Suburbs as exit, suburbs as entrance.

• Author: Garnett, Nicole Stelle

Most academics assume that suburbanites are "exiters" who have abandoned central cities. The exit story is a foundational one in the fields of land-use and local-government law: exiters' historical, social, and economic connections with "their" center cities are frequently used to justify both growth controls and regional government. The exit story, however, no longer captures the American suburban experience. For a majority of Americans, suburbs have become points of entrance to, not exit from, urban life. Most suburbanites are "enterers"--people who were born in, or migrated directly to, suburbs and who have not spent time living in any central city. This Essay reexamines current debates about growth management and regional governance in light of the under-appreciated suburbs-as-entrance story. The exit paradigm provides a powerful normative justification for policies constraining urban growth. When it is stripped away, proponents are left with utilitarian arguments. Economists challenge these arguments by showing that metropolitan fragmentation actually may be efficiency enhancing--and utilitarian arguments may ring hollow with suburban enterers themselves. This Essay sounds a cautionary note in the growth management and regional government debates. The exit story is an outdated rhetorical flourish that tends to oversimplify the case for--and camouflage the complexities of--policies restricting suburban growth, especially when it comes to distributional and transitional-fairness concerns.

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE EXIT STORY A. Exit Begins B. "White Flight" C. Exit Rights (and Responsibilities) D. The Last Exiters? II. THE ENTRANCE STORY A. Native Suburbanites and Domestic Migrants B. The New Immigrant Gateways III. THE CASE(S) FOR METROPOLITAN SOLIDARITY IN A POSTEXIT WORLD A. The Exit Story as a Normative Justification for Regionalism B. The Utilitarian Case Against Fragmentation C. Transitional Fairness IV. COMPETITIVE CITIES AND CONVERGING SUBURBS CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION

Most academic discussions assume that suburbs are places of exit. According to the conventional account, suburbanites abandoned cities in favor of an isolated, privatized realm. Municipal incorporation laws shield suburbs from city governments that might otherwise annex them; suburban land-use policies exclude otherwise mobile, poor, urban residents who would like to be their neighbors. The exit story is a foundation of land-use and local-government law. Not only is exit considered a primary cause of intrametropolitan inequality, but proponents of growth management and regional government argue that former urban dwellers who exit for the suburbs remain, in important respects, part of the urban polity. Exiters' historical, social, and economic connections to their center cities are used to justify both growth controls and regional government.

The exit story accurately describes much of the history of American suburban development. From their inception, American suburbs were self-consciously anti-urban. Post-Civil War suburbs reflected the Victorian ideal of the home as a semipastoral retreat both from the cold, calculating world of commerce and industry and from the burgeoning immigrant ghettos. (1) By the late nineteenth century, suburbanites had begun to spurn larger cities' consolidation and annexation overtures and to guarantee political autonomy by defensively incorporating their communities as independent municipalities. (2) This suburbanization-as-exit phenomenon continued apace throughout the twentieth century. It reached its zenith after World War II, when legal and demographic changes spawned white flight from previously stable urban enclaves. In recent years, African Americans and other minorities have become exiters as well. During the 1990s, in fact, minorities were responsible for the bulk of suburban population gains in many major metropolitan areas. (3) A majority of Asian Americans, half of Hispanic Americans, and nearly forty percent of African Americans are now suburbanites. (4)

The exit story no longer captures the American suburban experience. For a majority of Americans, suburbs have become points of entrance to, not exit from, "urban" life. The U.S. Census Bureau defines "urbanized areas" as central cities and areas around them that have a population of 1000 or more people per square mile. (5) By this definition, suburbs are the only "urban" areas most Americans have ever known. Most suburbanites are "enterers"--people who were born in, or migrated directly to, suburbs and who have not spent time living in any central city. By the 1960s, more Americans lived in suburbs than in central cities; (6) the employment balance shifted to the suburbs by the 1980s. (7) By 1990, the United States had become a suburban nation, with a solid majority of all Americans residing in the suburbs. (8) As a result, many suburban residents likely are second- or third-generation exiters. Perhaps their parents or grandparents left the old neighborhood, but their own experience is entirely suburban. Other suburbanites lack even this historical connection with the center city closest to their suburban homes. For example, the nation's fastest-growing suburbs--on the fringes of "New Sunbelt" cities--benefit from domestic migration from other parts of the country (9): they may absorb more Rust Belt exiters than hometown exiters. Finally, two groups of suburbanites--new immigrants who increasingly bypass city centers for new immigrant gateways (10) and domestic migrants from depopulating rural areas--lack social and historical connections with any major U.S. urban center.

