Talk:Exurb

Comments
"Exurbs are commonly viewed as the only rural communities which are benefiting from the rural exodus."

Even the Types_of_rural_communities article shows some examples of other types of communities finding viable economic models in the context of farm consolidation and farm labor force reduction.

"Exurbs are increasingly faced with problems of over-crowding and pollution along with over-taxation of services such as cooking, dry cleaning, parcel-delivery, repairs, and systems maintenance."

This seems like a very strange claim to make. Most municipalities are subject to state sales and income taxes, but can sometimes make their own property taxes. To tax this specific list of items on a local level seems unusual. Perhaps there is some argument why these services are disproportionately taxed, but it does not seem likely to be neutral.

The article on Manassas, Virginia doesn't seem to have any supporting information.

This article seems to be parroting the debatable claims of a particular viewpoint.

-- Beland 00:40, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Prior commentor seems unfamiliar with the concept of "overtaxed". If a phone system designed for 10 people is used by 100 people it will be "overtaxed". The concept has nothing to do with governmental revenue collection.


 * In Beland's defense, "over-taxation" is odd usage, and the hyphenation is dubious. NTK 06:38, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ah, that makes more sense. The idea of there being a shortage of parcel delivery service in a commuter-heavy rural suburb seems very strange. It's not implausible that restaurants and dry cleaners might be farther away, but that there are too few of them to handle their customer base seems odd. The American economy is pretty good about expanding in areas where there is an underserved customer base, and there's no physical shortage of materials that would under-supply these industries. So I doubt the veracity of these claims. -- Beland 03:12, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

> These communities tend to be highly competitive. <

Competitive in what way?

> Exurbs are increasingly faced with problems of over-crowding <

As a city dweller, I find the concept of a "rural community" being "over-crowded" to be something of an oxymoron. I suppose some rural folks may think of medium-density suburbs as "too crowded", so there is a POV issue here.


 * Perhaps the discussion needs to be more specific? One common problem is that new developments may add more cars to the narrow roads at commute times than they can easily handle, thus causing jams of traffic and a need for stop signs and lights where previously there may have been none.  Additionally, housing available for people of modest means may become limited as large properties go up in value and low density zoning prevents or impedes new development.  -- M0llusk 05:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

> Exurbs are commonly viewed as the only rural communities which are directly benefiting from the rural exodus. <

This dubious claim has still not been addressed; see above. -- Beland 03:12, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps this article would be better served if it were re-cast as a vocabulary term for a particular school of thought, which is not universally accepted, though I'm not sure who its proponents are/were. -- Beland 03:12, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Why not edit this entry and improve it yourself, to the point where you are ready to retract that "The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed" notice you have applied to it. Then you can apply the notice to an entry that really deserves it. Many fastidious wikipedians won't use this notice, because it has been degraded as a mud-slinging weapon, as you may notice yourself, in looking around Wikipedia. Wetman 08:26, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I tagged the article as POV and inaccurate because I believed that was the case. Much as I would love to, I unfortunately don't have the time to fix all the problems I find in the Wikipedia.  I was hoping that someone more interested in the subject and with more expertise would notice the tag and fix it, or perhaps that the original author(s) would come back and clarify things.  In the meantime, it's important for readers to know that someone thinks the article is biased and inaccurate.  The article has since gotten much better, even though it is still very short; I don't know if the tagging had anything to do with it, but hey.

--- Move here...

Exurbs tend to be populated by people that work in the city and bring their capital home to spend on local services, thus retaining the urban connections that are characteristically severed by the more recent developments called by the US Census Bureau "micropolises". Exurbs are commonly viewed as the only rural communities which are directly benefiting from the rural exodus. These communities tend to be highly competitive.

Exurbs are increasingly faced with problems of over-crowding and pollution along with exaustion of services such as cooking, dry cleaning, parcel-delivery, repairs, and systems maintenance.

Who coined "Exurb"?

 * According to the New York Times (You may have to pay to see this article):


 * "The term "exurb" was coined in the 1950's in "The Exurbanites" by A. C. Spectorsky, a social historian, to describe semirural areas far outside cities where wealthy people had country estates."


 * There is also a good explanation of it at the Architecture Urbanism Design Collaborative Wiki.


 * I am going to update the article to reflect this.

