Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities

By Robert E. Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy

Brookings Institution Press, 2007, 198 pp., paperback, $26.95.

As America’s post-World-War II suburbs become ever larger and more diverse, so do the ways of describing them. In the early 1990s the term “edge cities” — referring to large commercial agglomerations in the suburbs — came into vogue. At the turn of the millennium, we heard about “exurbs” — the ring of low-density McMansions at the edge of most metropolitan regions. Now, thanks to Lang and LeFurgy, “boomburbs” have entered the lexicon.

All of those terms describe aspects of the ever-expanding, automobile-oriented, contemporary, American built environment. The term “suburbs” has long ceased to be interesting, so Lang and LeFurgy slice them into clever new categories for our amusement. A boomburb is defined as a municipality of more than 100,000 people that has been growing at a double-digit pace for three consecutive decades and that is not the major city of any metropolitan area. The book offers another category, “baby boomburbs,” for places with the above characteristics but a population between 50,000 and 100,000.

Although boomburbs have plenty of office, retail, and light industrial space, few of them contain edge cities. Instead, commercial uses are spread out along highways and adjacent to freeway exit ramps all over town. Examples of boomburbs are Irvine, California; Irving, Texas; Lakewood, Colorado; and Chesapeake, Virginia.

The picture of boomburbs painted by Lang and LeFurgy is not a pretty one. They typically have hundreds of square miles and virtually no urban fabric. They’ve got little charm or character until you venture into the private realm of trendy restaurants, upscale shops, and magnificent master suites.

These amenities serve mostly their own well-heeled residents: boomburbs are not recommended destinations for a weekend getaway. They are not redeemed by affordability, either — median house prices are $365,910 in boomburbs versus $213,900 for the US as a whole. Nor, apparently, by ease of getting to work: commute times are above the US average.

Yet boomburbs have thrived. Everyone knows the mantra of real estate success: location, location, location. Boomburbs are in the path of growth. They took the form they did because that’s the way America grew over the last half-century. So boomburbs are no surprise. They are the inevitable outcome of suburbanization, combined with particular political conditions. Boomburbs only exist where jurisdictional boundaries are large enough — most commonly in the Southwest — to allow low-density municipalities to attain the requisite population. The Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Dallas areas are the leading homes to boomburbs.

Trouble ahead for boomburbs?
The more interesting question is: what now? The authors allude to trouble ahead on many fronts: a lack of water resources, changes in tastes and demographics, global warming, and rising gasoline prices. But others have predicted the downfall of suburbia before, and Lang and LeFurgy ultimately refuse to go down that road. Society could “just as easily” overcome these problems through new technologies, they say, allowing new boomburbs to thrive for many decades in the future.

My view is that boomburbs are the antithesis of sustainability. They are the product of a time that is coming to a close, and they are going to be compelled to reinvent themselves. There is reason to hope for change: The authors report that nearly every boomburb is working to establish or enhance rail transit to encourage transit-oriented development. Boomburbs will continue to succeed only to the extent that they are able transform themselves into something significantly more urban.