Santa Clarita Valley

Future Growth Will Be In the Suburbs, Like Valencia, California – Not the Cities

In this year of the Census the future growth in this country is still largely debated.  For several years now, the whole urban renewal thing was on the tops of minds of developers, real estate investors, and planners.

But now, proponents of Suburbia are speaking up too.

Last week, D Magazine (Dallas) published an article on this very topic Subdivided: How I Met Joel Kotkin.  The article recalls a documentary whereby all suburbs in America were presented as inferior to their urban core brethren.  Some excerpts:

I thought it went a bit overboard and smelled of urban narcissism, elitism. What the heck is wrong with the suburbs? Though the houses may not be architectural masterpieces, they house solid kids

As I read Kotkin’s The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, he says future growth will be in those suburban and exurb areas, not the cities.  Parents seek out the suburbs as mine did for education, and this is a stat DISD needs to etch in memory: “Despite some success with urban public education, graduation rates in cities remained nearly 20 per cent below those of surrounding suburbs.”

Today as we witness the tremendous strain that our neighbor, the City of Los Angeles, is having with huge budget deficits, decrepit infrastructures, gang warfare, etc, it is nice to live in an independent city like Santa Clarita with its planning foresight and “relative” fiscal responsibilities.

“Baby Boomers Are Leaving the Suburbs and Moving to Pedestrian-friendly Cities”… have become common-place in the media…Yet generally speaking, the greater one’s age over thirty-five, the greater the chance of living in a suburb or exurb than the other way around.

If anything, writes Kotkin, work will continue to disperse over the next few decades even within the suburban context… moving toward “edgeless cities.” He cited Valencia, California and The Woodlands, Texas as two successful examples of well-planned, thriving suburbs that have become so well known they no longer need to lean on “their city” for an identity. We will see older suburban communities and towns re-inventing themselves, centering around small, quaint, but thriving downtowns — like Naperville, Ill.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Please feel free to comment below.  If we can be of any assistance to you in buying or selling your home in the suburbs of Santa Clarita, please contact us.