Word: suburbias
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...SUBURBIA? The word alone is enough to unleash myths: a place afloat in behind-the-fridge gin, high on pot concealed in oregano jars, giddy with spouse swapping-and bored nonetheless. Perhaps an even greater fiction is that the terrain between city lines and countryside is uniform down to the last resident's outlook and lawn. In planning this week's cover story on the suburbs, TIME'S editors decided to challenge the myths head-on to discover how much diversity there really is among the nation's suburbs and suburbanites...
...pursuit of the suburban dream, Americans have precipitated one of the largest mass movements in history: during the past decade, the population of suburbia has grown by more than 15 million. According to the preliminary 1970 census reports, there are now 74.9 million people classified as suburbanites, a 25% increase over 1960. This surge has made suburbanites the largest group in the land, outnumbering both city dwellers and those who live in rural areas. So many Americans have already achieved the suburban goal that suburbia itself has undergone a mutation. Inevitably, the new migrants have undone the cliché image...
...plan is essentially a compromise between city residents unwilling to see money spent solely for suburbia and suburbanites cool to helping foot the bill for city urban renewal. It will take 20 years to complete, and the price tag will be $1 billion in public and private funds for each paired town. But Dr. Hubert Locke, the project's director and an associate at the Urban Studies Center at Wayne State University, thinks the plan is worth the money...
...second half of the film undermines all that precedes it. When we first saw the characters, they were apparitions floating up from suburbia. There was a beautiful, almost hallucinatory, effect in those early facial close-ups against a blank background. But once past histories and individual psychologies are filled in, the dreamlike quality vanishes. As the film becomes more "rational" and defined, it becomes less moving...
What makes Joe Didman's plight so relevant is that he finally recognizes his own historical irrelevance. Didman's liberal conscience originally made him an outcast among fellow Yale graduates who, in the Silent '50s, sought the maximum security of suburbia while Didman chose a deteriorating New York City, hoping to forward his progressive ideas through publishing. Instead, he finds himself powerless to prevent Government agencies from using his publishing house as a propaganda mill...