Americans are paying more and more to live in the same places they once abandoned

The Chicago Tribune reports:

America's urban downtowns were neglected for decades, abandoned for newer malls in the suburbs and bigger homes on the edge of town. The construction of new highways helped speed their decline. And rising crime nearly killed them.

That's the story of much of the second half of the 20th century in cities such as Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago. But newly unveiled housing data dating back to 1990 show that these long-shunned city centers have been attracting Americans again. According to detailed data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, home prices over the past 25 years have appreciated more in the heart of big cities than just about anywhere else.

"After decades of hollowing out," write FHFA economists Alexander Bogin, William Larson and William Doerner, "center-cities are becoming increasingly popular."

In the Washington area, the highest price appreciation is in parts of downtown Washington.

This is not, on its own, a novel proposition. Downtown boosters and academics have argued that we're witnessing an urban revival in the United States. But there remains deep debate over how widespread the pattern really is and whether it points to a fundamental shift in where and how Americans live. The new evidence, based on unprecedented mortgage data covering 18,000 ZIP codes and nearly 100 million transactions between 1975 and 2015, shows that demand for city living has been rising for a generation - even in unexpected corners of the country.

"We find that the tide has changed," Doerner says. "After World War II, we saw the rise of the automobile and households flocking to the suburbs. Over the past 25 years, though, people have been paying more to move into downtown central areas, primarily in large cities. This is a major shift - it's happening across the country, and it's happening for a variety of reasons."

You'll want to read the entire article which explains the suburbs aren't dying.