The 10th anniversary of GlobeSt.com finds the world of land use in the midst of change. The year 2000 was the midpoint of two decades in which urban cores were being rebuilt as places to work and live, not just work and leave. A downtown migration of affluent, childless professionals and empty nesters created a development boom, in many cases breathing new life into old space and allowing cities to reinvent their economies.

While this downtown growth has resulted in a remarkable shift in how we view our cities, it’s but one aspect of the evolution in urban growth that is going to intensify in the years ahead. What we learned from this phenomenon is that there is a market for compact, mixed-use design, smaller housing space, and transit-oriented development that minimizes the need to drive. But perhaps the bigger lesson--one we are still learning how to apply--is that there is a demand for at least some aspects of this type of development that stretches beyond downtown cores and into outlying suburbs. In other words, growth in the suburbs does not inevitably mean sprawl.

Going forward, our decisions on what and where to develop will be guided not by a plentiful supply of land throughout urban regions, but rather how best to use the land that is left. Vast demographic, financial, and environmental shifts are necessitating a major overhaul in what and where we build and will continue to do so in the decades ahead.