Center City

This won't be surprising to anyone here (tho you should keep reading, just in case).

A new government report finds that a substantial amount of new housing shifted from suburbia back to the center city in the past 15 years.

From USAToday:

"In more than half of the 50 most populous metropolitan areas, communities at the urban core have captured a significantly larger share of their region's new residential building permits since 2002 than in the first half of the 1990s, according to an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency."

A large amount of residential construction still occurs on former farmland, but there was a consistent increase in new urban housing from 2002 to 2007. Analysts attribute the change to demographics, high gas prices, and congested roads. The change may also reflect the investment cities have made in public transit systems.

Of course, the housing collapse and the overall economy mean that most housing developments are struggling, no matter if they are in the city or the suburbs. But it is an interesting trend, one that gives me hope for less sprawl in the future. But we'll just have to see where people want to live once the economy picks back up.