Toronto Star

Say what you like about suburbia, sneer at it all you want, but the truth is it's here to stay. Maybe that's not the way it should be, but that's the way it is, especially here in North America, where gas is still (relatively) cheap and land in plentiful supply. But as U.S. author Joel Kotkin (The City: A Global History, The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape) argued in his presentation at the University of Toronto last month, that's not so much because people prefer the 'burbs so much as the fact they prefer single-family housing. The city may be where they'd rather live, but for most that's simply not an option. The cost of downtown real estate and the relative lack of it lead inevitably to the suburbs.