Word: suburban
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...unexpected diversity, some contradiction and occasional surprise. Suburbanites are not primarily transients: more than half have lived for more than ten years in the same community. Suburbanites are not automatically Republicans: on the voting rolls, half are Democrats, a third Republicans. They are not enormously affluent: nearly half of suburban families have an annual income under $10,000, and one-third of them contain a union member. They are not primarily commuters: not many more than a third of the principal wage earners travel to the central city to work. And they are not steeped in sin, at least...
...myth is that they are based on what the Census Bureau considers to be a suburb, which is, roughly, that part of a metropolitan area surrounding a central city with a population of 50,000 or more. That includes some unexpected territory. Nassau County on Long Island is obviously suburban, reaching only 20 miles from Manhattan at its farthest point. Most Americans would also consider California's Marin County to be a suburb: many of its residents commute across the Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco from upper-bohemian Sausalito, sophisticated Mill Valley or nondescript San Rafael...
...specific aspects of suburbia (such as politics or race), but they have never attempted a systematic nationwide classification of the types of towns that make up suburbia. Louis Harris and his polltakers set out to do just that for TIME. "Our goal," he says, "was to examine suburban complexity and to find a systematic way of classifying suburban communities that would shed light on the real differences that exist within the wide and expanding belt between the cities and the small towns and farms...
...contain increasing numbers of wealthy retired individuals, and they are 98% white, 61% Protestant, 3% Jewish. They are Republican (62% for Nixon in 1968, 24% for Humphrey). Few in the Affluent Bedroom admit to feeling "really bored and stuck out here"; most believe that their fellow townsmen truly enjoy suburban living. The Affluent Bedroom comes closest to Lewis Mumford's description of the historic suburb: "A sort of green ghetto dedicated to the elite...
...nearly half of all the suburbanites Harris polled, the biggest single factor was the desire to have a home of their own. Next in order of importance came the search for a better atmosphere for the children (40%), a goal that they ruefully admit is not always realized. Suburban teen-agers are impressively unhappy with their surroundings: nearly three-fifths are "often bored," and 43% say that they would like to live somewhere else when they are no longer dependent on their parents. At least among the offspring of suburbia, the age of ecology has modified the urbanizing tradition that...