Suburbia: Homeland of the American Future

Joel Kotkin reports:

By 2000, roughly three out of five jobs in American metropolitan areas were located in suburbs. More than twice as many people in the United States commuted from suburb to suburb, where the job growth was concentrated, than from suburb to city.

Studies have shown this preference for suburbs extends to a wide range of firms. Only 11 percent of the nation’s largest companies were headquartered in the suburbs in 1969; a quarter-century later, roughly half had migrated to the periphery. The pattern of 1990s suburban job growth appears to have expanded further since the beginning of the new millennium. By 2000, in the 100 largest metropolitan areas, only 22 percent of people worked within three miles of the city center; another study focusing on areas with high levels of sprawl (such as Chicago, Atlanta, and Detroit) showed that more than 60 percent of all regional employment now occurs more than ten miles from the core.

Perhaps most importantly, suburbs have gradually become the preferred location for the burgeoning science and information-based industries, the biggest growth sectors of the modern economy. Since World War II, high-tech firms have migrated to the suburbs for many reasons, including space for large, campus-like office parks, less crime, lower taxes, and most critically, the access to educated workers. Areas like the Santa Clara Valley in Northern California, northeastern New Jersey, and the suburban ring around Boston, have provided ideal locations for aerospace, computer, and information industries.

Most big ,old, industrial cities peaked in the 1950's.This is another great article by Joel Kotkin.