This article was downloaded by: [University of Otago] On: 18 September 2013, At: 01:51 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

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The future of the suburbs. Suburbs in transition/The resettlement of America's suburbs/Suburbs in global context: the challenges of continued growth and retrofitting/Suburban urbanity: reenvisioning indigenous settlement practices/ Toward a new suburban America: will we catch the wave?/Optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on the evolution of the North American suburb/Response a

b

c

Jill L. Grant , Arthur C. Nelson , Ann Forsyth , Michelle Thompsond

e

Fawcett's , Pamela Blais & Pierre Filion

f

a

School of Planning, Dalhousie University , Halifax , Nova Scotia , Canada

b

University of Utah , Salt Lake City , UT , USA

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Graduate School of Design, Harvard University , Cambridge , MA , USA

d

Department of Geography , University of Otago , Dunedin , New Zealand

e

Metropole Consultants , Toronto , ON , Canada

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School of Planning, University of Waterloo , Waterloo , Canada Published online: 18 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Jill L. Grant , Arthur C. Nelson , Ann Forsyth , Michelle Thompson-Fawcett's , Pamela Blais & Pierre Filion (2013) The future of the suburbs. Suburbs in transition/The resettlement of America's suburbs/Suburbs in global context: the challenges of continued growth and retrofitting/Suburban urbanity: re-envisioning indigenous settlement practices/Toward a new suburban America: will we catch the wave?/ Optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on the evolution of the North American suburb/Response, Planning Theory & Practice, 14:3, 391-415 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2013.808833

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INTERFACE The future of the suburbs Suburbs in transition Jill L. Grant

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School of Planning, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

No urban form has been more maligned in public discourse than the American-style residential suburb. It stands accused of being inefficient, sterile, homogeneous, car-oriented, anti-social, and even obesogenic (inducing its inhabitants to become fat). As Arthur C. Nelson’s article and the four commentaries which follow note, though, suburbs are in a process of transition, responding to economic and cultural changes that are reshaping cities around the world. Today’s suburbs are diverse, housing a range of people and uses. In many places they are increasingly dense, emulating patterns of cosmopolitan city centers. Old stereotypes no longer apply nearly as neatly as the suburb’s critics might suggest. Even in the USA, the epitome of sprawling suburbia, new forms and practices are emerging. For this Interface we asked Nelson to comment on contemporary theory and practice in planning the suburbs. He has written extensively about urban development patterns and prospects in the USA. The American suburb may reflect a particular history and face unique problems, yet it has become an international signifier of urban malaise for some and modernity for others. Trends that begin in suburbs in the USA eventually come to influence suburban form in affluent neighborhoods around the world. For that reason, exploring the current status of America’s suburbs and their future prospects should interest planners everywhere. Nelson’s contribution here argues that demographic changes and shifting consumer preferences are likely to have dramatic implications for the housing and planning market in the USA over the next few decades. After generations of low density suburban growth stimulated by government subsidies, economic prosperity and demographic shifts, contemporary conditions in the USA are likely to reshape development practices to favor less expensive, denser, and better connected communities. Nelson describes a fifth wave of settlement – largely dominated by downsizing and starter households – inundating cities with a recommitment to urban and urbane living. As the four commentaries indicate, suburban trends and issues vary from country to country (just as they have shifted markedly over time). In the USA economic recession and a mortgage meltdown undermined confidence in the American dream, while worsening employment and income opportunities have begun to force households to reconsider housing options. The authors responding to Nelson’s piece acknowledge transformation is necessary and timely. Each adds something cogent to the argument. Ann Forsyth reminds us that the growing world population will be increasingly suburban, often in ways different from what occurs in the USA: planners need to be prepared to address the divergent impacts urbanization will generate in distinct places and conditions. Michelle Thompson-Fawcett reminds us that suburbanization is a contested process overlaid in many nations with colonialist and racist histories: in the New Zealand context, for instance, Ma¯ori communities are asserting their rights to shape planning and design processes, q 2013 Taylor & Francis

INTERFACE

Planning Theory & Practice, 2013 Vol. 14, No. 3, 391–415, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2013.808833

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increasingly forcing planners to take notice. In Toronto, Canada, as Pamela Blais notes, high rates of immigration and urbanization challenge public investment and financing strategies to keep up with expectations for services such as public transit. She argues that regulations and development financing need to shift from contemporary practices to support reurbanization policies. Pierre Filion is most sanguine about Nelson’s arguments. He notes the many challenges to transforming current development patterns in ways that might shift reliance away from the automobile. He questions Nelson’s predictions about the trajectory of energy prices. I share some of Filion’s reservations. Given recent growth in petro-carbon production through fracking and proposals to build pipelines from Canadian tar-sands to southern refineries, predictions of the “end of peak oil” may have been premature. With relatively low energy prices reducing automobile reliance will prove challenging. And while, as Nelson argues, consumer preference surveys indicate that people say they would choose cosmopolitan options over suburban lifestyles, consumer behavior can be highly sensitive to a range of factors from cost to fashion to location of employment options. People do not always do what they say they will do, as anyone who has ever made a New Year’s resolution can attest. Nelson is right that suburban landscapes have to be able to transition in form, function, and pattern as community needs change. In the past such transformation was limited by zoning regulations, infrastructure and amenity availability, financing practices and community attitudes. In recent years, codes and covenants enforced by developers and homeowners’ associations have played an increasingly important role in limiting the potential for ready physical adaptation, in providing mechanisms whereby people regulate externalities they experience in urban living, and in streamlining processes for socio-spatial segregation. How will planners find ways to address the needs of the less affluent and diverse households forming over the next decades in a context where the market producing housing has other priorities? How can we manage the social and spatial effects of a consumerist culture and an economic growth machine that continually encourages people to buy more, bigger, and better? In trying to address the problems of homogeneity and inefficiency which we regret in our old suburbs, how can we avoid stimulating gentrification processes that suburbanize poverty and disadvantage? As some people say about the poor, the suburbs will always be with us. Suburbs are as old as cities. That said, we have options about how and where they grow. Nelson challenges planners in the USA to learn from the current economic crisis and find ways to make suburbs more efficient and urban; in the process he offers planners in other nations insight about problems in the USA and some object lessons in what to avoid. Planners working in other contexts might reasonably ask themselves similar questions about how changing demographic and economic conditions might reshape housing demand over the next decades. In any locale, however, diagnosing suburban problems is likely to prove easier than implementing effective solutions to address and accommodate diverse housing needs in our communities. Jill L. Grant is Professor of Planning at Dalhousie University. Her research interests include suburban environments, gated communities, new urbanism, planning theory and practice, planning history, and health and the built environment. Email: [email protected]

The resettlement of America’s suburbs Arthur C. Nelson University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

America’s suburbs are in a class by themselves. With low densities spread across vast landscapes, they are dominated by one land use: the single-detached home on a large lot, dependent on the

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automobile, and so inefficiently developed as to rob America of economic vitality. Six emerging trends will change this: rising energy costs, lagging employment, falling incomes, shifting wealth, tighter home financing, and changing housing, neighborhood and community preferences. If planners and policy-makers heed emerging market trends and preferences, America’s suburbs could change dramatically. In this piece I explain how change may happen and what it means for America’s future. 1. Perspective1 I gladly accepted the invitation to write this commentary. I was raised in a typical American suburb: Milwaukie, Oregon, south of Portland. Our neighborhood only contained detached homes on quarter-acre lots. We drove everywhere. I have since lived in the suburbs of New Orleans and Atlanta, the central cities of Portland, Alexandria (Virginia), and now Salt Lake City. I spent part of my childhood in a suburb of Darmstadt, Germany and have used vacations to explore the suburbs and exurbs of Canada, England, Europe, and New Zealand. My professional and academic career has been spent largely trying to reform America’s suburbs. This commentary gives my reasons for believing transformation is coming. 2.

