Our Future Destination: Suburbs in the Heartland

"We concede," as one friend put it.  "They are denser than us."

Smart Growth advocates are predicting, really hoping for, a rise to denser schools, denser highways, and denser living.  As I've written before, no one can be that dense.

Joel Kotkin's Wall Street Journal op-ed factually debunks the oft-portrayed idea that suburbs will become the slums of the future, replaced by a return to dense, urban living.  Kotkin writes of "Smart Sprawl."

I was just alerted to his book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.  It's on my must-read list now.

Kotkin joins others in predicting up to 100 million new Americans by 2050. A growing population will still look to the suburbs to live.  Big cities' importance "will be cultural or symbolic more than economic."  The U.S. will continue to compete and be strong economically while much of the rest of the world whithers from shrinking populations.

Indeed.

The Heartland, namely Ohio, has what they're looking for in abundance--middle-class, suburban opportunity.

It's time our policies in Ohio prepare for the influx.  I'm serious.