Suburban Growth Still Leads, But in Changing Ways

"A new pattern is emerging this century. Most of the growth is happening on opposite ends of the suburban expanse: in older communities closest to the city and in the newer ones that are the farthest out.

'A few decades ago, all the growth was on the edge,' says Robert Lang, an urban sociologist at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas who analyzed 2010 Census data. "Now, there are citylike suburbs doing well on one side of the metropolis while conventional suburbs still flourish on the fringe.'"

The farther out suburbs showed a faster rate of growth than those closer to the center, but both exceeded the growth rate of the country as a whole.