When Life Doesn't Imitate Art

"Just as people start 'discovering' that Orange County, California, is cool, the executives at FOX television come up with a show, The OC, covering the lives of two families living in ocean-front McMansions in wealthy Newport Beach. The fact that almost everyone in The OC is white, however, speaks volumes about how most Americans, including academics, planners, and developers, continue to misunderstand the suburbs."

"The word 'suburb' still raises snickers among some scholars as a place 'out there' - where middle-class people without taste reside. The harshest critics delegitimize suburbs by referring to their space as the 'geography of nowhere.' Yet the American suburbs have grown so immense and diverse - now comprising well over half the U.S. population - that no stereotype can capture their complexity, meaning, or future direction."