Interlude: Dark Ages America Part-8

Continued from Part-7.

11a. Suburbia is also discussed in depth by Berman. He believes that America typically has less public space because Americans don't value the public realm. In this regard, his regional bias towards the East Coast definitely has it's flaws when applied to the US at large. Indeed, cities and town are discarding or have never even developed public space in the first place. However, in the West at least, public space is more regarded as something wild. By and large, public land is valued by people in the West. The space is just much larger. The cities and towns are intrusions. (North of the border, including Alaska, is something else again.) In some regards, Americans are at heart a rural people (and possibly even more so in areas settled by those fleeing cities). Americans just don't like people.

11b. Author's tautology:

Car Culture + Suburbia = Oil Dependency = War Culture.

Kids from the inner city and rural areas are fighting for the suburbs. As product of both the mountains and the city, I have always maintained that these two supposed extremes have far more in common than not.

Next.