Toward a unified theory of the exurbs
January 16, 2021 9:58 PM Subscribe
The Republican Party’s most Pro-Trump members have been elected by higher income white homeowners in the fast-growing exurban fringe. They feel the social status traditionally associated with their identity as white Christians is being degraded and that left wing political movements pose a threat to their livelihoods and political power.
If Republicans prefer suburbs, this is not just the old story of “white flight”... they are also in flight from city administrations that tax to pay for services they don’t want or use, and indeed from any tincture of “socialism”.
They flew from their affluent suburbs to the U.S. Capitol, ready to die for the cause of white privilege.
Describing this as an “urban-rural” divide is wrong. Only 1.3% of American workers actually work on farms. The major divide everywhere is within metro areas: between downtown business districts and inner suburbs, on the one hand, and outer suburbs and exurbs, on the other.
In rapidly growing cities of the Southwest where land on the edges of town was literally dirt cheap, developers came up with a template for success starting in the late 1970s and early '80s. Build homes catering to comfortably middle, upper middle and borderline affluent people who did not want the inconveniences of old urban living.
Sprawl results in growing economic inequality among metros, where people are increasingly sorted into either poorer (sprawled) or richer (compact) regions
Consider the rapid growth of exurban areas of the United States, where developers continue to plow under farmland in an effort to build affordable homes. The country has lost 24 million acres of natural land in the last 16 years.
Cities and states have allowed continued development on land known to be at high risk of floods, fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes
the Green New Deal has a big blind spot: It doesn’t address the places Americans live. And our physical geography—where we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places—is more foundational to a green, fair future than just about anything else.
Mike Davis on the election with a some specific focus on geographic alliances.
If Republicans prefer suburbs, this is not just the old story of “white flight”... they are also in flight from city administrations that tax to pay for services they don’t want or use, and indeed from any tincture of “socialism”.
They flew from their affluent suburbs to the U.S. Capitol, ready to die for the cause of white privilege.
Describing this as an “urban-rural” divide is wrong. Only 1.3% of American workers actually work on farms. The major divide everywhere is within metro areas: between downtown business districts and inner suburbs, on the one hand, and outer suburbs and exurbs, on the other.
In rapidly growing cities of the Southwest where land on the edges of town was literally dirt cheap, developers came up with a template for success starting in the late 1970s and early '80s. Build homes catering to comfortably middle, upper middle and borderline affluent people who did not want the inconveniences of old urban living.
Sprawl results in growing economic inequality among metros, where people are increasingly sorted into either poorer (sprawled) or richer (compact) regions
Consider the rapid growth of exurban areas of the United States, where developers continue to plow under farmland in an effort to build affordable homes. The country has lost 24 million acres of natural land in the last 16 years.
Cities and states have allowed continued development on land known to be at high risk of floods, fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes
the Green New Deal has a big blind spot: It doesn’t address the places Americans live. And our physical geography—where we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places—is more foundational to a green, fair future than just about anything else.
Mike Davis on the election with a some specific focus on geographic alliances.
they are the only group among whom a majority expresses a preference for living in a country “made up of people who follow the Christian faith”
Perhaps we could start with a majority of Christianity made up of people following the Christian faith.
They feel the social status traditionally associated with their identity as white Christians is being degraded
Oh, well, there's your problem. Your Christianity appears to be about identity and status instead of practice. That is probably going to degrade the brand a bit.
posted by weston at 10:55 PM on January 16, 2021 [77 favorites]
Perhaps we could start with a majority of Christianity made up of people following the Christian faith.
They feel the social status traditionally associated with their identity as white Christians is being degraded
Oh, well, there's your problem. Your Christianity appears to be about identity and status instead of practice. That is probably going to degrade the brand a bit.
posted by weston at 10:55 PM on January 16, 2021 [77 favorites]
Your Christianity appears to be about identity and status instead of practice.
It's practically sacrilege for them even to use the term 'Christian' to describe that particular collection of figurative idol-worship.
posted by Dysk at 11:06 PM on January 16, 2021 [13 favorites]
It's practically sacrilege for them even to use the term 'Christian' to describe that particular collection of figurative idol-worship.
posted by Dysk at 11:06 PM on January 16, 2021 [13 favorites]
Do people realize that progressive faiths and the Christian Left exist?
See: Millennial nuns, social justice Catholicism, Black Christian Americans, social justice-oriented Rabbis, Muslim Americans
Christian nationalism has hijacked religion as a brand.
posted by ichomp at 11:33 PM on January 16, 2021 [63 favorites]
See: Millennial nuns, social justice Catholicism, Black Christian Americans, social justice-oriented Rabbis, Muslim Americans
Christian nationalism has hijacked religion as a brand.
posted by ichomp at 11:33 PM on January 16, 2021 [63 favorites]
I've just discovered the Straight White Jesus podcast. I've only listened to one episode so far (the Sarah Churchwell one), but up to now it's living up to its blurb pretty well:
"An in-depth examination of the culture and politics of white Evangelical Christians by two ex-evangelical ministers-turned-religion professors. If you have ever wondered what social and historical forces led white evangelicals to usher Donald Trump into the White House this is the show for you."
posted by Paul Slade at 12:16 AM on January 17, 2021 [13 favorites]
"An in-depth examination of the culture and politics of white Evangelical Christians by two ex-evangelical ministers-turned-religion professors. If you have ever wondered what social and historical forces led white evangelicals to usher Donald Trump into the White House this is the show for you."
posted by Paul Slade at 12:16 AM on January 17, 2021 [13 favorites]
Mod note: A couple deleted. Folks, OP clearly put a lot of work into this this post, and there's a lot of interesting info here, so a lot to potentially discuss! Let's not kill the conversation straight out of the gate with the exact same old recycled "Religion / Christianity Sucks — No It Doesn't" fight we've had on the site over and over and over for 20+ years now. Please, read a link or two!
posted by taz (staff) at 12:17 AM on January 17, 2021 [110 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 12:17 AM on January 17, 2021 [110 favorites]
An amazing post latkes, will take me a while to absorb and respond, very useful and applicable in NZ and Oz too.
posted by unearthed at 12:34 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by unearthed at 12:34 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Regarding sprawl, How America Bankrupted It's Cities -- The Growth Ponzi Scheme is an interesting 10 min video from my favorite youtuber. And here's a link to the playlist with more videos on the topic. tl;dr, you build sprawl to increase tax revenue and the initial infrastructure gets partially paid for by the developers. But cities don't plan for the long term maintenance costs of the sprawl infrastructure so in 15-20 years the area starts going bankrupt if it doesn't raise taxes -- or start building more sprawl. Or, you know, you could make the responsible choice and plan ahead, build smart, and tax appropriately from the start.
posted by antinomia at 12:34 AM on January 17, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by antinomia at 12:34 AM on January 17, 2021 [14 favorites]
Build homes catering to comfortably middle, upper middle and borderline affluent people who did not want the inconveniences of old urban living.
I long for the time when we can just be open and honest about these things. The inconveniences these people fled to their homogeneous enclaves to escape were pretty much anyone and anything that would keep these exurbs from being homogeneous: anyone isn't white, "christian," and well off. These are the people to whom realtors drop dog whistled hints about demographics, and who just eat that shit up. They are racist, through and through, though most of them are the fragile variety that's more offended by accusations of racism than just about anything else in the world.
They'll raise their children to hate and fear anything that doesn't look like them. They'll keep this shit going as long as they're able, which, given the level of gerrymandering that gives them inordinate representation in the House, will be a long damn time. They are a goddamn cancer, and that's cruel to cancer to say so.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:38 AM on January 17, 2021 [42 favorites]
I long for the time when we can just be open and honest about these things. The inconveniences these people fled to their homogeneous enclaves to escape were pretty much anyone and anything that would keep these exurbs from being homogeneous: anyone isn't white, "christian," and well off. These are the people to whom realtors drop dog whistled hints about demographics, and who just eat that shit up. They are racist, through and through, though most of them are the fragile variety that's more offended by accusations of racism than just about anything else in the world.
They'll raise their children to hate and fear anything that doesn't look like them. They'll keep this shit going as long as they're able, which, given the level of gerrymandering that gives them inordinate representation in the House, will be a long damn time. They are a goddamn cancer, and that's cruel to cancer to say so.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:38 AM on January 17, 2021 [42 favorites]
Maybe if they practiced what's in the Bible and not just the parts that reinforced their prejudices.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:49 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:49 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Christian nationalism has hijacked religion as a brand.
"Hijacked" implies that a small cadre of intolerant Christian nationalists-cum-Christofacists have seized control of a larger community whose true civic character would be better represented by 'Millennial nuns, social justice Catholics, Black Christian Americans, social justice-oriented Rabbis, and Muslim Americans.' That is not the case. I wish it were.
Christian nationalism is the 'brand.' The rest are the 'disruptors.'
(Kinda weird that only "social justice Rabbis" are presumed to be tolerant amongst Jews but I'm too tired for that today.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:30 AM on January 17, 2021 [13 favorites]
"Hijacked" implies that a small cadre of intolerant Christian nationalists-cum-Christofacists have seized control of a larger community whose true civic character would be better represented by 'Millennial nuns, social justice Catholics, Black Christian Americans, social justice-oriented Rabbis, and Muslim Americans.' That is not the case. I wish it were.
Christian nationalism is the 'brand.' The rest are the 'disruptors.'
(Kinda weird that only "social justice Rabbis" are presumed to be tolerant amongst Jews but I'm too tired for that today.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:30 AM on January 17, 2021 [13 favorites]
From the first link:
White homeowners’ perception of a loss of status relative to upwardly mobile Hispanic and Asian American households is the social context out of which has emerged the nativist politics at the center of Trumpism.
This is a key point. The far right rage has to do with status. Sure, there are economic factors as well. The unionized jobs with high wages and great health insurance don't exist any more. But when others of a formerly low-status group are doing better than you, it feels like you're losing everything.
In economics you can have win-wins. But status struggles are zero sum.
posted by mono blanco at 5:34 AM on January 17, 2021 [36 favorites]
White homeowners’ perception of a loss of status relative to upwardly mobile Hispanic and Asian American households is the social context out of which has emerged the nativist politics at the center of Trumpism.
This is a key point. The far right rage has to do with status. Sure, there are economic factors as well. The unionized jobs with high wages and great health insurance don't exist any more. But when others of a formerly low-status group are doing better than you, it feels like you're losing everything.
In economics you can have win-wins. But status struggles are zero sum.
posted by mono blanco at 5:34 AM on January 17, 2021 [36 favorites]
Thank you for the post, latkes, some nuanced takes in there. The description of leapfrog development rang various bells for me, and also inspired me to look into just what’s considered suburban-v-exurban in my neck of the woods.
Ghidorah’s comment aligns with the story that most of my friends and colleagues tell about urban/rural. I think it’s both statistically accurate and a caricature. I’ve lived in various urban cores and encountered plenty of white people willing to drop casually racist shit in conversations (with me, a white guy) just as frequently, if not moreso than in the country. That time I lived in the hip, left, urban neighborhood? My neighbors used anti-black and anti-LGBTQ slurs off and on during the entire time I lived there.
Anecdatally speaking, the couple times I’ve moved house in my urban region have each been further from the “urban core”... because that’s where I could afford homes with the features I wanted. The last move (to a rural/exurban area) was a good one on most quality of life levels, barring my new home being in a thoroughly red area with less overall diversity than my last home. My realtor, each time I’ve moved, dropped no dogwhistles I could recognize — if anything, the issues they brought up are ones tied stereotypically to white country folk.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:09 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Ghidorah’s comment aligns with the story that most of my friends and colleagues tell about urban/rural. I think it’s both statistically accurate and a caricature. I’ve lived in various urban cores and encountered plenty of white people willing to drop casually racist shit in conversations (with me, a white guy) just as frequently, if not moreso than in the country. That time I lived in the hip, left, urban neighborhood? My neighbors used anti-black and anti-LGBTQ slurs off and on during the entire time I lived there.
Anecdatally speaking, the couple times I’ve moved house in my urban region have each been further from the “urban core”... because that’s where I could afford homes with the features I wanted. The last move (to a rural/exurban area) was a good one on most quality of life levels, barring my new home being in a thoroughly red area with less overall diversity than my last home. My realtor, each time I’ve moved, dropped no dogwhistles I could recognize — if anything, the issues they brought up are ones tied stereotypically to white country folk.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:09 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Since we're talking about urbanism and religion, I should point out a few things:
you can tell a lot about a church or synagogue by the size of the parking lot.
A synagogue with a big lot is almost always Reform for obvious reasons. And a church that has a large lot will be very different from one that does not or has no parking at all.
If you have a parking lot, the church will likely be congregational (meaning no bishops, no hierarchy, no formal parish). It means services at the church will be done at a higher emotional pitch, with a lot more participation expected of individual parishioners because if something is off about this particular church, well, you can just drive on to the one at the next exit. Protestant churches of the older denominations, mean while, are tied down to their location, which means ministers have to allow their parishioners more leeway to just be themselves and not show more of themselves than they want to, since they are your parishioners for better and for worse.
And of course, in your Christian Church of Exit 32 (formerly Fellowship Church of Exit 33), you need to keep the pews filled. And the way to do that is to pander, pander, pander. Which means telling the people in the seats that their way of life is literally righteous, so they keep coming for that assurance. And you have bills to pay, and the offering plate is a zero sum game. Which limits what you might say at the sermon.
Notice I've only talked about economics and anthropology, not doctrine here.
posted by ocschwar at 6:22 AM on January 17, 2021 [57 favorites]
you can tell a lot about a church or synagogue by the size of the parking lot.
A synagogue with a big lot is almost always Reform for obvious reasons. And a church that has a large lot will be very different from one that does not or has no parking at all.
If you have a parking lot, the church will likely be congregational (meaning no bishops, no hierarchy, no formal parish). It means services at the church will be done at a higher emotional pitch, with a lot more participation expected of individual parishioners because if something is off about this particular church, well, you can just drive on to the one at the next exit. Protestant churches of the older denominations, mean while, are tied down to their location, which means ministers have to allow their parishioners more leeway to just be themselves and not show more of themselves than they want to, since they are your parishioners for better and for worse.
And of course, in your Christian Church of Exit 32 (formerly Fellowship Church of Exit 33), you need to keep the pews filled. And the way to do that is to pander, pander, pander. Which means telling the people in the seats that their way of life is literally righteous, so they keep coming for that assurance. And you have bills to pay, and the offering plate is a zero sum game. Which limits what you might say at the sermon.
Notice I've only talked about economics and anthropology, not doctrine here.
posted by ocschwar at 6:22 AM on January 17, 2021 [57 favorites]
The burn:
I'm wondering why The New York Times and countless other publications kept on propagating the half-truth of the white working class trumpist voter. It was debunked almost immediately (as is written in this article). Some people on the left liked it because in their opinion, it was confirmation that the Democrats needed to elect a hard left populist as their candidate. And there is some sort of legitimization of the racism in it, that I can't quite figure out how works. Maybe it's the claim that the white working class in the heartland is somehow more authentic than anyone else, which is supposed to match a notion that Trump too is authentic, in spite of all his lies.
posted by mumimor at 6:23 AM on January 17, 2021 [28 favorites]
The stay-at-home dad husband of a physician. The son of an elected judge in Brooklyn. The owners of numerous small businesses, as well as assorted state legislators. The New York Times spent four years looking for Trump voters in Ohio diners, but apparently that’s not where they would have found failed actor Jacob Chansley, a.k.a. Jake Angeli, the infamous shirtless rioter with the painted face and horns, who reportedly hasn’t eaten since his arrest because there’s no organic food in jail(from the third link)
I'm wondering why The New York Times and countless other publications kept on propagating the half-truth of the white working class trumpist voter. It was debunked almost immediately (as is written in this article). Some people on the left liked it because in their opinion, it was confirmation that the Democrats needed to elect a hard left populist as their candidate. And there is some sort of legitimization of the racism in it, that I can't quite figure out how works. Maybe it's the claim that the white working class in the heartland is somehow more authentic than anyone else, which is supposed to match a notion that Trump too is authentic, in spite of all his lies.
posted by mumimor at 6:23 AM on January 17, 2021 [28 favorites]
Amazing post. Thank you!
posted by vocativecase at 6:41 AM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by vocativecase at 6:41 AM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Describing this as an “urban-rural” divide is wrong. Only 1.3% of American workers actually work on farms.
Describing rural as wiring on farms seems weird. Most people living in rural areas don't work on farms, but they work for small businesses that support agriculture or sell real estate in the area, etc. The rural/urban distinction is one of the biggest predictors of Trump support. Also, because of districting, counties are important state units and because of the Electoral College, states as entities are important. Without the EC we wouldn't have had to deal with Trump at all (or GWB), and counties have the same effect on state legislatures.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:05 AM on January 17, 2021 [18 favorites]
Describing rural as wiring on farms seems weird. Most people living in rural areas don't work on farms, but they work for small businesses that support agriculture or sell real estate in the area, etc. The rural/urban distinction is one of the biggest predictors of Trump support. Also, because of districting, counties are important state units and because of the Electoral College, states as entities are important. Without the EC we wouldn't have had to deal with Trump at all (or GWB), and counties have the same effect on state legislatures.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:05 AM on January 17, 2021 [18 favorites]
It's amazing how quickly the culture changes as you drive out of the city limits here. There were a handful of Trump signs inside the city this year but you got ten minutes outside and it was 90% Trump.
posted by octothorpe at 7:08 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 7:08 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Build homes catering to comfortably middle, upper middle and borderline affluent people who did not want the inconveniences of old urban living.
I'm a urban living person. I have a grocery store, a drugstore, 3 bars and 4 restaurants, a dentist and 2 banks, a drycleaners, a nail salon and a Starbucks within about 300 steps of my building. I'm less than 10 minutes walk from a driving range, a great lake, a 17 mile lakefront trail and massive park including ponds with beavers and a free zoo, an L train stop, 5 bus routes - one express. Also within 15 minutes are 4 more grocery stores, a few dozen more restaurants, convenience stores, drug stores, and chain stores, 3 hospitals and on and on.
I simply cannot think of a world more convenient than the one I currently live in (and thus I find it incredibly hard to move anywhere else).
I grew up in a suburb and I have spent a month living in an American exurb. They were the two least convenient places I ever lived and I have lived in lots of places - 3 different countries and 11 different cities.
The word 'inconveniences' here is extremely disingenuous and is probably as others above have pointed out hiding racism.
But given that the article is on a Houston news site my experience of urban convenience in a dense Chicago north side neighborhood might not apply at all to such a sprawl and car focused Texas city.
posted by srboisvert at 7:08 AM on January 17, 2021 [36 favorites]
I'm a urban living person. I have a grocery store, a drugstore, 3 bars and 4 restaurants, a dentist and 2 banks, a drycleaners, a nail salon and a Starbucks within about 300 steps of my building. I'm less than 10 minutes walk from a driving range, a great lake, a 17 mile lakefront trail and massive park including ponds with beavers and a free zoo, an L train stop, 5 bus routes - one express. Also within 15 minutes are 4 more grocery stores, a few dozen more restaurants, convenience stores, drug stores, and chain stores, 3 hospitals and on and on.
I simply cannot think of a world more convenient than the one I currently live in (and thus I find it incredibly hard to move anywhere else).
I grew up in a suburb and I have spent a month living in an American exurb. They were the two least convenient places I ever lived and I have lived in lots of places - 3 different countries and 11 different cities.
The word 'inconveniences' here is extremely disingenuous and is probably as others above have pointed out hiding racism.
But given that the article is on a Houston news site my experience of urban convenience in a dense Chicago north side neighborhood might not apply at all to such a sprawl and car focused Texas city.
posted by srboisvert at 7:08 AM on January 17, 2021 [36 favorites]
The word inconvenience does point to one thing that's legitimate. These are people who are so accustomed to driving everywhere that they find a lack of parking to be very inconvenient.
posted by ocschwar at 7:22 AM on January 17, 2021 [34 favorites]
posted by ocschwar at 7:22 AM on January 17, 2021 [34 favorites]
I'm a urban living person. I have a grocery store, a drugstore, 3 bars and 4 restaurants, a dentist and 2 banks, a drycleaners, a nail salon and a Starbucks within about 300 steps of my building. I'm less than 10 minutes walk from a driving range, a great lake, a 17 mile lakefront trail and massive park including ponds with beavers and a free zoo, an L train stop, 5 bus routes - one express. Also within 15 minutes are 4 more grocery stores, a few dozen more restaurants, convenience stores, drug stores, and chain stores, 3 hospitals and on and on.
