why the naive optimism?

I spent my high school years deep in the suburbs that Dunham-Jones and Williamson were referencing in their article.  My parents still live in that outer suburb of DC and I spent several summers all over Northern Virginia (NOVA for the uninitiated) working for a primarily residential architecture firm and visiting friends who lived in other upper-middle class suburbs.  

The recession may have stalled growth and spurred densification, but the sprawl is rapidly continuing as we speak.  The areas just outside of the inner suburbs are seeing some densification and instead of driving to a shopping mall you have the option of driving to “district” where you can walk outside between Lululemon, starbucks, trendy health food chains and the third story Target.  In the innermost traditional suburbs developers buy up modestly sized yet shockingly expensive houses to tear them down and build 4,000+ sq ft houses with 5 bathrooms for single families with two kids.  In the outer suburbs the rapid growth slowed during the recession after 15+ years of growth and since 2010 has picked back up explosively.  I lived in Stafford County 40 miles away from DC and worked in the wealthiest county in the US Loudon County and can promise you the pace of sprawl has picked up right where it left off.  

My parent's county is dark red.

2012 American Community Survey Data
10 out of the 20 richest counties in the US were DC suburbs

My parents live here.

 In this aerial image of my parent’s neighborhood what you don’t see is the new development in that large wooded area and the four other new neighborhoods just out of the frame.  The houses are built 10x  worse than the 1940’s developments and not worth renovating in another 20 years; so don’t ask me who will want to live there down the line.  You can’t afford to retire there.  And that’s if the commute doesn’t kill you.