# Why do liberals hate suburbs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 31, 2013, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965 "2013-07-31T02:31:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/321 "2013-08-07T17:03:04Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > …Meh. I don’t see this as a big problem. Just like people tend to marry someone with about the same IQ and income potential as themselves, people want to live around them as well. I’d much rather live in a middle class suburb with people who work for a living than in an inner city with thugs and welfare recipients. I don’t think that’s anything I should apologize for… With this post, you demonstrate the problem. People in the inner city are thugs and welfare recipients. I would guess this attitude comes from you lack of interaction with people who aren’t exactlylike you. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/322 "2013-08-07T17:04:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 1. Cars burn petroleum. This presents the problems of a) resource depletion and b) greenhouse-gas emission. The petroleum is there. As long as it exists, and with it the capability to do so much for humanity, people are going to use it. That’s just reality. We could scrap every car in America tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter. China and India would make up for it in a couple years. > [@](#): > > 1. Cars are expensive, a) placing a financial burden on the owner – cost of purchase, maintenance, fuel – and the more you drive, the more you drive the more you have to spend on fuel and maintenance; and b) placing a financial burden on society – it costs a **lot** to build and maintain all those streets and roads and signs and traffic signals, and have LEOs patrol the highways for speeders and drunk drivers when they could be actually fighting crime, and to have specialized courts for traffic offenses, and state Departments of Motor Vehicles – all expenses our society will have to bear in any case, but, they are roughly proportional to the amount of driving that gets done – the more traffic, the more wear and tear on the roads, the more traffic violations, etc. It also costs a lot to have the Navy patrol the sea-lanes, etc., to make sure our supply of imported petroleum is never interrupted. Cars are cheap if you are doing it right. If someone wants to buy an expensive car who are you to know better than them what’s a good way to spend their money. The fact that the vast majority of people spend more than the bare minimum to get a car with desirable features proves that they aren’t too expensive. Cars raise revenue through gas taxes, tolls and registration fees. This pays for the DMV and road construction. The Navy would have to patrol the seas for trade even if there were no cars. You are really reaching here. > [@](#): > > 1. Suburbs were designed for raising children, but it is not good for kids to grow up where they can’t go anywhere unless Mom drives them. See [post #161](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16532501&postcount=161) and [#271](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16538733&postcount=271). It’s much better for kids to grow up in the suburbs than in the city. Everyone understands this which is why they move there. You disagree, and that’s fine. But don’t pretend that you know better than everyone else what’s best for their kids. Plus, as has been pointed out there are plenty of suburbs that are walkable, especially for children. > [@](#): > > 1. Adults can’t go for a walk either, not even to the corner store for a jug of milk. Is this a joke? Of course you can still go for a walk in the suburb. I usually drive somewhere to go walking first. This is great because then every walk is different. Sure, maybe you can’t walk to buy milk, but that’s a feature, not a bug. Who wants to have to walk just to buy something? I’d much rather stock up with my car and then drive to a mountain to go on a hike. > [@](#): > > Monoculture is a problem. On the contrary, it’s multiculturalism that’s the problem. It has proven to be a failure. Look at France. > [@](#): > > If you grow up in a neighborhood where no family has much less than $50,000/year income nor much more than $150k/yr, you grow up thinking those are the normal people, the real people, and the others don’t matter, and you won’t know much about the others but what you see on TV. That is not good for any society and especially not for a democratic-republican society. It is better to have a wide range of home prices in a neighborhood because it is better to have a wide range of kinds of people in a neighborhood. Says you. The vast majority of people want to be among their own kind. What’s the point of working hard in school, getting a good job and obeying the law if you have to then live among people who didn’t do these things? You think you know what’s best for everyone, but you are mostly just flat out wrong in your assumptions. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/323 "2013-08-07T17:04:30Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > You’ll have to explain why it is a problem for a person to choose to live in a place that self selects those above a certain income. This is a feature, not a problem. **Brain Glutton** replied to the above dispassionately; I cannot. But to respond with what I am thinking might get me in trouble…So I will just say that I unequivocally reject this mindset in the strongest possible terms. Just, ugh. I do take comfort though that those who believe like me are on the rise while those who think like you are increasingly in the minority. