Richard Florida, known for his fairly recent theories on “the creative class” and their clustering in post-industrial cities, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks back about the qualities of America’s most resilient suburbs during an era where many suburbs are in decline.

In addition to the ongoing conversation about retro-fitting the suburbs to act more like traditional towns, Florida cites existing metropolitan suburbs that have held up well in the malaise of a stagnant economy.  According to Florida, these ‘burbs share many basic characteristics, such as dense commercial downtowns, a variety of housing options and are located along old streetcar lines.

Do you know any cities like that?

A 2007 study by Christopher Leinberger found more than 150 walkable towns in America’s 30 largest metro regions—places like Hoboken, Montclair and Princeton, N.J.; Stamford and Greenwich, Conn.; Brookline, Mass.; Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and Royal Oak and Birmingham, Mich. Newer versions of walkable suburbs can be found in regions that developed later, like Palo Alto, Calif.; Boulder, Colo.; Coral Gables, Fla.; Decatur, Ga.; and Clayton, Mo.

These are the places where Americans are clamoring to live and where housing prices have held up even in the face of one of the greatest real-estate collapses in modern memory.

So here’s a question…why is it that old streetcar suburbs are now the hottest thing going?  What is it about them that so appeals to the 21st century urbanista?

Thanks to Eva and Louis for forwarding!

As we’ve reiterated many times when speculating the future value of our city’s real estate, Decatur’s economic future is indelibly linked to that of its bigger, younger sister (see Marthasville) to the west.  Though many, many thanks must be given to Decatur officials, staff and residents, who had the foresight to implement smart growth concepts well before they were en vogue, even they would probably admit that it also had a lot to do with good timing.  While Decatur implemented a new strategy that valued its downtown instead of destroying it, the city of Atlanta came into its hey-day.

But what now?  How will our big sis fare in this economic downtown?

These questions were top-of-mind as I devoured  The Atlantic’s March cover story “How the Crash Will Reshape America“, written by American Urban Studies theorist Richard Florida.  Florida is big on the “creative class”, focusing on how concentrations of well-educated, creative folks (aka “talant-clusters”) drive city economies.  Unlike Friedman’s world is flat-theory, Florida, like many other urban theorists, believe that the easy accessibility of info of the 21st century is not be a death-knell to cities.  Instead, these mega-regions continue to remain vitality important in helping the U.S. compete with the rest of the world.

In examining our cities’ ability to weather this deep recession, Florida predicts big trouble for economies with a local economies that are heavy in the financials or industrials.  While giving a pass to NYC on financials because it is the center of the world economy, Florida writes the obit for dirty industry Detriot and real-estate dependent Las Vegas and Pheonix.

But when it comes to Atlanta, Florida only makes a passing mention when rattling off mega-regions:  I believe he calls it “Char-lanta.”  And while Charlotte gets a later mention for being a thriving research banking capital, Atlanta receives no other mention; pro or con.

So is that a good thing or a bad thing? Read the rest of this entry »