Sliding back into a very predictable liberal argument, Chris Bowers gets it all wrong about the exurbs and burbs
The suburbs, by contrast, are the antithesis of reality. In the suburbs, people are sheltered from all of the things that make urban and rural areas real: actual diversity, real connection to the weather, immediate economic impact of recessions, difficulty accessing quality education and health care, military service as sometimes the only way to find a job, etc. It is the difference between the reality-based community and the gated community.
This is just nonsense. People in the ‘burbs have the same basic needs and desires as folks in the rest of America. For too long liberals have looked down their nose at suburban life, deriding it as fake and artifical compared to the gritty reality of urban life.
News flash: most people aspire to live in the ‘burbs. The Democratic party can become a viable national movement again when we give people the tools they need not just to have livable city lives, but to fulfil the dream of so many people of having some land of their own and a home on it, with good schools nearby. But you aren’t going to get there by looking down your nose at suburbanites.
OW: I think you missed both the context and point of Bowers’ post.
In no way was Bowers denigrating suburban life; he was merely pointing out the very real fact urban and rural denizens face more immediate and challenging situations.
This is not to say those in the burbs face no problems or issues–but they’re different and tend to be muted.
An example–if you’re a farmer, a season of bad weather can put your farm on the auction block. And as a farmer, you probably have very limited choices as to where to send your kids to school. In short, you are unlikely to have the mobility a suburbanite might have.
Actually, I think OW got it right on…
The suburbs, by contrast, are the antithesis of reality.
It’s a rarity, but I agree with Oliver completely.
Years of living my in Iran with the Afshar Tribe by the Dasht daLut …… the only English speaking media I could get my hands on was BBC America (and Radio Moscow via my tiny shortwave radio — oh, I lied, I do recall RAAADIO MONTI CARLO too ..ack!)
….late one desert night staring up at the thickest of stars I was listening to a “talk show” on the BBC and some one said
“When you grow up in the country you can’t wait to get to the City and when you are in the City you work your ass off to save enough money to buy a place in the country” …and then she concluded with “one should never have left in the first place”
I will toss this BBC talking head statement that has never left my mind: “that if you truly want world peace, everyone needs to return to the place of their birth.”
Well, it doesn’t hepl Bowers cause that he spends so much time conflating the suburbs with gated communities.
If their dream is based on cheap gas, on big road subsidies, on externalized pollution… In short, if that dream is an unsustainable dream, I think progressives /should/ encourage people to dream better dreams.