American suburbs are different

American suburbs are different from those of the developed and developing world, but the future of suburbs everywhere may be informed by America’s resettlement movement. American planners and scholars view suburbs as mostly low density, uniformly developed landscapes with few landuse interactions and dependency on the automobile. By contrast, the City of London, which would be considered a “central city” in the US, is home to just 7000 people while Greater London’s 32 boroughs claim more than eight million residents. Potts, Falk, and Kochan (2007) estimate that 61% of Greater Londoners live in the suburbs, which comprise about 90% of its 607 square miles land area. At about 14,500 individuals per square mile, London’s suburbs are more densely settled than such central cities as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, which average around 12,000 individuals per square mile. London’s suburban densities support mixed uses including a wide range of housing types and extensive transit networks. New suburban development in the UK rivals the density of New York City (Commission for Integrated Transport, 2013). Suburbs throughout Europe, Asia and even Canada are routinely more densely settled than most central cities in the USA. New suburban communities in Shanghai are planned for densities exceeding 20,000 individuals per square mile (Yu, 2011). In contrast, densities of American suburbs range around 2000 individuals per square mile. In prior work, I classified American suburban landscapes as having between 1000 and 3000 individuals per square mile, reasoning that the lower end was the minimum needed to support wastewater systems and the upper end was below the threshold needed to support regularly scheduled bus service (Nelson & Sanchez, 2005). Exurbs located within commuting sheds of metropolitan employment centers (Sanchez & Nelson, 1999) range in population density between 500 and less than 1000 individuals per square mile. About three-quarters of Americans live in auto-dependent suburbs or exurbs. Unlike suburbs in much of the rest of the world, however, American suburbs do not have mixed land uses or a range of housing options, and lack densities to support public transit. The outward expansion of suburbs in most developed countries is constrained by national policies and cultural values that preserve farmland and open spaces. For instance, the UK’s Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 nationalized development rights on most farmland and open spaces outside areas designated for development. In Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand and other countries, federal policies that restrict subsidized utility investments and place high priorities

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on farmland and open space preservation produce higher suburban densities than in the USA.2 In Germany and the Scandinavian countries, a system of local community permission for newcomers to acquire farmland and subnational development allocation quotas has similar suburban development outcomes (Davies, 1989). The situation is different in the USA for three reasons. First, Americans have entrenched antiurban sentiments (Nelson & Dueker, 1990). Along with this anti-urbanism comes a strong libertarian undercurrent that elevates individual rights over land above impacts on the community (Jacobs, 2012). Few impediments to developing open land and local land-use schemes that facilitate low density development encourage sprawl. Indeed, as farmland is converted to suburban uses nearby farms are impacted adversely by incompatible neighbors, leading to further losses (Nelson & Dawkins, 2004). Second, implicit policy seems to favor new construction over rehabilitation, new highways over public transit, converting farmland and open space into low-density suburban development over sustaining working or passive landscapes, construction of owner-occupied and detached homes over rented and attached homes (Bourne, 1981). Until the 1980s, the Federal Housing Administration provided mortgage insurance only to homes built within subdivisions meeting its subdivision design standards (Jackson, 1985). Its Underwriting Manual (Federal Housing Administration, 1939) openly recommended applying restrictive covenants to prevent the sale of homes to minorities; this practice led to mortgage redlining. With the bias toward detached owneroccupied housing, America’s suburbs comprised residential land uses at low density, separated from nonresidential activities and dominated by white middle-class households. Concerns about public health also influenced policies. Before World War II, public officials and planners worried about housing construction, over-crowding, lack of daylight and urban pollution. After the war, prevailing wisdom urged reducing urban densities to advance public health (Sloane, 2006). As a result, from the end of World War II to the end of the twentieth century, America became a “suburban nation” (Duany, Plater-Zyberk, & Speck, 2001). America’s transformation was facilitated by Section 701 of the 1954 Federal Housing Act, which provided planning grants to thousands of suburbanizing jurisdictions. Land-use planning created the modern template for planning suburban communities: separating residential subdivisions from retail uses, employment centers and civic institutions. The first two factors led to the third: inefficient land conversion. Subsidies for suburban development inflated the value of land for suburban land uses. Public facility pricing policies, for instance, induced low density development by charging less than full cost while making up the revenue difference by charging higher density development more than full cost. More efficient development was economically punished while less efficient development was rewarded (Blais, 2010; Nelson, 2011) meaning America got more high cost, low density and less low cost, higher density development than was efficient. Moreover, negative externalities imposed by suburban uses on nearby farmland depressed farmland value (Nelson & Duncan, 1995). With inflated land value for suburban development and depressed land value for farming far more land was converted than would occur if neither perversity existed. As America became a suburban nation the share of Americans living in the suburbs rose from 27% in 1950 to 52% in 2000 (Hobbs & Stoops, 2002). Three-quarters of the nation’s growth –about 100 million people – settled in the suburbs. While suburban America will continue to dominate growth and settlement, I expect it will become more urban along the way. I begin by assessing emerging market trends then segue into an overview of population migrations described by Beauregard (2006) and Fishman (2005). I then show how demographic trends drove America’s suburban development. Projections of demographic trends combined with recent stated preference surveys hint that America’s suburban future may be quite different from the past. In future American suburbs may need to achieve a certain level of urbanity to be successful.

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Emerging trends

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America’s development will be influenced by six emerging trends that together may conspire to reduce home ownership rates, shift new housing construction onto smaller lots (perhaps with smaller homes and more attached homes), and favor mostly infill and redevelopment over greenfield development. 3.1 Rising energy costs Since the end of World War II, homeownership has risen steadily, from 55% in 1950 to 69% in 2004 (Census Bureau, 2013). A key reason was the vast supply of inexpensive land available for home building outside cities. Another factor was cheap gasoline, making the cost of driving low. Since the early 1970s, however, energy prices have been rising steadily. High fuel costs now make locations far from work, shopping and other destinations more expensive. Between 2002 and late 2012 the average price of gasoline rose more than 10% per year, compounded. Increasing gasoline prices may dampen the attractiveness of suburban fringe and exurban areas for home buying,3 but homes closer in are usually more expensive to purchase. Rising gasoline prices may reduce homeownership rates overall. 3.2 Lagging employment Not only did the unemployment rate spike during the Great Recession (from late 2007 to early 2009) and remain high well into the 2010s, but the structure of the American labor force made it prone to high unemployment. A key feature of employment and income is preparedness based on education. Unfortunately, minority students lag behind non-Hispanic white students in standardized reading and mathematics tests (National Center for Education Statistics, 2009). Poor employment prospects for minorities may compromise the ability of workers to afford homes. Rapid population growth among disadvantaged groups who are less prepared to succeed, could lead to lower wages and higher unemployment rates than historical standards. Unless home prices fall and mortgage underwriting becomes more flexible, the overall effect may be lower home ownership rates in 2035 than in 2010 (Nelson, 2013). 3.3

Falling incomes

Median household incomes for all age groups in each income category ended the decade lower than in 2000 (Harvard Joint Center for Housing, 2011, p. 15). Moreover, the poverty rate increased from 11.3% in 2000 (Dalaker, 2001) to 15.1% in 2010 (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2011), and grew fastest in the suburbs.4 Indeed, over the period 2000– 2008, suburbs accounted for nearly half the increase in the population in poverty (Garr & Kneebone, 2010). Combined with rising gasoline prices and lagging employment, those effects may further alter demand for owner-occupied homes over the next decades (Nelson, 2011). 3.4

Shifting wealth

Another trend reveals that the nation’s wealth has been shifting steadily to more affluent households. In the 1980s, about 80% of the nation’s wealth was held by the wealthiest fifth of households. By 2010, nearly 99% of America’s wealth was held by the highest quintile. Shifting wealth may lead to fewer people being able to buy homes. The US has become a nation where wealth inequality is greater than in many emerging countries, and where it is more difficult to rise above poverty than in nearly any developed country (Noah, 2012).

396 3.5

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In large part the bursting of the “housing bubble” of the middle 2000s produced the Great Recession (Faiola, Nakashima, & Drew, 2008).5 Banks and financial institutions closed, millions of homes were foreclosed (or “sold short” to avoid foreclosure), and home equity saw its biggest decline since the start of the Great Depression. In the wake of the financial disaster, lending institutions increased their underwriting requirements, thereby reducing the number of people who could buy a home. To qualify for conventional mortgages home buyers now need higher credit scores, longer and more stable work histories, and 20% down payments. According to the National Association of Home Builders (2011), the change in down-payment requirements alone may disqualify about five million potential home buyers, resulting in 250,000 fewer home sales and 50,000 fewer new homes built per year. 3.6 Changing housing and community preferences Americans seem to want something different from their homes, neighborhoods and communities than in the past. This will lead to a movement that resettles America’s suburbs. The next three sections explore the reasons and their implications. 4.