Walking on city street, taking a train or bus are not things that suburbanites think are "convenient". People will go their whole lives without taking any form of public transportation and won't go anywhere if there's not free parking right at the store.
posted by octothorpe at 7:36 AM on January 17, 2021 [15 favorites]
Walking on city street, taking a train or bus are not things that suburbanites think are "convenient". People will go their whole lives without taking any form of public transportation and won't go anywhere if there's not free parking right at the store.
posted by octothorpe at 7:36 AM on January 17, 2021 [15 favorites]
These are people who are so accustomed to driving everywhere that they find a lack of parking to be very inconvenient.
If you live in a "metro area" rather than the dense core of the city, there's certainly that dichotomy. You need a car to go to work and run errands, but going into the actual "city" part is in fact a hassle.
posted by Foosnark at 7:40 AM on January 17, 2021 [12 favorites]
If you live in a "metro area" rather than the dense core of the city, there's certainly that dichotomy. You need a car to go to work and run errands, but going into the actual "city" part is in fact a hassle.
posted by Foosnark at 7:40 AM on January 17, 2021 [12 favorites]
In several ways, cities are less convenient than more car-oriented suburbs or small towns, and I say that as one who has lived centrally in several major cities in both the U.S. and abroad my entire adult life, which is to say in a situation similar to the Chicago locale described above and, a few years back, only a few minutes away from the NYC neighborhood that originally inspired Jane Jacobs.
According to a 2019 study, pre-pandemic NYC had the longest commute in the U.S. Online dating aficionados joke that they won't get involved with anyone who doesn't live in their neighborhood / borough, only it's not always a joke. It's similarly widely agreed that if you move to, say, northern NYC or even just across the way in NJ, most of your friends will never visit you. To make a big purchase, from groceries to furniture, you either have to be prepared to cough up a lot of money in delivery fees, or struggle to lug stuff home yourself. Going to a museum or even a (pre-pandemic) restaurant or bar also takes time. Over the years, I finally got real about the fact that nearly any trip I took would take me at least an hour and a half one-way, accounting for subway departure times, the amount of time it takes to walk to the subway, and whether or not I had to change trains and, this, again, is living very centrally, by any standard.
Meanwhile, when I used to visit family in small town New England, I'd just pop in the car, and drive almost to the door of the supermarket. Big packages could go in the trunk. I could spontaneously meet a friend for drinks or dinner, take a sudden road trip to the Big City, or leave at the last minute to get to work.
It's not by accident all of these examples are transit-focused. Anyone who has lived in a city for a long time knows that public transit, at least in every city I've ever lived in, can take forever, even to go a few miles. Depending on the climate, it's also often uncomfortable. If the city is dense, it may also be crowded or unsafe. And it's certainly not made for getting big or unwieldy stuff home, though people certainly innovate.
It's not by accident that the American public fell in love with the car and the suburb in postwar America. Everyone in the suburbs had a yard, extra bedrooms, storage, a quiet environment and privacy — all things hard, if not impossible, to find in most cities. When they were sick of it, they could always get into their automobiles, and "road trip" like Jack Kerouac.
Historically, a lot of cities suffered from plagues, pollution and crime. In recent years, they've been grossly unaffordable, requiring all but the affluent to live with roommates. For those who didn't grow up in a city, family is often far away.
All of this is to point out that the pros and cons of city living are complex and multi-factoral. To me, the most interesting thing about the exurban factor is it provides yet more evidence that many in Trump's fan base are probably more liable to isolated, which goes hand-in-hand with loneliness.
posted by Violet Blue at 8:41 AM on January 17, 2021 [58 favorites]
According to a 2019 study, pre-pandemic NYC had the longest commute in the U.S. Online dating aficionados joke that they won't get involved with anyone who doesn't live in their neighborhood / borough, only it's not always a joke. It's similarly widely agreed that if you move to, say, northern NYC or even just across the way in NJ, most of your friends will never visit you. To make a big purchase, from groceries to furniture, you either have to be prepared to cough up a lot of money in delivery fees, or struggle to lug stuff home yourself. Going to a museum or even a (pre-pandemic) restaurant or bar also takes time. Over the years, I finally got real about the fact that nearly any trip I took would take me at least an hour and a half one-way, accounting for subway departure times, the amount of time it takes to walk to the subway, and whether or not I had to change trains and, this, again, is living very centrally, by any standard.
Meanwhile, when I used to visit family in small town New England, I'd just pop in the car, and drive almost to the door of the supermarket. Big packages could go in the trunk. I could spontaneously meet a friend for drinks or dinner, take a sudden road trip to the Big City, or leave at the last minute to get to work.
It's not by accident all of these examples are transit-focused. Anyone who has lived in a city for a long time knows that public transit, at least in every city I've ever lived in, can take forever, even to go a few miles. Depending on the climate, it's also often uncomfortable. If the city is dense, it may also be crowded or unsafe. And it's certainly not made for getting big or unwieldy stuff home, though people certainly innovate.
It's not by accident that the American public fell in love with the car and the suburb in postwar America. Everyone in the suburbs had a yard, extra bedrooms, storage, a quiet environment and privacy — all things hard, if not impossible, to find in most cities. When they were sick of it, they could always get into their automobiles, and "road trip" like Jack Kerouac.
Historically, a lot of cities suffered from plagues, pollution and crime. In recent years, they've been grossly unaffordable, requiring all but the affluent to live with roommates. For those who didn't grow up in a city, family is often far away.
All of this is to point out that the pros and cons of city living are complex and multi-factoral. To me, the most interesting thing about the exurban factor is it provides yet more evidence that many in Trump's fan base are probably more liable to isolated, which goes hand-in-hand with loneliness.
posted by Violet Blue at 8:41 AM on January 17, 2021 [58 favorites]
Wow, lots of hostility towards people who live outside of the city core. Is it not possible that some people simply want a house with a yard and take the location as an undesirable but acceptable tradeoff? Everyone in my age group who's bought a house in the past 10 years has moved out to the suburbs, not at all because they hate the city or city folk but because that's the only way to buy a single family home with a yard if you aren't ridiculously rich.
posted by randomnity at 9:00 AM on January 17, 2021 [19 favorites]
posted by randomnity at 9:00 AM on January 17, 2021 [19 favorites]
Wow, lots of hostility towards people who live outside of the city core.
I don't think it's that. There is a huge qualitative difference -- and a huge distinctively classist and racist animating principle -- between moving to the suburbs and moving to the exurbs. In LA there is an immense difference in political inclinations of people moving, for example, to the San Fernando Valley versus those moving to the Santa Clarita Valley. You can move to the San Fernando Valley and have a house with a yard. People move to Santa Clarita in no small part because it's whiter, and later lament how "trashy" even Santa Clarita is becoming, not because of any quantifiable reason that I could find other than it's becoming more diverse. I know this because I've watched it happen.
posted by tclark at 9:07 AM on January 17, 2021 [16 favorites]
I don't think it's that. There is a huge qualitative difference -- and a huge distinctively classist and racist animating principle -- between moving to the suburbs and moving to the exurbs. In LA there is an immense difference in political inclinations of people moving, for example, to the San Fernando Valley versus those moving to the Santa Clarita Valley. You can move to the San Fernando Valley and have a house with a yard. People move to Santa Clarita in no small part because it's whiter, and later lament how "trashy" even Santa Clarita is becoming, not because of any quantifiable reason that I could find other than it's becoming more diverse. I know this because I've watched it happen.
posted by tclark at 9:07 AM on January 17, 2021 [16 favorites]
What is the formal definition of exurb vs suburb? Because it’s always seemed to me to be more a way to signify class and race differences than proximity to an urban core.
posted by q*ben at 9:13 AM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 9:13 AM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
The Santa Clarita valley had cross-burnings as late as the '80s. Until fairly recently a lot of SCV felt more like being out in the Mojave than part of the outskirts of LA.
There have been a bunch of stories in the news over the last couple years about increasing racial tension in SCV as it becomes an increasingly popular choice for African American families, who might have preferred the San Fernando valley (the 'valley girl' valley) or San Gabriel valley (to the east, historically more Latino and Asian) but can't afford it.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:19 AM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
There have been a bunch of stories in the news over the last couple years about increasing racial tension in SCV as it becomes an increasingly popular choice for African American families, who might have preferred the San Fernando valley (the 'valley girl' valley) or San Gabriel valley (to the east, historically more Latino and Asian) but can't afford it.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:19 AM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
What is the formal definition of exurb vs suburb? Because it’s always seemed to me to be more a way to signify class and race differences than proximity to an urban core.
This study by the Brookings Institute defines exurb as "located on the urban fringe that have at least 20 percent of their workers commuting to jobs in an urbanized area, exhibit low housing density, and have relatively high population growth."
I'm sure there are other definitions, but that's one that at least some researchers are using.
posted by justkevin at 9:28 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
This study by the Brookings Institute defines exurb as "located on the urban fringe that have at least 20 percent of their workers commuting to jobs in an urbanized area, exhibit low housing density, and have relatively high population growth."
I'm sure there are other definitions, but that's one that at least some researchers are using.
posted by justkevin at 9:28 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Anyone who has lived in a city for a long time knows that public transit, at least in every city I've ever lived in, can take forever, even to go a few miles. Depending on the climate, it's also often uncomfortable. If the city is dense, it may also be crowded or unsafe. And it's certainly not made for getting big or unwieldy stuff home, though people certainly innovate.
Question for the non-USA Mefites, especially if you have experience living both in and out of the USA: is this the case in countries with better public transit systems? I've never lived outside the USA so I don't know.
City living can be fantastic if you can afford to live within walking distance of the places you go to or at least close to public transit stops that service them. So I'm wondering if people still struggle with the same issues in countries with better systems that have a better culture of public transit.
edit: I just realized Violet Blue mentioned living outside the USA in the same dang comment, so that answers that question
posted by Anonymous at 9:39 AM on January 17, 2021
Question for the non-USA Mefites, especially if you have experience living both in and out of the USA: is this the case in countries with better public transit systems? I've never lived outside the USA so I don't know.
City living can be fantastic if you can afford to live within walking distance of the places you go to or at least close to public transit stops that service them. So I'm wondering if people still struggle with the same issues in countries with better systems that have a better culture of public transit.
edit: I just realized Violet Blue mentioned living outside the USA in the same dang comment, so that answers that question
posted by Anonymous at 9:39 AM on January 17, 2021
"What is the formal definition of exurb vs suburb? "
On popular definition is that an exurb has a population density of 4 people/10 acres or less.
To me, two of the defining things about exurbs in the Chicago area are
1) that people live in 3,000-square-foot, five-bedroom houses, and are constantly furious that the farms that back up to the neighborhood use cropdusters.
2) that getting to the city center via commuter rail takes over an hour. About an hour by rail in Chicago and you're in the "ring cities" that are basically their own cities that have slowly been merged into the suburbs over the last 100 years. If you're more than an hour out by rail, and not in one of those ring cities, it's an exurb. I saw one exurban development last time I was driving out towards Rockford that billed itself as "perfect for working Chicago professionals!" and it was FORTY MINUTES by car to the train station and then EIGHTY MINUTES on the train even if you caught an express. That there's an exurb for sure. (Bunch of McMansions plopped in the middle of a bunch of farm fields.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:42 AM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
On popular definition is that an exurb has a population density of 4 people/10 acres or less.
To me, two of the defining things about exurbs in the Chicago area are
1) that people live in 3,000-square-foot, five-bedroom houses, and are constantly furious that the farms that back up to the neighborhood use cropdusters.
2) that getting to the city center via commuter rail takes over an hour. About an hour by rail in Chicago and you're in the "ring cities" that are basically their own cities that have slowly been merged into the suburbs over the last 100 years. If you're more than an hour out by rail, and not in one of those ring cities, it's an exurb. I saw one exurban development last time I was driving out towards Rockford that billed itself as "perfect for working Chicago professionals!" and it was FORTY MINUTES by car to the train station and then EIGHTY MINUTES on the train even if you caught an express. That there's an exurb for sure. (Bunch of McMansions plopped in the middle of a bunch of farm fields.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:42 AM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
Very hard to respond meaningfully to this from outside; the extreme racism and demographic / class divides of the US are also a warning to elsewhere. We have some of the same political types who seek to sow and reinforce divisions (and our unfortunate neighbours have a troupe of Trumpettes in charge).
Describing this as an “urban-rural” divide is wrong. Only 1.3% of American workers actually work on farms.
In NZ direct farm/horticulture employment is probably about 2% but farm support and farm related is at least 6% and IMO more like 10%. I'd think this would be a universal.
Here too the farm sector is a political football, as are people who live in rural areas on small blocks (generally <5>continued development on land known to be at high risk of floods, fires, earthquakes" Many buildings in Christchurch were built on known quake-susceptible land. At the time there were assertions that developers had pressured the council to weaken controls/bury reports. I know (and trust) some people who asserted this yet even a Royal Commission found no evidence - but developers have deep enough pockets to force any change.
posted by unearthed at 9:52 AM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Describing this as an “urban-rural” divide is wrong. Only 1.3% of American workers actually work on farms.
In NZ direct farm/horticulture employment is probably about 2% but farm support and farm related is at least 6% and IMO more like 10%. I'd think this would be a universal.
Here too the farm sector is a political football, as are people who live in rural areas on small blocks (generally <5>continued development on land known to be at high risk of floods, fires, earthquakes" Many buildings in Christchurch were built on known quake-susceptible land. At the time there were assertions that developers had pressured the council to weaken controls/bury reports. I know (and trust) some people who asserted this yet even a Royal Commission found no evidence - but developers have deep enough pockets to force any change.
posted by unearthed at 9:52 AM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm wondering why The New York Times and countless other publications kept on propagating the half-truth of the white working class trumpist voter. It was debunked almost immediately (as is written in this article). Some people on the left liked it because in their opinion, it was confirmation that the Democrats needed to elect a hard left populist as their candidate. And there is some sort of legitimization of the racism in it, that I can't quite figure out how works. Maybe it's the claim that the white working class in the heartland is somehow more authentic than anyone else, which is supposed to match a notion that Trump too is authentic, in spite of all his lies.
Affluent people regardless of their politics absolutely love the idea that poor whites are a pack of racist inbred hillbilly idiots, because it assigns the sins of the affluent (who are more conservative than the rest of us) to the poor. To believe that Trumpism, and far-right politics in general, is a phenomenon of the poor is to absolve the well-off people who actually form Trump's base, who have always been the backbone of reactionary movements, of blame. And the people who actually drive political opinion in the US are all either affluent or have aligned themselves with the material interests of the affluent, because it's the well-off who own the media outlets that steer our national ideas about how reality is shaped.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:57 AM on January 17, 2021 [44 favorites]
Affluent people regardless of their politics absolutely love the idea that poor whites are a pack of racist inbred hillbilly idiots, because it assigns the sins of the affluent (who are more conservative than the rest of us) to the poor. To believe that Trumpism, and far-right politics in general, is a phenomenon of the poor is to absolve the well-off people who actually form Trump's base, who have always been the backbone of reactionary movements, of blame. And the people who actually drive political opinion in the US are all either affluent or have aligned themselves with the material interests of the affluent, because it's the well-off who own the media outlets that steer our national ideas about how reality is shaped.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:57 AM on January 17, 2021 [44 favorites]
Question for the non-USA Mefites, especially if you have experience living both in and out of the USA: is this the case in countries with better public transit systems? I've never lived outside the USA so I don't know.
A lot of places have transit systems that are cleaner and easier to navigate than those in NYC and Chicago (the only US ones I've tried). In some countries there is more of a sense that everyone has to contribute to the order and maintenance of the system. But I don't think you can generalize and there can be stuff you don't get as a foreigner. Like, Casablanca has an amazing metro/light rail, but it only goes from the center to the rich suburbs. The poor are not so lucky.
In Europe, the main issue is that cars and gas are more expensive than in the US, and cities that are hundreds or even thousands of years old are really not practical for cars. So you see more cars in Germany, that was bombed out and rebuilt in a more car-friendly manner. But even there, going somewhere by train is normal and everyone does it because you can go faster and simpler from city center to city center, and even do some work on the way.
posted by mumimor at 9:59 AM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
A lot of places have transit systems that are cleaner and easier to navigate than those in NYC and Chicago (the only US ones I've tried). In some countries there is more of a sense that everyone has to contribute to the order and maintenance of the system. But I don't think you can generalize and there can be stuff you don't get as a foreigner. Like, Casablanca has an amazing metro/light rail, but it only goes from the center to the rich suburbs. The poor are not so lucky.
In Europe, the main issue is that cars and gas are more expensive than in the US, and cities that are hundreds or even thousands of years old are really not practical for cars. So you see more cars in Germany, that was bombed out and rebuilt in a more car-friendly manner. But even there, going somewhere by train is normal and everyone does it because you can go faster and simpler from city center to city center, and even do some work on the way.
posted by mumimor at 9:59 AM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
In the current environment, there are suburbs and there are suburbs. Or: there are suburbs, and then there are exurbs. The distinction has changed a lot over the last forty years or so.
I could give a lot of examples from the Twin Cities metro here in Minnesota. Around 1980, places like Richfield or Maplewood or Brooklyn Park would have fit that suburban stereotype of being overwhelmingly white and culturally assimilationist. That's not strictly true anymore. Those inner ring suburbs are a lot more diverse, more built-up, and less stifling than they were way back when. How you define that might be up to you--maybe it's just the central cities themselves growing past the arbitrary boundaries that were set on them a century or more ago (and that probably seemed spacious at the time).
Those old stereotypes of "the suburbs" still apply to the third- and fourth-ring suburbs where the edge of the metro area fades into actual working farmland. There's a whole cultural complex around that setting: starter castles, giant pickups, the predictable doses of explicit racism, a higher incidence of evangelical Christianity in allegiance if not in behavior, and a proud-to-be-stupid defiance of sophistication or intelligence. Most notably, you have a high percentage of people who identify with the cultural trappings of what they think is a pure, rural American heritage without getting their hands dirty by, you know, actually farming or ranching. It takes money and means to buy into that role-playing environment, so the membership ends up being exclusive the people who can afford it.
You can't live that kind of lifestyle in, say, New Hope, Minnesota, anymore, so these people end up moving further and further out into what they see as "purer" real estate that used to be actual, as opposed to pretend, farmland. Some of us used to call it "Bachmannistan" after the woman who represented a chunk of it in Congress for a few years.
I don't mind people who want to build a like-minded community, but that particular cultural horizon has too many assumptions that are directly or indirectly linked with white supremacy and the associated delusions of American exceptionalism for me to be comfortable with it.
And this doesn't excuse people who live in actual, genuinely rural parts of Minnesota, who can at times be eye-wateringly racist and subject to the bizarre end of the conspiracy-theory spectrum. It's just that they don't have the money, or means, or the vacation time and quiet nod from their employer that allow them to drive an hour into town so they can attack our democracy at the State Capitol or the Governor's mansion. In their luxurious spare time. Actual rural people are often literally too busy milking the cows. It's the exurban role-players who are able to execute on bits and pieces of their delusion.
posted by gimonca at 10:02 AM on January 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
I could give a lot of examples from the Twin Cities metro here in Minnesota. Around 1980, places like Richfield or Maplewood or Brooklyn Park would have fit that suburban stereotype of being overwhelmingly white and culturally assimilationist. That's not strictly true anymore. Those inner ring suburbs are a lot more diverse, more built-up, and less stifling than they were way back when. How you define that might be up to you--maybe it's just the central cities themselves growing past the arbitrary boundaries that were set on them a century or more ago (and that probably seemed spacious at the time).
Those old stereotypes of "the suburbs" still apply to the third- and fourth-ring suburbs where the edge of the metro area fades into actual working farmland. There's a whole cultural complex around that setting: starter castles, giant pickups, the predictable doses of explicit racism, a higher incidence of evangelical Christianity in allegiance if not in behavior, and a proud-to-be-stupid defiance of sophistication or intelligence. Most notably, you have a high percentage of people who identify with the cultural trappings of what they think is a pure, rural American heritage without getting their hands dirty by, you know, actually farming or ranching. It takes money and means to buy into that role-playing environment, so the membership ends up being exclusive the people who can afford it.
You can't live that kind of lifestyle in, say, New Hope, Minnesota, anymore, so these people end up moving further and further out into what they see as "purer" real estate that used to be actual, as opposed to pretend, farmland. Some of us used to call it "Bachmannistan" after the woman who represented a chunk of it in Congress for a few years.
I don't mind people who want to build a like-minded community, but that particular cultural horizon has too many assumptions that are directly or indirectly linked with white supremacy and the associated delusions of American exceptionalism for me to be comfortable with it.
