Interesting article on New Geography.

I've seen a ton of news stories on the suburbs coming back with force and new car sales reaching record highs. This one is really good though.


"For nearly a half century, the death of suburbs and exurbs has been prophesied by pundits, urban real-estate interests and their media allies, and they ratcheted up the volume after the housing crash of 2007. The urban periphery was destined to become “the next slums,” Christopher Leinberger wrote in The Atlantic in 2008, while a recent book by Fortune’s Leigh Gallagher, The End of Suburbs, claimed that suburbs and exurbs were on the verge of extinction as people flocked back to dense cities such as New York.

This has become a matter of faith even among many supposed development professionals. “ There’s a pall being cast on the outer edges,” John McIlwain, a fellow at the Urban Land Institute, told USA Today. “The foreclosures, the vacancies, the uncompleted roads. It’s uncomfortable out there. The glitz is off.”

Yet an analysis by demographer Wendell Cox of the counties with populations over 100,000 that have gained the most new residents since 2010 tells us something very different: Suburbs and exurbs are making a comeback, something that even the density-obsessed New York Times has been forced to admit. Of the 10 fastest-growing large counties all but two — Orleans Parish, home to the recovering city of New Orleans, and the Texas oil town of Midland— are located in the suburban or exurban fringe of major metropolitan areas"

- America's Fastest-Growing Counties: The 'Burbs Are Back | Newgeography.com (http://www.newgeography.com/content/003957-americas-fastest-growing-counties-the-burbs-are-back)

Needless to say, suburbs are not going anywhere anytime soon; neither are cars.

The suburbs will continue to thrive for families with kids as long as inner-city schools continue to have the problems they do. To many young couples, a good, safe school environment for their kids outweighs walkability on the priority list. Many people can not afford to send their kids to private school but can afford to live in the suburbs.

Nothing in New Geography is unbiased - I'll say that.

The writers on New Geography are experts in selective analysis, interpretation and spin.

My money is still on the long-term demographic trends and the rising cost of transportation winning out in the end and not on a new Fed-induced suburban housing bubble.

The suburbs will continue to thrive for families with kids as long as inner-city schools continue to have the problems they do. To many young couples, a good, safe school environment for their kids outweighs walkability on the priority list. Many people can not afford to send their kids to private school but can afford to live in the suburbs.
This is true. Lived in downtown Dallas and moved to Raleigh, then Atlanta. Our son became school age and we could not afford private schools out East ... burbs are where we moved to. Picked the 'burb' based on the rating of the school. If you want your home to retain value, you have to live in a neighborhood with a good, safe school.

You aggressively repair and maintain urban schools - and all that entails - and you will bring back inner-cities. This means aggressive police presence - both 'on-foot/bike' and in cars. People use to police their children, now there is no one home to do so, we all must have 2 incomes. Neighborhood involvement - not' passing the buck'.

Many people can not afford to send their kids to private school but can afford to live in the suburbs.

...but only when the suburban lifestyle is subsidized. Take away the subsidy and they can't afford it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/markets-mortgages-fed-idUSL2N0H11O120130905



Reuters) - The Federal Reserve bought $12.1 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities from Aug 29 through Sept 4, less than the $14.6 billion purchased the previous period, the New York Federal Reserve Bank said on Thursday.

In a move to help the housing market, since October 2011 the U.S. central bank has been using funds from principal payments on the agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, it holds to reinvest in agency MBS.

The New York Fed said on its website the Fed sold no mortgage securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the Government National Mortgage Association, or Ginnie Mae, in the latest week. It sold none the prior week.

Last Sept. 14, the Fed increased its purchases of MBS to $40 billion a month in its third round of large-scale bond buying in an attempt to support the housing recovery and boost economic growth.

I think section 8 has helped lead to.the decline of.urban areas. I can think of numerous decent older once middle class neighborhoods that have become slums within a decade because of this. I have friends in Tulsa that are both associate degree educated, working full time in cube farms who live next door to single mothers with 3 and 4 kids. Pit bulls out in the back yard and cars parked in the yard.

Then you look how the schools are setup. Elementary might br OK, but middle schools become worse, and highschools are nightmares.

So people take out loans that are to the top of their budget to.get away instead of living in reasonably sized and priced housing.

