Footloose

Yesterday's NY Times included ("Off to Resorts, And Carrying Their Careers"). The article mentioned the growing numbers of location-neutral businesses, giving many people the option of relocating to mountain-state areas with amenities.

"The New Urban Refugees" is the accompanying graphic that showed most 1980-1990 (county-level) home value appreciation was in the SF bay area and the NewYork-Nantucket ambit. In the 1990-2000 the top home-value appreciating counties were in the mountain states.

Jobs have been becoming more footloose for many years and the trend will accelerate. This will increase the scope for individuals to choose. Localities will have to compete more than ever. This is as it should be.

Competition means that markets will have a hand in picking and choosing neighborhood styles and forms. Smart Growthers will have to get used to the fact that there will be more bottom-up and less top-down planning.

The various voices of this discussion are well represented in Planetizen's recently published Contemporary Debates in Urban Planning.