I want you to picture a drive. And, you know,
it's probably a drive you've done a hundred times
without even really thinking about what you were
seeing. You start right in the city center. It's
tight. It's loud. You're in those canyons of
steel and glass. Right. The urban core. Exactly.
Then you drive out. You pass that inner ring.
You know, the older houses, the really dense
neighborhoods. Then you hit the highway. The
main artery out. Yeah. The arterial bleed. And
for, I don't know, the next 20, 30 minutes. It's
the classic American suburb. It's almost comforting
in its familiarity. Totally. You know exactly
what to expect. The strip malls, the big box
stores, the car dealerships with those wacky
inflatable tube men. Those nine gorillas, yeah.
You know exactly where you are. But then you
keep driving and the landscape, it starts to...
It starts to glitch. Glitch is the perfect word
for it. It stops making linear sense. It really
does. You pass the last big shopping complex
and then boom, there's a cornfield. But right
in the middle of that cornfield is a brand new
subdivision. And I don't mean like one farmhouse.
I'm talking 50 enormous 4 ,000 square foot houses
on these huge lots. Right. And then what's next
to that? A patch of forest? A forest, then maybe
a solitary glass office building sitting alone
in a meadow. Like it was dropped there by a spaceship.
Totally. Then a goat farm, then another subdivision.
And you're sitting there thinking, okay, wait
a minute. Am I in the country? But you can't
be, because you know there's a Starbucks five
minutes down the road. Right. So you think, am
I in the city? Well, definitely not. Am I in
the suburbs? Well, I can't see my neighbor's
house through the trees, so probably not the
suburbs as we know them. This is that uncanny
valley of human settlement. We are entering the
excerpt. That's it. And that right there is the
mission for this deep dive. We are going to decode
this very specific slice of geography that sits
right at the bleeding edge of the metropolitan
area. It's the in -between. It is. It's not city,
it's not suburb, and it's not quite rural. It's
something else. And I think interface is maybe
the most important word we can use today. It's
the analytical layer. We're not just looking
at a place on a map. We are analyzing the friction
point. This is where the tectonic plates of the
urban economy and the rural landscape just grind
against each other. That's a great way to put
it. We're looking at economic tethers, huge population
shifts, and the weird sociological experiments
that happen when you start mixing commuters with
bears. Oh, we are definitely getting to the bears.
We have a massive stack of sources to work through.
We're going to hit the sociological definitions,
of course. We've got the landmark Brickings Institution
report. which is basically the Bible for this
topic. It really is. But we're also going global
with this. We have ecological studies from Xi
'an in China that are just fascinating. We've
got reports on these. posh but kind of emptying
neighborhoods outside Moscow dogs and we're absolutely
going to talk about how this specific type of
zoning led to a literal battle between dogs and
bears in New Jersey which is a real thing by
the way it sounds made up but it's not I know
it's amazing and frankly a little terrifying
but okay before we get to the animal combat let's
try to pin this thing down What actually is an
exurb? Because, you know, it feels like one of
those buzzwords. It does. It sounds like something
a real estate agent invented to sell a house
that's an hour away from everything. Right. It's
not in the middle of nowhere. It's an exclusive
exurb and retreat. Exactly. But it's a real sociologically
distinct concept. And, you know, to get a handle
on it, we can start with the word itself. It's
a portmanteau. OK. It combines extra meaning
outside. And urban. Outside the city. Simple
enough. Simple enough. But who came up with it?
It feels so modern. Like something that would
have popped up during the dot -com boom or something.
You would think so, wouldn't you? But it actually
goes all the way back to 1955. Wow. Really? Yeah.
A writer named Auguste Comte Spiktorski wrote
a book. called the Exurbanites. 1955. That's
like peak Mad Men era. That's the gray flannel
suit era. It absolutely is. And Spektorsky was
describing something very, very specific to that
time. He wasn't talking about the kind of middle
class sprawl we see today. Not at all. So what
was he looking at? He was looking at what he
called a ring of prosperous communities. that
were way out beyond the suburbs. Think about
the top -tier New York executives who didn't
want to live in one of those cookie -cutter,
livy towns. They wanted something more. They
wanted the estate. They wanted the gentleman's
farm out in Connecticut or maybe a converted
barn in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It was about
creating a buffer. So, originally, the excerpt
was a status symbol. It was the VIP section of
living. Precisely. It was for the urban elite
who had the time and, more importantly, the money.
