# 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:** 8
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/141 "2013-08-01T16:08:52Z")
It’s not that Liberals hate suburbs. It’s just that statistics have found that Christmas is most heavily celebrated within suburbs, and that’s our real enemy. Personally, I hate suburbs because I don’t have a car and they’re super inconvenient. I also find them excedingly dull. ---
**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, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/142 "2013-08-01T16:16:09Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > I also find them excedingly dull. Maybe that’s the problem right there. Conservatives **like** “exceedingly dull” and liberals don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/143 "2013-08-01T16:17:46Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > 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. Leaving the bourgeois issue aside, you seem to have this inside out and backward. Gas being cheap and abundant doesn’t mean sprawl and pollution weren’t issues. Cheap gas is one of the things that lead to made sprawl possible in the first place and the pollution still goes on as a result of the sprawl even though gas isn’t so cheap 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, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/144 "2013-08-01T16:29:18Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Leaving the bourgeois issue aside, you seem to have this inside out and backward. Gas being cheap and abundant doesn’t mean sprawl and pollution weren’t issues. Cheap gas is one of the things that lead to made sprawl possible in the first place and the pollution still goes on as a result of the sprawl even though gas isn’t so cheap now. Put another way: Sprawl was a problem in and of itself, for many other reasons (which you’ll find covered in the books I cited in my first post in this thread), **before** petroleum-supply or greenhouse gases were (recognized as) problems. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/145 "2013-08-01T17:02:10Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 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). True, but the stereotype is pretty durable. I grew up influenced by representations like Camazotz (the Levittownesque planet in Madeleine L’Engle’s book _A Wrinkle in Time_) and the '80s Rush song and video “Subdivisions,” and it’s hard to shake those generalizations, especially when they do still contain grains of truth. ---
**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, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/146 "2013-08-01T17:08:51Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > 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… I won’t deny that city dwellers often are slightly snotty about the suburbs, but that is a far cry from the OP’s “war on the suburbs.” That tension has existed as long as there have been cities and people who don’t live in them, but regularly interact with urbanites. But look at the picture that **WillFarnby** paints: it is not casually dismissive of city dwellers, it is dripping with imagined details (what exactly is an “ethnic mural” and who looks longingly at photos of kids playing in a fire hydrant?). Some city folk, myself included, took some of the typical cheap shots at the burbs, but some of the conservatives are creating whole, complex narratives of these imagined liberals and their lives of hypocrisy. There’s real hate there. I don’t like the burbs because I grew up in them, and I knew that they didn’t hold what I wanted to get out of life. Every once in a while I make an offhand comment on the SDMB, or when I’m driving down to NoVA to visit family and that about the extent of my “war on teh suburbs.” But **WillFarnby** drives through the city and looks at us from the windows of his locked car and seethes, he fills in the narrative of our complex lives with cartoonish brush strokes and seethes some more. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/147 "2013-08-01T17:13:57Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > I won’t deny that city dwellers often are slightly snotty about the suburbs, but that is a far cry from the OP’s “war on the suburbs.” That tension has existed as long as there have been cities and people who don’t live in them, but regularly interact with urbanites. And as you imply here, anti-urban sentiment has long been a staple of right-wing rhetoric. ---
**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, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/148 "2013-08-01T17:29:44Z")
Yeah, it really came out when Palin ran for VP. What did Jon Stewart say? Something like “the GOP is the party that loves America, but hates half the people in it.” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/149 "2013-08-01T17:34:11Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > Yeah, it really came out when Palin ran for VP. What did Jon Stewart say? Something like “the GOP is the party that loves America, but hates half the people in it.” She beat that drum a lot, but that was going on long before she showed up. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/150 "2013-08-01T17:37:21Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I wouldn’t mind my suburban neighborhood as much if there were more things within close walking distance. And by close, I mean within a quarter mile. You should be able to pop out for basic necessities like milk, bread, soap, light bulbs, tea/coffee, etc., and be back within 10 minutes on foot. Why? If you need to run out and buy a light bulb every time one burns out you are doing it wrong, IMHO. When I need one I just go into the huge box of them that I bought at BJs. Yes, I got there with my dreaded SUV. Lugging milk and light bulbs around on foot every time I run out? Why on earth would I do that? I’d rather stock up at the warehouse club every six months and then spend my afternoon going on a hike. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/151 "2013-08-01T17:40:31Z")
