A ‘boomburb’ adopts New Urbanism

New Urban News Article with images, 1/1/2009

A suburban Texas municipality approves one of the largest applica-tions of the SmartCode and is work-ing on a city-wide form-based code.

“Boomburbs,” as described by author Robert Lang, are suburban municipalities topping 100,000 people that have seen double-digit growth for at least three decades in a row. Most boomburbs were rural outposts in 1950, and although you may have not heard of many of them, they have accommodated a disproportionate share of the nation’s growth in the last half-century.

Mesquite, Texas, with 136,000 people, is a boomburb east of Dallas, but it is outside of what real estate analysts call the “favored quarter” — the area where the region’s highest valued growth has taken place in recent decades. That circumstance is reflected in property values that are lower than in north Dallas suburbs like Plano, McKinney, and Frisco. Mesquite’s image suffers as a consequence, as revealed in a 2006 survey of metropolitan Dallas residents. City officials are counting on new urban planning and zoning to shape growth and polish its image in the decades to come.