On Nov 13, 2009, at 1:18 PM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> If I was going to break down Doug's differentiation, I'd say that the
> "older, denser suburbs" are those built by, say, 1970, where middle
> and
> upper middle income and professional classes could still raise their
> kids -
> at least until 1982/84 or so - in a manner that primarily focused on
> achieving natural growth. Suburbs and ex-urbs built since 1980 are
> infinitely more likely to be gated communities, or the equivalent,
> not to
> have sidewalks or neighborhood schools, to have less public space,
> and to
> have "show" living rooms and garage doors on the face of the house and
> multimedia rooms (what we used to call the back- or TV-room),
> kitchens (of
> massive scale, if little use) and porches on the back (with bedrooms
> upstairs only having windows facing the back yard.
Really nice distinction. Nails it, I'd say. I do wonder how much people deliberately choose the physical isolation of the exurbs that you describe, and how much people just find themselves there.
Doug