Police Investigate Family for Letting Their Kids Walk Home Alone. Parents, We All Need to Fight Back

[MisterP]

120. you can even see the change in the geography of the suburbs:

40s-70s they were definitely tract housing that promised you access to nature while gobbling it up, that planted lawns and chimneys in near-desert regions; they were very white for all their "a home for every G.I. and blue collar" slogans and were full of race covenants and nosy neighbors

nevertheless there was space--front lawns and convenient parks; even the picture windows invited the eye inwards to the living room or outwards to the deck and yards; by the 90s and 00s the suburbs were financialized more than ever--the sprawl-dependency of counties and portfolios had run out of control: houses were bought to be flipped as much as lived in; rancher and Googie had been chosen because they were simple (to build) and "all-American" (inoffensive): Fauxtalian and "neo-eclectic" styles were chosen to provided maximum ostentation with minimum cost; the bland 'burb, decried for boiling life down to its basic eating-sleeping-lounging-childrearing functions, became massed ranks of McMansions or enlarged rabbit-hutches 7 feet from the street and 7 feet from each other; five different types of house, mirrored to provide ten styles, became five indistinguishable styles; sprawl became the planned community, sidewalks went out and gates came in; average Walkscores went from 45% to 28% and the lawn's share of the lot was almost halved

think Edward Scissorhands vs. The Sopranos

edit: and the media was just as sensationalist then, and could be open about its racism; heck, they had to deal with Sid Davis