Posted on 03/10/2009 5:28:25 PM PDT by Lorianne
Contrary to a parade of films and books demonizing life in the 'burbs, those who live there love it ___ Suburban angst makes for good novels and films, but people who live between the country and the city in the United States like their lawns and driveways.
Suburbanites are significantly more satisfied with their communities than people who live in cities, small towns or rural areas, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographics Trends Project.
"Ever since there have been suburbs, there have been harsh critiques of suburbs - a common one being that they are suffocating places where people live lives of quiet desperation. Well, most suburbanites apparently never got that memo," said Richard Morin and Paul Taylor, the authors of the study.
More than 40 per cent of suburban residents rated their communities as satisfying places to live, compared with 34 per cent of urban dwellers, 29 per cent of people living in the countryside and 25 per cent of people living in small towns.
The poll comes on the heels of Revolutionary Road, a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet that is based on a 1950s novel by Richard Yates that depicts suburban life as a masquerade of satisfaction concealing a crippling sense of unfulfilled passions.
It also suggests that a parade of films and books produced since the rise of U.S. suburbs in the late 1940s, including the stories of John Cheever and films such as The Ice Storm, Little Children and American Beauty, portrays suburbs through a darker glass than might be warranted.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
There's not a thing wrong with our older, close-in suburb. If I didn't want more land to work my dogs, and a smaller house now that the children are almost grown, I would be happy to live here for the rest of my life.
Some of the newer developments with the look-alike houses on tiny lots I find fairly ugly, but some people like them and that's their privilege in a free country.
I think these liberal authors and filmmakers just want to get rid of the comfortable middle class and are attacking them every way they can think of. Interferes with their vision of socialist paradise.
It’s only left wing twits who criticize the suburbs. I’m in the burbs to avoid the bad schools, crime, etc... our big-city libs have caused.
You mean “American Beauty” was wrong?
They just want everyone forced into government-provided, thug filled high rises in the urban gutters.
Everybody crowded into one place so the bureaucrats can count more numbers in their little fiefdoms. High prices, high taxes, force everyone from their cars and funnel them into dirty, crime ridden public transportation where everyone gets to the same place equally late.
A thousand permits, fees, and permissions to get before anything productive can be done, with a thousand brothers and cousins each getting a piece of the pie you worked for.
Dependency and entitlement. Just another great way to make life as difficult and expensive as possible for anyone who works for a living, and as easy and ghetto-fabulous as possible for those who don’t get up before noon.
Stalin called it “de-kulakization”. Get rid of the independent prosperous class so everybody can be equally subjected and equally miserable.
We bought the house hubby grew up in, in the burbs. Much better schools than in the city. Safer than the city. Big enough back yard for a garden. It was a great place to raise the kids.
As far as I can tell, the only ones who don’t like the burbs are liberals. Fine. They can live in apartments if they want. Far, far away, in the city!
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