Wow.  And note that the steep decline in new housing construction started in early 2006, well before the recession set in almost two years later.  Well, I guess we already knew that.

What I didn't know before I tracked down this graph (as reported by Agora Financial's web forecast manager Ian Mathias) was that "Housing starts in April fell 12.8%, to an annual rate of 458,000, the worst since at least 1959, when the government started keeping track. Applications for building permits fell to a record low as well."

The mention of 1959 is intriguing, because that era was the beginning of suburban sprawl, and just before the Interstate Highway System and a decade or more of high-profile urban chaos brought it to full flower.  That was the dawn of a new paradigm of development in this country.

Are we at another dawn of another paradigm?  The signs, which I have been reporting for a while (e.g., here) are manifest.  Mathieu Helie certainly thinks so.  I am increasingly persuaded to agree.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog's home page.