Suburbia: The Economist got it wrong

Here’s another occasion to bug you with my interest for suburbia. The Economist has an article this week on America’s suburbs. It talks about their transformation, from homogeneous to heterogeneous. Whereas in the ’50s, most inhabitants of suburbia where twenty- and thirty-something white couples who were just sarting a family, it now includes a muti-ethnic population, as well as seniors and gay couples.
But the suburbs have also seen their roles changed and have become the center of the attention. More businesses and offices are moving there and some residents have abandonned their daily commute to the city centres.
Now the most interesting part of the article — in my opinion — is this little passage about suburbia’s detractors:

James Kunstler, an American urbanist, says they represent “the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known.” Richard Florida, an influential writer, sees them as incidental, at best, to cities’ highest purpose, which is to concentrate the young, creative folk who will come up with brilliant innovations. Now that America worries about global warming, the acres of bungalows and freeway exit ramps seem not just pointless but harmful.
Although much of it is nonsense, it cannot be denied that a little sheen has come off America’s suburbs in the past year.

Well, that’s a smart way to quickly go over what some urbanists and researchers have been dedicating their work to and spend the rest of this 2600-word article trying to persuade us that there’s nothing so wrong with the suburbs (“Walk around Willingboro in the evening and you will see homeowners mowing their lawns and children squirting each other with water pistols, just as they did when the neighbourhood was much more homogenous.” Oh well then where’s the problem?) So if the author is allowed to introduce Richard Florida as nothing more than “an influential writer,” then I can say without regret that this article is useless, shallow and plainly wrong. If you want to write about the suburbs, then write something meaningful.