Boomburbs or Your Money or Your Life

Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities

Author: Robert E Lang

A glance at a list of America's fastest growing "cities" reveals quite a surprise: most are really overgrown suburbs. Places such as Anaheim, California, Coral Springs, Florida, Naperville, Illinois, North Las Vegas, Nevada, and Plano, Texas, have swelled to big-city size with few people really noticing--including many of their ten million residents. These "boomburbs" are large, rapidly growing, incorporated communities of more than 100,000 residents that are not the biggest city in their region. Here, Robert E. Lang and Jennifer B. LeFurgy explain who lives in them, what they look like, how they are governed, and why their rise calls into question the definition of urban.

Located in over twenty-five major metro areas throughout the United States, numerous boomburbs have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in size between census reports. Some are now more populated than traditional big cities. The population of the biggest boomburb-Mesa, Arizona-recently surpassed that of Minneapolis and Miami.

Typically large and sprawling, boomburbs are "accidental cities," but not because they lack planning. Many are made up of master-planned communities that have grown into one another. Few anticipated becoming big cities and unintentionally arrived at their status. Although boomburbs possess elements found in cities such as housing, retailing, offices, and entertainment, they lack large downtowns. But they can contain high-profile industries and entertainment venues: the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Arizona Cardinals are among over a dozen major-league sports teams who play in the boomburbs.

Urban in fact but not in feel, these drive-by cities of highways, office parks,and shopping malls are much more horizontally built and less pedestrian friendly than most older suburbs. And, contrary to common perceptions of suburbia, they are not rich and elitist. Poverty is often seen in boomburb communities of small single-family homes, neighborhoods that once represented the American dream.

Boomburbs are a quintessential American landscape, embodying much of the nation's complexity, expansiveness, and ambiguity. This fascinating look at the often contradictory world of boomburbs examines why America's suburbs are thriving and how they are shaping the lives of millions of residents.

What People Are Saying

Robert Fishman
"This lively, original, and perceptive book enables us to see a new form of city where previous observers had seen only suburban sprawl. These 'accidental cities' that Lang and LeFurgy call 'boomburbs' not only challenge our traditional concept of the urban; the fate of the boomburbs will increasingly determine the future of metropolitan America."--(Robert Fishman, Taubman College of Architecture and Planning, University of Michigan)

Robert Bruegmann
"Robert E. Lang has become one of America's best commentators on the vast urban territory outside of the traditional city center. In this book, he and Jennifer LeFurgy explore a group of new cities sprouting in the suburbs that is changing our very definition of what it means to be urban. Deploying acute first-hand observation, ingenious research, and a fondness for neologisms, they provide excellent insight into topics ranging from the demographic diversity of the 'New Brooklyns' to the exclusive governance of the 'cluburbs.'"--(Robert Bruegmann, professor of art history, architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Sprawl: A Compact History)

Bill Fulton
"Urban and metropolitan studies have been mired for too long in a false dichotomy about cities and suburbs. Boomburbs is an important book because it leaves all that baggage behind and describes fast-growing American communities as they really are-big yet small, tedious yet vibrant, pimply yet mature."--(Bill Fulton, author of The Reluctant Metropolis and The Regional City)

Jon Teaford
"Boomburbs is one of the most significant contributions to contemporary metropolitan studies. It explores a new world and carefully maps this previously overlooked sector of metropolitan life. It should become a classic in the field and required reading for all students of the early twenty-first century American metropolis."--(Jon Teaford, professor of history, Purdue University)

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Ed Glaeser
Preface
1. Legoland
2. From Settlements to Super Suburbs
3. Who Lives in the Boomburbs
4. The Business of Boomburbs
5. Big Skies, Small Lots: Boomburb Housing and Master-Planned Development
6. The Small Town Politics of Big Cities
7. Boomburbs at Buildout
8. Emerging Urban Realms and the Boomburbs of 2030
Notes
Index

Interesting book: SELECT Series or A Design That Cares

Your Money or Your Life: The Tyranny of Global Finance

Author: Eric Toussaint

In the last decade, neoliberal policies have created debt and global impoverishment on a massive scale. In this updated edition of his internationally recognized book, Eric Toussaint traces the origins and development of the crisis in global finance.

This new edition is fully updated with new statistics to account for new developments in global financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF. Your Money or Your Life is widely considered one of the clearest and best-documented books on globalization available. Includes an extensive bibliography and notes.

Eric Toussaint is president of the Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt and is a fellow and frequent lecturer at the International Institute for Research and Education in Amsterdam.