And this doesn't excuse people who live in actual, genuinely rural parts of Minnesota, who can at times be eye-wateringly racist and subject to the bizarre end of the conspiracy-theory spectrum. It's just that they don't have the money, or means, or the vacation time and quiet nod from their employer that allow them to drive an hour into town so they can attack our democracy at the State Capitol or the Governor's mansion. In their luxurious spare time. Actual rural people are often literally too busy milking the cows. It's the exurban role-players who are able to execute on bits and pieces of their delusion.
posted by gimonca at 10:02 AM on January 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
The flip side of suburban expansion is that the very center, core cities are becoming way too expensive to live in. The interesting, dynamic places for the next few decades may actually be inner-ring suburban areas, as the downtown cores become too calcified by the cost of buying-in.
posted by gimonca at 10:08 AM on January 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by gimonca at 10:08 AM on January 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
One thing I would like to read more about on this topic is the tension/difference between working class people being pushed out to exurbs and higher income people choosing to move to the exurbs. In the SF Bay Area, a large portion of working class African American people have been priced out of the urban core and live in exurbs 45 minutes to 2 hours from Oakland. The inner Bay Area cities are completely impossible to afford unless you have inherited wealth (as many middle class whites have - a parent owned a home providing you with the inherited equity power to make a down-payment on your own, along with a high paying job.) However, to classify this phenomenon only as African American and working class people being 'forced out' doesn't capture the complexity: the working class people who move to the exurbs are seeking the same things that higher income "upper middle class" exurbans want: they want more space, a house with a garage, the ability to own their home, better schools. But housing discrimination and housing segregation exists in the exurbs too, so there seem to be two kinds of exurbs: the exurbs of working class, and the exurbs of the petite bourgeoisie.
posted by latkes at 10:15 AM on January 17, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by latkes at 10:15 AM on January 17, 2021 [9 favorites]
And the difference doesn't map exactly onto ethnicity: As Mike Davis has been talking about, Latino exurban voters who either are employed in law enforcement or are small business owners increasingly align themselves with Trumpest politics.
posted by latkes at 10:24 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by latkes at 10:24 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Magazuelans - on the Venezuelan-Americans who support Trump.
posted by aniola at 10:26 AM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by aniola at 10:26 AM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's not by accident all of these examples are transit-focused. Anyone who has lived in a city for a long time knows that public transit, at least in every city I've ever lived in, can take forever, even to go a few miles.
Yeah, I've lived in the city for years but still have a car because it's just inconvenient to take the bus a lot of the time. My current job is ten minutes away by car (pre-covid obviously), but 50 minutes by transit so it's just not worth the hassle. Almost all trips for me involve changing buses Downtown which adds more time waiting and a $1 transfer fee per trip so a round trip on the bus costs $7.
posted by octothorpe at 10:31 AM on January 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I've lived in the city for years but still have a car because it's just inconvenient to take the bus a lot of the time. My current job is ten minutes away by car (pre-covid obviously), but 50 minutes by transit so it's just not worth the hassle. Almost all trips for me involve changing buses Downtown which adds more time waiting and a $1 transfer fee per trip so a round trip on the bus costs $7.
posted by octothorpe at 10:31 AM on January 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
Some big proportion of far-out greenfield development is retirement housing in Western Washington. So, older, and richer than average for old. But a Hypothesis I developed with my mother while we were both working in nursing homes is that moving far from your previous life when you retire is more likely among people who don’t form social bonds very well, and increasing the proportion of weakly bonding people in a community is hard on it. The Villages may be a counter example.
posted by clew at 10:45 AM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by clew at 10:45 AM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
And the difference doesn't map exactly onto ethnicity: As Mike Davis has been talking about, Latino exurban voters who either are employed in law enforcement or are small business owners increasingly align themselves with Trumpest politics.--latkes
This. There are exurbs south of San Jose that have a majority Hispanic population and are exactly like any other pro-Trump exurb.
posted by eye of newt at 10:56 AM on January 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
This. There are exurbs south of San Jose that have a majority Hispanic population and are exactly like any other pro-Trump exurb.
posted by eye of newt at 10:56 AM on January 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
IN Massachusetts the Commonwealth has been driving the building of retirement housing towards town centers. THat's really amped up the Normal Rockwell-esque style of life because the retirees become regulars at the local cafes and diners, and they're the ones who step forward to be poll workers on Election Day.
And while there are places where it's possible to build exurbs, and it's even attempted on occasion, the commonwealth's hostility towards homeowner's associations tamps that down too.
posted by ocschwar at 10:57 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
And while there are places where it's possible to build exurbs, and it's even attempted on occasion, the commonwealth's hostility towards homeowner's associations tamps that down too.
posted by ocschwar at 10:57 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
I had to laugh at the specific inclusion of beavers when extolling the virtues of urban living.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 10:59 AM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm less than 10 minutes walk from a driving range, a great lake, a 17 mile lakefront trail and massive park including ponds with beavers and a free zoo, an L train stop, 5 bus routes - one express.Given that, for her work, Mrs. Johnson has to deal with these exact same rodents, and I have been witness to more than one after-hours phone call about how to deal with their insatiable appetites for landscape vegetation, in our house we leave beavers out of the "why I love Chicago" conversation.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 10:59 AM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
What's interesting to me is that exurbs are an American phenomenon. I've done a little analysis looking at the four major Anglosphere countries (using gridded population data), and the US is a clear outlier in what share of population is in that low-density exurban fringe.
For example, comparing metro areas with 1-2 million people, 12% of the residents in the American metros lived in areas of under 200 people per sq km (around 500 per sq mi; roughly 3 acres per house) -- and in some metros, like Nashville and Birmingham it can be over 20% of the population. In UK metros, this was 3% and that might not be surprising given the different histories of these two countries. But Canada and Australia had similar population growth histories and were built largely after the car just like in the US, and metros there have 4% and 6% of their population in the exurbs; half to one third of the US rate.
It's the same if you include low-density suburbs up to 800 people per sq km (2000 per sq mile; 0.8 acres per house -- although given roads and commercial and so on it's more like half an acre per house). In the US metros, it's 33% of the population in these two low-density bands; as high as 47% in Hartford and Raleigh, 63% in Birmingham. In the UK, Canada and Australia, it's 9%, 13% and 14% respectively.
You can even see it on the map -- this is population density in the Port Huron / Sarnia area. The US is on the left, and Canada on the right. The same climate and geology; but the US side has a disperse rural/exurban population that just isn't there in Canada. (It's not an artifact of the data; it's harder to see but still visible with just plain satellite views.) You can scroll over to see similar sized Flint, MI and London, ON - there's a clear urban/rural boundary to London that there isn't to Flint's sprawling exurbs.
---
But with all of this talk, while exurbs and Trump are certainly American phenomenons, his policies really aren't entirely. There are anti-mask marches in Canada, anti-free-trade / anti-immigrant Brexit in the UK, immigrants in cages offshore of Australia.
So I think it's interesting to note that exurbs are a hotbed of American white supremacy (and also just incredibly destructive for the environment, obvs), and it's important to dispel the fiction that all Trump supporters are economically anxious poor people, I don't think the causality is that exurbs breed white supremacists so much as just the exurbs collect them.
posted by Superilla at 11:57 AM on January 17, 2021 [22 favorites]
For example, comparing metro areas with 1-2 million people, 12% of the residents in the American metros lived in areas of under 200 people per sq km (around 500 per sq mi; roughly 3 acres per house) -- and in some metros, like Nashville and Birmingham it can be over 20% of the population. In UK metros, this was 3% and that might not be surprising given the different histories of these two countries. But Canada and Australia had similar population growth histories and were built largely after the car just like in the US, and metros there have 4% and 6% of their population in the exurbs; half to one third of the US rate.
It's the same if you include low-density suburbs up to 800 people per sq km (2000 per sq mile; 0.8 acres per house -- although given roads and commercial and so on it's more like half an acre per house). In the US metros, it's 33% of the population in these two low-density bands; as high as 47% in Hartford and Raleigh, 63% in Birmingham. In the UK, Canada and Australia, it's 9%, 13% and 14% respectively.
You can even see it on the map -- this is population density in the Port Huron / Sarnia area. The US is on the left, and Canada on the right. The same climate and geology; but the US side has a disperse rural/exurban population that just isn't there in Canada. (It's not an artifact of the data; it's harder to see but still visible with just plain satellite views.) You can scroll over to see similar sized Flint, MI and London, ON - there's a clear urban/rural boundary to London that there isn't to Flint's sprawling exurbs.
---
But with all of this talk, while exurbs and Trump are certainly American phenomenons, his policies really aren't entirely. There are anti-mask marches in Canada, anti-free-trade / anti-immigrant Brexit in the UK, immigrants in cages offshore of Australia.
So I think it's interesting to note that exurbs are a hotbed of American white supremacy (and also just incredibly destructive for the environment, obvs), and it's important to dispel the fiction that all Trump supporters are economically anxious poor people, I don't think the causality is that exurbs breed white supremacists so much as just the exurbs collect them.
posted by Superilla at 11:57 AM on January 17, 2021 [22 favorites]
What's interesting to me is that exurbs are an American phenomenon.
I get what you're saying, but there are aspects that aren't just American. The northern fringes of the GTA are an awful lot like northward expansion of Dallas 'burbs out past Plano to where they swallowed up McKinney.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:15 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I get what you're saying, but there are aspects that aren't just American. The northern fringes of the GTA are an awful lot like northward expansion of Dallas 'burbs out past Plano to where they swallowed up McKinney.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:15 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I heard this either from a comment here, or in an essay someone linked - I am sorry, I do not remember which. This explains a lot about the outlook of contemporary so-called conservative voters. To them, political and social status is a zero-sum game. If someone else starts getting more, this can only be at the expense of those who had status already. It is fairly obvious that people who think this way see improvements in the economic and political power of non-whites as a direct threat. But this also explains, for example, how reactionary voters see gay marriage as a threat. They see it is diluting the importance and status of purportedly God's-sole-approved man + woman marriages. If just anybody can get married, that disrespects my marriage, which occurred in a system of exclusion and can be seen as having value in virtue of that exclusion.
posted by thelonius at 12:36 PM on January 17, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 12:36 PM on January 17, 2021 [9 favorites]
Regarding the convenience of transit, I'm an American who lives in Europe (the Netherlands) and I don't own a car here and I never feel inconvenienced. I live in Amsterdam and before covid I would regularly take the train to Rotterdam or the Hague or Utrecht in the evening for some event and be home by bed time. Granted this country is about the size of Maryland, but still, these are intercity train trips that take the same time (to Rotterdam) or less (to the Hague or Utrecht) than driving, and I get to read Metafilter or do some duolingo on the way. And the train stations are in the center of these cities, connected to both tram and bus lines, although usually I grab a bike share bike and cruise to my destination because biking is so safe and pleasant here. I wish more people in the US could see what it's like here because there is no reason infrastructure like this couldn't be built in the US and it seriously feels like paradise.
posted by antinomia at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by antinomia at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
I think exurbs tend to exhibit a lot more "one way in one way out onto an arterial road" development mentality vs the older suburbs built from the 50-60s which were often more grid based and comparatively friendly to foot traffic.
Having lived across a variety of the US even places that qualify as suburbs or rural can feel much more city like if they have dense grid based build. Currently I live in a town of about 30k but it's almost entirely gridded out/constrained by geographical barriers and feels like a larger community than would otherwise be the case.
Mandating or incentivizing developments that weren't entirely cloistered off from the rest of the world would do a lot to improve intense car culture. Problem is that the cloister mentality is baked into the white supremacist motivation of why exurbs are created.
posted by Ferreous at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
Having lived across a variety of the US even places that qualify as suburbs or rural can feel much more city like if they have dense grid based build. Currently I live in a town of about 30k but it's almost entirely gridded out/constrained by geographical barriers and feels like a larger community than would otherwise be the case.
Mandating or incentivizing developments that weren't entirely cloistered off from the rest of the world would do a lot to improve intense car culture. Problem is that the cloister mentality is baked into the white supremacist motivation of why exurbs are created.
posted by Ferreous at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
Another Mefite abroad: I can’t imagine living without public transportation after having lived in Japan. I live (and, uh, have always lived) in Chiba City, functionally a suburb of Tokyo. It’s 35 minutes by train to Tokyo station, and the trains are almost always on time and regularly run. While I’m not a huge fan of buses, they are everywhere, and link every station to the communities that surround it. We can take a bus from our nearest station to the local baseball stadium and back, which, hot damn, makes life better.
On the other hand, when I do go back to the states to visit family, it’s to suburban Chicago. If we can’t borrow a car from family, we have no choice but to rent one, as there is nothing anywhere near where they live. Taking the train to the city to visit friends is an exercise in frustration, with the Metra and the El.
I’m guessing there’s some direct correlation to the quality, abundance, and efficiency of public transportation and a given society’s interest in serving the public.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:56 PM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
On the other hand, when I do go back to the states to visit family, it’s to suburban Chicago. If we can’t borrow a car from family, we have no choice but to rent one, as there is nothing anywhere near where they live. Taking the train to the city to visit friends is an exercise in frustration, with the Metra and the El.
I’m guessing there’s some direct correlation to the quality, abundance, and efficiency of public transportation and a given society’s interest in serving the public.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:56 PM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
House with a yard/convenient access to the urban core is a false dichotomy. It ain't cheap (but it was affordable back when Georgia was working, now it's kinda a struggle but we make it work), but I've got myself a yard and a bus line a couple blocks away that will get me to the middle of downtown in 10 to 15 minutes outside of rush hour. Granted, that ain't happening in NYC, but the US contains multitudes.
We often think of all suburbs being the same and all cities being the same, but it's just not true. There are wide variations in how one can reasonably exist in both. Some suburbs (usually, but not always the older ones) have stuff reasonably close by. Some cities are largely hopeless without a car. Most of both are somewhere in between, with both walkable areas and car (or if you're lucky, bike) dependent areas.
One thing "ride sharing" has done is turn some of those places that were marginally walkable, but missing some services, into places where you really can get by without a car with a ride a couple times a month.
That's not to say having a car isn't pretty damn convenient in many cases, assuming you don't need to drive when traffic is bad and have a place to park the damn thing, anyway.
Bringing it back to politics, at least in my city the biggest thing separating the die hard Trump voters from everyone else are their insistence that cars are an absolute necessity and that the city is horribly dangerous. "The city" isn't dangerous, but there are a few blocks you probably want to stay away from when the kids are out of school. That's got more to do with the sea of guns floating about than any direct threat of being victimized, though. Using deadly weapons "for fun" in a crowded city leads to people getting shot even if that wasn't the intent.
posted by wierdo at 2:05 PM on January 17, 2021
We often think of all suburbs being the same and all cities being the same, but it's just not true. There are wide variations in how one can reasonably exist in both. Some suburbs (usually, but not always the older ones) have stuff reasonably close by. Some cities are largely hopeless without a car. Most of both are somewhere in between, with both walkable areas and car (or if you're lucky, bike) dependent areas.
One thing "ride sharing" has done is turn some of those places that were marginally walkable, but missing some services, into places where you really can get by without a car with a ride a couple times a month.
That's not to say having a car isn't pretty damn convenient in many cases, assuming you don't need to drive when traffic is bad and have a place to park the damn thing, anyway.
Bringing it back to politics, at least in my city the biggest thing separating the die hard Trump voters from everyone else are their insistence that cars are an absolute necessity and that the city is horribly dangerous. "The city" isn't dangerous, but there are a few blocks you probably want to stay away from when the kids are out of school. That's got more to do with the sea of guns floating about than any direct threat of being victimized, though. Using deadly weapons "for fun" in a crowded city leads to people getting shot even if that wasn't the intent.
posted by wierdo at 2:05 PM on January 17, 2021
Just a note, for people thinking about definitions of urban/rural when it comes to the US, because it blew someone's mind last week when I brought it up:
New York State is the size of England.
Not the whole island of GB, just the England part, in terms of land area.
And NYC and London's populations are both around 9 million.
The big difference?
New York State has about twenty million people.
England has Fifty-Six million people.
To get that kind of population density, you could move everyone living in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut into the area between the Hudson River and Lake Ontario, and still be a couple million people short in comparison.
By those lights, ALL of New York State, and by extension more or less all of the US, could be considered sub- or ex- 'Urban', depending on your definitions.
posted by bartleby at 2:55 PM on January 17, 2021 [9 favorites]
New York State is the size of England.
Not the whole island of GB, just the England part, in terms of land area.
And NYC and London's populations are both around 9 million.
The big difference?
New York State has about twenty million people.
England has Fifty-Six million people.
To get that kind of population density, you could move everyone living in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut into the area between the Hudson River and Lake Ontario, and still be a couple million people short in comparison.
By those lights, ALL of New York State, and by extension more or less all of the US, could be considered sub- or ex- 'Urban', depending on your definitions.
posted by bartleby at 2:55 PM on January 17, 2021 [9 favorites]
Tagging in on foreign transit:
I lived in Central Europe and San Jose, Costa Rica for a year each. The post-Soviet country was great: I could walk to a tram within 20 min in just about every neighborhood, and all the suburbs were set up around the tram connection with the city. There were many places closed to cars that trams had rails through. It was basically a hub and spoke network that worked well. SJ was all buses and it kind of sucked. The busy time traffic was as bad as any 90s depiction of LA freeways, but it was all city streets. If it wasn't pouring, I'd sometimes walk the two miles instead because I knew I'd make it on time.
Having also visited Hong Kong, Melbourne, NYC, DC, and San Francisco I can say that foreign transit is often remarkably better in being central and being convenient vs USA setups.
posted by cult_url_bias at 3:05 PM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
I lived in Central Europe and San Jose, Costa Rica for a year each. The post-Soviet country was great: I could walk to a tram within 20 min in just about every neighborhood, and all the suburbs were set up around the tram connection with the city. There were many places closed to cars that trams had rails through. It was basically a hub and spoke network that worked well. SJ was all buses and it kind of sucked. The busy time traffic was as bad as any 90s depiction of LA freeways, but it was all city streets. If it wasn't pouring, I'd sometimes walk the two miles instead because I knew I'd make it on time.
Having also visited Hong Kong, Melbourne, NYC, DC, and San Francisco I can say that foreign transit is often remarkably better in being central and being convenient vs USA setups.
posted by cult_url_bias at 3:05 PM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
I believe the rule of thumb is exurbs are what you get once you start building *outside* the ring road around a city. They're also probably most common in the South where cities didn't come into being with a plan. Obvious examples of this are cities like Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles all of which famously sprawl.
•
It's untrue that all Trumpistas are racist. Many were life-long Republicans and couldn't conceive of voting for a democrat (or a woman). Some were born-again and reassured by Pence's presence. Some were Hispanic and identify more as small business owners than people with cultural links to illegal immigrants, say. Some were amazingly wealthy and voted for Trump because he was making them money.
As for the insurrectionists, some of them were unquestionably racist or antisemitic or generally hateful. Many, I've been increasingly reading, are isolated and lonely and prone to believing in Q-anon and other such theories. Those folks amassed because it gave them a sense of purpose, people to meet online (and ultimately in person) and something to do. These are the folks who seemed aimless once they arrived at the capitol. They are quite distinct from the white supremacist cops who showed up, not to mention those in paramilitary gear, carrying weaponry or flexicuffs.
This morning, I heard Congressman Peter Meijer comment that the reason people are so loyal to Trump is because they are similarly low status, and the people who despise Trump also despise them.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:08 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
It's untrue that all Trumpistas are racist. Many were life-long Republicans and couldn't conceive of voting for a democrat (or a woman). Some were born-again and reassured by Pence's presence. Some were Hispanic and identify more as small business owners than people with cultural links to illegal immigrants, say. Some were amazingly wealthy and voted for Trump because he was making them money.
As for the insurrectionists, some of them were unquestionably racist or antisemitic or generally hateful. Many, I've been increasingly reading, are isolated and lonely and prone to believing in Q-anon and other such theories. Those folks amassed because it gave them a sense of purpose, people to meet online (and ultimately in person) and something to do. These are the folks who seemed aimless once they arrived at the capitol. They are quite distinct from the white supremacist cops who showed up, not to mention those in paramilitary gear, carrying weaponry or flexicuffs.
This morning, I heard Congressman Peter Meijer comment that the reason people are so loyal to Trump is because they are similarly low status, and the people who despise Trump also despise them.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:08 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
On the way to helping out at a busy exurban polling place this November, I encountered a large group waving Trump flags on the sidewalks at a busy intersection near the polling area. This burb has a lot of large homes and professional types who moved there in the late 90s and 2000s from suburbs with mostly smaller homes closer to the main city.
posted by greatalleycat at 3:10 PM on January 17, 2021
posted by greatalleycat at 3:10 PM on January 17, 2021
By those lights, ALL of New York State, and by extension more or less all of the US, could be considered sub- or ex- 'Urban', depending on your definitions.
New York State minus NYC is basically ex-urban. There are only four other cities in New York over 100,000 population, and only Buffalo is (barely) over a quarter million. None of them have any significant urban core to speak of in population or in area. The UK on the other hand has seven cities other than London with over 500,000 people in it.