This Essay situates the underappreciated suburbs-as-entrance story within current debates about growth management and regional governance. The exit paradigm provides a powerful normative justification for metropolitan solidarity by tying the fortunes of center cities to the selfish actions of surrounding communities and their residents. Demands to remedy the "inequitable" distribution of fiscal resources within a metropolitan area are most powerful if those benefiting from the inequities helped create them by abandoning their former neighbors. Similarly, proponents of regional government can most plausibly assert that a metropolitan region is, in reality, a single polity when the residents of outlying areas share social, economic, and historical connections to the region's anchor city and to one another. When the exit account is stripped away, however, regional government and growth control proponents must increasingly fall back on utilitarian arguments: metropolitan fragmentation is inefficient, suburban fortunes stand or fall with the fortunes of center cities, and so on. Not only are these arguments challenged by economists who argue that metropolitan fragmentation is efficiency enhancing, but they may also ring hollow with suburban enterers who have little or no affinity for (or connection to) urban life.

This Essay does not argue that the entrance story requires unfettered suburban growth or obliterates the case against metropolitan fragmentation. Municipal boundaries are arbitrary, intrametropolitan inequality is troubling, and self-interested suburbanites do impose externalities on their neighbors. Rather, the Essay seeks to sound a cautionary note in the debate over growth management and regional government. The exit story is an outdated rhetorical flourish that tends to oversimplify the case for--and camouflage the complexities of--policies restricting suburban growth, especially when it comes to distributional and transitional-fairness concerns.

1. THE EXIT STORY

   Cities have spawned suburbs throughout history. The earliest suburbs developed primarily to accommodate noxious land uses and provide housing for those too poor to afford the protection of city walls. (11) (Ancient Romans referred to this area as "suburbium." (12)) The wealthiest urbanites, however, also built suburban homes to escape the evils of city life--congestion, disease, and unrest. Indeed, as early as 539 BC, the emperor of Persia received a letter from a subject extolling the virtues of suburban life: "Our property seems to me the most beautiful in the world. It is so close to Babylon that we enjoy all the advantages of the city, and yet when we come home we are away from all the noise and dust." (13) By the early modern period, as increasing numbers of city residents could afford suburban life, development beyond city walls exploded throughout the Western world. (14) While industrialization increased population density in cities, it also drove residents with financial means to flee the unpleasant and dangerous aspects of urban life (including city crowding). (15) By the turn of the twentieth century, the latter phenomenon overtook the former. In both Europe and the United States, the urban form began decentralizing rapidly, as more and more city residents fled to new suburban communities. (16)

   1. Exit Begins

      By the mid-nineteenth century, American suburban developments began gaining prestige, as city conditions worsened and transportation improvements made daily commuting possible. Even before the Civil War, wealthy Americans began to flee center-city neighborhoods for the first bedroom communities--New York's Brooklyn Heights, Philadelphia's Germantown, and San Francisco's Nob Hill. (17) As historian Kenneth Jackson has observed, however, ideology, as well as technology and economics, fueled the phenomenal growth of American suburbia. Americans fell in love with the suburbs and grew to loathe the city. Flight from the city to the suburbs became the American ideal. (18)

      Americans had good reasons to flee nineteenth-century cities. Industrialization made them crowded, dangerous, unhealthy places to live. But the decision to leave the city for the suburbs was, for many, ideological as well as practical. Industrialization had separated work and home for the first time in...