No surprise here: while home prices are falling pretty much everywhere, they’re falling less in neighborhoods that don’t come with a long commute. In fact, according to this NPR report , home prices have even been rising slightly in the once-avoided downtown and in-city sections of cities like DC, LA, Philadelphia, and Boston. That rosy suburban picture is fading quickly as the bright green lawns become unkempt and overgrown, the white fences go without painting, and one of the two cars sits at home all the time because gas is on its way to becoming unaffordable. CNN reported back in June about the suburb of Elk Grove, California, which has suffered from thousands of foreclosures and a spike in crime, including several busts of abandoned homes inside of which were growing massive crops of marijuana.

It’s not hard to see which way the trend is heading. According to this Wall Street Journal article, baby boomers and “millenials” (people born between the late ’70s and mid-’90s) are finding themselves in sync when it comes to where and how they want to live: it’s not way out in a subdivision with a big lawn to worry about and a two-car garage, but in urban centers where transportation is easy. With these two generations’ numbers peaking in 2015, the demand for urban housing - which incidentally is also much better for the environment in terms of carbon footprint - will just keep on rising. After all, who wants this:

when you can have something like this:

Thanks to Smart Growth America for pointing out those articles!  Visit their blog to learn more about smart growth in American communities.

Filed under: I'On Group, Urban Sustainability, Videos & Photos on August 1st, 2008