----- Original Message ----- From: "Wojtek Sokolowski" <sokol at jhu.edu>
of Americans in every part of the country.
Michael, thanks for posting this piece, it is really informative. It is certainly consistent with what I saw around Baltimore and Harrisburg - "blue" cities surrounded by "red" burbs. It is, however, important to observe that most of burb dwellers are urbanites who "escaped" to the burbs. It is therefore, important to understand how this "escape" is correlated with politics.
There are two possible causal arguments here:
1. Conservative political views, such as racism, unwillingness to live with minorities, etc., caused people holding these views to "escape" to more class- and ethnically homogenous burbs; This argument posits that increased mobility and development opportunity resulted in a geographic segregation of the US population by cultural/political preferences and life styles. Before, these different groups were forced to share the same urban space.
2. Escape to the burbs and the conditions prevailing there, such as compartmentalization and resultant alienation, greater dependence on mass media in filling the pass time, etc. caused people to become more politically conservative. This argument posits that suburbanization, lowering population density and filling out pass time with mediated content (tv, radio) instead of human interaction altered the political views of the Us population as a whole.
If memory serves, Elaine Tyler May, _Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era_ quotes Nixon saying that suburbanization was the Republican strategy to defeat communism in the US. I read that book long time age and need to re-check it. But if true, that is consistent with the argument #2 above, and it is also consistent with the staunch Repug opposition to any attempt at urban revitalization. Needless to say that if true, that makes the situation even more hopeless as trend toward suburbanization continues in this vast wasteland.
Any thoughts?
Wojtek
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Real Estate prices and regional inflationary spillovers. Just look at the development of the I-270 corridor from Bethesda to Frederick, MD over the last 25 years. That's one metro region that knocks your correlations to pretty much to bits. That dynamic has played in lots of metropolitan areas. People do make substantive responces to price signals.
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