21st Century
Electorate's Heart is in
the Suburbs
By Morley Winograd
Even as the nation
conducts its critically
important decennial
census, a demographic
picture of the rapidly
changing population of
the United States is
emerging. It underlines
how suburban living has
become the dominant
experience for all key
groups in America’s 21st
Century Electorate.
While suburban living
was once seen as the
almost exclusive
preserve of the white
upper-middle class, a
majority of all major
American racial and
ethnic groups now live
in suburbia, according
to the newest report on
the state of
metropolitan America
from the Brookings
Institute. Slightly more
than half of
African-Americans now
live in large
metropolitan suburbs, as
do 59% of Hispanics,
almost 62% of
Asian-Americans, and 78%
of whites. As a result
the country is closer
than ever to achieving a
goal that many thought
would never be
achieved—city/suburban
racial/ethnic
integration. This is
particularly so in the
faster growing
metropolitan areas of
the South and West.
The trend is likely to
continue for the
foreseeable future. A
majority of Millennials
live in the suburbs and
43% of them, a portion
higher than for any
other generation,
describe suburbs as
their “ideal place to
live.”
The nation’s one hundred
largest metropolitan
areas have grown twice
as fast as the rest of
the country in the last
decade. That growth was
heavily concentrated in
lower density suburbs,
which grew at three
times the rate of cities
or inner ring suburbs.
At the same time, one
third of the nation’s
overall population
growth was due to
immigration. As a result
about one-quarter of all
children in the United
States have at least one
immigrant parent. In
2008, non whites became
a majority of Americans
less than eighteen years
old, a demographic
milestone that
underlines just how fast
and how dramatically the
country is changing. Any
political party that
wants to build a lasting
electoral majority must
align its policy
prescriptions with these
new demographic
realities to attract the
votes of a younger, more
ethnically diverse
population, most of
which now lives in the
suburbs.
Economic opportunity
continues to be the
major driver in
determining where people
want to live and work.
Five of the six fastest
growing metropolitan
areas in the last decade
were also among the top
six in job growth
according to data from
the Census and the
Bureau of Labor
Statistics analyzed by
the Praxis Strategy
Group. The same five
metropolitan
areas--Phoenix,
Riverside (CA), Dallas,
Houston and Washington,
D.C-- also ranked high
in the diversity of
their population,
differing only in the
degree of educational
attainment their
residents have achieved.
With America
experiencing the first
decade since the 1930s
in which inflation
adjusted median income
declined and job
creation slowed to
levels not seen in
decades, this movement
to where the jobs are is
hardly surprising. Yet
this crucial factor is
often overlooked by
urban planners who argue
that cultural amenities
and sport complexes are
the key to attracting
new residents. In fact,
metropolitan areas that
focus on job creation
for Millennials (young
Americans born
1982-2003) and
minorities have the best
chance of gaining
population in the next
decade.
Clearly providing higher
quality public education
experiences is a key
part of any such
economic strategy. The
arrival of stealth
fighter parents at local
school district meetings
across the country only
underlines how
passionate young
families are about the
quality of education
their children receive
and their unwillingness
to let Boomer
ideological debates
delay the changes needed
to properly prepare
their children for a
higher educational
experience that
increases the odds of
economic success. The
traditional separation
between municipal
partisan politics and
non-partisan school
policy making is
increasingly outdated
when so much of a city’s
economic success depends
on the quality of the
education its residents
receive. In this
environment, the
educational policies of
the Obama administration
that focus on results
and outcomes and not on
process or previous
practices should serve
as a template for
elected officials at
every level to follow.
Safe neighborhoods of
single family dwellings
with a surrounding patch
of land continue to
attract families of
every background to the
nation’s suburbs.
Metropolitan areas that
provide such an
environment to all of
their residents are the
furthest along in
achieving a more
integrated society. Los
Angeles, for instance,
which is often decried
by non-residents as
simply an aggregation of
suburbs with no central
core, has a suburban
population whose
demographic profile
almost exactly matches
the city’s population.
The fact that most of
its housing reflects the
tract developments of
the 50s and 60s, and
that former Los Angeles
police chief William
Bratton used his
COMPSTAT crime fighting
techniques to bring the
city’s crime rates down
to levels not seen in
five decades, are two
key reasons for this
polyglot profile.
Rather than fighting
this desire on the part
of America’s 21st
Century Electorate to
live comfortably in the
suburbs, politicians of
all stripes should find
ways to embrace it and
advocate policies that
reflect our new economic
realities. For instance,
rather than insisting on
higher density housing
and light rail systems
as the only answer to
the nation’s appetite
for foreign oil, the
federal government
should adopt tax
incentives that
encourage telecommuting.
If all Americans worked
from home, as many
Millennials prefer to
do, just two days a
week, it would cut that
portion of our nation’s
gas consumption by more
than a third. The FCC’s
recently announced
broadband policy will
help put in place the
infrastructure required
to make such a lifestyle
possible and even more
productive.
Three out of four
commuting trips involve
a single individual
driving their car to
work and this isn’t
likely to change with
the increased growth in
suburban living. But
putting as much emphasis
on making our nation’s
highways “smart” as in
creating a smart
electrical grid would
make it possible for the
existing highway system
to shorten commuting
time and reduce the
quantity of fuel used in
such trips. Recent
developments in mobile
technology makes this a
practical, near term
solution if state and
local governments are
prepared to invest in
upgrading an
infrastructure that is
already designed and
deployed to connect
people’s homes to their
workplace.
Aligning the message at
the heart of a party’s
programs with the values
and behaviors of
America’s 21st Century
Electorate is the best
way to guarantee victory
this year and for years
to come. As Simon
Rosenberg has stated,
Democrats need to
“embrace the coalition”
based on the country’s
new demographic
realities that Barack
Obama used so
effectively in 2008.
That embrace requires
not only focusing the
party’s efforts on the
growing demographic
groups that now make up
a majority of Americans,
but also rethinking many
of the policies it
advocates to make them
more friendly to the
suburban lifestyle that
so many members of the
coalition desire. As he
points out, “crossing
the chasm” from the old
coalition to the new
will “be hard, but it is
in the best interests of
the country and the best
interests of the
Democratic Party.”
