Writer thinks there's a "war against suburbia" (seriously)

Did you know there's a war by the big, mean cities against the suburbs?

Actually, there isn't. But Joel Kotkin - a longtime advocate of wasteful suburban development patterns - apparently thinks there is.

Kotkin has a new article called "The War Against Suburbia." But the very first sentence in this piece proves it's actually a war by suburbia against the cities! He correctly points out that suburbs are "now in open revolt" against cities - but he spends countless paragraphs trying to "prove" that this is because politicians have ignored suburban interests.

Politicians have not ignored the suburbs. They've coddled the suburbs. Suburbs have the highest personal incomes in America. In the eyes of our government and corporate masters, suburbs count; we don't.

Indeed, even Kotkin seems to admit that the electoral victories by Scott "Records" Brown, Chris Christie, and Bob McDonnell were accounted for entirely by the suburban vote. Fact is, if you take away the suburbs, each of these right-wingers loses in a landslide. So it really is the suburbs that are forcing everyone else to live by their "mandate."

In fact, the Republicans probably would not have won a single presidential election in my lifetime if not for the suburbs.

Still, Kotkin complains that "the suburbs are under a conscious and sustained attack from Washington." What was under attack by the Republican Congress of the '90s and '00s, Joel? It damn sure wasn't suburbia. In fact, since even before then, the federal government was subsidizing suburbs with its highway and housing policies.

Modern exurbia is not sustainable. It wastes fuel, and it sucks economic life out of our cities. Development policies have to be changed to discourage suburban-style development.