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In 2011, the suburban poor outnumbered the urban poor by three million; from 2000 to 2011, the number of poor people soared by 64 percent in the suburbs, compared with 29 percent in cities. Today nearly one-third of all Americans are poor or nearly poor. One in three poor Americans live in the suburbs. If you're poor in the Seattle, Atlanta or Chicago regions, you're more likely than not living outside the city limits.

The Street Plans Collaborative is an urban planning, design, and research-advocacy firm. We strive to create high-quality public spaces, and believe that the key to reversing the harmfulmn effects of suburban sprawl is to promote compact, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. We thrive on working with our clients, partners, and other likeminded organizations to improve the quality and function of the built environment. We seek to increase the effectiveness of multi-modal transportation as a means to creating more competitive and sustainable 21st century towns and cities.

Existing patterns of urban and suburban development seriously impair our quality of life. The symptoms are: more congestion and air pollution resulting from our increased dependence on automobiles, the loss of precious open space, the need for costly improvements to roads and public services, the inequitable distribution of economic resources, and the loss of a sense of community. By drawing upon the best from the past and the present, we can plan communities that will more successfully serve the needs of those who live and work within them. Such planning should adhere to certain fundamental principles.

"Rethinking the Automobile" is a project created by livable streets advocate Mark Gorton. Its goal is to raise awareness around the negative impact of the automobile on our world. Through public events and media campaigns, Rethinking the Automobile reveals how policies that prioritize the automobile destroy public space in our cities and towns and have created a dangerous and unsustainable world.

There's an important debate taking place right now, as you know, about what will happen to the suburbs and particularly the more distant exurbs when economic conditions and the real estate market pick up a little more. On one side are the suburbanists, such as Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, who believe that the march of the affluent to distant locations will simply continue, and we will be building more subdivisions 30 and 40 miles out from the cities. Then there are the urbanists, such as Christopher Leinberger, who argue that the Great Recession marks a demographic turning point, and communities far from the urban center are going to be much less attractive to the next generation of affluent homebuyers.

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