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PaperclipPerfector  12hr ago (text post)   1574 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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Suburbs are sometimes exclusivist, but theres also plenty of suburbs that are affordable to the lower working class- I live in one. They’re simply a practical solution to ‘everyone gets a single family home with a yard’ in a rich country where you have to be quite poor not to have a car. Most of my neighbors, if offered the choice, would not move to a walkable safe neighborhood, because they want a single family home with a yard.

In blue states, though, you can't build new suburbs of single-family homes, because the anti-growth mindset has won. For instance, there's lots of space in Western Maryland to build such things, but the Maryland Master Plan says no, that's gotta be preserved. This has been a sore point for people living in those counties who DO want the growth for well over a decade. Blue Tribe has been causing the housing price increases itself.

In blue states, though, you can't build new suburbs of single-family homes

You can't build new urban places either - the City that Builds in 2025 is Austin, TX. The dynamic isn't urbanists vs suburbanites, it's builders vs blockers. And it is, unusually, Red State (builder) vs Blue State (blocker) political culture, not Red Tribe vs Blue Tribe. Republicans in Blue States are some of the worst blockers. As far as I can see, Blue Tribers in Austin are making sure the new building happens in a Blue way, not trying to block it.

Republicans in Blue States are some of the worst blockers.

This is because in Blue States, the choices are between pods and nothing. In particular, the state government wants to build multi-family low-income housing in Republican-leaning areas of blue states in order to turn those areas Democratic-leaning. No need to gerrymander if you can move the population.

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