America’s fifth settlement movement

So, where are American suburbs going from here? Using insights from Beauregard’s (2006) Four Waves and Fishman’s (2005) Four Eras of American settlement patterns, I believe the USA is entering a Fifth Settlement Movement. 4.1

The fifth wave

Beauregard described four distinct waves of settlement in the USA with the fourth, the most recent beginning in 1948. Except for the fourth, he gave each wave precise beginning, middle and end years with milestones and characterizations of settlement activities. His third wave started with the panic of 1896 and ended in 1948 with the end of the recession that followed the war. The fourth wave saw the collapse of manufacturing and industry-related economic activity along with the rise of post-industrial society (Bell, 1976), and was fueled by home financing innovations of the Great Depression (Jackson, 1985). As innovations were added (such as lowering down-payment requirements to 5% or less and relaxing mortgage qualification standards), home ownership rates rose from 55% in 1950 to 69% in 2005. Beauregard (2006, pp. 58 –60) called the fourth wave the era of “parasitic suburbanization”. It accelerated America’s socio-economic and racial segregation while reducing the scales of agglomeration needed to advance the economy. State and federal fiscal policies transferred wealth from cities to suburbs (Orfield, 2002); public facility pricing encouraged low density, uniform suburban development by shifting wealth from more efficiently developed areas (Blais, 2010); land-use codes socially engineered community composition. Parasitic suburbanization came with a price. I estimate that largely because of it, four million more homes were built in the USA than were needed during the 2000s (Nelson, 2013). The Great Recession witnessed more home foreclosures than at any time since the Great Depression. By 2010 the US home ownership rate had fallen to 65.1% (Census Bureau, 2011). I will next discuss why the Fifth Wave of Settlement will be unlike the Fourth. 4.2 The fifth migration Citing Lewis Mumford’s classic 1925 work, “The fourth migration”, Fishman (2005) argued that the USA was entering a fifth migration. The first migration involved Europeans settling the east

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coast and then pioneers settling the rest of the continent to about the middle of the eighteenth century. The second migration led to population shifts from farms to factory towns especially in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions to about the beginning of the twentieth century. The third migration produced America’s first truly metropolitan centers of industry, commerce and finance; it had completed its course by the middle 1920s. Mumford then predicted a fourth migration which would result in decentralizing metropolitan areas, spreading people and jobs across larger regions. Fishman suggested a fifth migration emerged during the 2000s. It involves the reurbanization of inner city and older suburban areas, led by young professionals, empty-nester seniors, and immigrants. To Fishman, the fifth migration is re-creating a genuinely urban economy of flexible, small-scale, highly skilled units whose jobs are replacing the lost world of urban mass production. In a strange alchemy, precisely the disadvantages of inner-city districts in the age of the fourth migration – pedestrian scale, resistance to the automobile, aging housing stock, “obsolete” retail and manufacturing facilities, reliance on mass transit, minority and immigrant populations – are turning into advantages for the fifth migration. (Fishman, 2005, p. 359)

As America adds 100 million people and about 40 million households by 2040, we may question how many will be attracted to areas between downtowns and older suburbs – and whether they can be accommodated. After all, in 2010 America’s central cities combined had fewer than 40 million households. I predict the Fifth Migration will be driven mostly by seniors seeking mature suburban communities that meet their needs better than newer suburbs but at prices they cannot find in many central cities. The Fifth Migration will extend from downtowns and inner cities into older, mature suburbs (Ehrenhalt, 2012). Together, the Fifth Wave and the Fifth Migration reflect what I call America’s Suburban Resettlement Movement. 5.

Demographic drivers of America’s suburban resettlement movement

Scholars often bemoan the rise of post-war suburbs, the spread of exurbs, and the decline of central cities, especially those in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions (e.g. Duany et al., 2000; Jackson, 1985). Without being judgmental, let us look at the demographic drivers that created America’s suburban landscape in the first place. Three factors fueled post-war suburban expansion: rising incomes, falling household size and population growth. Between 1953 (the earliest year available) and 2000, median household income rose from $34,696 to $85,903 (in 2011 US dollars) mostly as married women entered the workforce (Census Bureau, 2012a). Average household size fell from 3.38 in 1950 to 2.59 in 2000 (Census Bureau, 2004). The population grew from 152 million to 281 million people between 1950 and 2000. While the population grew about 88% between 1950 and 2000, the country added nearly 64 million households or about 1.4 times more than 1950. American’s central cities would have had to almost double in size to meet these new market needs. The Baby Boom from 1946 to 1964 was especially influential. During this period, 76 million babies were born, the largest generation in the nation’s history. Tens of millions of households sought suburban locations to raise their children in healthy and safe communities offering better public education opportunities (Jackson, 1985). As boomers became parents themselves, they often raised their families in suburban landscapes. From 1985, when they were in full stride raising their own families, to 2011 when they began turning 65, the boomers had a profound effect on America’s built environment. To illustrate, I divide America’s housing market into three broad housing demand groups.6 Starter-

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home households comprise singles, young couples and young families whose householders are under 35 years of age. Peak demand households include those whose householders are between the ages of 35 and 64, have growing families, usually have good incomes (often with two wageearners), and need space to meet their peak housing needs. Downsizing households comprise householders who are 65 years of age and older, whose children have moved out, who face retirement or have already retired, and mostly no longer need (or want) large homes and/or large lots to maintain. Over the period 1985 through 2011, peak demand households accounted for 77% of the change in households, while downsizing households accounted for the rest. There was essentially no change in the number of starter households. Not surprisingly, new detached homes accounted for 78% of the change in total housing units during this period. New housing demand will transform over the next 25-year period, 2010 –2035. Table 1 estimates the number of starter, peak demand, and downsizing households for the period 2010– 2035. Peak demand households will account for only 16% of demand from 2010 through 2035. In contrast, the market share of downsizing households will grow from 23% over the period 1985– 2011 to 72% from 2010 to 2035. Together with starter households downsizers will account for about 84% of the new housing market to 2035. As the nation’s net demand for new housing units grows by about 1.2 million units per year, about one million will be for starter and downsizing households. Table 2 estimates the change in the number of households with and without children, and single individuals. Households with children will account for only 16% of household growth from 2010 to 2035, while those without children will account for 84%. More than half of the household growth (52%) will be single individuals, mostly as boomers lose their partners.

6.

Emerging housing, neighborhood and community preferences

Emerging evidence from surveys indicates that Americans want something different from their neighborhoods and communities. As demographic and economic trends are changing so are market preferences. Stated preference surveys gauge consumer demand given forced choices between clearly stated alternatives. In planning, such surveys can illustrate emerging preferences for communities, neighborhoods and housing. The US National Association of Realtors recently commissioned a large national survey (Russonello & Stewart, 2011). In addition to evaluating responses for all respondents, I sorted respondents into those under 35, those between 35 and 69, and those over 70 years of age. Table 3 shows choices participants made between types of communities and homes within them. Nearly 40% of respondents, including half of those under 35 years of age and more than a third of all others, would choose to live in an attached home (question 11) that was more accessible to destinations than detached homes. Yet attached homes comprise less than 30% of the housing supply (Census Bureau, 2012b). In choosing between small and large lot options, 60% of all respondents, and 56% of those 70 and over would choose a home on a smaller lot with a shorter commute rather than a home on a larger lot with a longer commute (Q9). Yet only 40% of the nation’s detached housing stock is on smaller lots (Census Bureau, 2012b). As households without children will account for 84% of the demand for housing choices to 2035, and more than half of that demand will be comprised of singles (mostly boomers losing partners), we find a substantial mismatch between emerging preferences and current housing supply. By 2035 and likely before, attached and small lot homes could comprise three-quarters of the housing market. If that is the

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case, the nation already has twenty to thirty million more homes on larger lots than the future market may demand. Table 4 shows that nearly 60% of respondents, about two thirds of those under 35, and substantially more than half of the rest, would choose mixed use, mixed housing neighborhoods if they could walk to destinations (Q10). About the same shares would choose more “urbane communities” over “conventional communities” (my descriptors based on Q13). The survey indicated that 24% of respondents and 34% of the singles now live in urbane communities.7 This is another indicator that the next quarter to half century of housing demand may be very different from that seen in the past half century. The Rise of a New Suburban America For more than a generation, most Americans have lived in American-style suburbs. Preference surveys indicate that half or more Americans now want something other than what conventional suburbia offers, but for the most part they do not crave large, dense cities. I call this a desire for a “suburban urbanity”, or, less charitably, “urbanity light.” Market surveys reveal that a third to half or more of boomers (born 1946 –1964), Generation-X (born 1965 –1979) and Gen-Y (born 1980 –1995) prefer to live close to a town center and be able to walk to shops, restaurants and other amenities. They value sociability. They would trade off large lots for smaller ones, and say they would choose attached homes to accomplish this (Logan et al., 2005). Aging boomers will especially want suburban places that allow for personal growth and learning, provide social opportunities and offer diverse and affordable housing choices (Stafford, 2009). How can we achieve the transformation? One challenge is to change attitudes of suburbanites. An example illustrates: in fall 2012, residents of Layton, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, narrowly defeated a proposal for a mixed-use, mixed-residential community near a commuter rail station. The Utah legislature subsequently made it more difficult for small groups of citizens to secure ballot initiatives intended to override city council decisions. Another challenge is to make urbane suburbia more affordable. Local governments will need to become proactive in applying affordable housing tools such as density bonuses, subsidized low and moderate income housing, and inclusionary zoning (Nelson, 2013). Existing suburbs may find it difficult to meet new opportunities. Older and closer-in suburbs are substantially built-out, albeit at low densities; retrofitting them may be difficult. Higher density infill and redevelopment can be accomplished by redeveloping parking lots and low rise, low intensity nonresidential development along commercial corridors (Dunham-Jones & Williamson, 2011). Land assembly along commercial strips may be easier on large sites whose owners can respond to market opportunities. Many kinds of fixed-way transit systems are feasible along these commercial strips. Still, retrofitting commercial corridors will not be easy. Filion and McSpurren (2007) observed that neighborhood opposition and disagreements among the many local governments through which commercial corridors pass may undermine the opportunity. Finally, reformation of America’s suburban form will not be achieved without important changes to public finance and planning institutions. American suburbs need to move away from using average cost pricing to finance public facilities and services. Currently, less costly, more efficient development subsidizes more costly, less efficient development: the resulting development patterns rob state and local governments of resources. We also have to address the mismatch between supply and demand for residential land uses which contributed to the Great Recession (Nelson, 2011, 2013). America’s economic future depends on making more efficient public financing and planning decisions in ways that can facilitate emerging market needs.

