Word: suburbias
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...Your article on suburbia [March 15] confirmed my suspicion that human nature is the one constant in a world of rapidly changing variables. The changes are not surprising; they are bound to happen. Perhaps some day soon we will all recognize our common ground and begin again. Utopia cannot exist in suburbia (zoning ordinances will not permit it), but somewhere between the city block and the country lane, a sense of unity can exist...
...result of its demographic dominance, suburbia may soon achieve a political primacy that the cities never quite managed in the long era of malap-portioned, rural-dominated state legislatures, which traditionally hold the key to everything from congressional districting to the parceling out of state aid funds. According to a National Urban Coalition study, "suburban gains in political power through court-ordered redistricting have been steady since 1966." Charles Richard Lehne, a Rutgers political scientist, foresees that the suburbs will pick up 25 seats in the House of Representatives as a result of redistricting based on the 1970 census...
Harris found, however, that few people change their political registration on moving to the suburbs, so the suburban migration does not necessarily mean a gain for the Republicans. (Though suburbia voted for Nixon in 1968, it now gives him a 52% negative job rating.) Reapportionment helped the cities get fairer representation in the state legislatures, but it also boosted the number of legislators from the expanding suburbs. Now urbanologists fear that suburban representatives may combine with rural lawmakers to perpetuate the historic discrimination against cities in the allocation of state funds...
...battle of the cities will be fought on the suburban front," says Robert Wood, president of the University of Massachusetts and author of the political and governmental study Suburbia. The cities have already been diminished by the movement of people and industry to the suburbs. "This trend," says Harris, "if not reversed, will have major consequences for urban America: declining tax bases within cities, less incentive for the cities themselves to develop efficient mass transportation, greater reluctance in the state capitals to provide aid for cities. In short, the isolation of the central city." That need not happen, however; planned...
...between the farms and the cities will be an ever growing, ever more self-sufficient suburbia expanding into one continuous blur, as it does already along the northeast corridor from Boston to Washington. In these spreading suburbs, in all their diverse forms, will come a further test of American democracy. The auguries are good: the Harris survey points to a high incidence of civic concern, and the example of Evanston indicates that the combination of civic concern with a manageable governmental unit can work very well indeed. Suburbia may never re-create the New England town meeting, but it could...