Checking over at the Congress for New Urbanism’s web site, in the wake of Kunstler’s comments, I come across these astonishing statistics:

Married couples with children now account for less than 25% of American households. Fifty percent of all households in America contain one or two people. Last year, 9% of all homes were purchased by single men; 22% were purchased by single women; 32% were purchased by couples. Only 37% were purchased by traditional or non-traditional families.

At the same time 61% of the U.S. housing stock is of the single-family detached variety.

Would love to know what the local stats are, but take another look at those numbers - 31 percent of all homes purchased last year were bought by single folks. The assertion is that these people aren’t intersted in the leafy new production home in the suburb ending in “Valley” or “Creek” or “Hills” - many of them would prefer an urban environment:

There is a housing stock imbalance that will only grow more acute without new forms of development that create walkable urban neighborhoods with mixes of housing types and price points. “Until 2024, the majority of the market is going to be looking at urban, diverse, sustainable neighborhoods,” Volk said.

Sure, but where do you build them - or are we merely talking about rebuilding them? As in - out of the suburbs, and into the cities?

But then that brings its own special set of problems. I’ve long said that if you think we’ve had fights here before - over the convention center and such - just wait until gentrification hits the table.