Not to sound cliché but upstate New York is literally a cold wasteland pocketed by human settlement where the UK has agglomerated around dozens of city centers over 100K.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:11 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
New York State minus NYC is basically ex-urban. There are only four other cities in New York over 100,000 population, and only Buffalo is (barely) over a quarter million. None of them have any significant urban core to speak of in population or in area. The UK on the other hand has seven cities other than London with over 500,000 people in it.
Not to sound cliché but upstate New York is literally a cold wasteland pocketed by human settlement where the UK has agglomerated around dozens of city centers over 100K.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:11 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
This morning, I heard Congressman Peter Meijer comment that the reason people are so loyal to Trump is because they are similarly low status, and the people who despise Trump also despise them.
does he really know any low status people? maybe he walks by them when he's checking out one of his family's supermarkets?
really, he doesn't know - he couldn't
posted by pyramid termite at 3:31 PM on January 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
does he really know any low status people? maybe he walks by them when he's checking out one of his family's supermarkets?
really, he doesn't know - he couldn't
posted by pyramid termite at 3:31 PM on January 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
It's untrue that all Trumpistas are racist. Many were life-long Republicans and couldn't conceive of voting for a democrat (or a woman). Some were born-again and reassured by Pence's presence. Some were Hispanic and identify more as small business owners than people with cultural links to illegal immigrants, say. Some were amazingly wealthy and voted for Trump because he was making them money.
If Trump's unabashed white supremacy (and, frankly, McCain's, Romney's, Bush's, and Reagan's' unabashed white supremacy) isn't enough to dissuade you from voting for him, I don't really care whether or not you think you're a white supremacist.
Somebody who joins the Nazis because they like the uniforms is a fucking Nazi, full stop, and deserves what they fucking get.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:35 PM on January 17, 2021 [31 favorites]
If Trump's unabashed white supremacy (and, frankly, McCain's, Romney's, Bush's, and Reagan's' unabashed white supremacy) isn't enough to dissuade you from voting for him, I don't really care whether or not you think you're a white supremacist.
Somebody who joins the Nazis because they like the uniforms is a fucking Nazi, full stop, and deserves what they fucking get.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:35 PM on January 17, 2021 [31 favorites]
Yeah I think the way that people have put it is "Maybe all Trumpers aren't racist, they just don't think that racism is a deal breaker" and that's basically where I come down on it. They're not anti-racist, certainly.
posted by jessamyn at 3:37 PM on January 17, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 3:37 PM on January 17, 2021 [15 favorites]
and deserves what they fucking get.
I mean the problem is that they actually get more than they deserve and want to keep it that way.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:41 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I mean the problem is that they actually get more than they deserve and want to keep it that way.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:41 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm not familiar with the term "exurb", but I've been told that Melbourne has an unusually low population density. According to this page "Metropolitan Melbourne" has an area of around 10,000 sq. km., and a population of only about 5,000,000. And public transport in most areas sucks, a car is a practical necessity in the outlying suburbs.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:44 PM on January 17, 2021
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:44 PM on January 17, 2021
With all due respect, there's prejudice in characterizing 75 million people as racist too.
posted by Violet Blue at 4:06 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Violet Blue at 4:06 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
So I think it's interesting to note that exurbs are a hotbed of American white supremacy (and also just incredibly destructive for the environment, obvs), and it's important to dispel the fiction that all Trump supporters are economically anxious poor people, I don't think the causality is that exurbs breed white supremacists so much as just the exurbs collect them.I’d go further than collect to recognize that they were often created by them. Cars made long commutes possible but it seems highly likely that the reason this exploded after school integration is because a large number of white people deeply opposed having to share schools and other infrastructure and are willing to set up a new school district to avoid doing so. Even when people have massive commutes they’ll often oppose any sort of transit expansion because “it’ll attract crime” or whatever term they prefer to use to refer to black people.
With that history, it’s no surprise that you find plenty of people of means since they had the most to build fears of losing and the greatest means to move.
posted by adamsc at 4:06 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
Many, I've been increasingly reading, are isolated and lonely and prone to believing in Q-anon and other such theories. Those folks amassed because it gave them a sense of purpose, people to meet online (and ultimately in person) and something to do.
The same could be said of ISIS, but for some reason the FBI paid a lot of attention to one rather than the other.
posted by benzenedream at 4:07 PM on January 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
The same could be said of ISIS, but for some reason the FBI paid a lot of attention to one rather than the other.
posted by benzenedream at 4:07 PM on January 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
I, too, am not clear what an exurb is. Could anyone familiar with the Seattle area give me an example around here? (Seattle is weird, because the city is mostly single-family houses, but maybe we have exurbs anyway.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:11 PM on January 17, 2021
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:11 PM on January 17, 2021
The rural/urban distinction is one of the biggest predictors of Trump support.
I doubt this is significant. While rural areas are 97% of the U.S. they contain only 19% of the electorate. Even assuming a high affinity for Trump, they only represent a small minority of Trump's 47% support.
A much stronger predictor of Trump support is white evangelicalism, which overlaps with both rural and suburbs.
posted by JackFlash at 4:28 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
I doubt this is significant. While rural areas are 97% of the U.S. they contain only 19% of the electorate. Even assuming a high affinity for Trump, they only represent a small minority of Trump's 47% support.
A much stronger predictor of Trump support is white evangelicalism, which overlaps with both rural and suburbs.
posted by JackFlash at 4:28 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
With all due respect, there's prejudice in characterizing 75 million people as racist too.
How dare you say all those people who go to church are religious.
posted by bashing rocks together at 4:29 PM on January 17, 2021 [10 favorites]
How dare you say all those people who go to church are religious.
posted by bashing rocks together at 4:29 PM on January 17, 2021 [10 favorites]
With all due respect, there's prejudice in characterizing 75 million people as racist too.
Won't somebody please think of the white people?!?
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:34 PM on January 17, 2021 [14 favorites]
Won't somebody please think of the white people?!?
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:34 PM on January 17, 2021 [14 favorites]
It's a risky path to start debating if all Trump voters are racist, just in terms of quality of discussion here, but hard not to respond to the idea that "there's prejudice in characterizing 75 million people as racist too."
It's probably strategically a bad idea to focus on whether or not people are themselves racist, since so many people receive that as a slanderous insult to their being, and much more valuable to think about ideology and behavior as racist. I'm sure it's accurate to say that most Trump voters do not perceive themselves as racist. Nor do they intend for their actions to cause harm to people solely based on race. But there are deeply insidious consequences to denying that a racist ideology is racist. And Trumpism is absolutely racist. Trump policies have harm that is hyper focused on immigrants and Black people. It's actually pretty unimportant to know whether Trump or anyone holds racist beliefs in their hearts, what matters is their behaviors and the consequences of their actions.
posted by latkes at 4:43 PM on January 17, 2021 [26 favorites]
It's probably strategically a bad idea to focus on whether or not people are themselves racist, since so many people receive that as a slanderous insult to their being, and much more valuable to think about ideology and behavior as racist. I'm sure it's accurate to say that most Trump voters do not perceive themselves as racist. Nor do they intend for their actions to cause harm to people solely based on race. But there are deeply insidious consequences to denying that a racist ideology is racist. And Trumpism is absolutely racist. Trump policies have harm that is hyper focused on immigrants and Black people. It's actually pretty unimportant to know whether Trump or anyone holds racist beliefs in their hearts, what matters is their behaviors and the consequences of their actions.
posted by latkes at 4:43 PM on January 17, 2021 [26 favorites]
The term exurb is pretty fluid, but I've always kind of taken the term to refer to larger, less dense areas than even suburbs, but they have a certain vibe to them that is entirely different than a suburb, and it isn't a cultural vibe either. An exurb is all of the worst parts of a suburb, but magnified. I know the Portland Metro area the best, so can give examples around here.
The term Suburb has changed a ton int he last 50-70 years. I live in this neighborhood of Portland, and when my house was built in the 1950s, it was 100% fucking the suburbs. By todays definitions, it feels pretty urban (and more dense all the time thank goodness). Density isn't like the city core, and there are lots of single family homes, and they're usually on lots about 1/10th of an acre. Amenities are roughly spread evenly, but sorta cluster around main roads more or less. Even when I was in high school, this was technically considered part of portland, but it was NOT really considered urban. Transit is pretty chill to use here, depending on exactly where you need to go, but especially to the city core or to the airport.
Now, if you look at communities that were largely built in the 1970s and 1980s, I'll point to areas south of here in the Milwuakie/Gladstone areas (check out the neighborhood Glen Echo for examples), and aside from those towns original cores, lot size roughly doubles, houses get larger, amenities are almost exclusively on larger boulevards and 5 lane highways, or in business parks. You can kind of get by on transit here, sometimes in certain circumstances, but it is hard.
But exurbs, (citing Happy Valley as the example) jesus sideways shitting christ, the lot sizes get slightly bigger, the houses far larger, and the actual size of the developments is larger than in previous suburb iterations. The amenities are even more spread out to the point where properties can be semi-rural (but certain development areas are somewhat dense, just with giaaaaaant fuck houses) Transit basically doesn't work out here very well at all. You must travel by car to function. Sometimes smaller bedroom communities outside city cores outgrow their little anchor and become exurbs of a nearby city.
I really think the term suburb just needs updating, but exurb works too and describes a very specific type of modern suburb.
posted by furnace.heart at 4:45 PM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
The term Suburb has changed a ton int he last 50-70 years. I live in this neighborhood of Portland, and when my house was built in the 1950s, it was 100% fucking the suburbs. By todays definitions, it feels pretty urban (and more dense all the time thank goodness). Density isn't like the city core, and there are lots of single family homes, and they're usually on lots about 1/10th of an acre. Amenities are roughly spread evenly, but sorta cluster around main roads more or less. Even when I was in high school, this was technically considered part of portland, but it was NOT really considered urban. Transit is pretty chill to use here, depending on exactly where you need to go, but especially to the city core or to the airport.
Now, if you look at communities that were largely built in the 1970s and 1980s, I'll point to areas south of here in the Milwuakie/Gladstone areas (check out the neighborhood Glen Echo for examples), and aside from those towns original cores, lot size roughly doubles, houses get larger, amenities are almost exclusively on larger boulevards and 5 lane highways, or in business parks. You can kind of get by on transit here, sometimes in certain circumstances, but it is hard.
But exurbs, (citing Happy Valley as the example) jesus sideways shitting christ, the lot sizes get slightly bigger, the houses far larger, and the actual size of the developments is larger than in previous suburb iterations. The amenities are even more spread out to the point where properties can be semi-rural (but certain development areas are somewhat dense, just with giaaaaaant fuck houses) Transit basically doesn't work out here very well at all. You must travel by car to function. Sometimes smaller bedroom communities outside city cores outgrow their little anchor and become exurbs of a nearby city.
I really think the term suburb just needs updating, but exurb works too and describes a very specific type of modern suburb.
posted by furnace.heart at 4:45 PM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
My whole point was you can't characterize all of Trump's followers as racist anymore than you can characterize them all as religious — or any other single thing. There are simply too many of them. There may be some characteristics that many of them share: Some of you may say racism, others may say sacrilege, but the preconceived notion that all of them are X thing is the very definition of prejudice.
That also isn't some sort of veiled argument for white supremacy, so funny, ha, ha.
posted by Violet Blue at 4:47 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
That also isn't some sort of veiled argument for white supremacy, so funny, ha, ha.
posted by Violet Blue at 4:47 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Violet Blue: "With all due respect, there's prejudice in characterizing 75 million people as racist too."
They're either racist or they're OK with a racist president. I'm not prejudging them; I'm judging them by their actions and they voted for a openly white supremacist president.
posted by octothorpe at 4:51 PM on January 17, 2021 [38 favorites]
They're either racist or they're OK with a racist president. I'm not prejudging them; I'm judging them by their actions and they voted for a openly white supremacist president.
posted by octothorpe at 4:51 PM on January 17, 2021 [38 favorites]
My whole point was you can't characterize all of Trump's followers as racist anymore than you can characterize them all as religious — or any other single thing.
This mythical trump supporter: I can excuse racism but I draw the line at animal cruelty.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:53 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
This mythical trump supporter: I can excuse racism but I draw the line at animal cruelty.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:53 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
As a leftist PoC, I somewhat feel when this sort of discussion comes up like I'm the particle in a double slit experiment having to decide whether something is racist or classist
posted by polymodus at 4:57 PM on January 17, 2021 [28 favorites]
posted by polymodus at 4:57 PM on January 17, 2021 [28 favorites]
They're either racist or they're OK with a racist president. I'm not prejudging them; I'm judging them by their actions and they voted for a openly white supremacist president.
Not to mention the only accountability the vast majority of these people will ever face is someone disrespecting them for their shitty opinions and actions and it's still not fucking good enough for these snowflakes.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:58 PM on January 17, 2021 [11 favorites]
Not to mention the only accountability the vast majority of these people will ever face is someone disrespecting them for their shitty opinions and actions and it's still not fucking good enough for these snowflakes.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:58 PM on January 17, 2021 [11 favorites]
I somewhat feel when this sort of discussion comes up like I'm the particle in a double slit experiment having to decide whether something is racist or classist
As Einstein would put it:
As Einstein would put it:
It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of hate, but together they do.posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:01 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
there's prejudice in characterizing 75 million people as racist too
Can we just fucking not?
And maybe save our nuance for thinking about what's in the post and how development patterns reflect and influence people to vote to destroy the polity?
posted by ambrosen at 5:13 PM on January 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
Can we just fucking not?
And maybe save our nuance for thinking about what's in the post and how development patterns reflect and influence people to vote to destroy the polity?
posted by ambrosen at 5:13 PM on January 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
A Brazilian immigrant, bereft of her Disney waitressing job and with two children (one autistic) to support alone, voted for Trump in the hopes that he would open things up and she would be able to work again soon.
I’m not saying that she was right. I’m saying that voters have their reasons that reason cannot know, once you get out of the realm of people who are interested in politics.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:14 PM on January 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
I’m not saying that she was right. I’m saying that voters have their reasons that reason cannot know, once you get out of the realm of people who are interested in politics.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:14 PM on January 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
It's probably strategically a bad idea to focus on whether or not people are themselves racist, since so many people receive that as a slanderous insult to their being, and much more valuable to think about ideology and behavior as racist. I'm sure it's accurate to say that most Trump voters do not perceive themselves as racist. Nor do they intend for their actions to cause harm to people solely based on race. But there are deeply insidious consequences to denying that a racist ideology is racist. And Trumpism is absolutely racist.
@latkes, I agree with a lot of what you have to say. Calling someone racist is slanderous. Saying a behavior or ideology is racist is far more accurate, and I certainly don't disagree that Trumpism is racist. But I also don't think that voters are always logical, or even very informed. I found Louis Menand's 2006 New Yorker article The Unpolitical Animal memorable because it made this point so well:
posted by Violet Blue at 5:18 PM on January 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
@latkes, I agree with a lot of what you have to say. Calling someone racist is slanderous. Saying a behavior or ideology is racist is far more accurate, and I certainly don't disagree that Trumpism is racist. But I also don't think that voters are always logical, or even very informed. I found Louis Menand's 2006 New Yorker article The Unpolitical Animal memorable because it made this point so well:
Seventy per cent of Americans cannot name their senators or their congressman. Forty-nine per cent believe that the President has the power to suspend the Constitution. Only about thirty per cent name an issue when they explain why they voted the way they did, and only a fifth hold consistent opinions on issues over time. Rephrasing poll questions reveals that many people don’t understand the issues that they have just offered an opinion on. According to polls conducted in 1987 and 1989, for example, between twenty and twenty-five per cent of the public thinks that too little is being spent on welfare, and between sixty-three and sixty-five per cent feels that too little is being spent on assistance to the poor....So not only do people frequently not vote in the interest of others, they also frequently don't vote in their own interest either. The fact is, however, that Trump voters make up half the country, and we won't become a stronger more perfect union until we stop treating them as an undifferentiated mass who voted in bad faith. I believe in diversity and inclusion, but the inclusive part of inclusion means everyone: not just POC, not just LGBTQIA, not just good democrats of all stripes, white and otherwise, but also Trump voters.
posted by Violet Blue at 5:18 PM on January 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
Calling someone racist is slanderous.
Not if it's true.
posted by octothorpe at 5:23 PM on January 17, 2021 [23 favorites]
Not if it's true.
posted by octothorpe at 5:23 PM on January 17, 2021 [23 favorites]
@octothorpe, good catch. I oversummarized @latkes' much more refined point.
posted by Violet Blue at 5:30 PM on January 17, 2021
posted by Violet Blue at 5:30 PM on January 17, 2021
They're either racist or they're OK with a racist president.
I default to “definitely just racist” in this discussion. But if I was going to entertain any other answer, the question I've pondered has been... so Trump has just continuously Tweeted racist and white supremacist stuff since he created his Twitter account, being quite obviously tied into those circles follow-wise, and as POTUS: I remember, some time in 2017 I think it was, he re-tweeted some particularly violent CNN-related thing and someone here at MeFi pointed out that if you went and looked at the original poster's other Tweets, one of them was a screen shot of the CNN web site's list of anchors and journalists marked up to indicate which ones were Jewish.
Then, obviously, there was the tweeting of the “white power” video clip last year. (Meaning that, every time he subsequently told an audience “I am the least racist person in this room” he was implying that he had certain knowledge everybody else, including the PoC or whatever—or to the face of a WoC presidential debate moderator in one case—had done an explicit “white power” Tweet at least twice.)
My question is—did Trump supporters ever just ask him to not Tweet white supremacist and other racist stuff while serving as president? Via petition or something? Even the PoC supporters? Like I've had Trump supporters chuckle uncomfortably and tell me, “gee, I sure wish he'd stop Tweeting!” but has anyone heard of that specific request being made in any serious way?
posted by XMLicious at 5:44 PM on January 17, 2021 [10 favorites]
Another complicating factor is that there are numurous avowed racists who have seized the Trump moment to advance their agenda, and Trump has explicitly encouraged them to do so and both echos and initiates their racist propaganda - and then enacts their preferred racist policies! Anyway I don't think we have to come to consensus here on whether we must "include everyone". Basically, I think that's true if you mean we should come up with policies that benefit everyone (Medicare for All! Free college) but I don't think we need to "include everyone" if that means giving airtime to ideology that is racist. Again, a waste of time to argue over who is racist becuase we can literally never prove someone else's feelings or intent. Anyway, this is all a bit of a derail but so hard not get sucked in! Not just on metafilter but in the larger world.
posted by latkes at 5:57 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by latkes at 5:57 PM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
My whole point was you can't characterize all of Trump's followers as racist anymore than you can characterize them all as religious
Yes, you can. If you support a racist who has racist policies and delivers those racist policies, you’re committing a racist act and yes, you’re a fucking racist.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:09 PM on January 17, 2021 [29 favorites]
Yes, you can. If you support a racist who has racist policies and delivers those racist policies, you’re committing a racist act and yes, you’re a fucking racist.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:09 PM on January 17, 2021 [29 favorites]
No question about the avowed racists, and no I don't think we'll come to consensus today. But folks on the left have been asking who Trump voters are ever since 2016, only to find our answers are repeatedly incomplete. This article on the exurbs was yet another stab — and an interesting one.
As I mentioned earlier "This morning, I heard Congressman Peter Meijer comment that the reason people are so loyal to Trump is because they are similarly low status, and the people who despise Trump also despise them." Those of you who clench your teeth and call Trump voters racist do, indeed, despise them. How does that move us forward? How does that prevent another violent attack? How does that help advance our policies in the senate when it cost us $1 billion to elect Ossoff, and we're right on the edge? How does that not simply promulgate more hate in a country with divisions so great, not everyone believes Biden is the new president?
posted by Violet Blue at 6:25 PM on January 17, 2021
As I mentioned earlier "This morning, I heard Congressman Peter Meijer comment that the reason people are so loyal to Trump is because they are similarly low status, and the people who despise Trump also despise them." Those of you who clench your teeth and call Trump voters racist do, indeed, despise them. How does that move us forward? How does that prevent another violent attack? How does that help advance our policies in the senate when it cost us $1 billion to elect Ossoff, and we're right on the edge? How does that not simply promulgate more hate in a country with divisions so great, not everyone believes Biden is the new president?
posted by Violet Blue at 6:25 PM on January 17, 2021
I'm really fucking tired of people handwringing about unity and the need to bend the knee to the right and tip toe around calling a spade a spade because of some need to move forward and keep the peace with America's equivalent of an abusive spouse. Why in the hell is it Biden's responsibility to reason and work with the people who deny his legitimacy, or prove it?
Dems played that song with Obama and the right turned around and elected Trump. Sorry, not going to fall for that one again. Fuck racists and fuck people who vote repeatedly for racists.
posted by Karaage at 6:34 PM on January 17, 2021 [26 favorites]
Dems played that song with Obama and the right turned around and elected Trump. Sorry, not going to fall for that one again. Fuck racists and fuck people who vote repeatedly for racists.
posted by Karaage at 6:34 PM on January 17, 2021 [26 favorites]
As I mentioned earlier "This morning, I heard Congressman Peter Meijer comment that the reason people are so loyal to Trump is because they are similarly low status, and the people who despise Trump also despise them."
