Housing

For much of the past decade, Darik Volpa labored long and hard in the high-tech vineyards of San Jose and Boston. As an executive in the medical instrument industry, he earned good money, but could not achieve a middle class lifestyle in those pricey locales.

When Volpa decided in 2003 to open his own company, Understand Surgery, he chose to do it in far-more-affordable Reno, Nevada. His reasons--embraced by scores of other fast-growing businesses--ranged from the unfriendly… more

The battle's over. For half a century, legions of planners, urbanists, environmentalists and big city editorialists have waged war against sprawl. Now it's time to call it a day and declare a victor.

The winner is, yes, sprawl.

The numbers are incontestable and the trends inexorable. Since 1950, more than 90 percent of metropolitan population growth in America has taken place in the suburbs. Today, roughly two out of three people in the nation's metro areas are suburban dwellers. "The… more

For the better part of the last half century, urbanists, planners, and environmentalists have railed against suburbia, and the dreaded trend of cities to "sprawl" outward from the old city core. Yet despite many attempts to discourage such growth, the pattern continues -- not only in America but in nearly all modern countries. The battle against sprawl is over. Sprawl won.

Since 1950, over 90 percent of metropolitan growth in America has taken place in the suburbs. The… more

Two of our country's most cherished dreams are at risk. One is the American dream of upward mobility. The other is the romantic dream of settling the American heartland. These two dreams cannot be separated in the information age any more than they could be in the frontier past. Indeed, for many Americans in this century moving up may mean moving inland.

After all the rhapsody about the digital age, it was skyrocketing home prices and sales that finally shook the U.S. economy out of its doldrums this year. While stock markets languished, mortgage refinancing pumped more than $1 trillion into consumers' pockets. Nationally, average home prices rose above the $200,000 mark for the first time ever. But rather than signal prosperity, the housing boom may be largely driven by the financial maneuvers of wealthier Americans. Housing, in fact, has become part… more