And yet during the same time period....

U.S. Cities Growing Faster Than Suburbs - Real Time Economics - WSJ (http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/05/23/u-s-cities-growing-faster-than-suburbs/)


With the caveat:


And there are notable exceptions to the latest trend — for example, in the nation’s Sunbelt

I think section 8 has helped lead to.the decline of.urban areas. I can think of numerous decent older once middle class neighborhoods that have become slums within a decade because of this. I have friends in Tulsa that are both associate degree educated, working full time in cube farms who live next door to single mothers with 3 and 4 kids. Pit bulls out in the back yard and cars parked in the yard.

Then you look how the schools are setup. Elementary might br OK, but middle schools become worse, and highschools are nightmares.

So people take out loans that are to the top of their budget to.get away instead of living in reasonably sized and priced housing.

Section 8 may be seen as a symptom of decline, not a cause. Section 8 has a bad rap. Section 8 serves approximately 3.1M households in the US, but there are nearly 115M households in total in the US.

It's a well understood principle that you can make numbers, math, science, statistics, etc. fit whatever your argument is. I do it all the time, and I see it in every argument made. But here are some non-stastical things we know, at least anecdotally, from watching OKC:

1. OKC's suburbs are a mixed bag now more than ever: Edmond and Norman are fantastic suburbs that do not look like they will be on the downslide anytime in the near future. Del City and Midwest City are not particularly desirable places to live. Yukon has been fairly static, Moore is up in the air for unforeseen circumstances, but will likely be okay, and has grown considerably. Mustang is the new hot suburb, and other places like Choctaw, Piedmont, and Jones are seeing more people give it a shot out there.

2. Within the context of OKC's self-suburbs and engulfed suburbs (Bethany, Warr Acres, Village), nearly no areas are really strengthening, many just maintaining a relatively middle-of-the-road existence and several areas are deteriorating.

3. OKC's downtown is looking at the potential for exponential growth: The number of units available for rent will increase by 26.5% sometime next year, and the following 2 years will increase by no less than 33.5%.

4. OKC's inner-city neighborhoods such as Crown Heights, Classen Ten Penn, Heritage Hills, Gatewood, Helm, Jefferson Park etc. are also a mixed bag, but on the whole are either being gentrified or have maintained great value and quality.

---------------

I imagine this situation ports over to many other cities as well, but it's pretty clear what is occurring in OKC: The core is strengthening considerably, and it's very clear those people are coming in from the suburbs or at least not departing directly to the suburbs post-education. In other cities, where the core is already strong, that the core is strengthening at all, is a good indication that substantial investment is going that direction (think how difficult and expensive it is to increase the number of people/business/etc in downtown NYC). So how are people both leaving the suburbs for the core but suburbs are still being strengthened?

1. Certain suburbs are seeing a massive loss in investment and residence to both the core and other strong suburbs. Think 10th street corridor between Council and May. They're all going to, Yukon, Mustang, Choctaw, Edmond, areas like NW Expressway/Council and the the Memorial corridor.

2. The rust belt, both core and suburbs, is bleeding people. People are leaving Detroit en masse. Cleveland, Buffalo are also MSAs over 1M people that are losing people and several other Top 100 MSAs are either losing people or growing at a pace that suggests major issues (<.25% /year)

It seems to me that too many people try to make this an "either or" question.

When a metro area grows by a couple hundred thousand people in a decade, you are always going to have LOTS of young families that choose suburbs, for many of the reasons listed above. I would not bank on growth slowing in the better suburbs of OKC any time soon.

On the other hand, some people seem to feel that young families are the ONLY demographic worth considering. There are lots of singles under 30, empty nesters over 50, and assorted people with or without children of whatever age that do not have public schools or 4000 SF houses as their highest priority.

A thriving metro area has both groups in abundance, and there is no reason why growth can't happen in the core AND the desirable suburbs. The places that are most at risk these days, it seems to me, are neither the core nor the desirable suburbs, but the 1950s-1980s midrange places with little character. The "suburbs" of yesteryear, so to speak. There will always be people who want new places on the fringe, but the danger is that the fringe keeps getting pushed farther out, leaving behind those midrange places to struggle.