That a Congressman said it does not make it true.
Indeed, the extensive links in this post go into some detail that Trump's most ardent supporters are in fact comparatively high status and quite well off.
Those of you who clench your teeth and call Trump voters racist do, indeed, despise them.
Your appear to be equating the utterly unfounded and irrational hatred that Trumpites have for, say, people merely being brown, with the resentment that those people have toward Trumpites that literally want them dead and have taken steps to make that a reality.
You are drawing an equivalence between hating people because of immutable properties of who they are, and despising people for the choices they make.
These two things are not the same. It is completely reasonable to dislike people that want and are actively trying to oppress you.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:36 PM on January 17, 2021 [46 favorites]
That a Congressman said it does not make it true.
Indeed, the extensive links in this post go into some detail that Trump's most ardent supporters are in fact comparatively high status and quite well off.
Those of you who clench your teeth and call Trump voters racist do, indeed, despise them.
Your appear to be equating the utterly unfounded and irrational hatred that Trumpites have for, say, people merely being brown, with the resentment that those people have toward Trumpites that literally want them dead and have taken steps to make that a reality.
You are drawing an equivalence between hating people because of immutable properties of who they are, and despising people for the choices they make.
These two things are not the same. It is completely reasonable to dislike people that want and are actively trying to oppress you.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:36 PM on January 17, 2021 [46 favorites]
I haven't wondered about the soul of the Trumpist once since 2017. I don't need to understand them better because I understand them just fine - that's why I want them stopped. Not included, but stopped. Trumpism is incompatible with a functional pluralist society. It cannot be accommodated; it must be crushed. Do the most mollycoddled people in the history of planet Earth feel bad that I judge them for being part of a movement that tried to lynch Congress on a livestream? I'm not sure what to do about that. I know quite well what they've had to say about my feelings these last four years though.
They can rejoin the rest of us once they set their genocidal and fascist fantasies aside. It can be considered then.
The fact is, what these people want is not hard to grasp. They don't want to lose their status and they reject elections they do not win. They want to be the ingroup the law protects but does not constrain. They would like everyone else to be the outgroup that the law constrains, but does not protect. They wish to continue enjoying the benefits of civilization with zero responsibility or accountability to that civilization. They don't want to be fellow citizens with us; they want to be the Real American nobility, ruling over us all. I'm not willing to discuss meeting them in the middle on that, no.
posted by EatTheWeek at 6:43 PM on January 17, 2021 [41 favorites]
They can rejoin the rest of us once they set their genocidal and fascist fantasies aside. It can be considered then.
The fact is, what these people want is not hard to grasp. They don't want to lose their status and they reject elections they do not win. They want to be the ingroup the law protects but does not constrain. They would like everyone else to be the outgroup that the law constrains, but does not protect. They wish to continue enjoying the benefits of civilization with zero responsibility or accountability to that civilization. They don't want to be fellow citizens with us; they want to be the Real American nobility, ruling over us all. I'm not willing to discuss meeting them in the middle on that, no.
posted by EatTheWeek at 6:43 PM on January 17, 2021 [41 favorites]
Looking for a coherent ideology in Trump voters is pointless; Trumpism itself is incoherent and centered only on the leader himself. Trump and Fox could come out in favor or reparations and some significant fraction of the cult would pivot instantly to deny they had ever opposed it. The lure for a lot of people was emotional not rational, including a Trump boat parade's worth of racism.
posted by benzenedream at 6:51 PM on January 17, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 6:51 PM on January 17, 2021 [15 favorites]
It is completely reasonable to dislike people that want and are actively trying to oppress you.
Also completely reasonable to despise them, too. And to despise those who are tacitly complicit in their actions by virtue of voting with them and not distancing themselves from them - especially when they show their ultimate intent as they did at the Capitol. Lie down with dogs...
The only remotely even tactical reason to engage in discussion with them, if only perhaps to slow them down, would be if they were the majority in the country, and they aren't even that. They need to be opposed, outvoted, and made to fear the consequences of acting violently and speaking their hatred - to be ultimately neutered politically and socially.
It is also necessary to undo the gerrymandering, campaign finance law gutting, and other voter suppression measures the Republicans have put in place over the last 40 years, and to go ahead and implement broad socio-economic reforms that will make the New Deal look timid, the latter not so much to show Trumpistas that things like universal health care, etc., actually benefit them too, though of course those measures do to some extent (because their resistance to such measures that help people not like themselves, i.e., people of colour, the poor, immigrants, etc. is based in their perception that they, as white people (or those who see themselves as honorary white people), will lose their special privileged status and exclusive grip on power), as to help all those disadvantaged people to be able to look up from their daily grinds of basic survival to find the time to be more politically engaged and thus assert their actual majority status in the US.
What won't work is engaging in naïve calls for "unity" and "healing" (which are hugely premature in the absence of contrition and apology and renunciation of the fascistic aims and attitudes of the movement Trump energized.) We've already seen what happens when a desire to avoid confrontation - a preference for "a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice", in MLK, Jr.'s words - takes precedence over the unpleasant but necessary work of confronting and defeating racists and fascists when they try to push back: the abandonment of Reconstruction and the acquiescence to the South's reestablishment of white oppression of black people, as part of the deal made to secure Rutherford B. Hayes' electoral victory over Samuel Tilden. It meant that the Civil War was only militarily won, not socially and ideologically, and that it continued and continues to this day as a cold war (frequently hot if you were black, as the black residents of Tulsa, OK and Wilmington, NC could've attested), which, more than ever, threatens to erupt into a fully hot one again, however ultimately futile it may turn out to be.
It's time to win the Civil War for once and for all. I hope it's without major bloodshed, by the means I outlined above, but the more times we let racists and fascists off the hook, the more likely it becomes that there will be blood.
posted by Philofacts at 7:23 PM on January 17, 2021 [20 favorites]
Also completely reasonable to despise them, too. And to despise those who are tacitly complicit in their actions by virtue of voting with them and not distancing themselves from them - especially when they show their ultimate intent as they did at the Capitol. Lie down with dogs...
The only remotely even tactical reason to engage in discussion with them, if only perhaps to slow them down, would be if they were the majority in the country, and they aren't even that. They need to be opposed, outvoted, and made to fear the consequences of acting violently and speaking their hatred - to be ultimately neutered politically and socially.
It is also necessary to undo the gerrymandering, campaign finance law gutting, and other voter suppression measures the Republicans have put in place over the last 40 years, and to go ahead and implement broad socio-economic reforms that will make the New Deal look timid, the latter not so much to show Trumpistas that things like universal health care, etc., actually benefit them too, though of course those measures do to some extent (because their resistance to such measures that help people not like themselves, i.e., people of colour, the poor, immigrants, etc. is based in their perception that they, as white people (or those who see themselves as honorary white people), will lose their special privileged status and exclusive grip on power), as to help all those disadvantaged people to be able to look up from their daily grinds of basic survival to find the time to be more politically engaged and thus assert their actual majority status in the US.
What won't work is engaging in naïve calls for "unity" and "healing" (which are hugely premature in the absence of contrition and apology and renunciation of the fascistic aims and attitudes of the movement Trump energized.) We've already seen what happens when a desire to avoid confrontation - a preference for "a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice", in MLK, Jr.'s words - takes precedence over the unpleasant but necessary work of confronting and defeating racists and fascists when they try to push back: the abandonment of Reconstruction and the acquiescence to the South's reestablishment of white oppression of black people, as part of the deal made to secure Rutherford B. Hayes' electoral victory over Samuel Tilden. It meant that the Civil War was only militarily won, not socially and ideologically, and that it continued and continues to this day as a cold war (frequently hot if you were black, as the black residents of Tulsa, OK and Wilmington, NC could've attested), which, more than ever, threatens to erupt into a fully hot one again, however ultimately futile it may turn out to be.
It's time to win the Civil War for once and for all. I hope it's without major bloodshed, by the means I outlined above, but the more times we let racists and fascists off the hook, the more likely it becomes that there will be blood.
posted by Philofacts at 7:23 PM on January 17, 2021 [20 favorites]
Mod note: Hey, Violet Blue, I think everyone understands your point of view, but it's not great to demand that people who have been subject to hatred and abuse from Trump voters just try harder to understand their abusers, and the thread can probably move on from that now.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:32 PM on January 17, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:32 PM on January 17, 2021 [16 favorites]
The idea that you could use raw numbers to argue your point - essentially, “75 million people can’t all be racist” - is terrible. Something like 95% of Americans with the power to vote supported slavery until the 1850s. The fact that large numbers are in play has. K bearing on the fact that a dominant and successful idea can be wholly racist.
Also, the tokenism in discussing the notion that this or that Brazilian waitress or Latino business owner voted for trump does not mean that the act was not an act of racism. People of color can and do perpetuate racism. The fact remains: Trumpism
Is built on racism; there are no Trump supporters that have not tacitly or overly endorsed racism.
posted by Miko at 7:33 PM on January 17, 2021 [31 favorites]
Also, the tokenism in discussing the notion that this or that Brazilian waitress or Latino business owner voted for trump does not mean that the act was not an act of racism. People of color can and do perpetuate racism. The fact remains: Trumpism
Is built on racism; there are no Trump supporters that have not tacitly or overly endorsed racism.
posted by Miko at 7:33 PM on January 17, 2021 [31 favorites]
Violet Blue - I think you might be arguing against definitions.
"All Trump Voters" might not be racist (implied as Caucasian/ White- identifying) against anyone not Caucasian/ White-identifying.
There is a term - insular - that describes someone who doesn't care (and is implied as antipathic to) anyone not of their own identity/ experiences.
A lot of this demographic is indeed racist in the classical sense of the word, but there is a large segment of that bloc of voters who don't hate because of ethnicity but hate because of threats to their perceived and actual privileges.
Privileges that are largely unearned and granted because of affiliation with systemic racism and classism.
posted by porpoise at 7:34 PM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
"All Trump Voters" might not be racist (implied as Caucasian/ White- identifying) against anyone not Caucasian/ White-identifying.
There is a term - insular - that describes someone who doesn't care (and is implied as antipathic to) anyone not of their own identity/ experiences.
A lot of this demographic is indeed racist in the classical sense of the word, but there is a large segment of that bloc of voters who don't hate because of ethnicity but hate because of threats to their perceived and actual privileges.
Privileges that are largely unearned and granted because of affiliation with systemic racism and classism.
posted by porpoise at 7:34 PM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
The only remotely even tactical reason to engage in discussion with them, if only perhaps to slow them down, would be if they were the majority in the country, and they aren't even that. They need to be opposed, outvoted, and made to fear the consequences of acting violently and speaking their hatred - to be ultimately neutered politically and socially.
I’m gonna guess you don’t live in a state that went for Trump by 23 points.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:41 PM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
I’m gonna guess you don’t live in a state that went for Trump by 23 points.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:41 PM on January 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
I disagree with Violet Blue in that I don't think identifying the racist nature of someone's polical actions is slander. And while there are some Trump supporters who are concerned about economics, or child abuse (for QAnon believers - though their concern for fictional children doesn't extend to actual children in cages), the majority seem to be driven by racial animosity and xenophobia. It's there in the antimmigrant policies, the rhetoric of making "America Great Again" harkening back to segregation and Jim Crow.
But Violet Blue does have a good point in that if Americans wish to stay in the same country with one another, the left will have to come to accept the humanity - the often flawed, mistaken, and sometimes hate filled - humanity of the right, even the right must come to accept the humanity and rights of racial minorities. Accepting someone's humanity doesn't mean forgiving them, excusing what they have done or supported the doing of - but it does mean seeing them as complex individuals in which racial animosity can coexist with sincerely held beliefs about gun rights or taxes or lots of other things that are open to political debate (unlike racism). We can't just write them off, because they will continue to vote and sway power - and affect all of our lives (including those of the rest of the world). Short of stripping them of their votes or sending them all to re-education camps (something I'm not personally willing to consider), how do we address this divide? How to convince them that Black lives - and Indigenous lives, immigrant lives, disabled and poor lives - really do matter?
We won't win all of them. I'm not holding out for one of the Nazi t-shirt wearing guys to be speaking at a B'nai B'rith meeting any time in the future, and I'm happy to wait for a generation of Reaganites to die off. But Trump has his young supporters and the numbers of people who voted for him increased (fortunately not by enough). But there is still 48 or 49% of the voting public who despite everything - corruption, incompetence, children in cages, mass graves, suggestions to inject bleach(!) - still support him. Those who are not completely lost to extremism need to be pulled back into civil and democratic discourse with the other half of the country.
posted by jb at 7:43 PM on January 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
But Violet Blue does have a good point in that if Americans wish to stay in the same country with one another, the left will have to come to accept the humanity - the often flawed, mistaken, and sometimes hate filled - humanity of the right, even the right must come to accept the humanity and rights of racial minorities. Accepting someone's humanity doesn't mean forgiving them, excusing what they have done or supported the doing of - but it does mean seeing them as complex individuals in which racial animosity can coexist with sincerely held beliefs about gun rights or taxes or lots of other things that are open to political debate (unlike racism). We can't just write them off, because they will continue to vote and sway power - and affect all of our lives (including those of the rest of the world). Short of stripping them of their votes or sending them all to re-education camps (something I'm not personally willing to consider), how do we address this divide? How to convince them that Black lives - and Indigenous lives, immigrant lives, disabled and poor lives - really do matter?
We won't win all of them. I'm not holding out for one of the Nazi t-shirt wearing guys to be speaking at a B'nai B'rith meeting any time in the future, and I'm happy to wait for a generation of Reaganites to die off. But Trump has his young supporters and the numbers of people who voted for him increased (fortunately not by enough). But there is still 48 or 49% of the voting public who despite everything - corruption, incompetence, children in cages, mass graves, suggestions to inject bleach(!) - still support him. Those who are not completely lost to extremism need to be pulled back into civil and democratic discourse with the other half of the country.
posted by jb at 7:43 PM on January 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
Has the material of Kenzie Lutece been posted here yet? They have great videos, but one fits here perfectly.
It is called The Religious Right: Judeo-Christianity, Capitalism, & Anti-Semitism but it goes over the very basics of what lead to them to loving Trump, it's not just an explanation of the antiSemitism. This is especially true of the first 2/3 of the video. As a former fundamentalist Christian, that left at the age of 30, it is pretty accurate and taught me things about my former faith I did not know, especially the background on totalitarianism always leading to or consisting of anti religiousness for them. If it is already been posted here please delete my post.
posted by RuvaBlue at 7:46 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
It is called The Religious Right: Judeo-Christianity, Capitalism, & Anti-Semitism but it goes over the very basics of what lead to them to loving Trump, it's not just an explanation of the antiSemitism. This is especially true of the first 2/3 of the video. As a former fundamentalist Christian, that left at the age of 30, it is pretty accurate and taught me things about my former faith I did not know, especially the background on totalitarianism always leading to or consisting of anti religiousness for them. If it is already been posted here please delete my post.
posted by RuvaBlue at 7:46 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
anyone remember the Nixon hand wavey phrase?.....oh, he did what all the other presidents did, but got caught.
"Looking for a coherent ideology in Trump voters is pointless; Trumpism itself is incoherent and centered only on the leader himself"
Bingo. As true in discussion 2015 as today.
The ideaolgy is for the worker, the idea is for those who control...This way, the business end of society functions and those in it are left for more orders, more clarification. Hitler had no real ideology amongst the Ghasts who served because he divided them, let them fight for another's power and that trickled down so ideology becomes a terminus of disbelief and infighting culminating into chaos and war.
No one dare speak the truth. Like Nixon, the madness turned sour when the president spied and lied on US.
posted by clavdivs at 7:47 PM on January 17, 2021
"Looking for a coherent ideology in Trump voters is pointless; Trumpism itself is incoherent and centered only on the leader himself"
Bingo. As true in discussion 2015 as today.
The ideaolgy is for the worker, the idea is for those who control...This way, the business end of society functions and those in it are left for more orders, more clarification. Hitler had no real ideology amongst the Ghasts who served because he divided them, let them fight for another's power and that trickled down so ideology becomes a terminus of disbelief and infighting culminating into chaos and war.
No one dare speak the truth. Like Nixon, the madness turned sour when the president spied and lied on US.
posted by clavdivs at 7:47 PM on January 17, 2021
the left will have to come to accept the humanity - the often flawed, mistaken, and sometimes hate filled - humanity of the right
I reject the premise that “the left,” whoever that is, has ever rejected the humanity of the right. Rejecting actions and ideology is very much not rejecting humanity. In fact, we seem to have done nothing but deeply and searchingly probe their humanity in a concerned and confused manner for five years, trying to understand the seeds of their toxic behavior - this FPP being yet another (good).
However, I don’t think you can convincingly argue the reverse is true. Let’s end this gaslighting that “the left” has failed to understand, when non trumpers have spent years trying to understand. The only conclusion is that status anxieties, massive inequality and economic change, and modern alienation have been mobilized by fascism. It turns out it’s not that complicated.
posted by Miko at 7:56 PM on January 17, 2021 [37 favorites]
I reject the premise that “the left,” whoever that is, has ever rejected the humanity of the right. Rejecting actions and ideology is very much not rejecting humanity. In fact, we seem to have done nothing but deeply and searchingly probe their humanity in a concerned and confused manner for five years, trying to understand the seeds of their toxic behavior - this FPP being yet another (good).
However, I don’t think you can convincingly argue the reverse is true. Let’s end this gaslighting that “the left” has failed to understand, when non trumpers have spent years trying to understand. The only conclusion is that status anxieties, massive inequality and economic change, and modern alienation have been mobilized by fascism. It turns out it’s not that complicated.
posted by Miko at 7:56 PM on January 17, 2021 [37 favorites]
...it’s not that complicated... [cbc.ca]
In response to inflammatory US-style political rhetoric from members of the 'Progressive Conservative' party, Canadian Federal Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole made a statement saying there is "no place for the far right" in his party.
"The Conservatives are a moderate, pragmatic, mainstream party — as old as Confederation — that sits squarely in the centre of Canadian politics," O'Toole said.
"My singular focus is to get Canada's economy back on track as quickly as possible to create jobs and secure a strong future for all Canadians. There is no place for the far right in our party."
--
Extremism on the "right" must be (I hope!) causing enough disdain in Canada to oppose this kind of batshittery. We've had Q-themed and rump-supporting and anti-COVID breakouts in our urban centers and anti-Liberal/ NDP provinces to be concerning.
But if a wannabe leader of the Conservative party up here makes a statement like that, I feel better that Canada's media is still mostly reality-based and the crazy is bleedover from the vast reach of unfettered crazy paid-for-agenda US-based propaganda-media (and fucking Facebook and the ilk).
posted by porpoise at 8:12 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
In response to inflammatory US-style political rhetoric from members of the 'Progressive Conservative' party, Canadian Federal Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole made a statement saying there is "no place for the far right" in his party.
"The Conservatives are a moderate, pragmatic, mainstream party — as old as Confederation — that sits squarely in the centre of Canadian politics," O'Toole said.
"My singular focus is to get Canada's economy back on track as quickly as possible to create jobs and secure a strong future for all Canadians. There is no place for the far right in our party."
--
Extremism on the "right" must be (I hope!) causing enough disdain in Canada to oppose this kind of batshittery. We've had Q-themed and rump-supporting and anti-COVID breakouts in our urban centers and anti-Liberal/ NDP provinces to be concerning.
But if a wannabe leader of the Conservative party up here makes a statement like that, I feel better that Canada's media is still mostly reality-based and the crazy is bleedover from the vast reach of unfettered crazy paid-for-agenda US-based propaganda-media (and fucking Facebook and the ilk).
posted by porpoise at 8:12 PM on January 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
The fact is, however, that Trump voters make up half the country
I wish people would stop saying this. 74 million is not half of 300 million. Even if we are taking non-voters into account. There's a reason why Republicans are constantly gerrymandering and pulling shenanigans. They need to cheat to win, because they don't have the numbers. I'm all for acknowledging a segment of the population, but I'm not going to inflate them up either.
posted by ishmael at 9:57 PM on January 17, 2021 [29 favorites]
I wish people would stop saying this. 74 million is not half of 300 million. Even if we are taking non-voters into account. There's a reason why Republicans are constantly gerrymandering and pulling shenanigans. They need to cheat to win, because they don't have the numbers. I'm all for acknowledging a segment of the population, but I'm not going to inflate them up either.
posted by ishmael at 9:57 PM on January 17, 2021 [29 favorites]
Racism, being systemic and institutional, wants you to individualize itself and the discussion surrounding it.
posted by runcifex at 1:36 AM on January 18, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by runcifex at 1:36 AM on January 18, 2021 [7 favorites]
Those of you who clench your teeth and call Trump voters racist do, indeed, despise them. How does that move us forward? How does that prevent another violent attack? How does that help advance our policies in the senate when it cost us $1 billion to elect Ossoff, and we're right on the edge? How does that not simply promulgate more hate in a country with divisions so great, not everyone believes Biden is the new president?
