I have only just began to read this report I received today. No suprise here, Ohio it bleeding its cities dry to the sprawl.  I believe we have struggled over articulating what the  definition of exurbia is...so here it is, and more. Discuss

 

http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20061017_exurbia.pdf

link would not work for me :(

 

edit: never mind!

Now printing it out and will read this afternoon. I see it's a brand-new report. I might write an article about it unless the PD gets to the story first.

my ADD is preventing me from focusing enough to read the full report right now. In some cases the Brookings Inst. has put a somewhat libertarian to mildly conservative spin on things so we will have to see if that shows up in the report or not.

I haven't read it all yet, but I'm suspicious of anything that's takes as its jumping off point the writings of David Brooks.

I can't stand David brooks (do you mean the NYC Times resident Conservative columnist?) I am not aware of a relationship between brooks and brookings inst. is there?

has any civilization in history de-urbanized and remained viable?

Suburbs and Exerbs are urban.  Suburbanites live essentially urban lives.  They are not rural or agricultural.  The problem is with the form (spread out) and the division of uses (office park, mall, residential subdivision).

but at such low densities, the generative function doesn't really function.

I can't stand David brooks (do you mean the NYC Times resident Conservative columnist?) I am not aware of a relationship between brooks and brookings inst. is there?

 

Oh, David Brooks is cool.  I read his BoBos in Paradise and thought he picked up pretty good on a certain demographic, though his attempt to coin a neologism didnt realy take off the way "Generation X" did for Doug Coupland.

 

Brooks social commentary does sort of have geopraphical connotations (I think his latest book was "On Paradise Drive"), so I can see a Brookings urbanism study quoting him or riffing on some of his obsrevations.

 

Brookings itself used to have a reputation as left-liberal, but I've notice they've been moving toward neoliberalism in some of their policy analyses.