What's the matter with exurbs?

I keep tabs on the old neighborhood -- northern Virginia -- by reading the WaPo, and today's article, "Exurbanites Occupy an Unsettled Place in Virginia Politics," really did not make a case for the benefits of  gated-community living and lengthy commutes. Among assorted gems in the article:

[Nancy] Perilla, who does vote, moved to Dominion Valley from a house in Manassas, which is in the older, more developed part of the region, a diverse area where Mexican and Central American immigrants have settled and where neighborhoods of single-family homes might be adjacent to townhouses and apartments. Like the Lechners, she and her family moved in part because the old neighborhood was changing.

"It sounds awful," Perilla said, "but it was turning into a more working-class neighborhood. More pickups -- not that there's anything wrong with that ..."

Hello, white flight!

Another interesting insight in the article comes from the talking heads:

In his book, Democracy in Suburbia, University of Chicago political science professor Eric Oliver asserts that, in general, the absence of conflict in suburban areas tends to go hand in hand with diminished participation -- not necessarily in elections, but in other parts of civic life, such as volunteering. "It turns citizens into consumers, basically," he said in an interview. ". . . They disconnect and disassociate themselves from the greater community in which they reside."

Furthermore, he said, a dynamic emerges that pits one region against another for resources. "If you have a city," he said, "you have different groups of people contesting for public resources, so there are class divisions in what people want from government. . . . When the community is homogenous, those core issues go by the wayside."

[...]

The problem, [Larry Sabato] added, is when the balance of power tips too far one way, and other interests are eclipsed.

"As exurbs become more powerful, more populated, more legislatively represented, there is the danger that the hidden concerns of the central cities and older suburbs will be ignored," he said. "We do tend to leave our problems behind, always searching for that new frontier that doesn't have any. Of course, there is no such thing."

We all know David Brooks is agog over the exurbs, and he contends they're actually filled with the kinds of people Perilla and friends may not care to have as neighbors ("Our Sprawling, Supersized Utopia," NYT Magazine, April 4, 04). Even more amusingly, there's evidence that as exurbs grow, they attract more immigrants and become more diverse. ("Paradise Glossed: The Problem with David Brooks," Washington Monthly, June 04)

The thing about the exurbs-as-homogenous-enclaves theory is that the residents seem to be setting themselves up for a backlash from the more densely-populated enclaves. And it's not like the exurbanites have numbers on their side:

With all the talk of the growth of exurbs and the hand-wringing over facile demographic categories like "security moms," you may be under the impression that an urban politics wouldn't speak to many people. But according to the 2000 Census, 226 million people reside inside metropolitan areas--a number that positively dwarfs the 55 million people who live outside metro areas. The 85 million people who live in strictly defined central city limits also outnumber those rural relics. When the number of city-dwellers in the United States is quadruple the number of rural people, we can put simple democratic majorities to work for our ideals.

-- The Stranger's Urban Archipelago

I'm not holding my breath for this manifesto to transform U.S. politics -- heck, Virginia's been grappling with the schism between its developed areas and its more rural areas for decades. I only see these schisms growing, especially as different waves of people gentrify cities and embrace urban identity politics. And I do wonder if these little closed communities, which seem to promise reprieve from social problems, might not be sowing the seeds for another crop of problems instead.

Comments

[Sheila]

I grew up in a DC suburb, Reston, and although it was very smug about the planned community, to the point of being extremely annoying about it, part of the original planning was precisely so that there -would- be subsidized apartments near big houses, so there wouldn't be a wrong side of the tracks. It's my impression that the town has only gotten more and more expensive and homogeneous in the 17 or so years since I lived there, which is really too bad. It's not like it was ever a model of integration, but I certainly was used to going to school with kids who didn't look or talk like me, and I doubt that that's true today.

[Becky]

I am fascinated by the delight those people are taking in their own ignorance. The people quoted in the article are completely removed from all reality, and they love it. They're not just afraid of conflict with the pick-up-driving, working class people moving into their old neighborhoods -- they're afraid of anything different, because it might actually cause them to re-evaluate their goals in life.

I would hope that the people they're avoiding move down the street from them soon, but I guess if you can pay $700,000 for a house, you can up and move to another exclusive exurb.

[Michelle]

I live in Reston now and this is still part of its strength. Sure, when you buy, everyone warns you not to buy off of Glade, near the subsidized housing, where the less prestigious elementary school is, but overall the area is more diverse -- without being scary -- than most of northern Virginia. As NoVA has integrated, there have been gang problems in some parts of the area, unfortunately, and Reston seems to manage things well.

Lisa, all I could think of was the same thing as you -- that people are moving further and further out because they can't afford to live close in. Hell, $700k, isn't very expensive in NoVA terms, so that exurb is likely far more integrated than those idiots in that gated community would like to think.

I'm sure they also argue for "quality of life" while making a 40+ mile commute into DC everyday.