# 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:** 7
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/121 "2013-08-01T02:28:40Z")
So all liberals are raging hypocrites? Really? Personally I find that insulting if that is what you mean. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/122 "2013-08-01T02:28:57Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It makes a lot of sense to want that. It’s more responsible, I will give him that. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Do you mean what the [Pew Political Typology](http://www.people-press.org/2011/05/04/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/) calls “Solid Liberals” (14% of population, 16% of registered voters)? Yes thank you BG. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/123 "2013-08-01T02:34:33Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [RationalWiki is a pretty good source here.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Democratic_party#Internal_factions) This isn’t anything close to being a “source” of objective fact. ---
**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 1, 2013, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/124 "2013-08-01T02:36:03Z")
I’m liberal and live in the city, but most of my friends send their kids to public school. Where do I fit into your paranoid fantasy? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/125 "2013-08-01T02:38:47Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > This isn’t anything close to being a “source” of objective fact. We’re discussing where Obama falls on the political spectrum. Is that a question WRT which “objective fact” exists? ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/126 "2013-08-01T02:44:02Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Why? At heart, all liberals love “Central Planning” it is the same mentality that gave the world “collective farms”, and ministries of planning. Liberals love to control people-and you cannot do that if the proles have their own houses and cars- you need to herd them all into “public housing projects”-where they can experience the benefits of collective conciousness, and class solidarity! All hail the people! > Funny how the rich liberals do not want to experience these benefits for themselves! (THEY live in mansions out in the country). Wow. I’m…speechless. Almost. You really have no idea what you’re talking about. This is a scary look into a conservative mindset. Well, maybe less “scary” than “scared”. The more I learn about conservatives, the more obvious it is that they’re mostly driven by fear. ---
**Author:** ![BorgHunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@BorgHunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BorgHunter)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/127 "2013-08-01T02:46:58Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Because one person doesn’t fit my description exactly I must be laughably wrong. If you are the rare bird who is liberal, and not a raging hypocrite, I am happy for you. Between the fantastic strawmen you’ve constructed and the enormous middle you’ve excluded, I’m not sure how any phrase _other_ than “laughably wrong” could apply. At least you have been proving my point from [post 22](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16527802&postcount=22); you’ve certainly been demonstrating more contempt for cities in this thread than any person, liberal or conservative, has displayed for suburbs. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/128 "2013-08-01T03:12:07Z")
Those preconceptions of the suburbs are decades out of date and nobody seems to have noticed that the topology has changed. Fifty years ago the Loop of Chicago was in the center and independent suburbs collected along a few railway lines in a star topology, and it was that way for 150 years.[sup]1[/sup] Now there are several suburbs of nearly the same importance as the Loop, some being Oak Brook, Schaumburg, and Naperville. These are at the center of their own clusters of suburbs, which are also connected to the Loop with trains and expressways. The Chicago area is like a WAN consisting of many Ethernet stars, except far more complex. Instead of being an unalloyed evil, individual transportation units are necessary for that model because the public transportation service is still mired in one where everyone is going to Chicago in the morning and going back to the suburbs at night, smoking pipes[sup]2[/sup] and wearing fedoras from _Mad Men._ The only train lines going north and south are where that is the path to the Loop. And I emphasize the Loop because the planners emphasized it, not caring that the plan created wedges that widened as you traveled away from it. Out here the train lines are about ten miles apart, so even if you want to take the train you have to take a bus or a car to even get to the train. Though the public transportation managers are openly Chicago oriented because Chicago is the political big dog, part is also because it is very difficult and expensive to build new railways in populated areas, and if the centers shifted again that plan is screwed, too. Trains are unlikely to have much of a resurgence for the foreseeable future. Buses are much more flexible but they have also been hobbled by limited vision, limited money, and their own limitations of where they can go and when. A friend from work lives in the next town north of Oak Brook and his bus commute time is a pleasant twenty minutes. The same few people (not very efficient) ride it every day and they are friends and have fun and it’s enough to make an urban planner say, “That’s what I’m talking about.” Except if my friend misses his bus to work or from work he has to wait an hour until the next one. Some may scoff and say that I won’t accept that because I’ve grown accustomed to instant gratification, but I’m not sitting on my thumbs for an hour to make some mass-transit planning fantasist smile. Not even the one I went to high school with.