> the suburbs that provide a balanced business, commercial, and housing ecosystem and have diverse transportation options to the main destinations outside will

> the suburbs that provide a balanced business, commercial, and housing ecosystem and have diverse transportation options to the main destinations outside will actually thrive and prosper. There are only a handful of places that match this description, and they're mostly pre-WWII vintage and right next to cities. Suburbia is overwhelmingly about strict zoning of housing, businesses, and entertainment and the use of highways to shuttle between the zones. This paradigm is breaking. Suburbia never really worked in the first place. It was built because it made developers and road contractors rich, and they control local politics. At the national level the auto and highway lobby beat the street-car lobby. Contrary to the claims of this article, there's little evidence people originally preferred the suburban paradigm. People had to move to suburbia in the post-war era because A) big businesses relocated jobs outside cities on sites requiring a car commute (the businesses moved first, not the housing); B) Suburban housing was all that was built. Loads of aging urban housing was simply ripped down and never replaced. The new housing was built in the suburbs. It's easy to spin this change in supply as a simple response to changing demand, but it was really concerted by all levels of the government along with politically connected business interests. Arguably, there's also a reason C: city governments got too dysfunctional. But it's difficult to distinguish that as cause or correlation relative to A and B.