New Metro Politics

A new report by Robert Land and Thomas Sanchez of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech interprets recent presidential elections using a county-based regional typology.  The authors focus on 417 counties in the top 50 metro areas in the US (including more than half of the nation's population), and considers five subsets:  core, inner suburbs, mature suburbs, emerging suburbs and exurbs.  The authors' analysis allows them to focus on the amount and nature of the "urbanized" population. That focus allows them to identify differences between "mature" and "emerging" suburbs that may have considerable significance, for example ("mature suburbs are adding more residents than emerging suburbs...[and include] more households with adults only compared to exurbs and emerging suburbs...[so that] the growing voting strength of mature suburbs is even greater than [their] poplations gains on their own would suggest." 

The analysis leads them to posit that for the new metro politics "it's the density, stupid," and to note that the "big divide between the suburbs is newness."  They conclude: 

"much of older suburbia dates to the post war era of the 1950s and 1960s.  On a superficial level these two areas may seem similar--perhaps old sprawl versus new sprawl...[y]et ...these places are now very much different.  A key concern for the old sprawl areas is that they are in rapid transition to a quasi-city like character...[and] policies that smooth this change and provide reinvestment opportunities in upgrading aging infrastructure are favored by these voters.  Voters at the metropolitan edge want policies that slow growth so that local service can catch up with demand.... The next several elections may be determined by who does a better job of addressing the new metro politics."