Funmurphys: the Blog

Suburban Life, The Choice Of America

I have to admit I get a little tired of urban living advocates who sneer at me (OK, not me personally, but in the aggregate as a suburb dweller) for my social isolation. They just assume I don't know my neighbors and sit around in my suburban cocoon all night after struggling home from an awful commute. Well who's sneering now?

Using data from 15,000 Americans living in various places across the country, researchers found that residents of sprawling suburban spaces actually have more friends, more contact with neighbors and greater involvement in community organizations than citydwellers who live in very close proximity to each other.

“Our findings suggest the old proverb may be true: good fences make good neighbors,” said Jan Brueckner, professor of economics at UCI and lead author of the paper. “This contradicts one of the common social and economic arguments against urban sprawl.”

I have to admit I did find it comical when Ray Suarez argued that urban living resembles small town life because everybody knows who you are -- OK, he didn't include the small town life part, but he did claim that everybody knew you.

But I have to wonder if wealth is the underlying causation for the inverse correlation of human density and the density of the weave of the social fabric. I figure wealthier people weave a tighter fabric and also live less densely. Hopefully they accounted for that, but you can't tell from the press release.