Boomburb Growth Must Go Up, Not Out, To Retain Viability

Planetizen reported recently on USA Today's "Housing bust halts growing suburbs". Now Streetsblog connects some of the dots to show how boomburbs can regain their growth - by booming upward rather than outward, and thus moderating it as well.

"The most interesting angle in the article, however, isn't the decline of suburban fortunes and the real estate market that fueled them. It's what municipal leaders and researchers are saying will be necessary to make those places economically viable in the future. Which is this: they'll have to become more like cities. Denser. More walkable. Not bedroom communities, but self-contained communities.

Robert Lang, a professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who coined the term "boomburbs," put it this way: "The irony is that if they want to keep growing, they must grow as cities, which is diametrically opposite of how they got so big in the first place."

From USA Today (7/15/09): Suburbs get urban makeover:
"Suburbs that had not allowed development to rise too high above the single-family homes that have shaped suburbia for decades are beginning to embrace the "urban" in "suburban."