400 Table 1.

Interface Housing demand by householder age category, 2010 and 2035.

Household stage Starter (, 35) Peak demand (35 – 64) Downsizing (65 þ ) Total

2010

2035

Change

Change (%)

Share of change (%)

23,406 67,670 25,868 116,945

27,077 72,582 47,963 147,622

3671 4912 22,095 30,678

16 7 85 26

12 16 72

Source: Projected for 2035 using data from Woods and Poole Economics (2011).

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Table 2.

Households by type, 2010– 2035.

Household type

2010

2035

Change

Change (%)

Share of change (%)

With children Without children Single person Total

34,814 82,131 31,264 116,945

39,785 107,837 47,304 147,622

4972 25,706 16,040 30,678

14 31 51 26

16 84 52

Source: Projected for 2035 using data from Woods and Poole Economics (2011).

Table 3.

Stated preference between community types and housing choices by respondent age.

NAR (2011) stated preference question

All HHs (%)

Under 35 (%)

Q9 – Please select the community where you would prefer to live: Houses are smaller on smaller lots, 60 62 and you would have a shorter commute to work, 20 min or less 40 38 Houses are larger on larger lots, and you would have a longer commute to work, 40 min or more Q10 – Please select the community where you would prefer to live: 59 66 The neighborhood has a mix of houses and stores and other businesses that are easy to walk to 41 34 The neighborhood has houses only and you have to drive to stores and other businesses Q11 – Please select the community where you would prefer to live: 39 50 Own or rent an apartment or townhouse, and have an easy walk to shops and restaurants and have a shorter commute to work 61 50 Own or rent a detached, single-family house, and have to drive to shops and restaurants and have a longer commute to work Source: Adapted from Russonello and Stewart (2011)

35 – 69 (%)

70 and over (%)

62

56

38

44

52

56

48

44

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Table 4. Stated Preference between community types and housing choices by respondent, continued.

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NAR (2011) stated preference question

All HHs (%)

Under 35 (%)

35 – 69 (%)

70 and over (%)

Q13 – Please read the two descriptions below and answer the following questions. Assume that the quality of the schools, crime rates, and cost of house are exactly the same in the two communities: 44 35 46 46 There are only single family houses on large lots. There are no sidewalks. Places such as shopping, restaurants, a library, and a school are within a few miles of your home and you have to drive to most. There is enough parking when you drive to local stores, restaurants and other places. Public transportation, such as bus, subway, light rail, or commuter rail, is distant or unavailablea. There is a mix of single family detached 56 65 54 54 houses, townhouses, apartments and condominiums on various sized lots. Almost all of the streets have sidewalks. Places such as shopping, restaurants, a library, and a school are within a few blocks of your home and you can either walk or drive. Parking is limited when you decide to drive to local stores, restaurants and other places. Public transportation, such as bus, subway, light rail, or commuter rail, is nearby.b Source: Adapted from Russonello and Stewart (2011). a The author terms these “conventional communities”. b The author terms these “urbane communities”.

Notes 1. I am indebted to Jill Grant for challenging me to write this commentary and then offering wonderfully useful insights that I included. 2. In parts of the British Columbia lower mainland where agricultural land reserve policies force intensification and planning policy supports multi-family housing, only 30% of housing starts in recent years are detached housing. The high housing costs of this region represent a reasonable model of where things may go when economic drivers force people to shift views (Grant & Scott, 2012). 3. Home values in the exurbs and suburban fringe have been falling for several years and are unlikely to return in most cases (Nelson, 2013). These homes may become affordable housing for more than one household through a kind of reverse filtering-down process as closer-in areas are gentrified, pushing lower- and even middle-income households out. 4. Hulchanski (2010) argues in the Canadian context that the suburbs are getting poorer because less affluent households are being driven out of the city of Toronto by rising housing prices as urban living becomes trendier. Emerging trends indicate that the USA is headed toward a Parisian model where the affluent monopolize the amenities of the central city and attractive suburban centers while the poor are confined to distant banlieus with poor access and poor prospects. 5. Housing speculation and financial frenzy occurred in several countries – with the USA leading the pack but others experiencing similar crises. For instance, as British banks struggled and the British housing market sagged, government adopted policies to help owners retain their homes so abandonment and foreclosure was probably not as common. Ireland and Spain seem to have suffered more. In contrast, Canada escaped much of the housing bubble outcomes because bank rules were tighter than in the USA. 6. I use data from the American Housing Survey (AHS) for 1985 (Census Bureau, 1988) and 2011 (Census Bureau, 2012b) to estimate housing demand by householder age by housing stage. The AHS is conducted

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every two years. The surveys used correspond to when boomers were entering and the leaving their peak housing demand period. 7. This is based on responses to Q4 for these descriptors of the current landscape in which respondents live: Which of the following best describes the place where you live: City – downtown, with a mix of offices, apartments, and shops; City – more residential neighborhood (Russonello & Stewart, 2011).

Arthur C. Nelson is the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Research Center, University of Utah. He is the author of several books and many articles on development trends in the USA. Email: [email protected]

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References Beauregard, R. A. (2006). When America became suburban. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bell, D. (1976). The coming of post-industrial society: A venture in social forecasting. New York, NY: Basic Books. Russonello, B., & Stewart (2011). The 2011 community preference survey: What Americans are looking for when deciding where to live. Washington, DC: National Association of Realtors. http://www.stablecomm unities.org/sites/all/files/library/1608/smartgrowthcommsurveyresults2011.pdf Blais, P. (2010). Perverse cities: Hidden subsidies, wonky policy, and urban sprawl. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Bourne, L. S. (1981). The geography of housing. New York: Wiley. Census Bureau. (1988). American housing survey for the United States: 1985 Current Housing Reports, Series H150/85. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Census Bureau. (2004). Households by type and size: 1900 to 2002. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/ population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabHH-6.pdf Census Bureau. (2011). Homeownership by selected demographic and housing characteristics. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/ownerchar.html Census Bureau. (2012a). Current population survey. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/apsd/techdoc/cps/ cpsmar12.pdf Census Bureau. (2012b). American housing survey for the United States: 2011 Current Housing Reports, Series H150/11. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Census Bureau. (2013). Housing vacancies and home ownership. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/ housing/hvs/ Commission for Integrated Transport. (2013). Theme 4: Density. Retrieved from http://www.plan4sustai nabletravel.org/key_themes/density/ Dalaker, J. (2001). Poverty in the United States: 2000 U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Series P60-214. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Davies, H. W. E. (1989). Planning control in western Europe. London: HMSO. DeNavas-Walt, C., Proctor, B. D., & Smith, J. C. (2011). U.S. Census Bureau, current population reports, P60239. Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Duany, A., Plater-Zyberk, E., & Speck, J. (2000). Suburban nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream. New York: North Point Press. Dunham Jones, E., & Williamson, J. (2011). Retrofitting suburbia. New York: Wiley. Ehrenhalt, Alan (2012). The great inversion and the future of the American city. New York, NY: Knopf. Faiola, A., Nakashima, E., & Drew, J. (2008). What went wrong? Washington Post. Wednesday, October 15, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101403343.html?hpid¼ topnews&sid=ST2008101403344&s_pos¼ Federal Housing Administration. (1939). Underwriting manual: Underwriting and valuation procedure under Title II of the National Housing Act with revisions to February, 1938. Washington, DC: Federal Housing Administration. Filion, P., & McSpurren, K. (2007). Smart growth and development reality: The difficult co-ordination of land use and transport objectives. Urban Studies, 44(3), 501– 524. Fishman, R. (2005). Longer view: The fifth migration. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(4), 357– 366. Garr, E., & Kneebone, E. (2010). The suburbanization of poverty. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Grant, J. L., & Scott, D. E. (2012). Complete communities versus the Canadian dream: Representations of suburban aspirations. Canadian Journal of Urban Research: Planning and Policy, 21(1), 132– 157, Supplement.

