Undeterred by the facts, North Carolina’s city planners continue to write comprehensive plans based on the illusion that higher density will solve most urban problems. They believe that sprawl is the cause of pollution, congestion, and the lack of community in our cities. Our city planners have appointed themselves to the task of defeating this "enemy."
Unfortunately, Census data show that as the younger generation ages, they want to live in single-family homes in the suburbs rather than in high-density housing downtown.
In a Forbes article yesterday morning, Joel Kotkin reported on a study by demographer Wendell Cox. Cox used Census data to compare where 25- to 34-year-olds were living in 2000 to where they were living by 2010 (now age 35-44). He found that by 2010, this group had grown in the suburbs by 12 percent and shrunk in the core cities by 22.7 percent. Kotkin writes,
In many ways this group [now age 35-44] may be more influential than the much ballyhooed 20-something. Unlike younger adults, who are often footloose and unattached, people between the ages of 35 and 44 tend to be putting down roots. As a result, they constitute the essential social ballast for any community, city or suburb.
Which cities gained the most? You guessed it, cities that are largely suburban.
The most popular cities among this group — with increases of over 10% — were Las Vegas; Raleigh, N.C.; Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.; Charlotte, N.C.; Orlando, Fla.; San Antonio, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, in Texas; and Sacramento, Calif.
And where did the now 35- to 44-year-old group move in these cities?
Furthermore, most of the growth took place not in the urban centers of these regions but in the outlying suburbs. This cohort expanded by more than 40% Raleigh’s suburbs — 37,000 people — over the decade. Houston’s suburbs gained the most of any region of the country, adding 174,000 members of this particular generation.
Planners should end their quixotic fight against the suburbs and sprawl and recognize the fact that the vast majority of people want to live in a single-family home with a yard in the suburbs or in an exurban environment.
Robert Bruegmann documents this trend in his book Sprawl: A Compact History. People have been moving out of the crowded, high-density cities for nearly 1,000 years. As soon as medieval city residents achieved a degree of wealth and government provided security, they moved outside of the city walls to a less crowded lifestyle. Or as Bruegmann summarizes, people then and now seek "privacy, mobility and choice."
It is past time for North Carolina’s city planners to reject their New Urbanist ideology and plan cities based on the desires of real people.
Kotkin concludes:
Unless there has been a mind-numbing change in attitude or an unexpected return to good governance in cities, young adults entering middle age will continue their shift toward suburban and lower-density areas in the decade ahead, upending the predictions of most pundits, planners and development experts.
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