The new American Dream

Talk of the built environment, sprawl, and the suburbs was prominent in the media in the last week. As economist and The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued that spread-out metro areas decrease opportunities for economic mobility, a new book was released by Fortune editor Leigh Gallagher called The End of the Suburbs. The title is provocative and a huge overstatement — the suburbs aren't ending, but as Gallagher argued on talk shows and in articles: Suburbs are changing, and so is the American Dream. For a lot of people in previous generations, the dream was a house on a big lot in the suburbs. Now, for younger generations and for many Americans, the dream is a connected, walkable community — the kind you find in a more compact city or town. "The housing crisis of recent years has concealed something deeper and more profound happening to what we have come to know as American suburbia," she says. "Simply speaking, more and more Americans don’t want to live there anymore." The first-generation suburbs offered many advantages: tree-lined streets, soccer leagues, a center-hall Colonial house. "Today’s suburb is more likely to evoke endless sprawl, a punishing commute, and McMansions," she writes. The good news for suburbs is that they can adapt and become less auto-dependent. As others have said: the problem is not suburbia, but sprawl.

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