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/324 "2013-08-07T17:07:31Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > With this post, you demonstrate the problem. People in the inner city are thugs and welfare recipients. I would guess this attitude comes from you lack of interaction with people who aren’t exactlylike you. We’ve already had plenty of cites in this thread that crime is higher in the inner cities. Do you seriously need a cite that there are more welfare recipients? Your assumption about me is wrong, BTW. I’ve lived in the downtown area, suburbs, and rural in my life. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/325 "2013-08-07T17:09:22Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I do take comfort though that those who believe like me are on the rise while those who think like you are increasingly in the minority. I guess that’s why the suburbs have just about all emptied out, then, right? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/326 "2013-08-07T17:16:18Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > Yes, cars cost money, and depletable resources. People choose to pay it because they value the utility they receive from that ownership. Infrastructure costs and externalities associated with automobiles are covered by various surcharges and taxes. This is not a problem. Global warming **is** a problem. So is petroleum depletion. It makes no difference that people **like** a car-dependent lifestyle, it is simply part of the problem if they do (it is also part of the problem that people who don’t like it still have to have it). I’m sure junkies like their heroin, but that does not mean it is not a problem. > [@Bone](#): > > Regarding raising kids - I think parents are probably the best judge of what’s the best environment to raise their kids in. Many choose the suburbs. Are you saying you know better than them? I’m saying they’ve fallen prey to some ill-advised groupthink. From a parent’s POV the suburbs are good for kids because they’re perceived as safer than the city. Maybe so, but safety isn’t everything; George Bailey grew up better because he could walk everywhere in Bedford Falls. Otherwise, people seem to move to the 'burbs to start their families just because of a general widespread cultural assumption that that’s what you **do,** you’re not really middle-class if you don’t and everybody wants to be middle-class. I’m not just asspulling that, right now I’m in the middle of James Leowen’s [_Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism,_](http://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483) which is mainly about residential segregation by race but also covers the general sociology of post-WWII American suburbanization. Will post some relevant excerpts later. > [@Bone](#): > > Can I just state that monoculture is not a problem? (not that I subscribe to that, but it is as supported a statement of fact as the opposite view) 50-150K is a pretty big range, and is actually what I would call a normal household in some regions of the country. It doesn’t follow that others don’t matter so you’ll have to explain how you draw that conclusion. What would you consider to be a wide range of home prices to satisfy your premise that you need this in order to know about folks in other income brackets? 10k - 2M? Make a suggestion. Well, I won’t go by home prices as such, as I haven’t shopped for real estate in forever. What I mean is that a complete neighborhood should include as residents some of each of the following, and therefore should include housing that meets both their budget and their needs: 1. Poor people. They should not have to live next door to other poor people. Everything you might find objectionable about them comes from growing up in a monocultural poverty environment where they learn socially dysfunctional habits. If they live in an upper-income burb they might at least find work as servants, nannies, gardeners, without having to commute. And their kids will go to school with higher-income people and, therefore, grow up more middle-class in outlook. Perhaps some of these people are given over to crime – but, if so, they’re a lot less dangerous in the burbs. There will not be so many of them in a given burb and the police know who and where they are. If a kid snatches a purse in the inner city, he can immediately fade into the background, just one more face in the projects. 2. Working-poor and working-class people. Same reasons, with less urgency. 3. Middle-class people, since that’s the whole point of suburbia. 4. Rich people. If you’re rich, isn’t it better to show off your mansion where it isn’t surrounded only by other mansions? And you can be a highly valued member of the community, giving big to all local fundraising drives and stuff. 5. Young singles, perennial singles, elderly people – anyone who, regardless of class background or whatever, is at a stage in life or lives a lifestyle where buying a house designed for a family would be pointless even if possible. They need **apartments.** There’s no good reason why they shouldn’t be able to find them in the burbs – except that most burbs were designed without apartments and local zoning codes might actually prohibit them. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/327 "2013-08-07T17:25:13Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > I guess that’s why the suburbs have just about all emptied out, then, right? > > 😛 The trend is reversing as I have demonstrated with multiple cites; but more specifically, I am talking here about the change in political voting behavior. The attitudes like **Bone’s** are disproportionately held by older white men who make up a smaller and smaller percentage of the electorate with each passing cycle. