Word: suburb
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...census sees it, suburbia also includes such unlikely terrain as Cascade County, around Great Falls, Mont. -lightly populated towns in flat, rolling wheat country-and Minnehaha County, surrounding Sioux Falls, S. Dak., mainly onetime farming towns that have increasingly become dormitory communities. Northwestern University Sociologist Raymond Mack says a suburb has only two distinct characteristics: proximity to a big city and specific political boundaries, which result in local control of government. Most of the people whom Harris questioned do not even think of themselves as suburbanites. More often, they would say that they live in a small city, a town...
Using a computer programmed to recognize patterns among the characteristics of suburbs covered by the survey data, the Harris staff discovered that the interplay of two particular factors -income level and rate of growth-can be used to classify suburbs in four groups. The result is a new four-way typology of American suburbia. Each kind of suburb has distinctive traits, though no single suburb precisely fits the Harris statistical model (see boxes). The four composite types: AFFLUENT BEDROOM. Of the four classes of suburb in the Harris catalogue, this is the only one that comes close to fitting...
AFFLUENT SETTLED. This type of Suburb is not growing so rapidly as the Bedroom. It is more self-sufficient, even less of a dormitory for the central city. Here-the town of Fairfield, Conn., for example, or Huntington, L.I., or Arlington, Va.-the incomes may not be quite so high and there are slightly fewer homeowners. Protestants barely outnumber Catholics, though together they are a massive majority; only 6% are Jewish, double the proportion for Affluent Bedroom suburbs but hardly a significant minority. Here Nixon won-but only by 47% to 40%. The boredom quotient is higher; nearly half think...
...majority. Residents register Democratic overwhelmingly, 63% to 28%, and generally vote that way as well. But even here, Nixon squeaked out a 1 % margin three years ago. Understandably, those who live in Low-Income Stagnant communities say they enjoy their lives less than Americans in other types of suburb. They are most often bored (25%) and most likely to feel that they and their neighbors are only biding time until they can afford to move (21%). Even so, 39% rate their community as above average; only 10% consider it below average...
CRIME. When asked to list the problems of their suburb, only 12% volunteered that crime is a major concern. Questioned more directly, however, 43% admitted that crime is on the increase in their community and 32% said they do not feel it is safe to walk around at night. (That proportion rises to 46% among women and 57% among nonwhites, who live in poorer neighborhoods just as they do in the city.) One out of four said that places they once visited at night are now off limits because they are not safe. Over 90% agree that "government...