Fastest Growing Suburbs in America

A recent report from Forbes lists the top growth suburbs in the U.S. Suburbs in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Sacramento are growing quickly. Why? The article cites a study by the Brookings Institution pointing out that cities with restrictive policies on growth or expansion, are artificially raising the overall value of homes and land values in that particular city. This forces people to seek more affordable locations further away (far suburbs or exurbs).

It's ironic that policies that are trying to prevent urban-sprawl are actually encouraging it.

Guess what the highest household expense for people living in Houston is? That's right, transportation.

Another interesting fact from the article is that Boston is considered to have more sprawl than Las Vegas, because Las Vegas has more densely populated land.

I wrote about this before back in 2005, when mentioning a great article by Thomas Sowell, pointing out the restrictions of cities in San Mateo county, California.

The best way to eliminate sprawl and keep people near the jobs that are demanded by the economy, is to eliminate building restrictions, and especially height restrictions. My own city has been struggling with this in regard to their local airport. Values in my county are among the highest in Iowa, and in my opinion, it is because of restrictions on re-zoning downtown areas and placing artificial height restrictions on commercial and residential properties.

You see, people want to live downtown or where there are jobs, or maybe where the air is clean or the view is great. Some of us want to prevent that great view from being soiled by more people. This, however, is selfish and begins to put strain on the fragile relationship of supply and demand.

Cities with higher land values should allow developers to build up. Skyscrapers or tall buildings allow more people to co-habit the more expensive land. They are happy, because they are close to the jobs downtown, or the nightlife, or whatever. The only people not happy are elitists that often feel that they know better than thou and try to control growth through edicts, laws and popular issues and buzzwords, like sprawl.

However, there is a dilemma in wanting people to abide by the most basic forces of supply and demand. I, as a homeowner, should be in favor of building restrictions. It raises the value of my home (closer to the city center than those new ones being built 15 miles away). But my selfishness aside, it is better for the city to allow people (developers) to build where the demand is screaming for more homes or more dense dwellings. With a University, multiple hospitals, banks and other professional businesses downtown, having more people have the ability to live there (wherever "there" is) is the best for everyone.