Slurbs Are Winning

"You can understand why city managers, urban planners and 'metropolitan elites' repeat the urban legends, mostly to one another. They're deflecting an uncomfortable truth.

And the truth is that in the great struggle between cities and suburbs, raging now for a century or more, the verdict is finally in: Cities lost. The vast majority of people prefer the 'burbs.' The long-predicted comeback of the traditional city isn't in the cards.

Kotkin calls most of suburbia 'slurbs,' vast stretches of undistinguished space choked with traffic and lined with commercial strips lacking character, charm, or -- most important of all -- a sense of civic identity that can bind their residents together.

On the other hand, some suburbs now reflect the influence of the new urbanists, planners who favor suburbs with walkable downtowns, open space and accessible cultural institutions."