Are the Suburbs a Fading Fad?

By Patch Editor Whitney Teal

Are the suburbs, and their promise of more space and better schools, coming to an end?

According to Leigh Gallagher, author of The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving, probably. Nightmarish commutes and endless strip malls for people living on the outskirts of cities, among other factors, explain why cities are growing faster than suburbs for the first time in decades, she said.

She wrote on Time.com that the post-World War II experiment of planned communities may have run its course. She wrote:

“We are a nation that values privacy and individualism down to our very core, and the suburbs give us that. But somewhere between leafy neighborhoods built around lively railroad villages and the shiny new subdivisions in cornfields on the way to Iowa that bill themselves as suburbs of Chicago, we took our wish for privacy too far. The suburbs overshot their mandate.”

There is hope for suburbs, though, Gallagher suggests. Montgomery County and other DC suburbs are growing rapidly.

Shyam Kannan, real estate consultant and planning director for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, explains why older and more walkable suburbs are the exception, telling Gallagher:

“We are moving from location, location, location in terms of the most important factor to access, access, access,” said Kannan.