> 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.
I suspect it's heavily gendered. A friend of mine has retired parents who recently moved to a super-far out ex-urb, a really awful place in my opinion. They did it because the dad wanted to - the dad loves it there, the mom hates it. That's just an anecdote, but I believe there's solid data showing that young people who move to big cities are heavily female. Do men find something emasculating about living in close quarters?
Also: I agree, Alan's distinction is dead on.
SA