I suspect urban, development, land-economics, and migration theorists underestimate the importance of open land. From the dawn of the United States to the present day, the average American domestic migrant in almost any decade has tended to move from more densely settled regions to less densely settled regions. Even during periods of urbanization, much urbanization is driven by immigration, rather than domestic migration, and many urban migrants move into the most dense parts of a state less dense than their origin.I think of owning "your own de facto park" as having "elbow room." For nearly a decade I owned a home in a relatively dense suburb where, if I were in my backyard and my neighbor belched (or simply talked) in his backyard, I heard him. I didn't like it.
By and large, people tend to move from places with a relative abundance of people to places with a relative lack of people.
The problem of price-spiraling cities is not that the poor leave. It’s that the middle-class leave. Entrenched poverty has a tendency to, well, be entrenched.
Yet middle-class people are likely to be able to afford nice cities. So why do they leave? Simple: they can find a better mix of costs and amenities. And this is where we come back to greenfields.
Your classic early-stage-suburb, often an “exurb,” has abundant supply of land. This means you can buy land cheap. This means you can build a bigger house given a fixed budget constraint. Or you can build the same size house, but buy much more land. This is valuable as an investment asset, but also because parks are nice. And if you own your own de facto park, that’s very nice.
Now I live where my neighbors are far enough away so we can each do as we please (within reason) without the other being aware of it. Privacy is nice; it has utility difficult to put a dollar price on, but valuable nonetheless.
