penturbia

English

Etymology

pent- +‎ suburbia, coined by Jack Lessinger in 1987 to refer to the fifth American migration.

Noun

penturbia (uncountable)

1. Small towns that lie beyond city suburbs, viewed collectively.
   • 1987 August 20, Jim Spencer, “The land beyond the land beyond”, in Chicago Tribune:

     The exodus to penturbia will be the fifth (“pent” comes from the Greek word for five) great migration since the Revolutionary War, Lessinger says. The first came between 1760 and 1789 when vast numbers of folks left the more established colonies—Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania—for the unrefined open spaces of places such as North Carolina, Vermont, New Hampshire. Economic depression fostered the second migration (1817-1846), when Americans pushed west. In the late 19th Century the great industrial cities, Chicago in particular, grew and attracted people from the countryside. Then they left. Lessinger dates the fourth great migration—the one to the suburbs—from 1929 to 1958.

   • 1990, Michael Marien, Lane Jennings, Future Survey Annual 1988-1989, →ISBN:

     Penturbia is the ideal territory for "caring conservers": people who reject mass consumption values and save and guard their resources.

   • 1999, Harry S. Dent, The Roaring 2000'S: Building the Wealth and Lifestyle You Desire in the Greatest Boom in History, →ISBN:

     During this migration, we will return to smaller towns, called penturbia, and to more remote suburbs, called the exurbs.

   • 2014, Frank Kardes, Maria Cronley, Thomas Cline, Consumer Behavior, →ISBN, page 48:

     Community type is also a segmentation variable and includes urban environments, suburbs, exurbs (remote suburbs), and penturbia (small towns).