Housing bust halts growing suburbs

USA Today reports:

The recession and housing collapse have halted four decades of double-digit growth for nearly half of the nation's biggest rapidly expanding suburbs.

Twenty-four of the 53 cities of 100,000 or more that grew by at least 10% every decade since 1970 lost population from 2006 to 2008.

Fifteen are likely to end the decade with less than a 10% gain in population, largely because of recent losses. Among them: Bellevue, Wash., near Seattle; Coral Springs, Fla., near Fort Lauderdale; Fullerton, Calif., near Los Angeles; and Lakewood, Colo., near Denver.

"They will drop out of boomburb status," says Robert Lang, professor of sociology at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. "Some boomburbs have gone bust; some are still thriving."