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A Review of “The End of the Suburbs: Where theAmerican Dream Is Moving”Amélie Y. Davisa

a Miami UniversityPublished online: 13 Aug 2014.

To cite this article: Amélie Y. Davis (2014) A Review of “The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving”,Journal of the American Planning Association, 80:1, 92-92, DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2014.935664

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2014.935664

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Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter 2014, Vol. 80, No. 1

92 Reviews

Land Use

Leigh Gallagher. (2014). The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving. New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin. 272 pages. $16.00 (paperback).

Reviewed by Amélie Y. Davis, Miami University

Is owning a single-family house in the suburbs no longer representative of the American dream? Are Americans, and in particular the millennials, rejecting suburbia for city living?

These are the central questions that Leigh Gallagher, assistant managing editor at Fortune magazine, seeks to answer in her fi rst book, The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving.

The book contains an introductory chapter that serves as a summary for the main arguments presented in the remaining seven chapters. In Chapter 1, the author presents a brief history of subur-banization. Chapters 2 and 3 describe how the suburbs have been fi nanced, the various homeownership incentives provided by the government, and some of the downsides of living in the suburbs, namely time spent driving, and a lack of walkability in many suburban communities. Chapter 4 presents the concepts behind new urbanism, while Chapter 5 describes the changing household and population demographics in the United States. In Chapter 6, the author points to some suburban trends, including declining market share, increased crime, and differential home pricing, as evidence for the decreased desirability of the suburbs as a housing choice. Chap-ter 7 outlines some arguments for the continued success of the suburbs but concludes that the evidence shown in this book points to two inevitabilities: 1) the continued urbanization of the suburbs (moving toward a new urbanist urban form) and 2) more variety in housing choices, with more product lines beyond the detached single-family homes that dominate many existing suburbs.

Gallagher presents multiple lines of evidence for the decreased desirability of suburbs as they are built now as a housing choice for Americans of varying ages. The book is clearly written and the arguments are well substantiated (including a detailed notes section). Her sources include U.S. Census data, newspaper articles, studies from various institutes and companies, and interviews, as well as some personal anecdotes. However, as an academic, I would have preferred to see more citations from peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as interviews of a broader spectrum of individuals and busi-nesses. For example, Gallagher relies heavily on what massive real estate development group Toll Brothers is building as a way to

forecast the future of the housing market, with no interviews of other prominent building companies in the United States. Also, Gal-lagher’s arguments would have been more clearly illustrated by providing graphs of the many trends she describes. Individuals who want to consult these graphs and tables may wish to read Reshaping Metropolitan America: Development Trends and Opportunities to 2030 by Arthur Nelson (Island Press, 2013), professor and director of the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah. Gallagher presents many of the same arguments as Nelson (eerily similar arguments), but Nelson presents these with much greater academic and peer-reviewed rigor.

I found the title of the Gallagher book, The End of the Suburbs, to be a bit misleading, as it implies that suburbs in the United States are dying or at the very least have lost their appeal. Research on the subject does not completely support this view. Indeed, the two demographic groups that will shape the future housing market are the baby boomers (born 1944–1966) and generation Y (born 1980–1999). But, an AARP survey (Keenan, 2010) found that while many baby boomers prefer homes that have access to public transit, 85% of them would prefer to stay in their current residence. Simi-larly, the Urban Land Institute (2011) found that generation Y “willingly settles for less pricey digs in urbanizing commercial nodes along transit routes convenient to center-city jobs” (p. 39). To me, this implies that the revitalization of inner city suburbs is inevitable. Nelson (2013) believes that the suburbs could become a source of affordable housing for millions of households. In the end, suburbs will probably just look different than they do now; they will most likely be more walkable and transit friendly with more mixed use, and contain more renters and fewer young families with children. To be fair, the author touches on some of these points, but in light of this, a more suitable title might have been “The End of the Suburbs as We Know Them.”

In short, The End of the Suburbs is a quick and interesting read, albeit geared toward a more general audience. While builders and developers should certainly read it, academics and planners who are already knowledgeable about current housing trends and new urbanism concepts might not learn anything new.

References Keenan, T. (2010) Home and community preferences of the 45+ popula-tion. Retrieved from http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/general/home-com-munity-services-10.pdf Nelson, A. (2013). Reshaping metropolitan America: Development trends and opportunities to 2030. Washington, DC: Island Press.Urban Land Institute. (2011). What’s next? Real estate in the new economy. Retrieved from http://uli.org/wp-content/uploads/ULI-Docu-ments/WhatsNext.pdf

Amélie Y. Davis is an assistant professor at Miami University, where she holds a dual appointment in the Department of Geography and the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability. Her research focuses on environmentally sustainable land use planning.

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