Exurbia

Also known as Exurbs
==Background==
Sprawl moves people to the exurbs of large metropolitan areas in the United States. 
Exurbs are communities located on the urban fringe that have at least 20 percent of their workers commuting to jobs in an urbanized area, exhibit low housing density, and have relatively high population growth. 
In the US, exurban areas grew more than twice as fast as their respective metropolitan areas overall, by 31 percent in the 1990s alone. Roughly 6 percent of the population of these large metro areas are from exurbia.
==Details==
* The typical exurban census tract has 14 acres of land per home, compared to 0.8 acres per home in the typical tract nationwide.
* The South and Midwest of the US are more exurbanized than the West and Northeast. Five million people live in exurban areas of the South, representing 47 percent of total exurban population nationwide. Midwestern exurbs contain 2.6 million people, about one-fourth of all exurbanites. South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Maryland have the largest proportions of their residents living in exurbs, while Texas, California, and Ohio have the largest absolute numbers of exurbanites.
* Seven metropolitan areas have at least one in five residents living in an exurb. These metro areas include Little Rock (AR), Grand Rapids (MI), and Greenville (SC), as well as areas like Poughkeepsie (NY) that serve as "satellites" to nearby larger metro areas. Both fast-growing and slow-growing metropolitan areas have developed exurbs.
* Louisville's metro area has the highest number of exurban counties (13), followed by Atlanta, Richmond, and Washington, D.C., which each have 11. These exurban counties grew by 12 percent overall between 2000 and 2005, faster than population growth in urban, inner suburban, or outer suburban counties (like Loudoun County, VA). However, outer suburban counties added 4.5 million people in the last five years, exceeding the 1.8 million-person gain in exurban counties.
* Middle-income families' "drive to qualify" for more affordable new homes that are in limited supply elsewhere fuels growth in many metropolitan exurbs.
==Insights==
===Brookings Report: Finding Exurbia: America's Fast-Growing Communities at the Metropolitan Fringe===
:by Alan Berube, Audrey Singer, Jill H. Wilson, and William H. Frey, October 2006
* FullReport in PDF (5.27KB)
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