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Harvard Joint Center for Housing. (2011). State of the nation’s housing 2011. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Hobbs, F., & Stoops, N. (2002). Demographic trends in the 20th century U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 special reports, series CENSR-4. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Hulchanski, J. D. (2010). The three cities within Toronto. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto, Cities Centre. http://www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/pdfs/curp/tnrn/Three-Cities-Within-Toronto-2010-Final.pdf Jacobs, H. (2012). Talking about property rights over tea: Discourse and policy in the U.S. and Europe. In T. Hartmann & B. Needham (Eds.), Planning by law and property rights reconsidered (pp. 71– 96). Surrey, England & Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Jackson, K. (1985). Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Logan, G., Siejka, S., & Kannan, S. (2005). The market for smart growth. Washington, DC: Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/pdf/logan.pdf Mumford, L. (1925). The fourth migration. The Survey, 54(3), 130– 133. National Association of Home Builders. (2011). Diverse groups respond to proposed rule for qualified residential mortgages. Retrieved from http://www.nahb.org/news_details.aspx?newsID¼12403 National Center for Education Statistics. (2009). The nation’s report card. US Department of Education. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2008/2009479.pdf Nelson, A. C. (2011). The new California dream. Washington, DC: The Urban Land Institute. Nelson, A. C. (2013). Reshaping metropolitan America: Development trends and opportunities to 2030. Washington, DC: Island Press. Nelson, A. C., & Dawkins, C. J. (2004). Urban containment in the United States. Chicago, IL: American Planning Association. Nelson, A. C., & Dueker, K. J. (1990). The exurbanization of America and its planning policy implications. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 9(2), 91– 100. Nelson, A. C., & Duncan, J. B. (1995). Growth management principles and practice. Chicago, IL: American Planning Association. Nelson, A. C., & Sanchez, T. W. (2005). The effectiveness of urban containment regimes in reducing exurban sprawl. DISP, 160, 42– 47. Noah, T. (2012). The great divergence: America’s growing inequity crisis and what we can do about it. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press. Orfield, M. (2002). American metropolitics: The new suburban reality. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Potts, G., Falk, N., & Kochan, B. (2007). London’s suburbs: Unlocking their potential. London, UK: BURA and URBED. Sanchez, T. W., & Nelson, A. C. (1999). Debunking the exurban myth. Housing Policy Debate, 10(3), 689– 709. Sloane, D. C. (2006). Longer view: From congestion to sprawl: Planning and health in historical context. Journal of the American Planning Association, 72(1), 10 – 18. Stafford, P. B. (2009). Elderburbia: Aging with a sense of place in America. New York, NY: Praeger. Woods & Poole Economics. (2011). Complete economic and demographic data source. Washington, DC: Woods & Poole Economics. Yu, R. (2011). Shanghai unveils plan for 7 new satellite cities. China Daily. 30 June. Retrieved from http:// www.planetizen.com/node/50361

Suburbs in global context: the challenges of continued growth and retrofitting Ann Forsyth Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Among those working in urban studies, suburbs evoke strong responses. The kind of response varies, however, in part depending on what types of suburbs people are examining. Recent work attempting to look at suburbs globally has focused on how to define suburbs by targeting core characteristics such as outer location, relative newness and (less consistently) lower densities

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(Forsyth, 2012; Harris, 2010). This kind of work acknowledges the great variety of suburban environments in terms of other characteristics including building types (high rise housing and squatter settlements along with tract housing); activities (industrial suburbs as well as commuter havens); social and cultural dimensions (ethnoburbs and low income enclaves as well as middle class family-oriented sites); transportation modes (transit-oriented suburbs along with automobiledependent ones); and development approach (self-build housing, architect-designed suburbs, and planned new towns as well as developer tracts). Recent historical work has also put paid to the notion that North American suburbs were always white, middle and upper middle class demonstrating, for example, a rich suburban history of working class, African American, and selfbuild suburbs (Nicolaides & Wiese, 2006). In his article Arthur C. Nelson provides an important summary of recent and future trends in the suburban landscape of the USA – defining those suburbs using political boundaries (that is, as metropolitan areas outside core cities). This reflects a common definition among scholars working on the USA, one that is used less often internationally. Nelson’s careful assessment reflects his long and distinguished record of examining urban (including suburban) development. As he points out, the next 30 years will be a period in which the USA could add 100 million people, many in suburbs with available land – including infill in what are now suburban shopping centers and parking lots. He emphasizes that, compared with the past, rather more of such development will be in denser forms and located in redeveloping suburbs, but it will be suburban (Figure 1). This is not just a trend in the USA. In the same period the world’s population will grow by maybe 2 to 3 billion, mostly in urban areas (UN, 2004). That is, global population and urban growth will be 20 to 30 times that of the USA. And for practical reasons most of that growth will occur in the outer parts of urban areas, many large enough to have components that can be seen as suburban. Suburban growth, then, will be largely a phenomenon that occurs outside the USA and indeed will be located in lower and middle income countries in cities that are rarely household names to North American readers (or even to readers globally). Table 1, using figures from the UN examining the fastest growing cities with populations over 750,000, demonstrates this change in geography. In the period of 1950 – 2000 Las Vegas in the USA appeared in similar lists (Satterthwaite, 2007). Of course, the USA is a central site for the production of knowledge, culture, and economic practices and so what happens in the USA is perhaps important beyond its modest numbers. Some attention in the scholarly literature has focused on the export of such “US-style” suburban models as Orange County Beijing (Fishman, 2003; Leichenko & Solecki, 2005). Such stereotypical places are important but hardly the whole story of newer development in outer locations in urban areas around the globe that may be quite diverse and include substantial low income populations.

Figure 1. Suburban Hangzhou on left and suburban Faridabad outside Delhi on the right represent some of the new face of suburbs globally. Photos by author.

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Table 1. Urban areas over 750,000 with fastest average annual projected growth 2000– 2025. Urban Agglomeration

Country

Foshan Yamoussoukro Ouagadougou Abuja Lilongwe Kabul Kigali Shantou Huizhou Blantyre-Limbe Sana’a’ Luanda Huambo Niamey Nantong Putian Kathmandu Dar es Salaam Kampala Mbuji-Mayi

China Coˆte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Nigeria Malawi Afghanistan Rwanda China China Malawi Yemen Angola Angola Niger China China Nepal United Republic of Tanzania Uganda Democratic Republic of the Congo

Annual increase % 29.1 16.7 14.8 12.2 10.5 10.0 9.6 9.5 9.3 9.1 8.6 8.5 8.4 8.4 8.2 8.1 7.9 7.7 7.6 7.5

Source: Developed using UN, 2010.

They are also not the whole story in the USA. Nelson makes the point that in the future suburbs in the USA will not be exceptionally homogenous and low density – if they ever were. Suburbs have always had cheap land; it is clear that even in the USA people without means go to suburbs and suffer the problems of locational disadvantage that form the focus of debates elsewhere (Maher, 1994). Already, in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the USA, more poor people in the USA live in (politically defined) suburbs than in the core cities (Berube & Kneebone, 2006). Looking for immigrants in the USA one now as often as not looks in suburbs. While as I have noted above historians have clearly demonstrated that suburban diversity and disadvantage is not new in the USA, suburban variety is growing as suburbs simultaneously expand in some areas and age in others. It is now impossible to ignore this diversity within the USA; taking a global view of this is even more compelling and is forcing scholars and policymakers to rethink their approaches to suburbs. The sheer volume of suburban growth expected in coming decades is unprecedented. It will pose substantial challenges for planners not least because the places where considerable growth will occur lack the high incomes and well established governmental structures that can simplify problem solving. Opportunistic suburban developments that lack infrastructure and links to the services of the more established parts of urban areas are likely to remain a dominant mode of growth. However, such areas are also the locations where millions, even billions of people will energetically attempt to create better lives for themselves, their households, and their communities. They will be sites of innovation. Retrofitting such opportunistic suburbs will be a key area for urban planning intervention around the globe and there are plenty such suburbs in the USA also demanding attention. Thoughtful analyses and a more global perspective, as indicated by Nelson’s article and the related commentaries, can better prepare the profession for this coming challenge.

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Ann Forsyth is a Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her work focuses on the social aspects of physical planning and urban development. Email: aforsyth@ gsd.harvard.edu

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References Berube, A., & Kneebone, E. (2006). Two steps back: City and suburban poverty trends 1999– 2005. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from http://www.brookings.edu/, /media/research/ files/reports/2006/12/poverty%20berube/20061205_citysuburban.pdf Fishman, R. (2003). Global suburbs. Working paper. University of Michigan, URRC-0301. Retrieved from http://sitemaker.umich.edu/urrcworkingpapers/all_urrc_working_papers&mode 14single&recordID 14 308464&nextMode14list Forsyth, A. (2012). Defining suburbs. Journal of Planning Literature, 27(3), 270– 281. Harris, R. (2010). Meaningful types in a world of suburbs. In M. Clapson & R. Hutchinson (Eds.), Suburbanization in global society (pp. 15 – 50). Bingley, England: Emerald. Leichenko, R., & Solecki, W. (2005). Exporting the American dream: The globalization of suburban consumption landscapes. Regional Studies, 39, 241– 253. Maher, C. (1994). Residential mobility, locational disadvantage and spatial inequality in Australian Cities. Urban Policy and Research, 12(3), 185–191. Nicolaides, B., & Wiese, A. (2006). Introduction. In B. Nicolaides & A. Wiese (Eds.), The suburb reader (pp. 1 – 10). New York, NY: Routledge. Satterthwaite, D. (2007). The transition to a predominantly urban world and its underpinnings. IIED human settlements discussion paper. Retrieved from http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php? o¼10550IIED UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2004). World population to 2300. New York: United Nations. U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2010). World urbanization prospects: The 2009 revisions, data – Excel format. New York: United Nations.

