The Suburbs: Post-Levittown

"Suburbs absorbed a remarkable 84% of the nation's population increase during the 1950s. And the pattern has not much changed. We remain an increasingly suburban nation. Despite a strong uptick in residential growth in some core cities, during the first five years of the new millennium suburbs and exurbs accounted for slightly more than 92% of the total growth in our metropolitan areas."

"The tradition of suburb-bashing among intellectuals like Richard Wilbur continues today in the writings of James Howard Kunstler and urban critic Paul Knox, who denounces suburbia as "vulgaria." Such hostility is based on everything from the aesthetics of the communities to claims that their car-dependent culture helps to expand the nation's waistlines. And now suburbs have come under fire from environmentalists, who hector them for their alleged contributions to global warming."

"But places like Fort Bend County, Texas, and Walnut, Calif., are not your father's suburbs. They boast some of the most diverse populations in the nation. Today's Levittown, N.Y., is still only 10% nonwhite, but Willingboro, N.J., another Levittown development (in the Philadelphia suburbs), is now majority black. Indeed, more than one in four suburbanites nationwide is a minority-group member. Along with immigrants and their offspring, African-Americans have been consistently moving to the suburbs; the percentage of blacks living in the periphery has risen to well over one in three."