# How to deal with (sub)urban sprawl?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 9, 2009, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831 "2009-05-09T05:57:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 20

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**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/381 "2009-05-26T06:27:56Z")

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One really dispiriting prospect in Florida’s article is his statistic that college-educated people are more concentrated geographically than ever.

As a Midwesterner by temperament (I’m currently halfway thru a graduate program in Iowa, despite my 20 years in the NE), I think about my hometown/college town changing from a welcoming and livable community with a pleasant pace of life into a way station where no one with a degree would stay on if they could. I could easily see it happening.

I have visions of a future where anyplace green and peaceful is either gated, HOA’d and moneyed or seedy, abandoned and dirt-poor, and where the only culture, opportunity and life is found in grimy, impersonal rat race places amidst the kind of tension that makes people drive 80mph on a Sunday morning with no traffic and spend half of every day barking into cel phones.

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