Ah yes, the classic "but you're the intolerant one, for not tolerating the intolerance!"
It's not as clever as you think.
posted by Dysk at 2:07 AM on January 18, 2021 [20 favorites]
Ah yes, the classic "but you're the intolerant one, for not tolerating the intolerance!"
It's not as clever as you think.
posted by Dysk at 2:07 AM on January 18, 2021 [20 favorites]
That's quite an absurd reductio, at least when you're talking to the average MeFite.
It's undeniably true that a large fraction of Trump's voters are indeed irredeemably racist shitbags. It's also true that a large fraction are cult members who are part of a new satanic panic who can't hear anything that doesn't fit that worldview at the moment. There are also a small fraction who don't know shit and just tick the box because that's what they've always done and last time they read a news article was sometime in the early 2000s.
Nobody is asking anyone here to personally reach out to any of these people, but it also does nobody any favors to lump them all into the same damn worldview.
At the moment, the better course of action is to turn non-voters into voters, because there are at least as many out there as Trump's entire vote total. However, it behooves those of us who have the capacity and capability to do so to also inform the uninformed and help to deprogram the cult members whenever the opportunity presents itself, otherwise we will end up with 70 million virulently racist shitbags in our midst. By all rights, that's work should fall upon white people. It would be quite shitty to ask the victims of our sick system to do that work, but I haven't seen anyone here making that argument in a long while.
posted by wierdo at 2:53 AM on January 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
It's undeniably true that a large fraction of Trump's voters are indeed irredeemably racist shitbags. It's also true that a large fraction are cult members who are part of a new satanic panic who can't hear anything that doesn't fit that worldview at the moment. There are also a small fraction who don't know shit and just tick the box because that's what they've always done and last time they read a news article was sometime in the early 2000s.
Nobody is asking anyone here to personally reach out to any of these people, but it also does nobody any favors to lump them all into the same damn worldview.
At the moment, the better course of action is to turn non-voters into voters, because there are at least as many out there as Trump's entire vote total. However, it behooves those of us who have the capacity and capability to do so to also inform the uninformed and help to deprogram the cult members whenever the opportunity presents itself, otherwise we will end up with 70 million virulently racist shitbags in our midst. By all rights, that's work should fall upon white people. It would be quite shitty to ask the victims of our sick system to do that work, but I haven't seen anyone here making that argument in a long while.
posted by wierdo at 2:53 AM on January 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
Mod note: Aaaaand, this is the reason we don't have megathreads anymore, and lord willing will not again after wednesday. The u n b e l i e v a b l e popularity of the neverending exactly how many trumpists are racists and why can't we be nicer to them argument has filled thousands upon thousands of paragraphs in the last four years and if people are missing the thrill of wallowing in it yet again, please just go back and reread all that sameness over again on your own. There is absolutely nothing new here, I promise you. Nothing at all. On the other hand, if anyone would like to discuss the post topic, that's still an option.
posted by taz (staff) at 3:10 AM on January 18, 2021 [37 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 3:10 AM on January 18, 2021 [37 favorites]
I don't think it's particularly useful to characterize all Trump voters as racist, but the initial premise of the posted links is that selfishness is okay. If you don't want to pay taxes in the city, move to the suburbs. Of course, your company doesn't pay a living wage, and your party worked tirelessly to remove\disable ACA healthcare and social supports, but homeless and poor people aren't *your* problem. It's expensive and inconvenient to do a lot of things that exist for the common good. Taxes pay for parks, museums, education for everyone including kids who need more expensive education due to disabilities, hospitals, libraries, etc. A lot of the benefits of city taxes are available to suburbanites who can easily come in to the city for them, then leave. The No-Tax crew also screwed higher education, so non-wealthy people have lost that ability to educate themselves into the next class.
Calling racists racist is slander? Everyone who voted for Trump knew, or should have known, that he was raised racist, has a history of systemic racism in his businesses, has behaved in an appallingly racist manner. So many dogwhistles I feel sorry for the dogs of DC. Racism as a feeling is not actionable, but racist actions are.
Also, all of the white flight and suburban behavior are directly feeding Climate Crisis, the GOP is not just a denier of Climate Crisis, but is actively working to make it worse, because Profit. Places that have embraced alternative energy get cheaper energy, and that's even before you factor in in the climate cost.
Trumpers make it explicitly, loudly clear that they despise people who are not white and not wealthy. Why should I embrace them? For 4 years, I've heard: We Won, he's President, fuck your feelings and get over it and now that Biden is 2 days from the Oval Office, it's Why are you so mean to us; we want Unity and, by the way, ignore everything we screwed up.
posted by theora55 at 5:44 AM on January 18, 2021 [14 favorites]
Calling racists racist is slander? Everyone who voted for Trump knew, or should have known, that he was raised racist, has a history of systemic racism in his businesses, has behaved in an appallingly racist manner. So many dogwhistles I feel sorry for the dogs of DC. Racism as a feeling is not actionable, but racist actions are.
Also, all of the white flight and suburban behavior are directly feeding Climate Crisis, the GOP is not just a denier of Climate Crisis, but is actively working to make it worse, because Profit. Places that have embraced alternative energy get cheaper energy, and that's even before you factor in in the climate cost.
Trumpers make it explicitly, loudly clear that they despise people who are not white and not wealthy. Why should I embrace them? For 4 years, I've heard: We Won, he's President, fuck your feelings and get over it and now that Biden is 2 days from the Oval Office, it's Why are you so mean to us; we want Unity and, by the way, ignore everything we screwed up.
posted by theora55 at 5:44 AM on January 18, 2021 [14 favorites]
Could anyone familiar with the Seattle area give me an example around here?
I am not particularly familiar with Seattle, but Skagit County is often mentioned as an exurban Seattle area.
posted by Not A Thing at 6:52 AM on January 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
I am not particularly familiar with Seattle, but Skagit County is often mentioned as an exurban Seattle area.
posted by Not A Thing at 6:52 AM on January 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, if anyone would like to discuss the post topic, that's still an option.
There's no honest way to discuss the topic of the subject of American suburbs without addressing the implicit and often explicit racism built-in to their establishment and continuing existence.
posted by octothorpe at 6:57 AM on January 18, 2021 [10 favorites]
There's no honest way to discuss the topic of the subject of American suburbs without addressing the implicit and often explicit racism built-in to their establishment and continuing existence.
posted by octothorpe at 6:57 AM on January 18, 2021 [10 favorites]
Anyway, an exurb is a suburb that’s further out than the place where *I* live.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:58 AM on January 18, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:58 AM on January 18, 2021 [6 favorites]
What's interesting to me is that exurbs are an American phenomenon. I've done a little analysis looking at the four major Anglosphere countries (using gridded population data), and the US is a clear outlier in what share of population is in that low-density exurban fringe.
There were serious federal laws that created suburbs and then exurbs that I don't see anyone mention. First, I seriously disagree with the framing of a lot of these articles.
Let's get the history correct first:
1. The US always built supersized roads, from it's beginning, which enabled mass adoption of cars, before there were cars.
2. Federal subsidy of home loans (a good thing) came with many stupid covenants that primed the creation of suburbs and defined growth.
3. This enabled cars, which was not a big deal until the Great Depression.
4. During the Great Depression, downtown was bulldozed for parking. I'm not looking up that the stats, but I think 25% of the buildings in LA, Chicago, and a few others were bulldozed for paid parking lots. Houston (one of the cities mentioned as a sprawl poster child) had over 500k in population and over 35% of its downtown buildings bulldozed.
5. Post WWII, the subsidization of highway travel by the Federal Government came into earnest. This involved bulldozing neighborhoods to build highways so that existing suburban commuters could get to downtown. 'Suburban communities' started being built in about 1900.
6. This allowed suburbs to be in reasonable commuting distance via auto.
7. San Francisco had the first modern zoning code with the explicit goal of maximized property values in the late 1940s. It created modern master planned communities (within the city limits), made plans to bulldoze more of traditional development patterns, and relied on federal funding to do it.
8. LA downzoned in the 1960s, from an expected population of over 10 million down to 5, and later down to 4 million (about where it is today).
9. The master planned communities, envisioned in California, were amped up everywhere else where land was cheap, which was where builders built because it was the only place they could build. If you look at the stats, for every multi-family building unit built between like 1980 and 2010, 1000 houses were built. That's an example of really bad federal policy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:03 AM on January 18, 2021 [15 favorites]
There were serious federal laws that created suburbs and then exurbs that I don't see anyone mention. First, I seriously disagree with the framing of a lot of these articles.
Let's get the history correct first:
1. The US always built supersized roads, from it's beginning, which enabled mass adoption of cars, before there were cars.
2. Federal subsidy of home loans (a good thing) came with many stupid covenants that primed the creation of suburbs and defined growth.
3. This enabled cars, which was not a big deal until the Great Depression.
4. During the Great Depression, downtown was bulldozed for parking. I'm not looking up that the stats, but I think 25% of the buildings in LA, Chicago, and a few others were bulldozed for paid parking lots. Houston (one of the cities mentioned as a sprawl poster child) had over 500k in population and over 35% of its downtown buildings bulldozed.
5. Post WWII, the subsidization of highway travel by the Federal Government came into earnest. This involved bulldozing neighborhoods to build highways so that existing suburban commuters could get to downtown. 'Suburban communities' started being built in about 1900.
6. This allowed suburbs to be in reasonable commuting distance via auto.
7. San Francisco had the first modern zoning code with the explicit goal of maximized property values in the late 1940s. It created modern master planned communities (within the city limits), made plans to bulldoze more of traditional development patterns, and relied on federal funding to do it.
8. LA downzoned in the 1960s, from an expected population of over 10 million down to 5, and later down to 4 million (about where it is today).
9. The master planned communities, envisioned in California, were amped up everywhere else where land was cheap, which was where builders built because it was the only place they could build. If you look at the stats, for every multi-family building unit built between like 1980 and 2010, 1000 houses were built. That's an example of really bad federal policy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:03 AM on January 18, 2021 [15 favorites]
Important to add to #2, those federal loans were distributed according to racist zoning determinations, creating redlining, and were not available to rehab older city housing. That’s part of the reason early suburbanization was an inherently racist process.
Similarly, current zoning policy often works against density and redevelopment of older built stock, reflecting a bias against investing in spaces occupied by black, brown, and poor people, further encouraging exurbs where few restrictions apply and loans/investors much easier to get.
posted by Miko at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2021 [10 favorites]
Similarly, current zoning policy often works against density and redevelopment of older built stock, reflecting a bias against investing in spaces occupied by black, brown, and poor people, further encouraging exurbs where few restrictions apply and loans/investors much easier to get.
posted by Miko at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2021 [10 favorites]
My opinion: Density definitions for exurbs are wrong. Exurbs can be dense, suburbs can be dense. Suburbs in the Dallas and Houston area are more uniformly dense than the main cities. So therefore a suburb is a town/city directly adjacent to the main city, and exurbs are the next layer. In Seattle, Kirland would be a suburb, Bothell and Redmond would be examples of exurbs. And this continues until the economic pull becomes enough for them to be considered peers and they are split. A modern example would be San Francisco and San Jose.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
Important to add to #2, those federal loans were distributed according to racist zoning determinations, creating redlining, and were not available to rehab older city housing. That’s part of the reason early suburbanization was an inherently racist process.
Similarly, current zoning policy often works against density and redevelopment of older built stock, reflecting a bias against investing in spaces occupied by black, brown, and poor people, further encouraging exurbs where few restrictions apply and loans/investors much easier to get.
Exactly! People didn't make these choices of their own volition alone, and the same exact policies are being pushed to this day in Portland (Rose Quarter freeway expansion is going to displace people), Houston (Katy Freeway expansion displaces a lot of people), and other places.
Honestly the best thing Biden (or a Democratic congress) could do is to completely blow up Federal housing, highway, and economic development funding, and start over from scratch. That's how bad it is.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:14 AM on January 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
Similarly, current zoning policy often works against density and redevelopment of older built stock, reflecting a bias against investing in spaces occupied by black, brown, and poor people, further encouraging exurbs where few restrictions apply and loans/investors much easier to get.
Exactly! People didn't make these choices of their own volition alone, and the same exact policies are being pushed to this day in Portland (Rose Quarter freeway expansion is going to displace people), Houston (Katy Freeway expansion displaces a lot of people), and other places.
Honestly the best thing Biden (or a Democratic congress) could do is to completely blow up Federal housing, highway, and economic development funding, and start over from scratch. That's how bad it is.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:14 AM on January 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
Some local definitions of exurbs, from a Twin Cities perspective:
Are you inside or outside of the MUSA line? If you're outside, you're an exurb or you're a farm, definitely. If you're barely inside, you still might be an exurb. More pointedly, if you have a septic tank instead of a sewer line, you're more likely to be an exurb.
If you're a historic small community that is surrounded by more recent developments (Stillwater, Anoka, etc.)--you're not an exurb, but some of your neighbors might be.
If you get regular service from Metro Transit, something beyond one-a-day commuter buses, you're probably not an exurb.
Fridley, definitely not an exurb, at least not anymore. Coon Rapids or Blaine? Maybe recently, but not now--that's my gut reaction. Just regular suburbs in my mind, but one could argue. Andover, Ham Lake, East Bethel? Totally exurban.
posted by gimonca at 8:30 AM on January 18, 2021
Are you inside or outside of the MUSA line? If you're outside, you're an exurb or you're a farm, definitely. If you're barely inside, you still might be an exurb. More pointedly, if you have a septic tank instead of a sewer line, you're more likely to be an exurb.
If you're a historic small community that is surrounded by more recent developments (Stillwater, Anoka, etc.)--you're not an exurb, but some of your neighbors might be.
If you get regular service from Metro Transit, something beyond one-a-day commuter buses, you're probably not an exurb.
Fridley, definitely not an exurb, at least not anymore. Coon Rapids or Blaine? Maybe recently, but not now--that's my gut reaction. Just regular suburbs in my mind, but one could argue. Andover, Ham Lake, East Bethel? Totally exurban.
posted by gimonca at 8:30 AM on January 18, 2021
The fact is, however, that Trump voters make up half the country
I wish people would stop saying this. 74 million is not half of 300 million. Even if we are taking non-voters into account. There's a reason why Republicans are constantly gerrymandering and pulling shenanigans. They need to cheat to win, because they don't have the numbers. I'm all for acknowledging a segment of the population, but I'm not going to inflate them up either.
I actually think this election disproved the theory that if more people voted the republicans would lose. More people did vote! And Trump did lose! But it really wasn't that much of a difference. 26 million more people voted this time and Biden only won by 7M (Hilary won by 4M. There's wasnt much movement in the state legislatures or at the house and the senate (I know we won the two seats, but its only 2, and I know that they were hard won and its super awesome that we did, but there was no landslide anywhere in this election).
(all of this with the caveat that the new voters were not uniform across the country and made more of a difference in some places than others)
So the only conclusion I can draw is that actually the general population is split about the same as the election results and I don't anymore believe that republicans lose if more people vote. Apparently laziness/apathy is bipartisan!
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:30 AM on January 18, 2021 [5 favorites]
I wish people would stop saying this. 74 million is not half of 300 million. Even if we are taking non-voters into account. There's a reason why Republicans are constantly gerrymandering and pulling shenanigans. They need to cheat to win, because they don't have the numbers. I'm all for acknowledging a segment of the population, but I'm not going to inflate them up either.
I actually think this election disproved the theory that if more people voted the republicans would lose. More people did vote! And Trump did lose! But it really wasn't that much of a difference. 26 million more people voted this time and Biden only won by 7M (Hilary won by 4M. There's wasnt much movement in the state legislatures or at the house and the senate (I know we won the two seats, but its only 2, and I know that they were hard won and its super awesome that we did, but there was no landslide anywhere in this election).
(all of this with the caveat that the new voters were not uniform across the country and made more of a difference in some places than others)
So the only conclusion I can draw is that actually the general population is split about the same as the election results and I don't anymore believe that republicans lose if more people vote. Apparently laziness/apathy is bipartisan!
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:30 AM on January 18, 2021 [5 favorites]
Has the material of Kenzie Lutece been posted here yet? They have great videos, but one fits here perfectly.
This is a great link RuvaBlue! I never heard of Kenzie Lutece before.
posted by latkes at 8:44 AM on January 18, 2021
This is a great link RuvaBlue! I never heard of Kenzie Lutece before.
posted by latkes at 8:44 AM on January 18, 2021
The other day I saw this tweet from Jamelle Bouie that a) taught me the word/concept of 'revanchist' which I'm taking as being used broadly as a movment of those who expect to maintain their power responding to their perception of the loss of that power, and b) leaves me wanting to learn more about the demography of previous nativist movements. Anyway, off to read a book about Reconstruction.
posted by latkes at 8:57 AM on January 18, 2021
posted by latkes at 8:57 AM on January 18, 2021
So the only conclusion I can draw is that actually the general population is split about the same as the election results and I don't anymore believe that republicans lose if more people vote. Apparently laziness/apathy is bipartisan!
This is hard to judge. I'd argue that Trump was a very strong candidate despite the coronavirus -- he's an incumbent, evangelicals love him, he's harnessed all the white resentment there is, he managed to successfully create a false choice between "good economy" and "control virus" (pretending the third option of "control virus for good economy" didn't exist). He is a master of propaganda and understanding that endless repetition wins over debates. He managed to make a cult out a lot of people who were in the "why vote both sides are bad" camp. For the very low information voters that come out during high turnout he's a really good match -- charisma, very simple talking points, lies about all his failures which you have to double check to see. Was willing to completely demonize his opponents and supports the claim that they are baby eating monsters by giving a nod to the Qberts now and again.
Meanwhile, Biden, ehhhhh. Not very many people were excited about Biden, they may have been excited about the prospect of a white man dethroning Trump, but I did not meet people who loved Biden, at best they did not dislike him. This includes a lot of people campaigning for the man in the primaries. He embodied the idea of warm competence. He is not exciting or especially charismatic.
posted by benzenedream at 9:23 AM on January 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
This is hard to judge. I'd argue that Trump was a very strong candidate despite the coronavirus -- he's an incumbent, evangelicals love him, he's harnessed all the white resentment there is, he managed to successfully create a false choice between "good economy" and "control virus" (pretending the third option of "control virus for good economy" didn't exist). He is a master of propaganda and understanding that endless repetition wins over debates. He managed to make a cult out a lot of people who were in the "why vote both sides are bad" camp. For the very low information voters that come out during high turnout he's a really good match -- charisma, very simple talking points, lies about all his failures which you have to double check to see. Was willing to completely demonize his opponents and supports the claim that they are baby eating monsters by giving a nod to the Qberts now and again.
Meanwhile, Biden, ehhhhh. Not very many people were excited about Biden, they may have been excited about the prospect of a white man dethroning Trump, but I did not meet people who loved Biden, at best they did not dislike him. This includes a lot of people campaigning for the man in the primaries. He embodied the idea of warm competence. He is not exciting or especially charismatic.
posted by benzenedream at 9:23 AM on January 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
So the only conclusion I can draw is that actually the general population is split about the same as the election results and I don't anymore believe that republicans lose if more people vote.
But do the Republicans win if they don't voter-suppress/cheat 9 ways to Sunday? No, they don't. Their own internal correspondence agrees that they don't. The death cult aspect is swelling their numbers, but they still fill the need to cheat.
And as I've said before, their culty belief system is intense, but shallow, based on emotion. If Trumpism continues to be divisive amongst Republicans, as recent events have accelerated, they will continue to fracture as an electorate. Maybe not vote Democratic, but find the Republican party distasteful.
posted by ishmael at 9:24 AM on January 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
But do the Republicans win if they don't voter-suppress/cheat 9 ways to Sunday? No, they don't. Their own internal correspondence agrees that they don't. The death cult aspect is swelling their numbers, but they still fill the need to cheat.
And as I've said before, their culty belief system is intense, but shallow, based on emotion. If Trumpism continues to be divisive amongst Republicans, as recent events have accelerated, they will continue to fracture as an electorate. Maybe not vote Democratic, but find the Republican party distasteful.
posted by ishmael at 9:24 AM on January 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
I reject the premise that “the left,” whoever that is, has ever rejected the humanity of the right. Rejecting actions and ideology is very much not rejecting humanity. In fact, we seem to have done nothing but deeply and searchingly probe their humanity in a concerned and confused manner for five years, trying to understand the seeds of their toxic behavior - this FPP being yet another (good).