Suburban urbanity: re-envisioning indigenous settlement practices Michelle Thompson-Fawcett Department of Geography, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Some 35 years ago a fleet of army vehicles growled through central Auckland to reinforce 700 police officers in expelling protestors on ancestral Ma¯ori land in the heart of inner suburbia, less ¯ ra¯kei Ma¯ori Action Committee occupied temporary housing for than 8 km from downtown. The O 506 days on land the Crown sought to subdivide in this highly prestigious waterfront location: that is, until 222 of them were arrested for “trespassing” on these ancestral lands of Nga¯ti Wha¯tua, and the temporary meeting house, buildings and gardens demolished. The politics of the situation were complicated. However, the occupation confronted New Zealanders more powerfully than ever before, with the legacy of colonial domination in the urban context. Although 1978 is not very long ago, it is a world away from Nelson’s potential “suburban urbanity” of America’s “Fifth Settlement Movement”. Nelson’s recommended prioritisation of diverse housing choices, affordable housing, and communities of difference that acknowledge racial and ethnic minorities (inter alia) is a route now being slowly traversed in the New Zealand planning environment. It was not a familiar pathway 35 years ago. Therefore, in response to Nelson’s commentary, I want to raise some points that tautoko (support) his concept of suburban urbanity, and to do so in relation to indigenous urbanisation, grounded in shifts that are taking place in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Much of Nelson’s account of changes and visions for suburban America resonates with the situation in other countries. In

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particular, providing for diversity in suburbanisation processes is critical for producing a more physically and socially durable and flexible city form. This is especially so in places with a rich social, cultural and ethnic diversity such as New Zealand (Thompson-Fawcett, 2011). It is not just a question of what physical form a suburban urbanity might take (there are many alternatives), but how to encourage socially acceptable and socially resilient development (encompassing, for example, equity, diversity, inclusion and quality of life) via processes of meaningful engagement (Ancell & Thompson-Fawcett, 2008). Notions of inclusive, participatory planning mirror Nelson’s recognition of the importance of resident attitudes, involvement and commitment to chosen directions for the built environment. Several questions can be raised in response. What is the social capacity for change? What kinds of engagement processes might be adapted to differing circumstances to help secure agreed visions for implementation of development along the lines of a suburban urbanity? How is influence secured, over and above participation? How might the urban environment reflect the values and aspirations relevant to the cultural contexts? What can city planning feasibly achieve and who would the results serve? Parallel with the many debates surrounding the future of suburbia are deliberations within and between indigenous communities about indigenous urban futures – albeit on a smaller scale in terms of the quantum of text. Such discussions are relatively recent, indigenous groups having focused more on survival and retention of ways of knowing, ahead of any application to impending urbanisation (Royal, 2002). However, being creative about how to employ traditional knowledge as a foundation and inspiration for transforming urban settings in a way that expresses identity, self-determination and cultural specificity is now dovetailing with international shifts in thinking about urban and suburban futures (Thompson-Fawcett, 2010). Indigenous customary knowledge and practices offer important precedents in the search for suburban urbanity that are culturally specific and of their place. Application of indigenous Ma¯ori design principles, for example, has definite merit in terms of taking an integrated, low impact approach to development and tackling issues of equity, affordability, and cultural and locational relevance (Awatere, Rolleston, & Pauling, 2010). For example, the Ma¯ori pa¯ (fortified village) was often a relatively high density, complex urban environment that celebrated cultural identity, fostered productive and regenerative practices, maintained a living link to valued landscapes, ensured a responsive architecture, and merged the natural and cultural in a holistic worldview (Yates, 2010). The related design principles are not universal, but derive from particular values, local ecology, and the relationship between the local people and their environment. Any development process building on such ideas thus needs to empower local groups to participate effectively in the planning or the context specificity is lost. Back to Ta¯maki Makaurau/Auckland. In 2010 Auckland “super city” was born – via a process of local government restructuring. With approximately 1.5 million residents now, over a third of New Zealand’s inhabitants, the metropolitan area has a significant indigenous population, a substantial European and Asian population, and the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world. It consistently ranks near the top of international surveys of quality of life and liveability. A cosmopolitan place should have a meaningful appreciation of diversity in its suburban growth management. But does it? Let us look at one example. The 2012 Auckland Plan for the metropolitan region specifically commits to increasing traditional indigenous community housing forms in the city, enabling selfsustaining indigenous communities within the urban area, and targeting indigenous community development projects for support. In keeping with Nelson’s reformation preferences, this represents a pledge to moving towards a suburban urbanity that, amongst other things, achieves neighbourliness, learning, diversity, affordability, mixed demographics, mixed activity and walkability, not least through incorporating indigenous aspirations for redevelopment and new development. As is typical of many colonial cities, the presence of indigenous groups has long been

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rendered invisible in the urban fabric. Are the plan’s pledges helping re-establish a tangible, distinctive indigenous urban presence? An excellent model of contemporary transformation addressing such issues is now emerging on that site of historic controversy, just 8 km from downtown, in the centre of the Auckland isthmus. ¯ ra¯kei, has been A medium density development, by the indigenous group Nga¯ti Wha¯tua o O designed as a traditionally inspired environmentally and socially sustainable project that aims to attract and accommodate tribe members back onto ancestral lands. The plan was devised following an extensive series of meetings with tribe members that led to a particularised set of culturally relevant principles for further settlement of the site (Rolleston & Awatere, 2009). For example, kaitiakitanga (guardianship and stewardship) is nurtured via onsite mitigation of greywater and stormwater, careful use of rainwater and solar energy, and clustering of buildings to maximise communal reserves and restoration of natural features. Values such as rangatiratanga (selfdetermination and independence), whanaungatanga (participation and membership), kotahitanga (community collaboration and identity) are respected via a mix of clustered housing environments, a health clinic, educational opportunities, employment prospects, home occupation options, heritage markers, and natural, cultural and leisure amenities. Such attainments are a far cry from the displacing land confiscations, evictions, protests and demolitions that litter the urban history of this very landscape. I would suggest that contemporary activities on this site represent an indigenous community-centred resurgence, along the lines embraced by Corntassel (2012): defending homelands against colonialism, with integrity. Achieving that within the suburban setting is no mean feat. ¯ ra¯kei project demonstrates the tremendous potential for interweaving In addition, the O traditional and present-day patterns of urbanisation: reclaiming and integrating indigenous spatial narratives into urban environments, re-establishing the cultural imperative and presence of indigenous groups in cities, and concomitantly improving the prospects for suburban living space. In this Fifth Movement – both in America and beyond – we find an authentic, growing appreciation of indigenous knowledge in terms of the future of our settlements as physical and human landscapes, in ways that challenge conventional suburban development. That challenge is a provocative and constructive contributor to the potential implementation of a suburban urbanity – a suburban urbanity that could embrace diversity courtesy of genuine plurality in its realisation. Michelle Thompson-Fawcett’s research focuses on the power relations involved in indigenous planning, urban design, urban regeneration and urban growth management. Her work is fuelled by an enthusiasm for improving proactive, reflective and visionary local planning. She is a descendant of Auckland tribe Nga¯ti Wha¯tua. Email: [email protected]

References Ancell, S., & Thompson-Fawcett, M. (2008). The Social Sustainability of Medium Density Housing: A Conceptual Model and Christchurch Case Study. Housing Studies, 23(3), 423– 442. Awatere, S., Rolleston, S., & Pauling, C. (2010). Developing Maori urban design principles. In K. Stuart & M. Thompson-Fawcett (Eds.), Ta¯one Tupu Ora: Indigenous knowledge and sustainable urban design (pp. 17 – 22). Wellington: Steele Roberts Aotearoa. Corntassel, J. (2012). Re-envisioning resurgence: Indigenous pathways to decolonization and sustainable selfdetermination. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 1, 86 – 101. Rolleston, S., & Awatere, A. (2009). Nga¯ hua papaka¯inga: Habitation design principles. MAI Review, 2(2), 1 – 13. Retrieved from http://review.mai.ac.nz Royal, C. (2002). Indigenous worldviews: A comparative study. (Report for Nga¯ti Kikopiri, Te Wa¯nanga o Raukawa, Te Puni Ko¯kiri/Ministry for Ma¯ori Development, Fulbright New Zealand, Winston Churchill Memorial Trust). Retrieved from Mauriora ki te Ao: http://www.mkta.co.nz/assets/sabbaticalreport31.1. 2002.pdf

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Thompson-Fawcett, M. (2010). Keeping the past in sight to signal ways forward. In K. Stuart & M. ThompsonFawcett (Eds.), Ta¯one Tupu Ora: Indigenous knowledge and sustainable urban design (pp. 11 –15). Wellington: Steele Roberts Aotearoa. Thompson-Fawcett, M. (2011). Fuzzy futuring? Intensification, social sustainability and the Lisbjerg vision. In K. Witten, W. Abrahamse, & K. Stuart (Eds.), Growth misconduct: Avoiding sprawl and improving urban intensification in New Zealand (pp. 23 – 31). Wellington: Steele and Roberts Aotearoa. Yates, A. (2010). Micro-urbanism: Regenerative buildings and the architectural landscape of the pa¯. In K. Stuart & M. Thompson-Fawcett (Eds.), Ta¯one Tupu Ora: Indigenous knowledge and sustainable urban design (pp. 23 – 37). Wellington: Steele Roberts Aotearoa.

