Excited About The Exurbs

David Brooks invites Democrats to the exurbs to take part in the other national conversation, the one he says is happening in the new decentralized developments with sparse civic life.

"The other problem I had is that I didn't adequately describe the oxymoronic attraction these places have for millions of people. On the one hand, people move to exurbs because they want some order in their lives. They leave places with arduous commutes, backbreaking mortgages, broken families and stressed social structures and they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality. That's bourgeois.

"On the other hand, they are taking a daring leap into the unknown, moving to towns that have barely been built, working often in high-tech office parks doing pioneering work in biotech and nanotechnology. These exurbs are conservative but also utopian- Mayberrys with BlackBerrys.

"The Republicans won in part because Bush and Rove understand this culture."

Thanks to Heidi Schallberg