I'm sorry, I think I misspoke. I agree with you that there have been a great many* (probably too many) thoughtful explorations of the motivations of Trump's followers and more empathy offered to them than to the people they have been hurting.
I guess what I meant was that attempts to dismiss Trump's supporters as "just racist" (while it's totally true that many are personally racist and all are just fine with siding with racism) and waiting for them to go away is not a viable strategy. There are too many of them and they hold too much power - and (in addition to the racism) they also believe dangerous lies that have undermined the legitimacy of the American government. (Legitimacy is all that props up all of our governments, or else we get warlords).
The question is: how can we diffuse this social bomb, how to deprogram them? Are there just enough who aren't beyond the reach of truth and reality and/or too embroiled in hate who can be pulled back into civil discourse?
I have no idea how this can be done. I just think that it's necessary.
And, I've said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: I'm white, so I'm not the first target of these people, but I am also Jewish (and I have a partner who is visibly so) and we are being targeted as well. Over the past few years, our synagogue has been ramping up security, even just for online activities; I'm typing this comment just as my partner is preparing for yet another meeting with leaders to talk about how they can address the growth of the far right - and ignoring them, hoping they will go away, is not an option.
I feel blessed to live in what is (currently) a peaceful, multicultural country. We have our flaws and our deep systemic racism that we need to unravel. But I am still deeply afraid of the growth of the far right and we have to do something to stop them bringing more people into their orbit.
----
I did have a thought about one reason that there have been so many articles about "why Trump" - it's because, for a lot of media and other liberal and left-wing people, it's so perplexing. We're not confused by why someone would support Black Lives Matter, because that just makes sense and is part of being a decent person. But support for Trump is a mystery: I can't see anyone who benefits from him - not women, not people of colour, not even businesses that he doesn't own. Racists benefit a bit, but there are plenty of less destructive supporters of tacit white supremacy that they could have gotten behind.
It's not Fox News who are running the "who are Trump supporters and why" stories - they take that support for granted. It's the media who are perplexed by the support.
posted by jb at 9:59 AM on January 18, 2021
I'm sorry, I think I misspoke. I agree with you that there have been a great many* (probably too many) thoughtful explorations of the motivations of Trump's followers and more empathy offered to them than to the people they have been hurting.
I guess what I meant was that attempts to dismiss Trump's supporters as "just racist" (while it's totally true that many are personally racist and all are just fine with siding with racism) and waiting for them to go away is not a viable strategy. There are too many of them and they hold too much power - and (in addition to the racism) they also believe dangerous lies that have undermined the legitimacy of the American government. (Legitimacy is all that props up all of our governments, or else we get warlords).
The question is: how can we diffuse this social bomb, how to deprogram them? Are there just enough who aren't beyond the reach of truth and reality and/or too embroiled in hate who can be pulled back into civil discourse?
I have no idea how this can be done. I just think that it's necessary.
And, I've said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: I'm white, so I'm not the first target of these people, but I am also Jewish (and I have a partner who is visibly so) and we are being targeted as well. Over the past few years, our synagogue has been ramping up security, even just for online activities; I'm typing this comment just as my partner is preparing for yet another meeting with leaders to talk about how they can address the growth of the far right - and ignoring them, hoping they will go away, is not an option.
I feel blessed to live in what is (currently) a peaceful, multicultural country. We have our flaws and our deep systemic racism that we need to unravel. But I am still deeply afraid of the growth of the far right and we have to do something to stop them bringing more people into their orbit.
----
I did have a thought about one reason that there have been so many articles about "why Trump" - it's because, for a lot of media and other liberal and left-wing people, it's so perplexing. We're not confused by why someone would support Black Lives Matter, because that just makes sense and is part of being a decent person. But support for Trump is a mystery: I can't see anyone who benefits from him - not women, not people of colour, not even businesses that he doesn't own. Racists benefit a bit, but there are plenty of less destructive supporters of tacit white supremacy that they could have gotten behind.
It's not Fox News who are running the "who are Trump supporters and why" stories - they take that support for granted. It's the media who are perplexed by the support.
posted by jb at 9:59 AM on January 18, 2021
Those who are not completely lost to extremism need to be pulled back into civil and democratic discourse with the other half of the country.
Since every conversation is now pre-Godwinned I have to ask: is this what they tried in Nazi Germany? It seems like it's awfully easy to look at the scaffolds and nooses and guillotines and respond with, “well it'll probably work to just talk them out of it” if you see yourself as less likely to be among the victims, as I do because I'm a white cis hetero male. With poor fashion sense.
posted by XMLicious at 10:08 AM on January 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
is this what they tried in Nazi Germany?
No. There were trials coupled with intensive de-nazification programs on a massive scale and symbols associated with the ideology were banned. Even then it takes ongoing awareness and legislation to prevent fascism from gaining another foothold.
The US must do the same. Anything else and the rot will not be expunged.
posted by dazed_one at 10:18 AM on January 18, 2021 [7 favorites]
No. There were trials coupled with intensive de-nazification programs on a massive scale and symbols associated with the ideology were banned. Even then it takes ongoing awareness and legislation to prevent fascism from gaining another foothold.
The US must do the same. Anything else and the rot will not be expunged.
posted by dazed_one at 10:18 AM on January 18, 2021 [7 favorites]
is this what they tried in Nazi Germany?
If you are thinking about before the war, the answer is also no. Because before WWII, antisemitism was widely socially acceptable. Not that everyone was an antisemite, but it was ok in polite society to have prejudices against Jews, and all other "others". I feel it may have been a bit like it is with Muslims (at least in Europe) today. People felt they had legitimate arguments about Jews.
posted by mumimor at 10:31 AM on January 18, 2021 [8 favorites]
If you are thinking about before the war, the answer is also no. Because before WWII, antisemitism was widely socially acceptable. Not that everyone was an antisemite, but it was ok in polite society to have prejudices against Jews, and all other "others". I feel it may have been a bit like it is with Muslims (at least in Europe) today. People felt they had legitimate arguments about Jews.
posted by mumimor at 10:31 AM on January 18, 2021 [8 favorites]
There was to be no 'civil discourse' with people who supported the fascists, post WWII. In de-nazifying Germany, the allies tried to show fascist ideology as the freakish, anti social, evil thing that it was.
You mustn't tolerate the intolerant.
posted by dazed_one at 10:36 AM on January 18, 2021
You mustn't tolerate the intolerant.
posted by dazed_one at 10:36 AM on January 18, 2021
But support for Trump is a mystery: I can't see anyone who benefits from him - not women, not people of colour, not even businesses that he doesn't own. Racists benefit a bit, but there are plenty of less destructive supporters of tacit white supremacy that they could have gotten behind.
There's an 'ask me' thread about why the stock market is so disconnected from the actual economy. They had boat parades. They've passed all sorts of local bills and laws benefiting Christians. His supporters are benefiting bigly.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:49 AM on January 18, 2021
There's an 'ask me' thread about why the stock market is so disconnected from the actual economy. They had boat parades. They've passed all sorts of local bills and laws benefiting Christians. His supporters are benefiting bigly.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:49 AM on January 18, 2021
Because before WWII, antisemitism was widely socially acceptable.
White supremacy is widely socially acceptable in the United States. It's been years and years now that we have been staring at direct video evidence of unarmed Black people being murdered by state security forces and the majority of white people have shrugged and said, “well maybe there was a good reason for it.”
Here's a 60 Minutes television news magazine episode (60 Minutes S53 E15: “Saudi Fugitives, The High Cost of Healing, Excited Delirium” December 13, 2020, text article but video paywalled unfortunately) about medical professionals regularly collaborating with state security forces to drug people into submission, sometimes with lethal consequences; the victims are usually BIPoC, of course. Here's the trailer on YouTube, discussing the pretextual fake medical condition used in the police paperwork, “excited delirium”.
This is what the scaffolds with nooses mean. What they want is not fundamentally different from ISIS, and those furtive reports we'd get out of ISIS-controlled territories about ISIS fighters not actually being particularly pious or religiously observant, and the ones from Europe preferring to eat Western food, but really enjoying having Untermenschen Kurdish sex slaves and getting to murder people to terrorize and control the local populace who were ostensibly related ethnicities to their own and co-religionists.
posted by XMLicious at 11:19 AM on January 18, 2021 [11 favorites]
You mustn't tolerate the intolerant.
I didn't suggest tolerating intolerance. But what do you suggest that we do with the intolerant people? We can't strip them of their voting rights - we can't do mass arrests or forced re-education. Germany was an occupied country. But even there, even after being marched through the camps, it took a generation or more to make major changes (and they have their own far right movement).
In the US, and in other countries, they are elected officials, they have sway with those in power, they have radio stations, newspapers and television channels. Is the government prepared - or even able? - to shut down Fox News? I'm not American and I'm not a free-speech absolutist by any means, but I can't see that being legal (if only it were).
What other options do we have?
It seems like it's awfully easy to look at the scaffolds and nooses and guillotines and respond with, “well it'll probably work to just talk them out of it” if you see yourself as less likely to be among the victims.
Which I most certainly do not - in Pittsburgh, people like me were killed by a man driven by Trumpist conspiracy theories.
I'm also not saying that we can "just talk them out of it". But we do have to figure out how to de-radicalize people. Because I can't see another way to stop them being a threat (to me, to my friends and family, as well as many others) that I personally could live with.
posted by jb at 12:03 PM on January 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
I didn't suggest tolerating intolerance. But what do you suggest that we do with the intolerant people? We can't strip them of their voting rights - we can't do mass arrests or forced re-education. Germany was an occupied country. But even there, even after being marched through the camps, it took a generation or more to make major changes (and they have their own far right movement).
In the US, and in other countries, they are elected officials, they have sway with those in power, they have radio stations, newspapers and television channels. Is the government prepared - or even able? - to shut down Fox News? I'm not American and I'm not a free-speech absolutist by any means, but I can't see that being legal (if only it were).
What other options do we have?
It seems like it's awfully easy to look at the scaffolds and nooses and guillotines and respond with, “well it'll probably work to just talk them out of it” if you see yourself as less likely to be among the victims.
Which I most certainly do not - in Pittsburgh, people like me were killed by a man driven by Trumpist conspiracy theories.
I'm also not saying that we can "just talk them out of it". But we do have to figure out how to de-radicalize people. Because I can't see another way to stop them being a threat (to me, to my friends and family, as well as many others) that I personally could live with.
posted by jb at 12:03 PM on January 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
Understanding does not mean tolerance. No one says that cancer scientists are tolerating cancer when they are trying to better understand how it works. The white supremacy, xenophobia and antisemitism - as well as the conspiracy theories, anti-science and anti-evidence - of the right is a cancer on our society and our body politic. We have to learn how it works if we are to have any hope of dismantling it.
posted by jb at 12:08 PM on January 18, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by jb at 12:08 PM on January 18, 2021 [5 favorites]
I continue to be surprised by how many people feel compelled to defend total strangers against charges of racism, while managing to make it abundantly clear that they only have the shallowest and most superficial understanding of what racism even is. Racism is not merely overt acts of obvious hatred and prejudice, and racists don't all wear pointy white hoods or have Confederate flag stickers on their cars. The social structures that reinforce white Christian dominance are inherently racist: so is the history of white flight that led to the suburban population being what it is (supported originally by mortgage redlining and restrictive covenants that barred black and Jewish homeowners). The vestiges of this remain; "good schools" (frequently cited as a reason for moving to the suburbs) is usually code for "majority white schools", for instance.
Some of this is doubtless tied up with the unique history of Protestant Christianity in the USA ; the Calvinist bias and doctrine of predestination of the elect and worldly material success as a sign of divine grace and favour make it easier to dismiss ethnic poverty as not being due to racism but caused by inherent laziness and sinfulness.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 1:06 PM on January 18, 2021 [19 favorites]
Some of this is doubtless tied up with the unique history of Protestant Christianity in the USA ; the Calvinist bias and doctrine of predestination of the elect and worldly material success as a sign of divine grace and favour make it easier to dismiss ethnic poverty as not being due to racism but caused by inherent laziness and sinfulness.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 1:06 PM on January 18, 2021 [19 favorites]
I will validate mumimor' anti semitism 1900 to say 1933. It was socially fine to not do business, the polite catch phrase, with Jewish people. I'll offer only one source other then first person accounts. The Dearborn Independent.
Understanding does not mean tolerance.
I could not express this enough. As a child, I watched footage of Americans being fire hosed and worse, events that happened a mere 12 years before. I became intolerant, disruptive and outraged. I wasn't understanding and I couldn't until it stopped. I'll never come to an understanding but during Holocaust studies we had a survivor speak twice and one other person, a Hitler youth. He taught at an American high school after emigration. And we were shocked but listened as did the survivor, it was her idea. He gave his account without much denial of a system of evil he was raised in. Everyone knew and said nothing. Still, why. They came from the same town. Someone above mentions fascism birth, to subvert, to deny rights. quite true and these are backed up/taken away by Law. What I saw last week was the law holding onto a string to prevent this maniac from more destruction and to defang him and his followers in an impeachment trial for insurrection.
posted by clavdivs at 1:06 PM on January 18, 2021 [4 favorites]
Understanding does not mean tolerance.
I could not express this enough. As a child, I watched footage of Americans being fire hosed and worse, events that happened a mere 12 years before. I became intolerant, disruptive and outraged. I wasn't understanding and I couldn't until it stopped. I'll never come to an understanding but during Holocaust studies we had a survivor speak twice and one other person, a Hitler youth. He taught at an American high school after emigration. And we were shocked but listened as did the survivor, it was her idea. He gave his account without much denial of a system of evil he was raised in. Everyone knew and said nothing. Still, why. They came from the same town. Someone above mentions fascism birth, to subvert, to deny rights. quite true and these are backed up/taken away by Law. What I saw last week was the law holding onto a string to prevent this maniac from more destruction and to defang him and his followers in an impeachment trial for insurrection.
posted by clavdivs at 1:06 PM on January 18, 2021 [4 favorites]
What's interesting to me is that exurbs are an American phenomenon. I've done a little analysis looking at the four major Anglosphere countries (using gridded population data), and the US is a clear outlier in what share of population is in that low-density exurban fringe.
We don't have exurbs in the UK because we have greenbelts around our major cities which prevents that kind of sprawling development. Our housing is just more dense anyway - the British equivalent of a SFH with garage in the suburbs is a 3-bed semi. Our cities broadly function like this from the centre outwards:
posted by plonkee at 1:30 PM on January 18, 2021 [6 favorites]
We don't have exurbs in the UK because we have greenbelts around our major cities which prevents that kind of sprawling development. Our housing is just more dense anyway - the British equivalent of a SFH with garage in the suburbs is a 3-bed semi. Our cities broadly function like this from the centre outwards:
- city centre: mainly businesses and shops, plus some expensive apartments
- inner city deprived ring, usually small terraced houses from 1880s-1910s and estates of public housing built in the postwar period
- nice inner suburbs, typically also houses from 1860s-1920s with later infil but either built for a better class originally, or in a location that is now in demand, such as near a university, often but not always Labour/Green/Lib Dem voting
- interwar suburban areas, with some later infill, often semi-detached with big gardens
- postwar suburban areas, desirability based on size of housing and amount of greenspace usually
- postwar council housing estates, not desirable and often with poor employment opportunities
- greenbelt, no housing to speak of and mainly farmland and other open space
- small commuter towns, can be posh or rundown, can include new towns built entirely after 1945, nicer towns very likely to be Conservative voting, surrounded by farmland or other open space
posted by plonkee at 1:30 PM on January 18, 2021 [6 favorites]
I will validate mumimor' anti semitism 1900 to say 1933.
Antisemitism was legal and in fact officially mandated in many parts of Europe in the decades before WW2. It continues to be huge in Europe, but it would be a mistake to imagine that it has disappeared elsewhere. For instance, there were official quotas on the admission of Jews to US and Canadian universities until the 1960s.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:40 PM on January 18, 2021 [7 favorites]
Antisemitism was legal and in fact officially mandated in many parts of Europe in the decades before WW2. It continues to be huge in Europe, but it would be a mistake to imagine that it has disappeared elsewhere. For instance, there were official quotas on the admission of Jews to US and Canadian universities until the 1960s.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:40 PM on January 18, 2021 [7 favorites]
When you say that they voted for him for other reasons than race, that also means that race, women, people with disabilities, and other categories were simply a lower priority. And that's implicit racism, sexism, ableism.
My take is that Trump represents the alpha male to some people. He all but beats his chest, he's a bully and swaggerer who passes as a smart, wealthy businessperson. The Great Recession damaged people. Racial conflict is scary. Scared primates seek a strong leader. Their judgement sucks, because Trump is pathetic, but he's a scared primate's version of a strong primate.
To get any understanding of real estate and race, you have to read Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case for Reparations and understand that it's a starting point.
posted by theora55 at 1:45 PM on January 18, 2021 [12 favorites]
My take is that Trump represents the alpha male to some people. He all but beats his chest, he's a bully and swaggerer who passes as a smart, wealthy businessperson. The Great Recession damaged people. Racial conflict is scary. Scared primates seek a strong leader. Their judgement sucks, because Trump is pathetic, but he's a scared primate's version of a strong primate.
To get any understanding of real estate and race, you have to read Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case for Reparations and understand that it's a starting point.
posted by theora55 at 1:45 PM on January 18, 2021 [12 favorites]
> Our cities broadly function like this from the centre outwards...
8. small commuter towns, can be posh or rundown, can include new towns built entirely after 1945, nicer towns very likely to be Conservative voting, surrounded by farmland or other open space
9. Oxford, where all the murders and detectives are
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:36 PM on January 18, 2021 [6 favorites]
8. small commuter towns, can be posh or rundown, can include new towns built entirely after 1945, nicer towns very likely to be Conservative voting, surrounded by farmland or other open space
9. Oxford, where all the murders and detectives are
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:36 PM on January 18, 2021 [6 favorites]
I didn't suggest tolerating intolerance. But what do you suggest that we do with the intolerant people? We can't strip them of their voting rights - we can't do mass arrests or forced re-education. Germany was an occupied country. But even there, even after being marched through the camps, it took a generation or more to make major changes (and they have their own far right movement).
I was waiting for this! Any discussion about racism on this site inevitably devolves into these bizarre persecution fantasies of how white racists will soon be rounded up into reeducation camps or murdered or stripped of voting rights. Because that's something that's happened so often in American history! Is this something you genuinely fear? Is this something you genuinely believe will happen? I have noticed that white people seem almost incapable of having conversations about racism without summoning up these kinds of paranoid fantasies (often fantasies corresponding to things that have *actually* happened to people of color in this country).
posted by armadillo1224 at 5:07 PM on January 18, 2021 [13 favorites]
I was waiting for this! Any discussion about racism on this site inevitably devolves into these bizarre persecution fantasies of how white racists will soon be rounded up into reeducation camps or murdered or stripped of voting rights. Because that's something that's happened so often in American history! Is this something you genuinely fear? Is this something you genuinely believe will happen? I have noticed that white people seem almost incapable of having conversations about racism without summoning up these kinds of paranoid fantasies (often fantasies corresponding to things that have *actually* happened to people of color in this country).
posted by armadillo1224 at 5:07 PM on January 18, 2021 [13 favorites]
Except jb's not saying that. He's saying there will never be a scenario where Trumpists are forced to change their opinions, and even if there was it wouldn't work. If you want to change Trumpists' opinions you must persuade them, and in order to do that you must understand them.
posted by xammerboy at 11:39 PM on January 18, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by xammerboy at 11:39 PM on January 18, 2021 [5 favorites]
There have been successful efforts to talk people out of racism before. Fascism was explained as having no bottom in news reels and papers. They may be coming for Jews today, but eventually they will come for you. Racism was explained as ignorance, where if one would only open their minds, they would find people of other races to not be so different. These were very successful messaging campaigns.
posted by xammerboy at 12:09 AM on January 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by xammerboy at 12:09 AM on January 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
More tagging in on foreign transit:
Joe in Australia "Melbourne has an unusually low population density"
Christchurch NZ is also very low, I recall from transport studies a figure of something like 15 people per hectare (2.4 acres) is needed to make public transit pay for itself (in NZ). Christchurch mean is somewhere less than 5 people hectare (it has dense bits up to 40, but mostly sparse).
I've lived all over NZ where public transit has always been indifferent. Auckland I believe is better now but I haven't been there since 2008. There's no passenger rail in South Island as the system's still recovering from depredations of last right wing govt - rail is all freight, mostly milk powder and coal. A car is essential here.
Lived for a year in Portsmouth UK in 1991, there they had a system of very small buses ~16 seats on short routes and quick return times, so you could move across an area quite quickly. But Portsmouth is I believe one of the densest cities in Europe. UK train system is amazing (to me), altho' last there in 2011.
posted by unearthed at 12:56 AM on January 19, 2021
Joe in Australia "Melbourne has an unusually low population density"
Christchurch NZ is also very low, I recall from transport studies a figure of something like 15 people per hectare (2.4 acres) is needed to make public transit pay for itself (in NZ). Christchurch mean is somewhere less than 5 people hectare (it has dense bits up to 40, but mostly sparse).
