However your read the tea leaves, if it's true the 'burbs are reinventing themselves in the new era, it’s walkable, compact urbanism that's providing a game plan.
"Now that the recent economic unpleasantness is behind us, we can resume the suburbanization of everywhere. The Economist apparently thinks so, given its recent special section headlined, 'The World Is Becoming Ever More Suburban, and the Better for It.'”
"Forbes, it seems, agrees: 'Nobody moves to a smaller house,' crows Robert 'Bob' Toll, the 73-year-old cofounder and executive chairman of luxury home builder, Toll Brothers. That’s from a Forbes story with this for a headline: 'Big Houses And Sprawling Suburbs Are Back.' So there."
"Well, except for a whole bunch of studies, books and surveys that remind us that the trend to urbanization worldwide continues. For instance, this from a recent United Nations report: 'Today, 54 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66 per cent by 2050. Projections show that urbanization combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban populations by 2050.'"
Ben Brown goes on to describe the dynamics of the push and pull where urban forms seem to be winning out, even in the 'burbs.
FULL STORY: This Just In: No one is everyone, no place is every place
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North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA)
Economic & Planning Systems, Inc.
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research