> [@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’ve had many jobs and I don’t think I’ve ever had a commute as short as 25 miles. If you commute less than that you are very lucky. I bet it’s only that low because they are counting lots of work from home people or something. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/152 "2013-08-01T17:50:45Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Personally, I hate suburbs because I don’t have a car and they’re super inconvenient. I also find them excedingly dull. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Maybe that’s the problem right there. Conservatives **like** “exceedingly dull” and liberals don’t. Can you guys expand on this? I’ve heard this argument before and just don’t get it. Do you mean things to do? If a suburbanite wants to see a concert or a baseball game, they can just go into the city. Do you mean physically dull in terms of architecture? Suburbs have trees, lawns and nice houses. The city is dirty, old and cramped. You do have more chance of getting mugged. That’s not dull, I guess. Kidding aside, whether you live in the city or the suburb, you can go to a friends for dinner, go to your kids sporting event, or do whatever it is that makes you happy. Why is one or the other more “dull”? ---
**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, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/153 "2013-08-01T17:55:25Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > I don’t like the burbs because I grew up in them, and I knew that they didn’t hold what I wanted to get out of life. Some burbs are different than others though; I wouldn’t live in the N. Dallas suburbs (Frisco, Plano, Allen, McKinney) if you paid me; I can’t stand the relentless uniformity of those areas, and paradoxically, the competitive displays of wealth. It’s like everyone wants to show off just how rich and well of they are… within very narrow circumscribed boundaries. Have a big house, perfect lawn and late-model car? Great! Have a smallish house, ratty yard and old car, but go to Europe every 3 years? You’re a weirdo. However, where I live, which is a more inner suburb, it seems like the younger suburbanites (i.e. non-retirees) seem to be a more hip crowd- not quite hipsters, but definitely more along that direction than the folks further north. I’m more likely to have a discussion about organic produce and ethnic food than football in my neighborhood. ---
**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, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/154 "2013-08-01T18:11:11Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Can you guys expand on this? I’ve heard this argument before and just don’t get it. Do you mean things to do? If a suburbanite wants to see a concert or a baseball game, they can just go into the city. I mean, as I said upthread, that the liberal ideal is a highly-stimulating and variegated daily environment like Greenwich Village in its great days. The conservative ideal of daily life is more slow-paced and bucolic and every-day-the-same, like Mayberry or Bedford Falls. Either of which, of course, would be far **more** stimulating and variegated than the average postwar 'burb. From James Howard Kunstler’s [Clusterfuck Nation](http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary9.html) blog: > [@](#): > > Oddly, George Bailey’s greatest accomplishment in the movie _[It’s a Wonderful Life]_ is shown to be the development of Bedford Falls’ first suburb, Bailey Park, with a scene of much patriotic hoopla when the first unit is sold to the owner of a local restaurant, Mr. Martini, an immigrant. I say odd because of how innocently clueless our collective imagination was about the consequences of that seemingly benign transaction. Like vicious nano-bots, the little units of suburban America metastisized over the following fifty years to consume and defeat all the small towns like Bedford Falls in America, and all the rich local social and economic networks that the movie celebrates, including George’s bank and Mr. Martini’s family-owned restaurant. > > Along similar lines is the sequence in which George Bailey is shown, by the angel who saves him from a suicide attempt, how Bedford Falls would have turned out if George had never been born. The town is renamed Pottersville, after the movie’s villain, a greedy rival banker played by Lionel Barrymore. How striking and odd, though, what a wonderful town Pottersville actually appears to be, compared to the real horror of what happened to American towns in the late 20th century. In fact, Pottersville looks like the kind of tourist town that demoralized suburbanites now flock to for country weekends. Standing on