Apparently the more dense the city---which was thought to confine sprawl---the bigger the suburbs too. Wendell Cox examines this theory in New Geography: “Much has been written about how suburbs have taken people away from the city and that now suburbanites need to return back to where they came. But in reality most suburbs of large cities have grown not from the migration of local city-dwellers but from migration from small towns and the countryside.”

Richard Florida agrees at The Daily Dish. He said we need to not take such a hostile look at suburbs, rather seeing them in a new light: "While it's common to think of suburbs as draining off city assets, today's metropolitan areas with their urban cores and suburban and ex-urban rings, are really expanded cities. Up until the early-to-mid 20th century, cities were able to capture peripheral growth by annexing new development, until suburbs figured out they could prosper by becoming independent municipal entities — thus the now-famous concentric-ring or, in some cases, the hole-in-the-donut pattern of our metro regions. The growth of gargantuan mega-regions like the Boston-New York-Washington corridor is essentially the next phase of this process of geographic development.

It's important to understand how these two interrelated geographic processes outward geographic expansion and the more intensive use of existing urban space combine to shape economic progress."

Next week, DTE will explore this phenomenon in a series on smart growth with an eye on Spokane.

---

---