Toward a new suburban America: will we catch the wave?

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Pamela Blais Metropole Consultants, Toronto, ON Canada

Nelson’s article describes an impending new wave of urban development that is distinctly different from what we have known since the mid twentieth century. His most startling evidence shows that the traditional lion’s share of “peak demand” – the family households that have propelled growth since World War Two – is essentially being replaced with starter households and downsizers. Planners should be pleased. Nelson’s evidence suggests that after decades of planners trying to curb sprawl and regulate more urban forms of development into being, market demand may now actually be aligning with planning objectives. Demand is shifting to favour compact urban forms, with an emphasis on neighbourhood amenities, public transit, walking, and cycling. This could produce radical shifts in the pattern of urban development: indeed, Nelson heralds a distinct and new wave he calls the “fifth settlement movement”. Certainly from where I sit such a massive shift seems more than plausible. Toronto continues a central city residential building boom that has been underway for the better part of a decade. Since 2005 over 125,000 new housing units have begun construction within the City of Toronto (CMHC, 2013). At the centre of the Greater Toronto Area, the City of Toronto is completely urbanised: these units all represent redevelopment. Many are in high rise towers in the centre. Others occupy midrise buildings along the “avenues”, transit-served main streets in the centre and in post-war inner suburbs. What is driving the unprecedented growth? Playing key roles in the Toronto case are historically low interest rates and strong demand from young singles and couples who want easy access to jobs and the restaurants, shopping and other downtown amenities. In the inner suburbs, older households are downsizing from houses to more easy-to-maintain apartments, but staying within their own neighbourhoods. This takes place in the context of a Toronto region that has been growing at a rate of about 100,000 new residents every year, largely due to international immigration. Nelson suggests that baby boomers moving into retirement, coupled with a younger generation expressing preferences for more accessible, amenity-rich neighbourhoods, are driving the next wave. While the baby boom is an undeniable market force, international immigration to countries like the USA and Canada also needs to factor into the analysis. With a typically young age profile, immigrant households may moderate the effects of the aging boomers’ housing choices, particularly in the largest urban centres that tend to attract high shares of international migrants.

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Other market trends identified may vary depending on jurisdiction. For example, tighter home financing requirements are likely a more significant factor in the USA, as that market continues to recover from the subprime mortgage crisis, than in other countries. These and other considerations, such as existing urban form, suggest that the fifth movement may take different shapes in different kinds of cities. The analysis of demographics, market trends and preferences focuses on the changing nature of demand. And that is one important part of the picture. But the supply side of the equation is equally significant. Nelson warns that any real changes to American suburban form will not be realised without “substantial changes to public finance and planning institutions.” In particular, he notes the need to reform pricing to eliminate sprawl subsidies, and for municipalities to reassess their historically generous allocation of suburban land for development. These measures are certainly needed. But the Toronto example – which on one level already seems to be adapting well to changing demand – nevertheless reveals that additional responses are required. Already walkable, cyclable, and by North American standards well served with subways and streetcars, Toronto is growing at a pace and in ways that nevertheless signal a need to shift to a whole new paradigm of what North American urbanism means and how to make it work. Continuing along the same gentle trajectory and gradually ramping up current actions will not suffice. Recent growth signals a shift that calls for distinctly different planning policy, infrastructure and design responses. Transportation is a major challenge, particularly to and within the central city. In Toronto’s case, subways and streetcars are already well beyond capacity, traffic is congested and conflicts between cars and cyclists are a daily problem. While most other North American cities struggle to attract transit riders, Toronto has significant unfulfilled demand for transit and cycling. This calls for moving well beyond incremental change and instead adopting an approach that really places walking, cycling and transit as priorities for urban transportation. The shift also requires a stronger emphasis on detailed design of urban environments. This means creating environments specifically designed for walking and cycling: with wide sidewalks, attractive public spaces, appropriate design guidelines and dedicated cycling networks. The next wave also calls for new planning frameworks and approaches. Currently, within already-urbanised areas, planning often tends to be reactive and project-based. The new scale and types of development call for planning frameworks that are proactive and district-based. This is not just for efficiency’s sake. We need integrated and coherent frameworks. This means involving the community, developers and other stakeholders up front to create district plans. It entails addressing appropriate redevelopment locations, building massing, walkability and cycling before the development applications arrive. Then projects that conform could be built as-of-right, without a lengthy planning approvals process. Ironically, new approaches require that urban planning departments that deal with redevelopment work more like suburban planning departments: the latter are virtual “planning machines” that continuously manufacture community plans in anticipation of future development. In suburban areas, which Nelson suggests will be the main nexus for the next wave, transformed planning is also required. Here it means proactively integrating denser development at strategic locations, mixing uses, creating functional local centres, and integrating walking, cycling and transit. What stands in the way of our cities responding to changing demand? Not a shortage of land available for redevelopment. Nelson notes the startling point that “virtually all of America’s new development needs to mid-century can be accommodated on existing parking lots.” Even in Canada’s relatively more compact suburbs, we see substantial redevelopment capacity: municipalities are turning their attention to retrofitting suburbs.

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But will we respond with the necessary planning policy and public finance changes? In planning circles we have known about these next wave trends – such as the aging population or changing household composition – for some time. But generally our planning, policy and public finance responses have been weak to non-existent. Policies, programs, regulation, engineering standards, and planning practice and culture tend to be slow to change. We need to address hidden and not-sohidden subsidies, mispricing, bureaucratic inertia, and NIMBYism. The fifth movement presents a significant opportunity to reshape cities along the lines that as planners we have been trying to achieve for decades. Nelson’s analysis suggests that the tide may finally be turning, with the market aligning with planning objectives. The result on the ground in our cities depends in large part on how well we are able to reconfigure the supply side: updating the planning policies and public finance mechanisms that filter the market demand. Will we catch the wave? Pamela Blais is a city planner and Principal of Metropole Consultants, a Toronto-based planning practice. She is the author of Perverse cities: Hidden subsidies, wonky policy, and urban sprawl (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010). Email: [email protected] Reference Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. (2013). Housing now. January issue. Retrieved from http://www. cmhc-schl.gc.ca/odpub/esub/64163/64163_2013_M01.pdf?fr¼1361909351627

Optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on the evolution of the North American suburb Pierre Filion School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

The tone of Nelson’s article is optimistic. In his view, housing and urban environment preferences of young childless professionals, immigrants and retiring baby boomers – three rapidly growing social categories – clash with the residential stock and configuration of the North American suburb. A large proportion of people belonging to these categories aspire to smaller housing units set in a public transit and walking friendly environment with daily activities located close by. Such individuals are willing to sacrifice residential space for a more “urbane” environment. Of course, downtown or inner city living could be an option, but in many metropolitan regions, central areas are too depleted to provide the desired cosmopolitan settings. In other cases, the wave of people desiring to live in central parts exceeds the housing stock and thus inflates property prices. Even where considerable core area housing development has taken place (as in Vancouver and Toronto), the small size and high cost of units restrain the market for potential owners and renters. Nelson foresees an adaptation of the suburb to the preferences of young childless professionals, immigrants and retiring baby boomers. Thus modified, the suburb would become more urban and shed what critics perceive as its more nefarious features: low density, absence of alternative to the car and a dearth of walking environments (e.g. Kunstler, 1993). The argument places too much faith in the capacity to achieve a change in suburban form through emerging population groups, their preferences and the rising density ensuing from their favoured housing options. The active ingredient of the North American suburban form and

