Highest Income Counties in U.S. Did Loudoun Overtake Fairfax?

[leighland]

Originally Posted by Caladium

I've always heard the difference was that suburbs have businesses and office buildings. You can live and work in the same suburb. (Herndon would be an example of this). Exurbs are strictly bedroom communities where everyone has to commute to another city.

But where's the dividing line? I tend to think the line right now is Leesburg. Anything east of Leesburg is suburb, anything west is exurb. OTOH I've also heard people talk about buying a house out in the exurbs and they're talking about Falls Church.

Any opinions?

The only def I can find says that exurbs are beyond suburbs where rich people live. However the Urban Planner in me feels the exurbs are low density, Upper Middle and Higher Class income (say 160K annually in this metro), populated by primarily larger than average SFH, where the family doesn't have a day to day life revolving around the older urban core (in our case DC proper). In my day-to-day life (grocery shopping/Drs/Bank/Shopping Mall/Etc), I would say any area outside the Beltway is exurban. To me. Reston/Herndon/Chantilly is waaaaay out there.

[Caladium]

I like your definition (the family doesn't have a day to day life revolving around the older urban core). That's certainly true for us here in Herndon. We rarely have a reason to go east of Tysons. My entire family lives, works, and plays within a few miles of our house.

Funny, though, that exurbs would then stretch all the way from the Beltway to West Virginia. That's a very large area of different types of communities. It seems odd to have one term covering them all.

I also thought your point that saying "exurb" connotes wealth was interesting. I think you're absolutely right, there's something swanky about the word exurb. So what do we call the lower income areas?

Whether or not they're outside the beltway, somebody ought to come up with a term that distinguishes the exurbs with commercial areas vs. the ones that are strictly residential. At least that makes sense to me.

[normie]

LOL, maybe that's why I'm not fond of the word exurb. To me it sounds a bit pretentious. You can practically hear money dripping from it, and is that how we should distinguish communities?

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we have lots of money in Loudoun. And I know it's just an innocent word that means outlying areas. But it sounds so pompous. I can't see myself saying I live in an exurb. If I started talking that way I'd expect people to think, "Well.... la-dee-dah! What, are you too snooty to claim you live in an ordinary suburb?"

To me, it's all just suburbia until you start hitting masses of cornfields.

[Stephen 81]

Originally Posted by Caladium

LOL, I totally agree.

On a somewhat related point, do you guys consider Loudoun suburban or exurban? Or half and half (that would be my vote).

But where's the dividing line? I tend to think the line right now is Leesburg. Anything east of Leesburg is suburb, anything west is exurb. OTOH I've also heard people talk about buying a house out in the exurbs and they're talking about Falls Church.

Any opinions?

Brookings Institution did a study of exurbs in the United States in 2006. Fortunately (and unsurprisingly) for us, one of their maps was of census tracts in the DC/Baltimore metropolitan areas.

On page 18 of http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2006/10metropolitanpolicy_berube/20061017_exurbia.pdf you can see a map of how they defined exurban Washington based on population density, population growth, and commuting patterns. As you thought, Caladium, the dividing line was roughly Leesburg, although Great Falls and Clifton in Ffx County qualified as exurbs, too.

Page 20 even goes so far as to say that Loudoun County, taken as a whole, has passed beyond the exurban stage of development. I would say congrats, but I'm sure not everyone would agree

[cdmurphy]

Exurbs (Wikipedia)

The expression exurb (for "extra-urban") was coined by Auguste Comte Spectorsky in his 1955 book The Exurbanites to describe the ring of prosperous communities beyond the suburbs that are commuter towns for an urban area. Most exurbs serve as commuter towns, but most commuter towns are not exurban.
....

Exurbs vary in wealth and education level. Exurban areas typically have much higher college education levels than closer-in suburbs, and have average incomes much higher than nearby rural counties. Depending on local circumstances, some exurbs have higher poverty levels than suburbs nearer the city. Others (like Loudoun County, Virginia outside Washington, D.C. and Ozaukee County, Wisconsin near Milwaukee) have some of the highest median household incomes in their respective metropolitan areas.

[normie]

Wow, we made it into Wikipedia? That's too funny. Mapmakers still don't know most of our towns exist, but Wikipedia's heard of us!