I've lived all over NZ where public transit has always been indifferent. Auckland I believe is better now but I haven't been there since 2008. There's no passenger rail in South Island as the system's still recovering from depredations of last right wing govt - rail is all freight, mostly milk powder and coal. A car is essential here.
Lived for a year in Portsmouth UK in 1991, there they had a system of very small buses ~16 seats on short routes and quick return times, so you could move across an area quite quickly. But Portsmouth is I believe one of the densest cities in Europe. UK train system is amazing (to me), altho' last there in 2011.
posted by unearthed at 12:56 AM on January 19, 2021
you can't characterize all of Trump's followers as racist anymore than you can characterize them all as religious — or any other single thing.
Yeah, you can.
You can categorize all of Turnip's followers as marks. He does.
posted by flabdablet at 5:34 AM on January 19, 2021 [6 favorites]
Yeah, you can.
You can categorize all of Turnip's followers as marks. He does.
posted by flabdablet at 5:34 AM on January 19, 2021 [6 favorites]
Except jb's not saying that. He's saying there will never be a scenario where Trumpists are forced to change their opinions, and even if there was it wouldn't work. If you want to change Trumpists' opinions you must persuade them, and in order to do that you must understand them.
posted by xammerboy at 3:39 PM on January 19 [1 favorite +] [!]
There have been successful efforts to talk people out of racism before. Fascism was explained as having no bottom in news reels and papers. They may be coming for Jews today, but eventually they will come for you. Racism was explained as ignorance, where if one would only open their minds, they would find people of other races to not be so different. These were very successful messaging campaigns.
posted by xammerboy at 4:09 PM on January 19 [1 favorite +] [!]
I don't have evidence for this, it's more a feeling than anything, but while I think both of these points are right, a prerequisite is that Trumpists/fascists/racists need to feel like they're going to lose before they're reachable.
The sheer spectacle of seeing someone win, of being on the winning side, of being part of something that feels triumphant and inevitable, is a powerful drug. Again, just my thoughts on it, but this is why "fascism is bottomless" and eventually victimizes everyone, this is why the positions they take don't have to make sense, it's why it seems to emerge and recede like a tide. It always starts with a loophole (Electoral College anyone?), a lack of consequences, an unpredictable victory, or in the worst cases, outright violence to circumvent/upend the rules. The drug continues to be effective as long as the fascists hold the initiative.
People who are addicted to that high pursue it. It is a high that requires a community, so yes, addicts with the means are going to cluster, usually far from anything that harshes their buzz.
It feels to me almost like a gambler's high. You might not buy a Powerball ticket. The odds are terrible, it's a clear waste of money, but if your neighbors are doing it, and one of them wins? "Hmm...maybe?" The road from that to gambling addict is long, but the path is pretty straight, it requires a certain level of wealth, and if you throw in generic self-reinforcing community dynamics + religion + racism... That's kinda how you get a Deseret.
I feel like a lot of the exurbs and Trumpism are the same thing. It's not to say that everyone who moves to the exurbs is moving there for this, but it's a lot easier to get that triumphalism fix when you can't see your neighbors' houses and you go everywhere in your car, so it's the natural space to colonize for movements that capitalize on that high, both in terms of self-selection and in terms of new recruits.
Once ensconced in these communities, only seeing their triumph irrefutably fail brings them back. You have to cut off the supply of wins to even begin to reason with them. Trump losing Twitter, the lack of pardons for insurrectionists, the investigations we'll see in the next few years... They'll work. Not forever, but for the moment, consequences and losses will bring a lot of these people back. From there, reasoning with them shouldn't be too hard.
posted by saysthis at 5:58 AM on January 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by xammerboy at 3:39 PM on January 19 [1 favorite +] [!]
There have been successful efforts to talk people out of racism before. Fascism was explained as having no bottom in news reels and papers. They may be coming for Jews today, but eventually they will come for you. Racism was explained as ignorance, where if one would only open their minds, they would find people of other races to not be so different. These were very successful messaging campaigns.
posted by xammerboy at 4:09 PM on January 19 [1 favorite +] [!]
I don't have evidence for this, it's more a feeling than anything, but while I think both of these points are right, a prerequisite is that Trumpists/fascists/racists need to feel like they're going to lose before they're reachable.
The sheer spectacle of seeing someone win, of being on the winning side, of being part of something that feels triumphant and inevitable, is a powerful drug. Again, just my thoughts on it, but this is why "fascism is bottomless" and eventually victimizes everyone, this is why the positions they take don't have to make sense, it's why it seems to emerge and recede like a tide. It always starts with a loophole (Electoral College anyone?), a lack of consequences, an unpredictable victory, or in the worst cases, outright violence to circumvent/upend the rules. The drug continues to be effective as long as the fascists hold the initiative.
People who are addicted to that high pursue it. It is a high that requires a community, so yes, addicts with the means are going to cluster, usually far from anything that harshes their buzz.
It feels to me almost like a gambler's high. You might not buy a Powerball ticket. The odds are terrible, it's a clear waste of money, but if your neighbors are doing it, and one of them wins? "Hmm...maybe?" The road from that to gambling addict is long, but the path is pretty straight, it requires a certain level of wealth, and if you throw in generic self-reinforcing community dynamics + religion + racism... That's kinda how you get a Deseret.
I feel like a lot of the exurbs and Trumpism are the same thing. It's not to say that everyone who moves to the exurbs is moving there for this, but it's a lot easier to get that triumphalism fix when you can't see your neighbors' houses and you go everywhere in your car, so it's the natural space to colonize for movements that capitalize on that high, both in terms of self-selection and in terms of new recruits.
Once ensconced in these communities, only seeing their triumph irrefutably fail brings them back. You have to cut off the supply of wins to even begin to reason with them. Trump losing Twitter, the lack of pardons for insurrectionists, the investigations we'll see in the next few years... They'll work. Not forever, but for the moment, consequences and losses will bring a lot of these people back. From there, reasoning with them shouldn't be too hard.
posted by saysthis at 5:58 AM on January 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
Sorry to double up, but I realized I hit post without capping off my comment (it took a lot of mental energy to phrase it and I just kind of...)
The close of the comment is this:
A lot of the people we've lost to Trumpism will peel off, but don't be surprised if the places it persists the longest are the exurbs.
Now I am done.
posted by saysthis at 6:44 AM on January 19, 2021 [6 favorites]
The close of the comment is this:
A lot of the people we've lost to Trumpism will peel off, but don't be surprised if the places it persists the longest are the exurbs.
Now I am done.
posted by saysthis at 6:44 AM on January 19, 2021 [6 favorites]
It doesn't seem like they are 'winning' in the suburbs, I mean that's why a few of the articles posit that they are extra pissed. That non-white (mostly Asian and Middle Eastern) people are achieving the American dream at similar or slightly higher rates than their white compatriots, and taking over what used to be white-only and now are only white majority. So the angry displaced whites move out farther (from suburb to exurb) and start over.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:28 AM on January 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:28 AM on January 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
...But what do you suggest that we do with the intolerant people? We can't strip them of their voting rights - we can't do mass arrests or forced re-education.
i mean, i suppose we can't do it to intolerant people, but we certainly could do it to Black, Japanese, Muslim, Indigenous, and Latinx people.
Perhaps it's a failure of imagination on the part of white people, or an implicit admission that white lives seem to matter more.
posted by i used to be someone else at 8:16 AM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
i mean, i suppose we can't do it to intolerant people, but we certainly could do it to Black, Japanese, Muslim, Indigenous, and Latinx people.
Perhaps it's a failure of imagination on the part of white people, or an implicit admission that white lives seem to matter more.
posted by i used to be someone else at 8:16 AM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
but in reality, nobody's really calling for re-education camps for the trumpists. there are no masses of red guards carrying little red books seeking to overturn the establishment for the left in the united states, and outside of the fevered dreams of conservative intellectuals nobody with a platform is really at risk of being murdered or "re-educated" to be less awful people.
you are seeing masses of red voters wearing little red hats seeking to overturn the establishment for their beloved, dear, great leader, though, most recently in the parler putsch. you are seeing people "re-educated" to the right and into conspiracist thought by algorithms in social media in favor of "engagement"; you are seeing the isolation causing people to turn to demagogues on silicon screens and identify deeply with them in parasocial relationships.
i don't think there is a unified theory of trumpism. and i don't know if sitting around with a thumb up one's ass while trying to "understand" why republicans and conservatives dehumanize people who aren't white/male/christian/straight/cis is as useful as using whatever blunt tools we have:
in any case, if white liberals/leftists so dead set on opposing their right-wing, fascist opponents, why are so many so allergic to minorities calling a spade a spade? with republicans gleefully rolling out anti-trans bills across the country, why shouldn't trans people be able to say republicans are transphobic? when right-wing media breathes life into anti-Asian, anti-Black, anti-Latinx bigotry that their audience laps up, why shouldn't people of color be able to say right wing media and their audiences are racist?
why is that such a problem that white liberals/leftists feel the need to tackle it now? is it like gun violence, where now is not the time, and we can talk about it later, on a day that will never come?
posted by i used to be someone else at 8:50 AM on January 19, 2021 [11 favorites]
you are seeing masses of red voters wearing little red hats seeking to overturn the establishment for their beloved, dear, great leader, though, most recently in the parler putsch. you are seeing people "re-educated" to the right and into conspiracist thought by algorithms in social media in favor of "engagement"; you are seeing the isolation causing people to turn to demagogues on silicon screens and identify deeply with them in parasocial relationships.
i don't think there is a unified theory of trumpism. and i don't know if sitting around with a thumb up one's ass while trying to "understand" why republicans and conservatives dehumanize people who aren't white/male/christian/straight/cis is as useful as using whatever blunt tools we have:
- deplatforming
- actually applying force and consequences equally (if we're going to take such a light touch with those in the putsch, take that same light touch with blm)
- applying media's baleful gaze equally (how many articles run with the latest Black victim of police brutality with shit like "he was no angel"? especially compared to how many just this past week painting white terrorists as having the "voice of an angel"?)
in any case, if white liberals/leftists so dead set on opposing their right-wing, fascist opponents, why are so many so allergic to minorities calling a spade a spade? with republicans gleefully rolling out anti-trans bills across the country, why shouldn't trans people be able to say republicans are transphobic? when right-wing media breathes life into anti-Asian, anti-Black, anti-Latinx bigotry that their audience laps up, why shouldn't people of color be able to say right wing media and their audiences are racist?
why is that such a problem that white liberals/leftists feel the need to tackle it now? is it like gun violence, where now is not the time, and we can talk about it later, on a day that will never come?
posted by i used to be someone else at 8:50 AM on January 19, 2021 [11 favorites]
Or, you know, you could make the responsible choice and plan ahead, build smart, and tax appropriately from the start.
But that's hard!
posted by Gelatin at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
But that's hard!
posted by Gelatin at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
This study by the Brookings Institute defines exurb as "located on the urban fringe
So, a suburb.
that have at least 20 percent of their workers commuting to jobs in an urbanized area
So, a suburb.
exhibit low housing density
Suburb.
and have relatively high population growth."
So the definition of an exurb is a suburb where the white flight is heading.
posted by Gelatin at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
So, a suburb.
that have at least 20 percent of their workers commuting to jobs in an urbanized area
So, a suburb.
exhibit low housing density
Suburb.
and have relatively high population growth."
So the definition of an exurb is a suburb where the white flight is heading.
posted by Gelatin at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
An exurb is a suburb that butts up against suburbs on the inside-side and farmland, forest, or undeveloped land on the outside, and the places that are sort of one town out into the hinterland from that. Places that are an extra loop outside what most people would call the suburbs.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:51 AM on January 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:51 AM on January 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
If you want to change Trumpists' opinions you must persuade them, and in order to do that you must understand them.
No, I think we have enough social science insight on this to understand that persuasion is a losing game and understanding is important only insomuch as you can use it to interrupt the pathological thinking. What people really respond to is changed norms. De-Nazification was an extreme version, but we get there in large part by shifting norms, by making space for the behavior and ideals we prefer to see and insisting on those in every institution of which we are a part (including here). I don't have time to explicate much, but norms matter. Putting Queer Eye on TV was a part of what made civil unions and then equal marriage happen, and it played perhaps a more numerically effective role in normalizing queerness and gayness than a hundred thousand individual persuasive discussions. Norms matter more than ideas. That's why it really, really matters what norms you create and accept.
posted by Miko at 1:01 PM on January 19, 2021 [25 favorites]
No, I think we have enough social science insight on this to understand that persuasion is a losing game and understanding is important only insomuch as you can use it to interrupt the pathological thinking. What people really respond to is changed norms. De-Nazification was an extreme version, but we get there in large part by shifting norms, by making space for the behavior and ideals we prefer to see and insisting on those in every institution of which we are a part (including here). I don't have time to explicate much, but norms matter. Putting Queer Eye on TV was a part of what made civil unions and then equal marriage happen, and it played perhaps a more numerically effective role in normalizing queerness and gayness than a hundred thousand individual persuasive discussions. Norms matter more than ideas. That's why it really, really matters what norms you create and accept.
posted by Miko at 1:01 PM on January 19, 2021 [25 favorites]
De-Nazification was an extreme version, but we get there in large part by shifting norms, by making space for the behavior and ideals we prefer to see and insisting on those in every institution of which we are a part (including here). I don't have time to explicate much, but norms matter.
Not only does shifting what are considered positive norms matter, but also what constitutes negative ones: what is now unacceptable which used to be acceptable. You can't change what's in people's hearts (at least not very easily), but you can make them afraid to express and act upon their racist attitudes. That's why having clear and consistent consequences for unacceptable behaviour is so important.
I was born in Germany (as an expat), and by the time we went back for a visit, the efforts the occupying powers and the subsequent West German governments had made over a generation had made Nazi attitudes publicly unacceptable (and criminally liable), even if significant numbers of Germans might still have secretly harboured those attitudes.
At one point we stopped by the office of an older German who had been a work colleague of my dad's, and somehow the subject of the war and the Third Reich came up. The German murmured piously about what "a terrible business" that had been. But afterward, out on the sidewalk, my dad muttered, shaking his head, "He was as guilty as the rest of them."
The point is not whether the guy's heart had changed; it's that the permissive pre-War atmosphere that had emboldened so many Germans to participate or at least acquiesce in the Nazi ideology and programme had been carefully and deliberately removed, so that this guy at least felt compelled to mime contrition, and to fear expressing views he wouldn't have hesitated to express before 1946.
posted by Philofacts at 3:25 PM on January 19, 2021 [16 favorites]
Not only does shifting what are considered positive norms matter, but also what constitutes negative ones: what is now unacceptable which used to be acceptable. You can't change what's in people's hearts (at least not very easily), but you can make them afraid to express and act upon their racist attitudes. That's why having clear and consistent consequences for unacceptable behaviour is so important.
I was born in Germany (as an expat), and by the time we went back for a visit, the efforts the occupying powers and the subsequent West German governments had made over a generation had made Nazi attitudes publicly unacceptable (and criminally liable), even if significant numbers of Germans might still have secretly harboured those attitudes.
At one point we stopped by the office of an older German who had been a work colleague of my dad's, and somehow the subject of the war and the Third Reich came up. The German murmured piously about what "a terrible business" that had been. But afterward, out on the sidewalk, my dad muttered, shaking his head, "He was as guilty as the rest of them."
The point is not whether the guy's heart had changed; it's that the permissive pre-War atmosphere that had emboldened so many Germans to participate or at least acquiesce in the Nazi ideology and programme had been carefully and deliberately removed, so that this guy at least felt compelled to mime contrition, and to fear expressing views he wouldn't have hesitated to express before 1946.
posted by Philofacts at 3:25 PM on January 19, 2021 [16 favorites]
Putting Queer Eye on TV was a part of what made civil unions and then equal marriage happen, and it played perhaps a more numerically effective role in normalizing queerness and gayness than a hundred thousand individual persuasive discussions. Norms matter more than ideas.
I think ideas and norms have a hand in glove relationship. Queer Eye was, in part, the culmination of decades long activism that included the argument that prohibiting gay marriage was discriminatory. Gay marriage was legal in Massachusetts before Queer Eye existed. It seems to me that when one freely accepts norms, they are also accepting the ideas they embody.
posted by xammerboy at 10:23 PM on January 19, 2021
I think ideas and norms have a hand in glove relationship. Queer Eye was, in part, the culmination of decades long activism that included the argument that prohibiting gay marriage was discriminatory. Gay marriage was legal in Massachusetts before Queer Eye existed. It seems to me that when one freely accepts norms, they are also accepting the ideas they embody.
posted by xammerboy at 10:23 PM on January 19, 2021
Prosecutors say Oath Keepers militia members conspired in U.S. Capitol siege - "Thomas Edward Caldwell, 65, of Clarke County, Virginia, whom investigators said has a leadership role in the Oath Keepers group, was named in a criminal complaint as having participated in the Capitol riots by President Donald Trump's supporters. His fellow members Jessica Watkins, 38, of Champaign County, Ohio, and Donovan Ray Crowl, also of Ohio, were also charged, and the three are accused of conspiring 'to forcibly storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021', prosecutors said."
Trump fraud claims open Republican rift in Texas and other red states - "Like many others here in Hockley County, where Cowan is the party chairwoman, she believes Trump's baseless claims that he was robbed of a Nov. 3 election victory by voter fraud... In west Texas, while many Trump supporters are turning against Republicans who repudiate the president's fraud claims, some have more nuanced views on how the party should move forward. Some, like Josh Stevens, the mayor of Lamesa, Texas, allow... 'What you don't do is throw on your f---king flak jacket, get your AR-15 and walk around out there, waving your gun like you're Rambo just to prove a point', he said. 'That kind of extremism is completely unproductive.'"
Blue state exodus could flip the political map upside down, turning red states purple - "States like Texas and Florida are seeing an influx of Democrats looking for more affordable, tax-friendly costs of living, turning these once Republican-strongholds into purple toss-up states... Ironically, many are fleeing from restrictive policies only to bring their blue votes with them, which could reinstate the stifling regulations they sought to escape and prop up what could be a liberal domino effect."
Conservatives, Trump officials quietly meet in Las Vegas to discuss 'woke tech' - "Anton, who served as deputy national security adviser under Trump from February 2017 to April 2018, was slated to be on 'The New Slave Power' panel. Anton recently wrote an essay entitled 'Blue America Needs Red America' for Claremont's American Mind publication, in which he suggested that Democrats were 'openly talking about staging a coup' in an effort to 'command and oppress' Republicans."[1,2,3]
posted by kliuless at 12:49 AM on January 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
Trump fraud claims open Republican rift in Texas and other red states - "Like many others here in Hockley County, where Cowan is the party chairwoman, she believes Trump's baseless claims that he was robbed of a Nov. 3 election victory by voter fraud... In west Texas, while many Trump supporters are turning against Republicans who repudiate the president's fraud claims, some have more nuanced views on how the party should move forward. Some, like Josh Stevens, the mayor of Lamesa, Texas, allow... 'What you don't do is throw on your f---king flak jacket, get your AR-15 and walk around out there, waving your gun like you're Rambo just to prove a point', he said. 'That kind of extremism is completely unproductive.'"
Blue state exodus could flip the political map upside down, turning red states purple - "States like Texas and Florida are seeing an influx of Democrats looking for more affordable, tax-friendly costs of living, turning these once Republican-strongholds into purple toss-up states... Ironically, many are fleeing from restrictive policies only to bring their blue votes with them, which could reinstate the stifling regulations they sought to escape and prop up what could be a liberal domino effect."
Conservatives, Trump officials quietly meet in Las Vegas to discuss 'woke tech' - "Anton, who served as deputy national security adviser under Trump from February 2017 to April 2018, was slated to be on 'The New Slave Power' panel. Anton recently wrote an essay entitled 'Blue America Needs Red America' for Claremont's American Mind publication, in which he suggested that Democrats were 'openly talking about staging a coup' in an effort to 'command and oppress' Republicans."[1,2,3]
posted by kliuless at 12:49 AM on January 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
The People the Suburbs Were Built for Are Gone: A new book documents the “retrofitting” of obsolete suburban malls, box stores, office parks, parking lots, motels, and more
[Wired.com interview with June Williamson, an associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York, and Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, authors of Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges]
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 9:35 AM on January 21, 2021 [7 favorites]
[Wired.com interview with June Williamson, an associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York, and Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, authors of Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges]
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 9:35 AM on January 21, 2021 [7 favorites]
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posted by johnabbe at 10:38 PM on January 16, 2021 [10 favorites]