Decay in Suburbia

Fast Company pulls together a handful of recent reports to paint a grim picture for the suburbs, as the number of people living in poverty rises, housing values decline, and infrastructure built in the 60s and 70s erodes.

1 minute read

February 8, 2010, 11:00 AM PST

By Tim Halbur


Greg Lindsay of Fast Company pulls together the latest Brookings report on growing suburban poverty, Joel Kotkin's "War on Suburbia" story, the Obama adminstration's smart growth policies, the New Urbanists' SmartCode, and much more.

He writes, "The suburban landscape we once aspired to and now take for granted is changing before our eyes. The absolute number of vehicles on America's roads fell last year for the first time in fifty years. So did the number of miles driven and the gallons of gasoline consumed. ExxonMobil believes the latter is in permanent decline due to high prices and biofuels. Our centrifugal patterns of urban development are no longer a given."

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