Let's face it: Downtown OKC could triple in population with nary a dent in Edmond's or Norman's growth. This is probably where we're headed as a metro area.

You can only make statistics say anything you want them to so long as no one pays attention to sample size, correlation, and standard deviation. Which most people don't. So like a good argument it really depends on the context.

I tend to think that a lot of subjects, in this case trends to/from the suburbs, really have nothing to do with anything other than population trends. For decades we had older baby boomers followed by younger gen x which was too small to matter. Over the last decade gen y has been hitting the scene and trending in all the directions you'd expect young single people to. Now the first batch of them are starting to get married and settle down. It should be no surprise that suburbs would start becoming more popular further out on the timeline we go....

It's a well understood principle that you can make numbers, math, science, statistics, etc. fit whatever your argument is. I do it all the time, and I see it in every argument made. But here are some non-stastical things we know, at least anecdotally, from watching OKC:

1. OKC's suburbs are a mixed bag now more than ever: Edmond and Norman are fantastic suburbs that do not look like they will be on the downslide anytime in the near future. Del City and Midwest City are not particularly desirable places to live. Yukon has been fairly static, Moore is up in the air for unforeseen circumstances, but will likely be okay, and has grown considerably. Mustang is the new hot suburb, and other places like Choctaw, Piedmont, and Jones are seeing more people give it a shot out there.

2. Within the context of OKC's self-suburbs and engulfed suburbs (Bethany, Warr Acres, Village), nearly no areas are really strengthening, many just maintaining a relatively middle-of-the-road existence and several areas are deteriorating.

3. OKC's downtown is looking at the potential for exponential growth: The number of units available for rent will increase by 26.5% sometime next year, and the following 2 years will increase by no less than 33.5%.

4. OKC's inner-city neighborhoods such as Crown Heights, Classen Ten Penn, Heritage Hills, Gatewood, Helm, Jefferson Park etc. are also a mixed bag, but on the whole are either being gentrified or have maintained great value and quality.

---------------

I imagine this situation ports over to many other cities as well, but it's pretty clear what is occurring in OKC: The core is strengthening considerably, and it's very clear those people are coming in from the suburbs or at least not departing directly to the suburbs post-education. In other cities, where the core is already strong, that the core is strengthening at all, is a good indication that substantial investment is going that direction (think how difficult and expensive it is to increase the number of people/business/etc in downtown NYC). So how are people both leaving the suburbs for the core but suburbs are still being strengthened?

1. Certain suburbs are seeing a massive loss in investment and residence to both the core and other strong suburbs. Think 10th street corridor between Council and May. They're all going to, Yukon, Mustang, Choctaw, Edmond, areas like NW Expressway/Council and the the Memorial corridor.

2. The rust belt, both core and suburbs, is bleeding people. People are leaving Detroit en masse. Cleveland, Buffalo are also MSAs over 1M people that are losing people and several other Top 100 MSAs are either losing people or growing at a pace that suggests major issues (<.25% /year)

I am impressed. If you plugged other variables in there it would read like a [probably] accurate weather report.
Well done. You have apparently stumbled onto the secret, not of "begging the question", rather, answering the begged question before it is asked!

Did you learn this in a math, sociology, debate/media or psychology class . . ?
(parts of the anthills being studied might object to terms such as "rust belt" but that's just semantic stuff. screw 'em.)

When you do have your owns kids to think about, it changes your priorities and needs. Then you turn into Grandparents and that's a whole other gig.

I am impressed. If you plugged other variables in there it would read like a [probably] accurate weather report.
Well done. You have apparently stumbled onto the secret, not of "begging the question", rather, answering the begged question before it is asked!

Did you learn this in a math, sociology, debate/media or psychology class . . ?
(parts of the anthills being studied might object to terms such as "rust belt" but that's just semantic stuff. screw 'em.)

RM, you're far too smart for me :)

I don't know where I learned a good lot of what I know, and sometimes even wonder if I actually learned it or just made it up from what someone tried diligently to teach me ;)

County numbers can be missleading too. If a growing area sits on the border of two counties, then their seperate growth is half of what the area is. So the counties themselves may not appear to be growing as fast as the area is. We see that here with OK/Cleveland counties. NW Arkansas sees the same thing because they're so spread out along the interstate.

It is what it is...another numbers survey.