The Free Exchange blog has posted a fascinating chart from a recent Brookings paper:
The most likely explanation for the shift is a combination of demographic change and increases in commuting costs, due to growing congestion and rising petrol prices. Two questions: will the trends continue? And will the trends feed on themselves? Suburbanisation and central city depopulation were subject to strong feedback loops which generated several decades’ worth of social and geographic change, from the mid-1950s to the turn of the millenium. If suburbs become a source of domestic outmigration, will that mark a point of departure from the previous forty-year trend?
Bevan Sabo
Ariel Goldring
Guest Blogger