Pottersville’s lively Main Street, George sees the sidewalks full of people. Some of them are carousing drunks. Some of the businesses are gin-mills, with hints of prostitution and all the other usual quaint human vices of an earlier day (including many that are now part of mainstream American culture). But the catch is that Pottersville is actually portrayed as a town brimming with life and activity! Only the content is considered bad – too many gin mills and loose women, not enough soda fountains. As we really know, the many Bedford Falls of our nation have uniformly become hollowed-out ghost towns with no life and no activity. And the George Baileys of our world went on to become the WalMart moguls and real estate tycoons who sold out their towns and ultimately destroyed them. > > So, it really provokes me to wonder what Americans are thinking when they see this beautifully-crafted but deeply paradoxical movie. Do we notice what it is we really have lost? And how insidious the process was? ---
**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, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/155 "2013-08-01T18:18:43Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > I’ve had many jobs and I don’t think I’ve ever had a commute as short as 25 miles. If you commute less than that you are very lucky. You do recognize that as a **problem,** don’t you? ---
**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, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/156 "2013-08-01T18:19:42Z")
Well if you consider a quarter mile a hike, that might be part of the problem. City dwellers tend to be more fit than suburbanites because of all those hikes. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/157 "2013-08-01T18:19:52Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > I’ve had many jobs and I don’t think I’ve ever had a commute as short as 25 miles. If you commute less than that you are very lucky. Just in case you didn’t see it, that quote was wrong. **SlackerInc** checked and found that the average commute was 25 minutes, not 25 miles. ---
**Author:** ![huck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@huck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/huck)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/158 "2013-08-01T18:33:25Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Can you guys expand on this? I’ve heard this argument before and just don’t get it. Do you mean things to do? If a suburbanite wants to see a concert or a baseball game, they can just go into the city. > > Do you mean physically dull in terms of architecture? Suburbs have trees, lawns and nice houses. The city is dirty, old and cramped. > > You do have more chance of getting mugged. That’s not dull, I guess. > > Kidding aside, whether you live in the city or the suburb, you can go to a friends for dinner, go to your kids sporting event, or do whatever it is that makes you happy. Why is one or the other more “dull”? I wouldn’t overgeneralize nearly to that extent; I know politically conservative people who want to live near theatre, museums, etc. and liberals who don’t. But as I’ve said I’ve lived in the western suburbs of Chicago for a long while and can tell you that in many ways it is dull, by choice. My kids went to school with kids who considered a train ride into “the city” as equivalent to a trip across the country (sometimes viewed as more like a third-world country) and had only done it a handful of times in their lives by the time they began high school–because their parents never did it. Lots of these families thought of a museum trip as going to the county historical museum (which consists of a collection of old clothes, furniture and farm implements mostly, with historical plaques); a concert as a poco band at the local “Taste of Whatever” festival once a year; and theatre as the twice-annual high-school production. I’m not suggesting this is even the majority of suburbanites but it is very common. I wouldn’t say it was wrong–to each their own–but I think it can be a bad thing for kids if one doesn’t take steps to broaden their horizons early and often. ---
**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, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/159 "2013-08-01T18:37:50Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Just in case you didn’t see it, that quote was wrong. **SlackerInc** checked and found that the average commute was 25 minutes, not 25 miles. Not much better. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/160 "2013-08-01T18:38:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You do recognize that as a **problem,** don’t you? Of course, shorter commutes are better than longer commutes. I’d say a 25 minute commute is not a problem at all, and would be fine. Doing an hour is about the limit because any more than that really starts to make you crazy. Of course, an hour doing 70 on the highway isn’t that bad compared with an hour stop and go that might be 30 mins without traffic or might be 90 minutes on a bad day. Meh. I’ve basically given up on having a short commute. As soon as you think you have things figured out and you move for a job you’ll probably get laid off the next week or the company will move or something. Better to live somewhere that’s nice, and within striking distance of many jobs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965.md?page=9)