Overview

A glance at a list of America’s fastest growing “cities” reveals quite a surprise: most are really overgrown suburbs. Places such as Anaheim, North Las Vegas, Plano, Coral Springs (Florida), and Naperville (Illinois) have swelled to bigcity size with few people really noticing—including many of their ten million residents. These “boomburbs” are large, rapidly growing, incorporated communities of more than 100,000 residents that are not the biggest city in their region. Here, Robert E. Lang and Jennifer B. LeFurgy explain who lives in them, what they look like, how they are governed, and why their rise calls into question the definition of urban. The paperback includes a new preface by the authors, in the wake of the 2008 elections.

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9780815703037

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Reviews

Boomburbs is one of the most significant contributions to contemporary metropolitan studies. It explores a new world and carefully maps this previously overlooked sector of metropolitan life. It should become a classic in the field and required reading for all students of the early twenty-first century American metropolis. -Jon Teaford, Jon Teaford, professor of history, Purdue University | This lively, original, and perceptive book enables us to see a new form of city where previous observers had seen only suburban sprawl. These 'accidental cities' that Lang and LeFurgy call 'boomburbs' not only challenge our traditional concept of the urban; the fate of the boomburbs will increasingly determine the future of metropolitan America. -Robert Fishman, Taubman College of Architecture and Planning, University of Michigan | Robert E. Lang has become one of America's best commentators on the vast urban territory outside of the traditional city center. In this book, he and Jennifer LeFurgy explore a group of new cities sprouting in the suburbs that is changing our very definition of what it means to be urban. Deploying acute first-hand observation, ingenious research, and a fondness for neologisms, they provide excellent insight into topics ranging from the demographic diversity of the 'New Brooklyns' to the exclusive governance of the 'cluburbs.' -Robert Bruegmann, professor of art history, architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Sprawl: A Compact History | Urban and metropolitan studies have been mired for too long in a false dichotomy about cities and suburbs. Boomburbs is an important book because it leaves all that baggage behind and describes fast-growing American communities as they really are -big yet small, tedious yet vibrant, pimply yet mature. -Bill Fulton, author of The Reluctant Metropolis and The Regional City | The wealth of statistical and contextual analyses of these places makes the book valuable for graduate students and faculty in urban affairs, as well as for city planners. -E. Carlson, Florida State University, CHOICE | The book is a valuable addition to the literature of growth and development in the United States. - Civil Engineering | Boomburbs is an excellent adventure through the evolution of these places, the people who inhabit them, the housing typologies that went from the craftsman house to the ranch to the McMansion, and the commercial and workplace economies that have emerged along the wide arterials and left-turn lanes. -Anthony Flint, on The Business of Government Hour | Lang and LeFurgy are that most rare of suburban chroniclers; they are describing the place based on research. Almost everyone else who weighs in on the subject, whether apologist or critic, has an ax to grind....this is an immensely readable book for the lay person or the scholar. -Christopher B. Leinberger, University of Michigan, Journal of Planning Education and Research

<p> Lang and LeFurgy are that most rare of suburban chroniclers; they are describing the place based on research. Almost everyone else who weighs in on the subject, whether apologist or critic, has an ax to grind....this is an immensely readable book for the lay person or the scholar. --Christopher B. Leinberger, University of Michigan, Journal of Planning Education and Research

Author Information

Robert E. Lang is co-director of the Metropolitan Institute and a professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning graduate program at Virginia Tech. His previous books include Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis (Brookings, 2003). Jennifer B. LeFurgy is a writer and consultant in Alexandria, Virginia. She was formerly deputy director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.

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