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/328 "2013-08-07T17:25:54Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > We’ve already had plenty of cites in this thread that crime is higher in the inner cities. Do you seriously need a cite that there are more welfare recipients? > > Your assumption about me is wrong, BTW. I’ve lived in the downtown area, suburbs, and rural in my life. I would like a cite that welfare recipients live in the city at a rate higher than their percentage of the population. Most welfare recipients are white and live in red state America, and when I think of welfare recipients I picture more Apalachia than the city. But your knee jerk idea that city residents are thug and welfare recipients is telling and I thinks speaks to why the suburbs are a problem. Of the neighbors in my neighborhood, there’s a teacher, a guy who does something with IT, a retired federal employee, a nurse, another guy who does something in tech I don’t understand, a guy who works with dept. of Homeland Security, and DC firefighter. None of them seem to be on welfare and none of them are what you would call a thug. I think you’ll find that’s true of a lot of the world if you get out there and see it, it’s not nearly as scary as TV makes it seem. This kind of misunderstanding of the world outside the subdivision leads to all kinds of negative consequences in crafting our domestic and international policies. ETA: > [@](#): > > Most people who depend on welfare are White and live in suburbs or rural areas, a recent study shows. The findings are contrary to the popular belief that most welfare recipients are unemployed, inner-city minorities whose families have gotten public assistance for generations. > > The majority of Americans who receive welfare checks are not Black. The majority of those who receive welfare checks are White people [BLACK HISTORY MONTH: WELFARE, IN BLACK AND WHITE | BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS](http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/black-history-month-welfare-in-black-and-white/) > **[NBC News - Breaking News & Top Stories - Latest World, US & Local News](https://www.nbcnews.com/)** > > Go to NBCNews.com for breaking news, videos, and the latest top stories in world news, business, politics, health and pop culture. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/329 "2013-08-07T17:30:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What I mean is that a complete neighborhood should include as residents some of each of the following, and therefore should include housing that meets both their budget and their needs: This will never happen. Nor should it. You won’t ever see all of those groups living in the same city or town. The same neighborhood? That’s crazy. First of all your going to have to scrap every zoning law in the country. That’s just for starters. Here’s the fundamental thing I think you’re missing: Some people are different from other people, and that’s OK. There’s nothing wrong with people wanting to be around others that are like them. A gun totin’, moonshine making country guy might want to live out in the country among his own kind in Alabama. Just like a hipster, Macbook using bohemian might want to live in the South End in Boston. You push those people too close together and you’ll get conflict. They don’t want the same things. It’s OK for them to be different. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/330 "2013-08-07T17:34:03Z")
Cities have had “bad” neighborhoods probably back to Ur. I doubt that urban living somehow automatically promotes egalitarianism. More likely the rich and influential will find loopholes in the laws to create _de facto_ enclaves, while warning their children not to go amongst “those people” on the wrong side of the tracks. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/331 "2013-08-07T17:39:13Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > The trend is reversing as I have demonstrated with multiple cites; but more specifically, I am talking here about the change in political voting behavior. The attitudes like **Bone’s** are disproportionately held by older white men who make up a smaller and smaller percentage of the electorate with each passing cycle. What attitude? That people should stick with their own kind? I’ve got news for you. The millions of illegal immigrants that we let come in every year have no problem sticking with their own kind. “La Raza” is their movement. Literal translation: The Race. You speak as if only white men like to stick with their own. In truth, white people are about the least likely to shamelessly prefer their own company. It’s like this all over the world. People want to stick to their own. [Buchanan had a good article on the subject recently.](http://www.humanevents.com/2012/08/21/pat-buchanan-the-new-world-disorder/) > [@](#): > > Yet, in 2012, sectarianism, tribalism and nationalism are all resurgent, reshaping a world where U.S. power and influence are visibly receding. > > Syria is sinking into a war of all against all that may end with a breakup of the nation along ethno-sectarian lines — Arab, Druze, Kurd, Sunni, Shia and Christian. Iraq descends along the same path. > > A U.S. war with Iran could end with a Kurdish enclave in Iran’s northwest tied to Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran’s Azeri north drifting toward Azerbaijan, and a Balochi enclave in the south linked to Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, leaving Iran only Persia. > > The Middle and Near East seem to be descending into a Muslim Thirty Years’ War of Sunni vs. Shia. Out of it may come new nations whose names and borders were not written in drawing rooms by 19th and 20th century European cartographers, but in blood. > > India, too, is feeling the tremors. Ethnic violence in the Assam region has sent hundreds of thousands fleeing in panic. > > In East Asia, ethnonationalism, fed by memories from the 20th century, is igniting clashes among former Cold War allies. