Christopher Leinberger, author of The Option of Urbanism, takes on Joel Kotkin's latest dustup on the "war between the city and the suburbs." Leinberger argues that the data Kotkin's using is dated and doesn't reflect reality.
Leinberger notes that he and Kotkin share a lot of beliefs: "Surprisingly, there is a convergence between his view of the next generation of real estate and infrastructure development and mine..."
The problem, says Leinberger is in poor data: "Our metropolitan data sets are compiled according to 'central city' and 'suburbs' classifications and have been for decades, providing longitudinal data particularly prized by researchers. Unfortunately, the concept of dividing the world into city versus suburbs is no longer so relevant."
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