These new people may live in the old suburbs but they hate suburbanites. They hate sprawl, big-box stores, automobile culture. The words they use about suburbanites are: synthetic, bland, sterile, self-absorbed, disengaged. They look down on people who like suburbs. They don't like their lawn statuary, their Hallmark greeting cards, their Ethan Allen furniture, their megachurches, the seasonal banners the old residents hang out in front of their houses, their untroubled attitude toward McDonald's and Dairy Queen, their Thomas Kinkade fantasy paintings. And all the original suburbanites who were peacefully enjoying their suburb until the anti-suburban suburbanites moved in notice the condescension, and they do what Americans have always done when faced with disapproval, anxiety, and potential conflict. They move away. The pincer movements get them: the rich and the poor, the commutes and the mortgages, the prices and the alienation. And pretty soon it's Henderson, Nevada, here we come."
"Sprinkler Cities" may be the latest "fad," but we saw exactly this same thing happen here in Philadelphia over the years.
Philadelphia because of its physical size was a microcosm of the Continental US.
The Philadelphia Social History Project traced the population movements from the area now known as "Old City" (in the late 1700s) to the edge of Fairmount Park (Parkside) to the "middle north-east" (Pennypack & Oxford Circles area) to the Far North east -- to over the border into Bensalem.
While this "migration" is well documented here in Philadelphia, one must assume that it is pretty much identical to the patterns seen in other parts of the country in other, more recent times. And, one would assume, that the equivalent "sprinkler city" area in Pennsylvania is now Lancaster County.
You also missed an important quote....
"GEORGE SANTAYANA once observed that Americans don't solve problems, they just leave them behind. They take advantage of all that space and move. If there's an idea they don't like, they don't bother refuting it, they just go somewhere else, and if they can't go somewhere else, they just leave it in the past, where it dies from inattention."
Unlike Europe, the United States still has "Labensraum," living space.
Those of you who are familiar with Gordon R. Dickson's Childe Cycle (aka the Dorsai series) will realize that it is exactly this "principle" which lead to the creation of the cultures of the "philosophical" Exotics, the "fundamentalist" Friendlies and the "mercenary" Dorsai. He put the "Great Emigration from Earth" into the later part of the 21st century following the invention of the "phase shift drive."
As Joe Halderman described the Childe Cycle:
"... he charted in his mind a cycle of at least nine thematically related novels -- three historical, three contemporary, and at least three science fiction -- which would ultimately show the evolution of humanity through the fusion of three kinds of leaders: the man of action, the man of thought, and the man of faith. It was to be called the Childe Cycle, I think in homage to the Child Ballads, a collection of English and Scot folk songs that certainly provided some of the archetypes that he planned to track through the millenniums.
"It was a large project for a man in his forties. But he thought he had at least another half century.
"Only the science fiction books were published, the successful Dorsai saga."
The "theme" of all the books was to be the pivotal influence of certain individuals on the history of mankind -- what has now come to be called the "tipping point."
It would appear from recent history that the era of cheap hydrocarbon based fuel is now over and that it has become profitable to begin seriously investing in energy schemes which finally replace James Watt's steam turbine in their ability to convert energy from one form to another.
One has to wonder what Gordie would make of the invasion of Iraq. (He died in 2001.)
T.T.F.N. William H. Magill [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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