I began to write this piece while I was away spending time with my in-laws across the Deep South. It is a shift in many of my regular habits and often a moment to assess the many habits that I don’t put much thought into in my daily life in New York. This holiday season, I traveled a bit more extensively than usual, with multiple days in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. A few of my in-laws and distant cousins have bought new homes in the last couple of years, which means time in subdivisions in a way that is otherwise uncommon to my routine (and preference for) in dense, urban neighborhoods. I grew up in Brooklyn in a large apartment building within walking distance of landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Barclays Center. After getting my driver’s license relatively late in life, I now spend much of my winter holidays driving from place to place in a way that doesn’t happen any other time of the year. 

The allure of the suburban lifestyle has never quite captivated me, but I can admit there are some perks, even if I think the downsides are more important. Across much of the Sunbelt, new single-family subdivisions are popping up left and right. What would have been rural farmland a couple generations ago and the very edges of a metro area one generation ago is now becoming suburbanized today. The growth across much of the urban South has been explosive, with a lack of key conversations about the infrastructure needed to sustain this growth. 

My recent trip this past holiday season brought me to Hampton, an exurb of Atlanta located towards the southern edge of the region. One of the main municipalities in Henry County, Hampton  finds itself within an upward growth trajectory as hundreds of thousands of retirees and working age adults across America seek lower housing costs. While there are no shortage of new subdivisions that have been recently completed or in construction, the city does have a small core along its Main Street that was built adjacent to a former train station. That rail line is no longer active, outside of the rare freight train that passes through at night, and so it is a downtown that hasn’t had substantive growth around it at the same scale. Instead, you will find subdivision after subdivision in almost every direction.

Henry County has done a demographic 180 from 30 years ago. Then a mostly white Republican commuter county, it has become a reliably Democratic county with a black plurality if not majority as of 2025. What that means remains to be seen but we have some idea of what these changes might mean long term. Its neighbor Clayton County is about 20 years ahead of Henry County in terms of demographic shifts, becoming majority Black around the year 2000. It has struggled as residential growth has moved further away from the Atlanta core and multiple county-level scandals with its schools and law enforcement have tarnished its reputation. Though the most dense of the suburban counties around Atlanta, it lacks a true downtown core – though its county seat Jonesboro could grow into one.

Hampton has a quaint main street that, while it has a stable commercial strip of small businesses, isn’t expanding. I don’t think that means that the municipality is in bad shape, but if it isn’t intentional about growing its commercial center, then it may find itself left behind by other communities that are intentional. In a car-oriented development framework, there is always the potential for a nicer, newer suburb if you drive far enough down the road. More on this to come.