CITY VS SUBURBS WAR IS OVER. SUBURBS WON: That’s the verdict of Allan Berger and David Gordon, writing for Joel Kotkin’s Newgeography. How long will it take the enviros and their urban planning allies to figure this out?

“Here’s what we found: Most — 63 percent — of those the U.S. Census defines as ‘urban’ Americans are actually suburbanites who commute by car from auto-dependent places. An additional 18 percent live in exurbia and also commute by car. People that live relatively close to city centers and ride in by public transit are another 13 percent. Still, even they rely on cars in their home communities.

“Any realistic route to a sustainable urban future needs to harness this combined population, a racially and economically diverse 92 percent of U.S. ‘metropolitan’ residents, and their automobile-based mind-set. It’s these suburbanites in their much-dissed ‘bedroom’ communities and anything-but-iconic houses that can create the radical changes we need.”

Berger and Gordon are high on Electric Vehicles. I’m not, as I suspect most Instapundit readers aren’t. But putting that issue aside, the key implication of their findings — the suburbs, and the exurbs, are here to stay — is that, if you want to save the environment, you better figure out how to do it with something other than forcing people to move back into the cities.