[sup]3[/sup] I have said that cars needed to be more efficient and environmentally friendly for 45 years, and they are MUCH better than they were. We’re getting there. My workplace is extraordinarily diverse because there are so many ways to get to it. Yes, most involve driving, but the planners planned for it. They just didn’t plan a way I can safely sneak my bicycle to it. My town is much more diverse than it was when I moved here, and the town where I grew up is barely recognizable. In 1972 there was one African-American, three Chinese, one Hispanic, a couple Jews, and no South Asians or Arabs of any sort in my high school, population 2400. It’s broader now.[sup]4[/sup] And an awful lot of the White Devils you see at the WalMart are Polish and Russian emigres.[sup]5[/sup] People on both sides need to put aside their preconceptions and realize that the old city/suburb model no longer exists… 1 - One of those old rail lines was turned into the first Rails to Trails bike path, but because of that old star topology out here it’s only good for going to and from the Loop, except it stops 15 miles short. I could bike to work, but I haven’t worked out a whole route on which I don’t die. Baby steps. 2 - Except there are no smoking cars anymore. They were as unpleasant as you might imagine. 3 – Okay, he was a couple years older than me and went to the Catholic school so I was invisible, but I knew his sisters and parents pretty well. 4 – Well, it would be, if it hadn’t closed 35 years ago. 5 - You can recognize them because the women dress like fashion models. If the Soviet Army had looked that good folks might’ve welcomed an invasion because you can’t have too many hot blondes.[sup]6[/sup] 6 – Well, I learned in freshman year that you can, because the already unusually attractive student body[sup]7[/sup] all went blonde, and it got boring. Much like how they all wore miniskirts up to their crotches. Bring me a brunette in tight jeans! 😃 7 – I got spoiled and was disappointed by the real world. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![miss\_elizabeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@miss\_elizabeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/miss_elizabeth)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/129 "2013-08-01T04:58:50Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Well then we have probably lived in different areas. Yeah. Shocker-- you haven’t actually seen everything. So maybe instead of making gross generalizations about swaths of the population, you should learn something called nuance. It feels less righteous in the belly, but it’s more satisfying long term. > [@](#): > > Neighborhoods are more diverse racially in many suburbs. Cities as a whole seem to have different cultures, but they are highly segregated. as you move out to the suburbs, people of different races seem to behave similarly and they lose their original culture. Do you have a cite for any of this? You don’t expect me to take your word for it, right? We’ve already established you don’t know quite as much as you think you do. > [@](#): > > You felt the need to prove yourself. I didn’t request that you do so. Um, no. You asked me questions, and I answered them. > [@](#): > > Because one person doesn’t fit my description exactly I must be laughably wrong. If you are the rare bird who is liberal, and not a raging hypocrite, I am happy for you. Yes, but I know lots of people like me. The bulk of my social group is people like me. Everyone I know sends their kids to public school. Everyone I know is working class. I’m am not “one person”, and liberals aren’t all raging hypocrites. _You are **laughably** wrong._ ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/130 "2013-08-01T05:35:26Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I was stunned to read recently that the average American commute is 25 miles. The average! I would have thought this would be a 90th percentile commute at that distance, and I had already thought we had a sprawl problem. I’m equally astonished. I don’t need erroneous or exaggerated figures to be convinced, but are you sure you aren’t misremembering, or that source you read wasn’t overlooking something? ---
**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 1, 2013, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/131 "2013-08-01T11:22:31Z")
I found my [source](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/05/commuting-in-the-u-s-is-long-and-hellish-but-at-least-it-hasnt-gotten-worse/), and it looks like I misread it originally rather than misremembering it (unless it was subsequently corrected). It’s 25 _minutes_, not miles! Phew, much more reasonable although still too long for my tastes. But there remains a bit of sobering news in there: > [@](#): > > About 1.7 million Americans have “extreme” commutes that take 90 minutes or more each way. Yeesh. 1.7 million may not be a huge percentage, but it’s still a lot of people spending a lot of time commuting. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/132 "2013-08-01T13:44:11Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > It is likely “the city”, regardless of what it once was. Many metros have inner ring “suburbs” that are just extensions of the city with a grid layout, and no discernible difference from the city itself. That is not suburbia in any meaningful sense. So a “suburb” is more a state of mind than a geographic location then? I grew up in Alief, as a matter of fact, and back in the 1970s/1980s it was as suburban as you could want- lots of homes and white people. It happens to be [15 miles or more outside the city center- it’s outside the Sam Houston Tollway](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=aief%2C+tx&data=!4m10!1m9!4m8!1m3!1d135330!2d-95.5809208!3d29.6823418!3m2!1i1680!2i937!4f13.1) as a matter of fact. It’s a suburb, even if the people living there aren’t suburbanites. That was my point- it’s not “inner city”- while there are apartments, the area still is overwhelmingly single-family houses with yards, even if those families happen to be poor. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/133 "2013-08-01T14:13:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > We’re discussing where Obama falls on the political spectrum. Is that a question WRT which “objective fact” exists? No, which is why the cite was of such little value. ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/134 "2013-08-01T14:39:18Z")
