As I posted on The New York Times web site last week, I owe Downton Abbey for the origin of this All-New prediction.
As suburbs decline and dense neighborhoods grow, especially around light rail and train stations, there will be a huge building boom in the next ten years. The biggest single building type will be the mixed use building of retail shops on the first floor, offices on the second floor, and apartments and condo's on the rest of the floors.
The building boom won't just happen in big cities. It will happen in any sized community that has a train station. So even smaller communities, especially those between two bigger cities connected by a train, will see big population growth and the building boom.
There was a building boom in the 1920s, and for the same reason. People were leaving farms, and the farmhouses became empty. They moved to be near the factories where they worked, and the white collar workers moved to suburbs. Thanks Downton Abbey!
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