David Callahan writes for Demos an article entitled "Four More Reasons to Hate the Suburbs." Briefly, he says the suburbs are anti-egalitarian, exclusionary, inefficient, and bad for economic growth.
All four of these seem to COTTonLINE to be reasons to prize suburbs, and even more so exurbs. He notes they have better schools, how is this bad? Mostly that is because the "feedstock" for suburban schools (i.e., pupils) are less screwed up when they arrive at school.
Suburbs are, according to Callahan, exclusionary - I sure hope so. Who wants to live in a "combat zone?" And they are inefficient - another plus from my point of view. An inefficient government is probably insufficiently organized to run your life.
Callahan believes suburbs retard economic growth. If you already have a good job and a nice life, as many suburbanites do, growth only adds congestion and traffic. These are negative factors in my book; very likely what people moved to the suburbs to avoid.
COTTonLINE's credo: Suburbs are better than cities, exurbs are better than suburbs, and rural is better than all of them. Low population density equals high personal freedom, count on it.
