"I want to live in the countryside but I don't want only farmers to talk to."

Duncan's article was an easier read than the Bickford article, and provided an interesting comparison of something I would suspect may have since become a fairly common condition in our society. In Charlotte, we are seeing this more and more, as our city grows at a break-neck pace. Despite the troubled subprime housing market, demand for residential development is still very strong here, and just about everywhere you go in this city (or county), some development group is responding to the clamor with a vast, new residential spread. In many cases, these new developments (eerily similar to how Duncan has described the Beta areas) are thrown onto what was once farmland in a process so rapid it makes your head spin. Huge tracts of land that formerly held cattle, and, say, a single dilapidated barn are transformed into the latest & greatest from Ryan Homes or Ryland Homes or Centex Homes. Due to this process, I can think of at least 2 specific cases within a few miles of my home where I have seen basically the exact same condition appear as what Duncan's study covers.

So................I may have to reluctantly admit that this type of condition (and study) does give a little more clout to one of the ideas that came out of the Bickford discussions -- that leaving the urban center for suburban (or rural) destinations, and trying to take the city with you isn't necessarily a good thing. While I'm not ready to agree that all suburban development is quite as cantakerous as the worst-of-the-worst cookie-cutter setups, I can concede that there is something to be made of the argument that a landscape invaded and dominated by inhabitants whose social conditioning, expectations and patterns have absolutely nothing to do with what (perhaps) existed there long before them, and is completely at odds with what they are accustomed to, is not necessarily the best situation.

I find a bit of humor in the fact that the study goes as in-depth as to highlight the differences even between the alpha inhabitants' and beta inhabitants' mailboxes! It's hard to argue against the study's findings & conclusions when details as minute as that are quietly giving a visual hint to the strange dichotomy that exists in Bedford.

One last curiosity that came to mind while reading the article -- although this was written in 1973, as far as online social networking goes, which group today do you think uses MySpace, and which one uses Facebook? (Since clearly the two groups can share nothing, nor have even the scarcest trace of an overlapping social network, and we must assume that that trend has continued into the 21st century.)

*****Sorry for the delay....I had written this up on another computer after reading the article yesterday, and then never got around to retrieving it and posting it here!!!***********