About that list of "exurban" towns: Aren't the exurbs rural?
Being familiar with two of the towns listed as examples of exurbs, I understand the disagreement over whether some of these places are exurbs, suburbs, or independent urban areas. In the '70's I was a student at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, one of the examples listed, and continued to live in Delaware for several years after graduating. Having lived most of my life (before and since my Ohio years) in the Boston area, I know of another example, Marlborough, Massachusetts, enough to have a general idea what that town is about, despite having spent very little time there. From everything I've read and heard about exurbia, I have the picture of an area which has historically been rural in character. It may have been a small rural town with low population density, or a rural section of a county, outside the boundaries of any municipality, but all descriptions of exurbs I have ever encountered gave a picture of the influx of a metropolitan commuting population into a predominately RURAL area. What distinguishes exurbia from suburbia is that the single-family houses, shopping malls, office parks, and small retail business districts which cover most of the land area in an essentially unbroken sprawl across the suburban landscape, are, in the exurbs, scattered around in more isolated clusters of dense land use, separated by wide areas which remain largely rural. (It is likely that many established suburbs were once exurbs, when these areas had their earliest influx of residents who commuted to nearby cities.) Both Delaware (current population of just under 30,000) and Marlborough (population approx. 36,000) are non-rural in character, and so would not fit the above image of exurbia. Both towns are visibly more densely populated than adjacent rural, or semi-rural, areas, and both are centers of services and business for populations in surrounding areas. Marlborough, roughly 20 miles west of Boston, and Delaware, located some 20-25 miles north of downtown Columbus, both have histories as independent small urban centers, beyond the fringes of the nearby metropolises. Though I'm less familiar with Marlborough, having lived in Delaware I know that it maintains a self-contained economic base--being, in addition to a college town, a center of light manufacturing industry--so that even as the nearby metropolitan area expands, and with the possibility of an increase in the percentage of Delaware's population comprised of commuters to Columbus, presumably Delaware will for the forseeable future continue to be its own town to a significant degree. Still, small cities of this sort are likely to add a noticeably suburban tone to their character, even if they do not entirely lose their independent "real-town" feel, making them analogous to exurbs, given their mix of commuting populations with the continued existence of more long-established uses of a different sort. Despite all I have read about exurbia's existence in formerly rural areas, I wonder whether anyone has information about whether there is widespread agreement on this point. Are exurbs generally viewed mainly as rural areas that have gained a bedroom-community function, or are there urban geographers and sociologists who view any sort of community beyond the suburban fringe but which is gaining a significant commuting population to be exurban? Perhaps at some point one of these experts will solidify the distinction, by coining a new term for historically independent small cities which maintain much of this character while gaining significant numbers of residents who commute to nearby larger cities. Exmetros?

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Can the list of examples be narrowed down to approx 10 good and different examples, instead of 100 broadly similar examples?

Car Dependency
From the "Planning" section: "...create heavy car dependency (a very deliberate design choice). " Is there a citation or reference to that? Seems POV to me --Ozzykhan 17:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Hartford County an exurb of NYC?
Is Hartford County, Connecticut really considered an exurb of NYC?

I live here, and it is at least 100 miles to New York, it is just too far away to become an exurb...does anyone have any proof of this?

Causes of Exurban Growth
Can we question: "In the 1970s, rampant crime and urban decay in U.S. cities was the primary 'push force', whereas exurb growth has continued in the 2000s even as most U.S. cities experience plummeting crime and urban revitalization.”

The Exurb appears to be a product of the 20th Century, contingent primarily on the existence of inexpensive transportation (primarily the automobile).

Urban disinvestment would be a symptom of suburban migration.

“However, house prices have skyrocketed, so middle-class people who want a large yard or farm are pushed beyond suburban counties." what are you talking about? HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH Does this statement make any sense? This doesn’t seem to be the case in the area where I live (housing prices haven’t skyrocketed, but the exurb area has).

Sources needed
The section 'Examples of exurbs' is completely unsourced. It should be rather easy to find sources, because whoever knows enough to add this kind of information probably has the sources in front of them. At some point, per WP:V, it may be appropriate to remove material to the Talk page if sources are not provided in a reasonable time. EdJohnston 16:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Propose merge into Commuter town
Please see and contribute to discussion at Talk:Commuter town. Grumpyyoungman01 12:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Etymology
I question the current given etymology of "exurb," that it's a "portmanteau of extra and urban." Not that I think it's completely wrong per se, but that it could be more correctly described as being a combination of the Latin prefix "ex," meaning outside of, and "urban," in a directly parallel construction to the Latin prefix "sub" + "urban" = suburb. It's a really, really muddy distinction, especially because "extra" as a prefix can mean exactly the same thing, but I think "ex" makes a bit more sense semantically. This mostly comports with how Merriam Webster presents its etymology (although not quite — they say it's ex + suburban). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exurb As this is Wikipedia, my own pet-etymology doesn't matter — the question is, are there sources that cite the extra+urban explanation? If Auguste Comte Spectorsky did in his originally coinage, then let it stand.Wemedgefrodis (talk) 21:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

"Identify exurban census tracts" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Identify_exurban_census_tracts&redirect=no Identify exurban census tracts] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. – bradv  23:28, 19 June 2023 (UTC)