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dynamics is not density alone. Dense sectors within suburbs function exactly like lower density areas; they reveal few modal share and journey pattern differences (Cervero & Kockelman, 1997). More critical to the nature of the suburban model is the relation between near-universal automobile reliance and land use in a context of plentiful infrastructure provision. These conditions reduced accessibility constraints and generated ample developable land, thus promoting liberal consumption of space. The need to provide abundant parking (generally in lots) itself arguably contributes to the low density suburban morphology (Shoup, 2005). As with low density, land use specialization – another defining feature of the North American suburban model – stems from heavy reliance on the automobile and encourages more and longer car journeys. Only automobiles can provide effective connections between large mono-functional zones. Meanwhile, the negative externalities of major traffic generators on residential areas further embed functional separation. Finally, dispersed suburban structuring activities (employment, retailing, services and institutions), which reflect the many medium peaks of automobiledefined accessibility patterns (in contrast to the centralizing tendency of public transit), hamper the effectiveness of other modes. Difficulties encountered by past attempts at modifying the suburb expose the deep rootedness of its prevailing land use –transportation dynamics. New urbanism developments have mostly failed in their efforts to create pedestrian-friendly main-street retail configurations and thus opportunities for functional walking (Grant & Perrott, 2011). Indeed, accommodating the car has been given such importance that one is hard pressed to find a single post-1950 suburban example of such a retail configuration. In a similar vein, efforts at suburban recentralization, while laudable, resemble car-dominated edge cities more than real suburban downtowns (Filion, 2007). And efforts at suburban residential intensification have often resulted in “stranded density”, where dense developments are just as deprived as low density areas of urban amenities (Filion, McSpurren & Appleby, 2006). Will emerging demographics alter the suburban model in a way that reflects new preferences? Nelson answers positively because in his view these demographic changes will coincide with a period of economic and financial stress, which will challenge prevailing suburban development patterns. In this perspective, stagnating incomes compounded by rising oil prices will make it increasingly difficult to acquire the typical single-family home and partake in the car-dependent suburban life style. To explore the possibility of a deep transformation of the North American suburban model we should examine both how the present financial reality of the suburb is felt by its residents and the expected future costs of different expenditures pertaining to the development and eventual conversion of the suburb. This leads me to challenge current views on how the financial consequences of prevailing forms of development are felt and Nelson’s predictions about the effect of changing costs on suburban life. In her recent book, Pamela Blais (2010) highlighted the heavy cost burden of the high infrastructure demands of low-density suburbs. While spreading out infrastructure certainly translates into heavier property tax loads or service fees (or higher property prices if financed through development charges), a surfeit of infrastructure also increases the supply of developable land and thereby reduces its cost, all else being equal (Vojnovic, 2000; White, 2003). What households pay in additional taxes and fees they may save in lower property values and mortgage payments. It follows that extensive and costly suburban infrastructure may not represent as great an obstacle to ongoing reliance on suburban urban form than assumed on the sole basis of infrastructure impact on public sector expenditures. The anticipated evolution of costs associated with the suburb – its development and life style – is more complex than suggested in the article. Present low inflation rates conceal wide variations in the evolution of prices. Sectors of the economy that enjoy productivity gains and/or engage in outsourcing register below average inflation, or indeed deflation. In contrast, the productivity gains

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of other economic activities are limited. This is the case for services such as those relying on a highskill workforce, and the construction industry. Inflation within this category of activities exceeds average rates, sometimes by a wide margin. A final group, the wildcard category, is dominated by commodities, where prices fluctuate according to worldwide shifts in supply and demand. If Nelson is right in pointing to a decades-long rise in oil prices, new extraction techniques and the possibility of a greater reliance on electricity and even natural gas to power vehicles may reverse the transportation energy cost progression. The effect of price trajectories on the evolution of suburbs will not be favourable to the retrofitting of suburbs into more urban environments. For example, while the relative cost of infrastructure and services, notably public transit capital and operation expenses, will most likely increase, that of owning and driving a car may decrease. In the present fiscal environment, governments will be hard pressed to set up the imposing infrastructure and service systems needed to break suburban car-dependent land use – transportation dynamics. Since at this time I am unable to identify the mechanisms that would bring about desired changes in the suburban model, I cannot share Nelson’s optimism. One can see how new suburban housing types could raise overall densities, but it is more difficult to fathom how the suburb could be modified into a much less automobile-dependent and more pedestrian- and transit-hospitable environment. Present suburban dynamics are deeply entrenched and conditions needed for the vigorous interventions required to alter these dynamics are lacking. All of this means that a large segment of the emerging demographic groups will be frustrated by the lack of adaptation of the suburb to new living environment preferences. The resettlement of Toronto inner suburbs by recent immigrants illustrates the tension between the inertia of the suburban model and the social and economic transition the article charts. Although density has risen substantially and retailing does mirror the new ethnic makeup, suburban sectors have maintained their overwhelming car orientation, generating accessibility problems for the new residents (Lo, Shalaby & Alshalalfah, 2012). Pierre Filion is Professor of Planning at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on how to create active and diversified urban settings. Recent research work explores the relationship between changes in urban form and the evolution of society. Email: [email protected] References Blais, P. (2010). Perverse cities: Hidden subsidies, wonky policy, and urban sprawl. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Cervero, R., & Kockelman, K. (1997). Travel demand and the 3 Ds: Density, diversity, and design. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2, 199– 219. Filion, P. (2007). The urban growth centres strategy in the Greater Golden Horseshoe: Lessons from downtowns, nodes, and corridors. Toronto, Ont: The Neptis Foundation. Filion, P., McSpurren, K., & Appleby, B. (2006). Wasted density? The impact of Toronto’s residential density distribution on transit use and walking. Environment and Planning A, 38, 1367– 1392. Grant, J. L., & Perrott, K. (2011). Where is the cafe´? The challenge of making retail use viable in mixed use suburban developments. Urban Studies, 48, 177– 195. Kunstler, J. H. (1993). The geography of nowhere: The rise and decline of America’s man-made landscape. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lo, L., Shalaby, A., & Alshalalfah, B. (2012). Relationship between immigrant settlement patterns and transit use in the Greater Toronto area. Journal of Urban Planning and Development, 137, 470 –476. Shoup, D. C. (2005). The high cost of free parking. Chicago, IL: American Planning Association. Vojnovic, I. (2000). Shaping metropolitan Toronto: A study of linear infrastructure subsidies. Environment and Planning B, 27, 197– 230. White, R. (2003). Urban infrastructure and urban growth in the Toronto region, 1950s to the 1990s. Toronto, Ont. The Neptis Foundation.

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Response Arthur C. Nelson

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University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

I am enlightened by the insights of the commentators. We collectively have much more to share than the word limits we were given. I welcome the opportunity to add to their discussion. Forsyth implicitly questions how we differentiate between city and suburb. Bethesda, Maryland, an unincorporated American suburb in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, has more people and is more densely settled than most US cities. The “suburbs” outside Shanghai house hundreds of thousands and even millions of Chinese people emigrating from the countryside; those suburbs are more like cities than most American cities. The literature has not fully resolved either the semantic or measurable differences between city and suburb. Thompson-Fawcett reminds us that planners often do not plan for the very people who will live in communities they plan. The housing, neighborhood and community preferences of aging American baby boomers, Latinos, Asians, and other populations are at odds with suburban zoning codes, which themselves are based on land-use plans rooted in a past dominated by white middle-class families comprised of married couples with children. My professional practice confronts the disconnection between past conditions and emerging realities; I often find locally elected suburban officials in denial. Blais confronts another reality emerging in Toronto and other large Canadian metropolitan areas: high rates of immigration that may only be accommodated efficiently through redevelopment. But efficient redevelopment requires wholesale changes to planning and landuse regulations, and new investment, especially in transit. Filion seems unconvinced that American suburbs can change much. The sheer scale of suburban sprawl undercuts the economics of reducing automobile dependency, especially through transit investments. I concur in the short term but disagree over the long term. In a remarkable 15year period, the Salt Lake Valley added light and commuter rail systems accessible to about 20% of the population; it will deploy bus rapid transit and streetcar systems accessing another quarter of the population over the next 15 years. Market studies suggest that nearly all future residential development will occur within 1 km of a transit station. It is not that most people want to live or work near transit – indeed about two-thirds do not. Yet, to meet the demand of the one-third who want those options, nearly all new residential and nonresidential development in the Valley will need to be built near transit stations to about mid century. Filion also questions my predictions of energy prices. To be clear, I do not believe the world is anywhere near reaching “peak oil” rising global demand means sustained increases in fossil fuel prices. While fracking and other technologies may reduce costs per British Thermal Unit (BTU) the producers of this energy will sell their products to the highest bidder on the world market. For instance, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway recently bought a major American railroad company to corner the market for shipping coal to Pacific ports to access Asian markets. And the controversial Keystone pipeline connecting Canada’s tar sands producers to US refineries will terminate at Gulf of Mexico ports where fossil fuels will be shipped overseas. It is conceivable that North America will become a net exporter of BTUs, but that will not mean lower energy prices domestically. Finally, I share Filion’s concern that people do not always do as they say in preference surveys. But stated preference surveys (also called forced-choice surveys) tease out consumer preferences given choices. The entire market analysis industry uses stated-preference surveys to guide product development and marketing efforts. Keeping in mind that American zoning regulations prevent the

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market from delivering what the market wants, we know from hedonic price studies that the market will pay a premium for smaller homes on smaller lots and attached homes if buyers gain transit advantages, improved walking and biking options, reduced dependency on the automobile, expanded accessibility to jobs and services, higher levels of public amenities that make sense only at higher densities, and so forth. After decades of unbridled expansion to meet particular needs, American suburbs are now in transition. Successful American suburbs of the future will be resettled by very different kinds of households.