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/332 "2013-08-07T17:49:57Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I mentioned neither, but the causal effect in each case is too obvious to need a cite, isn’t it? We don’t eat much more than our ancestors, do we? But we **walk less,** in our daily lives; that causes obesity. As for the Iraq War, [yes, it was about the oil, but not the way you think.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=381910) Still, the oil would not have been so politically salient if America’s demand for it were less. I was responding to madmonk’s post, not yours. I didn’t notice it slid in there before I replied. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/333 "2013-08-07T17:52:37Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > This will never happen. Nor should it. > > You won’t ever see all of those groups living in the same city or town. The same neighborhood? That’s crazy. To the contrary, **Brain Glutton’s** idea is a very sound one. There was a recent program on This American Life about high schools in Chicago that see a huge percentage of their students killed, and almost a 100% gang membership rate. The key to why something like this needs to be done was found in the interview with one high school police resource officer. He says he has come to realise that it is not realistic or even advisable for him to urge kids not to join gangs. Even if they would desperately like to have nothing to do with gangs, he said it is more dangerous for them to be unaffiliated than to be affiliated. Think about that for a second. The critical mass is there, and the only thing I can see that will shake this up, and give good quiet nonviolent strivers a chance, is if all of these poor minorities are super widely dispersed throughout the metro. Then they will no longer feel that “to cross through this block, I need to be with a bunch of my affiliated gang mates so I don’t get killed”. Rather, the ones who would be most likely to instigate the gang violence will be shut down real quick, as BG pointed out, and everyone else can breathe a sigh of relief and just keep their heads down and live regular lives. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/334 "2013-08-07T17:53:32Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > I think you’ll find that’s true of a lot of the world if you get out there and see it, it’s not nearly as scary as TV makes it seem. I’ve already told you that I’ve lived in the downtown of a city before. Continuing to insist that I’ve never even been to one makes it seem like you aren’t even reading my posts. If you want to argue against a cardboard cutout of a provincial suburbanite who never leaves home then please just do that and leave my name out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/335 "2013-08-07T17:56:51Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > To the contrary, **Brain Glutton’s** idea is a very sound one. There was a recent program on This American Life about high schools in Chicago that see a huge percentage of their students killed, and almost a 100% gang membership rate. The key to why something like this needs to be done was found in the interview with one high school police resource officer. > > He says he has come to realise that it is not realistic or even advisable for him to urge kids not to join gangs. Even if they would desperately like to have nothing to do with gangs, he said it is more dangerous for them to be unaffiliated than to be affiliated. Think about that for a second. > > The critical mass is there, and the only thing I can see that will shake this up, and give good quiet nonviolent strivers a chance, is if all of these poor minorities are super widely dispersed throughout the metro. Then they will no longer feel that “to cross through this block, I need to be with a bunch of my affiliated gang mates so I don’t get killed”. Rather, the ones who would be most likely to instigate the gang violence will be shut down real quick, as BG pointed out, and everyone else can breathe a sigh of relief and just keep their heads down and live regular lives. This is a terrible idea. All that would accomplish is spreading gangs to the suburbs. I know from experience. This literally happens when your idea is attempted. They have special schools in my area that used to ship troubled kids out of the city to live in the suburbs. The theory was that being around good kids would straighten them out. The opposite occurred. These gang member kids are automatically the coolest kids in the suburban schools and quickly bring violence and drugs with them. This is forced busing all over again. Just a terrible, awful idea. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/336 "2013-08-07T18:01:43Z")
