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The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving by Leigh Gallagher (© 2013, Penquin Group, 273 pages)
There are many interesting and important issues to discuss with respect to the residential real estate sector in America today: regional population shifts, aging demographics, changing immigration patterns, the impact of transportation costs, heightened environmental awareness, rapidly changing technologies, and generational preferences (either cyclical or structural), just to name a few.
If someone is interested in a thoughtful, well-researched, and balanced discussion of these issues, I recommend giving a pass to The End of the Suburbs by Leigh Gallagher. Rather, The End of the Suburbs presents a fairly superficial treatment of the issues, where all roads lead to "the end of the suburbs"-or at least some of the suburbs, a point which will be examined later in this review. No doubt this book will be very well-received by people who already agree with the sentiment implicit in the title. But the book will do nothing to influence those who disagree, and only moderately inform those who are trying to form an opinion.
The book contains interviews with a diverse group of people in support of its central thesis: urbanites who think the suburbs are ended, former suburbanites who think the suburbs are ended, homebuilders who think the suburbs are ended, homemakers who believe the suburbs are ended, academics who believe the suburbs are ended, and activists who believe the suburbs are ended. Well, you get the idea. Homebuilder Toll Brothers, frequently both praised and quoted throughout the book, is used to represent both the suburban and the urban perspective.
The End of the Suburbs acknowledges that there are still many people living in the suburbs, but for whatever reason, Ms. Gallagher cannot seem to locate them-at least not those that are happy. There is also very limited reference to academics or essayists who challenge the book's thesis, although dissenting voices do make a cameo appearance starting on page 192 of the 273-page book, including one fairly bland generic reference to the prolific New Urbanism skeptic Joel Kotkin.
Interestingly, the author acknowledges that 2013, the year of the book's publication, does not mark the end of all suburbs. Indeed the last chapter of the book...