
[ 1960s subdivision in Medfield, a Boston suburb; click image to enlarge ]
Sticking up for a presumed silent, oppressed majority—real or imaginary—is an unbeatable marketing strategy. Just ask Fox News. And so it goes with noted sprawl apologist Joel Kotkin, who writes:
“A year into the Obama administration, America’s dominant geography, suburbia, is now in open revolt against an urban-centric regime that many perceive threatens their way of life, values, and economic future.”
Joel Connelly exemplified the local version of this pseudo-drama, writing in a column entitled “520 bridge debate shows Seattle at its worst,” that “Seattle politicians should briefly depart from their insular world of interest groups and come [to Medina, the wealthy Eastside suburb] to get a broad view of State Route 520 and how to bridge the problem of cars occupied by just one person. ”
The tired meme goes like this: Those who are critical of the suburbs are an urban elitist minority who don’t understand the suburban way of life, and who hope to use “social engineering” to force suburbanites to swallow a more urban lifestyle. Case in point: State Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, fretting, in Connelly’s paraphrase, that the 520 bridge project “has become a playground for social engineering.”
The first flaw in that argument is that it’s pretty much impossible to be an American and not have had significant direct experience with the suburbs. Our landscape is thick with them, and our culture is drenched in the suburban American dream.
It’s not that critics of the suburbs don’t get the suburbs.
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