You Hate Taxes, but You’re Not Moving to Nashville
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How has the Great Recession reshaped America? Does the decline in New York’s financial sector herald the “demise of the luxury city,” as Joel Kotkin has recently suggested? Or instead has this watershed meant “the death of the fringe suburb,” as Christopher Leinberger speculates?
In fact, none of America’s diverse living styles is about to perish. Incomes remain highest in the large, well-educated coastal cities, even though Kotkin is right that they remain challenged by the high cost of government. Population growth remains strongest in the car-oriented cities of the Sun Belt, even though Leinberger and his Brookings Institution colleagues are right to note that exurban population growth has fallen.