The word “suburb” still raises snickers among some thinkers as aplace “out there” where middle-class people without taste reside. Theharshest critics dismiss suburbs as the “geography of nowhere.”

Yet the American suburbs have grown so immense and diverse, nowhousing more than half the U.S. population, that no out-of-datestereotypes can capture their complexity, meaning or future direction.

For example, according to Census data, the number of single peopleliving in the suburbs continues to grow. In fact, some suburbs now havemore single households than families with children. Another example:The suburbs in all big metropolitan areas except New York and Chicagocontain more office space than the regions’ central business districts.

American suburbs now have essentially the same elements that make aplace urban - just arranged in a way that differs enough fromtraditional central cities.

“Cosmoburbs” is the term used in the forthcoming book “Boomburbs:The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities” to describe wealthy suburbsthat are also diverse and that increasingly contain non-traditionalhouseholds. Leading examples around the nation include Naperville,Ill., Plano, Texas, Bellevue, Wash., and Lakewood and Aurora inColorado.

In Lakewood, a suburb that is now all but built out, singles andchildless couples outnumber households with children. Plans for futuregrowth center on Lakewood’s six stations along the West Corridor lineof the FasTracks light-rail system. The areas around the stations willfeature high-density, mixed-use developments, including manymultifamily units. This type of housing does not typically appeal tofamilies.

Lakewood is following a land-use planning model set by Arlington,Va., in the 1980s when it focused denser growth along the WashingtonMetro system’s Orange Line. Arlington in 1980, like Lakewood today,contained mostly post-World War II single-family housing in mostlyhomogenous neighborhoods. But the Orange Line changed the city into amore diverse and vibrant place. Lakewood is poised to do the same overthe next decade, as will other suburbs with new light-rail systems,such as Tempe, Ariz.

Aurora is another increasingly diverse suburb. By 2000, less than 60percent of Aurora was non-Hispanic white. This booming suburb continuesto gain minority residents as it grows - it passed 300,000 people in2005. By 2010, Aurora may even become a “majority minority” city.

Like Lakewood, Aurora will have a branch of the FasTracks system andhas started planning for mixed-use development at the stations.Projections are for Aurora to keep growing at its edges as well.Already Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora may someday rival Denverin overall size.

Even some of Denver’s smaller suburbs have been swept by change.Englewood, just south of the city, was a quintessential 1950s suburb.In fact, Englewood’s Arapahoe Acres neighborhood is the firstpost-World War II subdivision to be listed in the National Register ofHistoric Places. Arapahoe Acres’ mid-century modern homes are goodexamples of the small horizontal ranches that were home to baby-boomfamilies across the U.S. Where in the past such neighborhoods containedmostly households with children, Arapahoe Acres and other similarneighborhoods now have a mix of singles, retirees and childlesscouples.

Outdated conceptions of suburbia arise from the image developershave marketed to the public. Suburbs are supposed to be safe from thedangers of the cities, for instance. Interestingly, it is this image ofsafety that attracts a rising influx of minorities. According to the2000 census, minority groups constituted the largest shift from citiesto suburbs in the 1990s. In 65 of the largest 102 metropolitan areas,“minority flight” equaled or outpaced “white flight” to the suburbs.

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