Ah shit, I’m a liberal and I live in the suburbs - in fact, right on the border of [the dreaded NAPERVILLE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naperville,_Illinois)! Do I have to move now? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/135 "2013-08-01T14:44:27Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > No, which is why the cite was of such little value. No, it is of value. It puts things in their proper perspective. We can argue whether Obama is “center-left” or “center-right” – that all depends on the endlessly debatable question of where the “center” **is** – but not over whether he is further right than Dennis Kucinich or further left than Zell Miller, the answer to both is undeniably yes; and, more importantly, neither can we deny that wherever Bill Clinton falls on the spectrum, there also, more or less, falls Obama. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/136 "2013-08-01T15:06:21Z")
> [@Yookeroo](#): > > Wow. I’m…speechless. Almost. You really have no idea what you’re talking about. This is a scary look into a conservative mindset. Well, maybe less “scary” than “scared”. The more I learn about conservatives, the more obvious it is that they’re mostly driven by fear. Wow. I’m speechless…the more I learn about “liberals”, the more I realize that most of them don’t know what they are talking about. The impulse to control is very strong in them…read a certain German philosopher…he wrote about “the will to power”. That would be a good education for you. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/137 "2013-08-01T15:08:45Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Wow. I’m speechless…the more I learn about “liberals”, the more I realize that most of them don’t know what they are talking about. The impulse to control is very strong in them…read a certain German philosopher…he wrote about “the will to power”. That would be a good education for you. Whatever politics his philosophy implies has very, very little in common with modern American liberalism. ---
**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 1, 2013, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/138 "2013-08-01T15:17:11Z")
I think what this thread reveals is that there is a certain type of conservative who is made to feel insecure and fearful by cities and they assume that we hate them as much as they hate us. You have Palin’s small town values schtick and the obsession that some conservatives feel as revealed in this thread. Mostly we don’t really think about you that much. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/139 "2013-08-01T16:01:43Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > I think what this thread reveals is that there is a certain type of conservative who is made to feel insecure and fearful by cities and they assume that we hate them as much as they hate us. You have Palin’s small town values schtick and the obsession that some conservatives feel as revealed in this thread. > > Mostly we don’t really think about you that much. Maybe so- but the reality is, the suburbs have galled many liberals for a looong time. Liberal intellectuals loathed the suburbs back when gasoline was cheap and abundant, so I won’t stand for anyone telling me the hostility has anything to do with “sustainability” or the environment. Gas was cheap and there wasn’t any sprawl yet when Richard Yates wrote _ **Revolutionary Road** _ in 1961. Yates, like many liberal intellectuals, loathed the suburbs because he loathed the bourgeois types who lived there (and who probably voted for Ike). Gas was cheap when Carole King and Gerry Goffin mocked the suburbs in “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Pleasant Valley was the kind of loathsome suburb where there are “rows of houses that are all the same, and no one seems to care.” Sigh… you wanna talk about rows of houses that are all the same? Look at the brownstones in Brooklyn or the row houses in my old neighborhood, Astoria, Queens! Yet rich liberals who’d scoff at “Pleasant Valley” are eagerly snapping those houses up (at prices my family could never have imagined back in the Seventies) and don’t seem to mind that their homes look EXACTLY like all the others for blocks around! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/140 "2013-08-01T16:07:20Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Gas was cheap and there wasn’t any sprawl yet when Richard Yates wrote _ **Revolutionary Road** _ in 1961. Yates, like many liberal intellectuals, loathed the suburbs because he loathed the bourgeois types who lived there (and who probably voted for Ike). Look, if you’re thinking in terms of [“Little Boxes Made of Ticky-Tacky,”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boxes) that’s out of another time. It’s not what suburbia is any more (culturally) and it is a stereotype no liberal holds any more (though it was quite relevant when written). That kind of organization-man middle class is as dead as the massive domestic industries that employed it (see Robert Reich’s [_The Work of Nations_](http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0679736158). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965.md?page=8)