I sometimes wonder at the completely different perceptions academics have of the world. My comments are italicized.
Marginal Revolution: Why I love the suburbs:
Why I love the suburbs
I favor the suburbs for several reasons…
1. We live 30 minutes from Washington but we also have a fox in the backyard. Deer are a frequent sight as well.
30 minutes? At any time of day? Will that last? I don’t know many people who regard a fox — a predator, with the manners and temperament that accompany that niche — as a good neighbor. The illusion of wilderness: what does the fox live on, with his home range converted to suburb? Pets?
2. Chinese restaurants are usually better in the suburbs these days.Hoo, boy, there’s a benefit.
3. Driving is fun and a good way to experience music. MR readers know I favor a (revenue-neutral) gas tax. My worry is that car culture makes people more individualistic and thus I have some reluctance to tax this trend. Try Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place To Go.”As noted in the comments to the original post, driving is not fun and “experiencing music” as a reason to drive underscores how boring and undemanding — ie, a waste of time — it is. And the individuality he mentions should be called by it’s real name — self-centeredness — or it’s chief manifestation, road rage.
4. A few weeks ago, the first Fairfax County police officer died in the line of duty. That’s the first ever. In New Jersey, where I grew up, you might speak of the first local cop to die today.This tells me nothing if I don’t have the context of Fairfax County’s population density in mind. Comments suggest this is an artifact of zoning: the distribution/division of land keeps prices high and keeps the poor out. I suspect one could make similar claims of many affluent communities. I wonder when the last police officer in Medina — where Bill Gates lives — drew a weapon?
5. Many of my friends who live in Manhattan lose interest in global travel or never acquire it. Sadly they feel they already have everything they need from the world right at home.Yeah, this is accurate <snort>. My recollection of suburban life was that it was a way of escaping different experiences and new sensations: urban dwellers were more likely to seek out those things.
This is all a bunch of meaningless generalization, of course, in the original and in my responses, and I would hope that someone who managed to secure a PhD would realize that before he pressed the ‘Post’ button. Perhaps I am being unfair to academics, but there seems to be some reality distortion effect from guaranteed lifetime employment that clouds the vision.
The best line from the comments?
“There are suburbs and there are suburbs.”
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