Let’s hear your solution, **Debaser**. Or the status quo is just fine? ETA: It’s not the same as busing, because in this plan the kids would not go back to the gang infested slums every afternoon and spend all night there and weekends. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/337 "2013-08-07T18:31:28Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Global warming **is** a problem. So is petroleum depletion. It makes no difference that people **like** a car-dependent lifestyle, it is simply part of the problem if they do (it is also part of the problem that people who don’t like it still have to have it). I’m sure junkies like their heroin, but that does not mean it is not a problem. So essentially suburbs are bad because of global warming. I can appreciate that, though I think the cost/benefit analysis we would do against the utilization of cars would differ between us. > [@](#): > > I’m saying they’ve fallen prey to some ill-advised groupthink. From a parent’s POV the suburbs are good for kids because they’re perceived as safer than the city. Maybe so, but safety isn’t everything So you do think you know better than parents who are raising their children. They are somehow misguided, misinformed, or confused about what is better for them? I’m not sure if you’re a parent, but safety is pretty damn important. Not absolutely everything that would lead to bubble living, but it ranks up at #1 in terms of concerns for your children. You’ll be wrong more often than not if you think you know what’s better for a child than their parents. > [@](#): > > Well, I won’t go by home prices as such, as I haven’t shopped for real estate in forever. What I mean is that a complete neighborhood should include as residents some of each of the following, and therefore should include housing that meets both their budget and their needs: > > 1. Poor people. They should not have to live next door to other poor people. Everything you might find objectionable about them comes from growing up in a monocultural poverty environment where they learn socially dysfunctional habits. If they live in an upper-income burb they might at least find work as servants, nannies, gardeners, without having to commute. And their kids will go to school with higher-income people and, therefore, grow up more middle-class in outlook. Perhaps some of these people are given over to crime – but, if so, they’re a lot less dangerous in the burbs. There will not be so many of them in a given burb and the police know who and where they are. If a kid snatches a purse in the inner city, he can immediately fade into the background, just one more face in the projects. > 2. Working-poor and working-class people. Same reasons, with less urgency. > 3. Middle-class people, since that’s the whole point of suburbia. > 4. Rich people. If you’re rich, isn’t it better to show off your mansion where it isn’t surrounded only by other mansions? And you can be a highly valued member of the community, giving big to all local fundraising drives and stuff. > 5. Young singles, perennial singles, elderly people – anyone who, regardless of class background or whatever, is at a stage in life or lives a lifestyle where buying a house designed for a family would be pointless even if possible. They need **apartments.** There’s no good reason why they shouldn’t be able to find them in the burbs – except that most burbs were designed without apartments and local zoning codes might actually prohibit them. This is complete fantasy. The only way you could do this is through force, forcing people to live where they would otherwise choose not to. If you think poor people should not have to live next to other poor people, you are also saying that non-poor people must live next to poor people. There is nothing wrong with being poor, but those who are not should not be forced to live in certain conditions if they have the means to do otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/338 "2013-08-07T18:35:38Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > **Brain Glutton** replied to the above dispassionately; I cannot. But to respond with what I am thinking might get me in trouble…So I will just say that I unequivocally reject this mindset in the strongest possible terms. Just, ugh. > > I do take comfort though that those who believe like me are on the rise while those who think like you are increasingly in the minority. Hope that works out for you, I’ll stay here in reality. People have been self selecting to be with similarly situated people since, forever. Glad to know that human nature is changing all of the sudden. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/339 "2013-08-07T18:36:42Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > I’d need a cite for both the causal effect of automobile dependent cities on obesity and wars in the middle east. I gave a site for the link between sprawl and obesity and somewhere earlier in this thread, I and other posters linked to cites that people who live in walkable communities are fitter than people who live in car dependant sprawl. Do you really need a cite that America’s foreign policy in the Middle East is driven by access to oil? ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/340 "2013-08-07T18:47:10Z")
I need a cite that supports the idea that automobile dependent cities cause obesity, greater than other causes of obesity. Simply living in a walkable community and being overall less obese isn’t sufficient - correlation only. The obvious counter example to this would be non-obese people living in an area of suburban sprawl. For the wars in middle east claim, there would need to be a cite that the wars in the middle east are caused by automobile dependent cities. There’s a lot of reasons, mostly shitty, why we have been fighting wars in the middle east. I’d be surprised if you can trace the cause to a suburb in bumfuck Iowa. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965.md?page=18)