DetroitPlanner said: First tier suburbs are in a real pickle. . Click to expand...

My personal view is that maybe this is changing. Think of Denver.. or San Diego. The infill redevelopment of the inner ring is practically the only thing going on in those two cities right now. They are denser, more transit accessible, already have infrastructure that municipalities don't have to force developers to build for them, and they have the programs and tax base that go with being part of the larger city (as opposed to a suburban municipality). They also offer some of the benefits of "suburbia" while still feeling "urban" to the younger families who want live in a 'burb but still have a hip urban lifestyle.The outer suburban rings in San Diego are essentially dead. 50%+ declines in property values, nobody can afford the gas to commute 30+ miles into the center each day, and their schools are no longer a differentiator since the state and the increasingly fiscally constrained munies out there have been forced to slash programs and school funding into oblivion. There was a time not too many years ago when people would be willing to sell their limbs to live in some of those outer burbs just so their kids could go to the local schools. Now, with class sizes in outlying areas pushing 35-40+, after mass teacher layoffs, the vast inner city SDCS isn't looking that bad anymore. And for those who can afford it, who cares about the local schools if you feel you have to send your kids to private schools anyway. And the private schools are all in the city and the inner ring. Many a planning consultant working for these strapped burbs have been asked to run future growth projections for new subdivisions based on "zero children" assumptions. Asked how they intend to keep kids from moving in, the municipal officials just shrug. They have no clue. All they know is that they absolutely cannot afford to issue building permits if children comes with the homes associated with them.The outer burbs have finally realized that, without vast state subsidies, they're financially unviable as going concerns, with residential-only tax bases incapable of supporting public services. Now that those subsidies are long gone, some of them are quickly becoming the new ghettos. They're shutting down schools, ending police protection, consolidating fire stations, in some cases firing virtually their ENTIRE city staffs. Roads are going unmaintained, capital highway-building projects are cancelled or postponed, the landscaping is going untended, graffiti is going unremoved, and crime is going up. To give you an idea of how bad things are, between 2007 and 2011, San Diego's estimated metro population increased by the same absolute amount of people as the city proper... in other words, the city absorbed virtually all of the (net) growth, and almost all of that growth was absorbed into the core neighborhoods (defined as centre city neighborhoods + the inner ring suburbs).Outer ring suburbs only work if somebody else pays their bills or when their entirely residential ad valorem tax base is inflated by a property bubble. Without such a bubble.. or massive infrastructure and public employment subsidies, single-use residential doesn't pay for much at anything short of penurious tax rates. Therefore, when the gravy train stops, such places fail, victims of their location and their historical NIMBYistic desire to bar virtually all land-use diversity.