Burgeoning exurbia

capt. planet · January 2006

Like a lot of people who decided to move the NYC in the 70's, I came here because I was appalled at the ticky tacky houses in the suburbs and the idea of NYC dying was too much to bear.

Now NYC is back, thank God, but so are the suburbs Now they're called "exurbs". In today's NY Times, David Brooks in his editorial column continues to hype new developments in the exurbs, as he has done in the past. Today's spin is that exurbs are cool because the new developments feature stores and mixed income housing. He even talks about an "archipelago of villages"in the future.

I mean, what is that dude smoking? Hasn't he heard of peak oil? It's going to get pretty lonely in your little community of 100 houses when you can't go anywhere because gas costs $20 a gallon.

Anyone else read the column? Any thoughts?

emily · January 2006

I can't read the article because it's Times Select, but I don't have a particularly high opinion of Brooks's trend pieces. He went to the same high school as I did and frequent invokes our town to illustrate various points that don't ring very true to someone who knows the area well (e.g. his entire book about "bourgeois bohemians"). I assume that most of what he writes is similarly full of hot air.

I am all for mixed-use (not just mixed-income) development but I can't imagine it taking place in the edge suburbs that he calls "exurbs." (I think he does make a fairly convincing case for a difference between suburbs and exurbs, by the way, but I don't think the distinction was originally his idea.)

metulj · January 2006

Old Bobo is a hoot. His column on the appeal of cultural geography got his head handed to him. I am getting a doctorate in cultural geography and the thought of a half-ass neocon like him suggesting that discipline to freshmen in college is a laugher. If you aren't a Marxist (hell, Neil Smith and David Harvey are on staff at CUNY now), then you are post-structuralist or a feminist. It demonstrates that he doesn't do his homework and isn't afraid to write up any bullshit thing that comes to mind when a deadline is looming.

muteflute · January 2006

metulj wrote: Old Bobo is a hoot. His column on the appeal of cultural geography got his head handed to him. I am getting a doctorate in cultural geography and the thought of a half-ass neocon like him suggesting that discipline to freshmen in college is a laugher. If you aren't a Marxist (hell, Neil Smith and David Harvey are on staff at CUNY now), then you are post-structuralist or a feminist. It demonstrates that he doesn't do his homework and isn't afraid to write up any bullshit thing that comes to mind when a deadline is looming.

He just believes strongly in the virtues of the free market! That's no more ridiculous, in the end, than Marxism!

Sarcasm aside, he used to amuse me with his inanity; now, I am just bored with him and depressed about what passes for intelligent "commentary" in this country. Anyone who praises exurbic sprawl for its New Urbanistic mingling of economic groups has missed the picture entirely. I know of no suburbs (and maybe they're different from exurbs, but I doubt it, fundamentally) that are economically and socially and racially mixed, and it seems evident by now that organic mixed-income and mixed-race communities are not "springing up": in fact, the opposite. Hence the resentment over the "destruction" of communities we see in the other topic about who's a native and not. And that doesn't even begin to bring in the question of racial self-segregation and its ties to economic strata and property distribution and so on....

rant over.

Burgeoning exurbia

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