Bedroom community
For a list of bedroom communities, see List of bedroom communitiesA
bedroom community,
dormitory town, or
commuter town is a community that is primarily residential in character, with most of its workers
commuting to a nearby town or city to earn their livelihood.
The distinction between a
suburb and a
bedroom community is not always clear. As a general rule, suburbs are developed in areas adjacent to main
employment centers, whereas bedroom communities have no large businesses and most residents commute to employment centers some distance away. Bedroom communities may be in rural or semi-rural areas, but
urban sprawl and
conurbation have erased clear lines among towns and cities in large
metropolitan areas.
Bedroom communities can arise for a number of different reasons. Sometimes, a town loses its main source of employment, leading its residents to seek work elsewhere. In other cases, a pleasant small town over time attracts more residents but not large businesses to employ them, requiring them to commute to employment centers elsewhere.
Often, however, bedroom communities form when the workers in a region cannot afford to live in the particular town in which they are employed and are forced to seek residency in another town with a lower
cost of living. This phenomenon is becoming increasingly common in the
American West, where
resort towns require large workforces but place an emphasis on building "
McMansions", and other types of extremely expensive housing. For example, the resort town of
Jackson, Wyoming has spawned several bedroom communities nearby, including
Victor, Idaho,
Driggs, Idaho, and
Alpine, Wyoming, where the majority of the Jackson workforce resides.
Since commuters tend to be wealthier and small town housing markets tend to be weaker than city housing markets, the development of a bedroom community tends to raise local housing prices and attract upscale service businesses in a process called
gentrification. Long-time residents are often displaced by new commuter residents due to the rising house prices. This can also be influenced by
zoning restrictions in urbanized areas that prevent the construction of suitable housing closer to places of employment.
Bedroom communities also naturally tend to spur the development of roads and
public transportation systems. These generally take the form of
light rail lines extended from the city center to the commuter town and new or expanded
highways, whose construction and
traffic can cause substantial friction.
The number of bedroom comunities has increased in the
U.S. and the
UK since the
1960s because of a trend for people to move out of the cities into the surrounding
green belt.
In the United States, it is common for bedroom communities to create disparities in municipal tax rates. Because the bedroom community collects few business taxes, individuals are often forced to pay the brunt of the public operating budget in higher
property or
income taxes. This can also lead these municipalities scrambling to encourage
commercial growth once an established
residential base has been reached.
*
List of bedroom communities*
Edge city*
Boomburbs*
Microdistrict
