Bulldoze the 'burbs?

Glaeser points out that the distribution of America's population was very different a century ago. In 1900, the 20 largest US cities were on waterways. But the advent of the automobile made it possible to travel over land cheaply, and people migrated in droves to the wide open of the Sun Belt. (The rise of air conditioning probably helped, too.)

But now there's another shift underway, as migration to America's southern tier is slowing and as more Americans are moving back into city centers, a trend that predates, but was accelerated by, the subprime mortgage crisis. As urban strategist Christopher B. Leinberger wrote in the Atlantic in March 2008, the growing number of vacant and abandoned malls, office parks, and McMansions threaten to turn suburbia into the next slum.

Many sustainability experts have noted that urbanites use far less energy than their suburban counterparts. New Yorker writer David Owen observed in 2004 that, if New York City were granted statehood it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use, thanks in part to public transit and other shared resources, but mostly because its compactness forces people to be energy efficient. No matter what your politics are, when you don't need to get in a car just to go pick up a quart of milk, you're living a greener lifestyle.

In the meantime, at least one perfectly good suburban housing development has already been demolished, not by the government, but by a profit-seeking enterprise.

In May, a video surfaced on YouTube of new houses in Victorville, Calif., being knocked down by a backhoe. Apparently, Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas, which acquired the 16 properties through a foreclosure sale, believed it was cheaper to destroy the homes than to sell them.

Maura Judkis, the eco-blogger at US News, reported that the appliances were removed from the homes before they were wrecked, and some of the wood was sent to be reused for construction projects in Mexico, while the rest to be ground up for mulch.

Still, it all seems such a waste. Given how hard it is to predict future migration patterns, perhaps we should build new homes – such as prefabricated houses – that can be easily disassembled and rebuilt elsewhere.

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