The Big Picture

Economists tell us that economic activity (jobs) will tend to cluster for a couple of reasons. First, and most true historically, firms (businesses) that export goods to other cities prefer locations with access to transportation infrastructure -- ports or rail depots. This has become much less necessary as the interstate highway system has made highway interchanges almost as usefull as a large port or or rail depot. Second, firms (businesses) tend to do better when they are nearer to other related firms. This can be to either promote face-to-face communication with suppliers, accountants, banks, advertizing agencies or it can be to access a large pool of potential workers.

So where does this leave people to live? Well, outside these employment clusters. Economic theory also tells us that because commuting costs (time and money costs) are so important, land closest to emplyment centers should be most valuable and, because they have the highest time cost to commuting, where the highest income households choose to live. But that doesn't really describe how the world looks. The wealthy tend to live in suburbs furthers away from traditional downtowns.

Historically, this is because when the streetcar and later the auto allowed people to move away from crowded and polluted downtown neighborhoods that were populated by people of all different incomes and ethnic backgrounds. So the suburbs were populated by people who may have had the higher commuting costs, but they also were willing to pay the most for lower crime, better schools and a back yard. Crime and schools might be obvious, but the backyard is much overlooked. And to that I mean not backyards specifically, but housing that matches the economics and the lifestyles of the day. Building a new house where a house currently exists is expensive, building a new house on agricultural land where lots of houses are going to be built at once is cheap. More than anything else, this tells the story of suburbs and why inner ring suburbs are beginning to struggle.

The goal of this web log is to tell the story of inner ring suburbs, explain the economic forces that shape them, and try to think through strategies that will bring them successfully into the the mid-century.