Marxists feel contempt for the bourgeoisie, and I do think some of that has had an impact on what could be called the liberal aesthetic. And the suburbs are certainly associated with the bourgeoisie.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to all suburbs. Here in Chicago, I don’t believe anyone would say any of this for, for example, Evanston or Oak Park.
What puzzles me more is the converse: Why do conservatives hate cities? I can understand not wanting to live in one; they’re certainly not for everyone. But even among some Republican politicians, there seems a definite contempt for cities and those who live in them. Why? It’s especially odd in light of the history of the Republican Party, which has always fancied itself pro-business, and since businesses are often located in cities, naturally were interested in urban policy. And the city = Democrat split didn’t really happen until relatively recently.
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).
Liberals tend to support poor people’s issues, and suburbs are anti-poor people. Not only do people flock to suburbs to insulate themselves from the concerns of poverty, but people design suburbs to maintain this artificial bubble. All so that when there is a homicide in the neighborhood, you can tell the news reporter, “Things like this don’t happen in places like this!” Or when someone tells you they attended an urban,“ghetto” high school, you can smile smugly at them and feel superior because of your innate intelligence, morality, and success.
Paul Krugman wrote a good piece about sprawl and poverty. It pretty much sums up why I don’t like suburbs.
Those are examples of a very specific type, often called the “inner suburb.” Yonkers, New York is an oft-cited example. They are older cities, usually contiguous with the main city, which were mainly built during the streetcar era (1880-1930), and after 1930 are associated with lower-middle-class residents (but there is definitely a mix), many of them “ethnic” of one sort or another.
You take that back right now. :mad:
Damn, the OP is on to me. I’ve been waging war on suburbia for nearly thirty years. Sending my poop into their sewers, I have. Not taking care of all of the weeds in my yard. I’ll bring the suburban monster to its knees if I get another 100 years.
I’m as liberal as you’re going to find and support the political interests of the cities. But it doesn’t mean that i want to live in a large city myself. I happen to like having a yard and a driveway and a garage. So I tolerate a twenty minute commute downtown. I’m just not seeing where the politics gets into it.
Which is ironic, as “bourgeoisie” means “city residents”.
This whole misguided spiel is particularly rich in irony given the origin of post-war American Dream Suburbia in the very-much centrally-planned Levittowns.
I always thought of the suburbs as the most “controlled” places. They’re the closest thing we’ve got to a Matrix.
Yeah, I’d cosign that.
Some do, but I’d wager a lot more live in pricey urban condos. Much hipper, and we like to be hip. Suburbs are unhip, gauche really. Also, urban living is much more sustainable, and that is also hip.
An absurd one sentence op from a poster who hasn’t returned? Either whoosh or preperation for some not so clever gotcha, either way I’m surprised this hasn’t been sent to the Pit as a joke thread.
Around here at least, the relatively far suburbs are the best bang for your buck in terms of homeownership. As a result, they tend to attract young couples with decent jobs either with small children or looking to start families. And on the whole, couples with small children tend to be more conservative and risk-averse than they were prior to the children.
Collectively this group tends to want good schools, which raises the attractiveness even more to similar people.
You don’t see a lot of people in their 50s and 60s in new suburbs, unless they’re super-swanky luxury ones, and you don’t see a lot of young families living in the built-up parts of cities either unless they don’t have enough money to move to the suburbs. Most youngish families like the idea of having a good sized house, yard, and living amongst similar people with kids, and you find that in the suburbs.
How is it absurd? Some like me are arguing that the answer is obvious; but others are disputing the very premise of the question. Sounds like grist for a debate.
I think this take is slightly out of date:
Right now we live in an urban setting (for the first time in over almost 20 years before which we lived in the suburbs and I grew up in the suburbs) and we do all those things.
Color me confused why you think that’s limited to suburbs.
The person making a claim as unequivocal as it is broad cites nothing, references no train of thought, and doesn’t bother to return, while the rest of you are sifting through the chicken entrails for a debate topic.
If it wasn’t meant to be a joke this OP is still the SDMB’s version of, “why did the chicken cross the road?”…which is still a ‘debate topic’.
Amen to that. Liberals, in general, dislike intrusive government, and you’re not likely to find any government more intrusive than the homeowner’s association, found only in suburbs. Conservatives, by contrast, tend to applaud intrusive government, and so like things like HOAs.
Was completely unaware that “liberals” hated suburbs. What new Teahadist propaganda is this?
Suburbs and urban sprawl is the ultimate answer to the threat of nuclear war. Kind of interesting when you think about it. Small, compact congested cities could be taken out with a single mid-yield warhead. Today it would take dozens of warheads to do serious damage to the typical metropolitan area.
Seconded. There are plenty of liberals in the suburbs, and the OP doesn’t just say liberals don’t like the suburbs, he says they’re at war with them. This statement demands a lot of evidence. And it’s a very ironic claim considering national politics largely ignores cities in favor of suburban and even rural voters. Why? Lack of swing votes, for one thing. Cities in general go hard for the Democrats, so Democrats don’t have to compete that much for their votes and Republicans are openly hostile to them.