I was waiting for the experts to provide some context to the breathless headline “White Flight: Suburbs Lose Young Whites to Cities,” which the N&R deemed significant enough to put on the front page earlier this week. Antiplanner provides such context.
As you can imagine, Antiplanner views the Brookings Institution report as justification “to curb urban sprawl, build expensive rail transit networks, or otherwise impose more federal programs on metropolitan areas,” even though there’s no real evidence that whites are indeed fleeing the ‘burbs.
There’s a simple reason why “America’s suburbs are now more likely to be home to minorities, the poor and a rapidly growing older population” —- housing is cheaper. New Urbanists just don’t seem to grasp the fact that their high-density, mixed-use downtown developments price many people out of the housing market.
That said, you have to wonder if the New Urbanist movement —which is mostly made up of white liberals —- will still think that urban sprawl is evil now that they have a different picture of who’s driving it.
