A quick snapshot of the opening decade of the 21st century could look like this: pockets of compact housing surrounded by acres of sprawl.... Two groups will dominate in the next 10 years. One is the "echo boom," the sons and daughters of the original baby boomers.... The second is the 55-to-64 age group, which will include many empty-nesters looking for more compact quarters. Some of them are bound to choose urban neighborhoods close to shopping and cultural life. Their choice of housing will include both infill development and office building conversions....
A middle-class return to the inner city is also possible if crime continues to go down and highway congestion continues to go up....
But, as compact urban living gains popularity, there will also be a substantial movement to the mountains, the coasts, and other places with appealing scenery. And, as the population becomes more footloose, arguments over where growth should go will intensify....
No matter what governments do, housing is likely to continue to spread across more of the land because Americans will become wealthier on average and will have tools and processes that earlier generations lacked.
This material was excerpted from a story in the December 1999 issue of "Planning" magazine. To download the full text, see http://www.planning.org/pubs/dec299.htm
Contact: The story author is Philip Langdon, [email protected]. Copyright by Philip Langdon.
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