ELITES AND MARSHALLIAN IMPROVEMENTS DON'T ALWAYS GO WELL TOGETHER.

The Economist's Free Exchange column takes a controversial stance, "In praise of America’s car addiction."  No, seriously.  "How vehicle-dependence makes the country fairer and more efficient."  Marshallian improvements can be like that, even if some people are left worse off.

America is far more car-reliant than any other big country, averaging roughly two vehicles per household. This, in turn, is linked to many ills: obesity, pollution, suburban sprawl and so on.

Despite such horrors, more Americans than ever are consigning themselves to a car-defined existence by choosing to live in the suburbs. Census figures reveal that after decades of steady growth, a little more than half the American population is now based in the ‘burbs. It seems a classic case of elite opinions (cars and suburbs are awful) diverging from mass preferences (people quite enjoy them). For many, the main attractions of suburbia are lower housing costs and greater safety. Yet recent research sheds light on how cars are a crucial part of the equation, making America’s suburbs both impressively efficient and equitable.

Start with convenience. It is well-known that American cities are configured for vehicles, a process that began in the 1920s with the Model T. Car-centric urban designs became dominant throughout the country, involving wide roads, ample access to expressways and parking galore. To varying degrees, other countries have copied that model. Yet America has come closest to perfecting it. In a paper released in August, supported by the World Bank, a group of economists examined road speeds in 152 countries. Unsurprisingly, wealthy countries outpace poor ones. And within the rich world, America is streets ahead: its traffic is about 27% faster than that of other members of the OECD club of mostly rich countries. Of the 20 fastest cities in the world, 19 are in America.

Although there are a lot of places that are stroad hell, the article suggests there are also a lot of places where the motor vehicles and the roads make the rent gradients shallow and the wide open spaces desirable.

It is not that American roads are better in and of themselves. Rather, speed is a testament to America’s love affair with both suburbia and smaller towns that feel suburban. Compared with those in other oecd countries, American cities are 24% less populous, cover 72% more area and have 67% more large roads. All this enables drivers to zip around. New York, the country’s densest city, is an outlier, as anyone who has sat in its gridlock knows. But most of American suburbia more closely resembles Wichita, Kansas, and Greensboro, North Carolina, where drivers rarely face jams.

Driving speed shrinks distance. One fashionable concept among urban planners these days is the “15-minute city”, the goal of building neighbourhoods that let people get to work, school and recreation within 15 minutes by foot or bike. Many Americans may simply fail to see the need for this innovation, for they already live in 15-minute cities, so long, that is, as they get around by car. Most of the essentials—groceries, school, restaurants, parks, doctors and more—are a quick drive away for suburbanites.

Yes, the environmentalists and the egalitarians will note, for people who don't bear the full costs of their activities or who have the means to buy the houses and the cars.

Just as it is easier to get into American city centres, so it is easier to get out of them. Over time that has sapped vibrancy from their downtown cores as people flee offices at the end of the day for far-flung homes. However, there is a more positive way of looking at this phenomenon: it is precisely such accessibility that has put larger homes and quieter streets within reach for a remarkably wide cross-section of the country. In his analysis of the census from 2020, William Frey of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, showed that suburbia has become far more diverse over the years. In 1990 roughly 20% of suburbanites were non-white. That rose to 30% in 2000 and 45% in 2020.

Not that cars are a panacea. Owning or renting one costs plenty of money, and is an especially big burden for the working poor. It is therefore common to hear laments in American cities about the sorry state of mass transit. Yet this general perception, though widespread, is not entirely accurate. Even if primarily built for private cars, roads are a shared resource and can be viewed as the “tracks” for buses. In their study Mr Conwell and his colleagues conclude that bus-based transportation in America is surprisingly effective: public-transit options between distant suburbia and city centres are roughly comparable in America and Europe. Although America could do more to improve its bus services within its urban cores, the crucial point is that cities designed for cars can also support mass transit.

The bus, unfortunately, always looks better in theory than it does to the strap-hanger.  Perhaps, though, the cities with the density to make subways and Commuter Rail look like good ideas are not always the Superstar Cities.

The future of the US economy could be powered by cities in the Sunbelt.

Economic and societal power in the US may be shifting away from colossal coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco to metropolitan areas tucked below the Mason-Dixon line, as Barron's recently reported. That's because economic power is flowing to the middle of the country — and places such as Houston, Dallas, Nashville, and Miami are becoming hot spots.

We'll leave the political economy of migration for another day and focus on the transportation.

Just as New York City has Wall Street and San Francisco has Silicon Valley, Houston has its energy economy and Miami has its proximity to Latin America and growing financial industry. And while Los Angeles has Hollywood and Washington, DC, has politics, Dallas has a blossoming environment of diversified business behemoths and Nashville is a healthcare and tech hub.

"You used to have two coastal power zones where you could live your best life, never really touching down in the red states," Niall Ferguson, a Stanford historian, told Barron's. "We now have much more of a multipolar America rather than a bipolar America. That reflects taxes, quality of life, cost of living, the ability to build, and incredibly striking differentials in quality of governance."

That might be, and it might be politically desirable that a continent not be governed by an island. The emerging metropolitan areas, however, will not be exempt from the rent gradient.

To varying degrees, these cities are already getting a glimpse of how high housing costs can plague an area with surging demand.

What's more, these southern metros and their high temperatures could also face future challenges tied to the climate crisis. Miami, in particular, could be vulnerable.

Meanwhile, it could be a battle over bragging rights in the years to come between the coastal cities and Sunbelt metros as to which offers the most economic power.

As with everything else, trust markets and bet on emergence.