Obama Is At War With Suburbia, Says Kotkin

Kotkin writes, "For the first time in memory, the suburbs are under a conscious and sustained attack from Washington. Little that the adminstration has pushed-from the Wall Street bailouts to the proposed 'cap and trade' policies-offers much to predominately middle-income-oriented suburbanites and instead appears to have worked to alienate them.

And then there are the policies that seem targeted against suburbs. In everything from land use and transportation to "green" energy policy, the Obama administration has been pushing an agenda that seeks to move Americans out of their preferred suburban locales and into the dense, transit-dependent locales they have eschewed for generations."

Kotkin says that the Obama stimulus package is spending billions on high-speed rail and mass transit, yet "offers little to anyone who lives outside a handful of large metropolitan cores."

In general, Kotkin decries the 'smart growth' agenda of the Obama administration, a policy that he says "seeks to force densification of communities and returning people to core cities."