To handle that long commute from the country,
it was all about exclusion. So you moved there
to get away from the masses in the city. And
the new masses in the suburbs. It was a double
retreat. But looking at the sources we have now,
that definition just feels, it feels incomplete.
I mean, sure, you still have wealthy people living
in the woods, but the excerpts we're talking
about in the 21st century seem like a totally
different phenomenon. They've absolutely evolved.
The term has expanded so much. Today, excerpts
are not just for the wealthy. In fact, many of
them include what our sources call extra -urban
districts that might actually be... It's economically
underdeveloped. Underdeveloped in what way? Like
no jobs? It's more about infrastructure. Yeah.
Public transit, for example, if you live in a
classic 1950s suburb, you probably have a train
station, maybe a bus line that can get you into
the city. Right. There's a connection. There's
a connection. In the modern exurb, you are often
in a total transit desert. You might have found
more affordable housing, which is a huge driver
for why people move there. But you are paying
for that affordability with your time. You are
driving. The sources also keep using this phrase
bedroom town. And I have to say that phrase always
depresses me a little. It is a bit bleak, isn't
it? It really is. It implies you're just, you
know, storing your body there at night. Well,
that's the economic reality for a lot of these
places. They're defined as agglomerations of
housing and jobs outside the municipal boundaries.
But for a very long time, that jobs part was
basically missing. It was just the housing part.
It was just housing. You sleep there, you wake
up, you get in your car and you leave. The community
itself is basically empty from 8 a .m. to 6 p
.m. So let's try to visualize the density because
I think that's the hardest part for people to
really grasp if they haven't seen it up close.
The sources bring up Loudoun County in Virginia
as like the poster child for this. Loudoun is
the perfect example because you can literally
watch the timeline of American development by
just driving west from Washington, D .C. How
so? You start in Arlington, which is dense. It's
urban. Then you drive through Fairfax County,
which is the quintessential sprawling suburb.
And then you cross the county line into Loudoun.
And everything changes. And what does that look
like on the ground? Is it like hitting a wall?
It's not a wall. It's a gradient. It's a slow
fade. You just start to notice the subdivisions
are getting further apart. The roads might go
from four lanes down to two, but they're still
jammed with rush hour traffic. And you see the
rural aesthetics starting to pop up, the white
fences, the horse farms. But the economy, the
reason people are there, is still entirely tethered
to the city they just drove out of. So, OK, we've
got a vibe check. It feels open, but it acts
urban. But how do we actually measure this? Because
if I'm a sociologist or a planner, I can't just
go, well, it has a vibe. No, you need hard data.
You need a formula. And for that, we have to
turn to the Brookings Institution. In 2006, they
published this report, Finding Exurbia. The Bible.
The Bible. And this is a really pivotal moment
because they finally gave us a checklist. They
stopped just describing the vibe and started
measuring census tracts. And they came up with
three rules. If a place meets these three criteria,
it's officially an exurb. Let's break them down.
Rule number one, economic connection. This is
the big one. It's the most critical rule. You
can't just be a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Right. If you live in a village, say, three hours
from a major city, and everyone who lives there
works at the local mill or the school or the
hospital, you are rural. You're a self -contained
community. You don't need the city to survive.
Exactly. To be an exurb, you absolutely must
have that commuter tether. The source material
really emphasizes this. While the housing is
out in the sticks, the money, the paychecks are
coming from the metropolis. So if a blizzard
closes the highway for three days, the exurbs
economy grinds to a halt. In an economic sense,
yes. The entire value proposition of those homes
is dictated by their access, however difficult,
to the urban job market. Okay, that makes sense.
Rule number two, low housing density. And the
source gets super specific here. It says you
have to be in the bottom third of all census
tracts in the metro area when it comes to density.
Right. And what that translated to, using the
year 2000 data they had, was a minimum of about
2 .6 acres per resident. Whoa, wait. 2 .6 acres
per resident? Per resident, yeah. Let's pause
on that for a second. That is... That's massive.
It is an enormous amount of space. So if you're
a family of four, you are statistically occupying
over 10 acres of land. On average, across that
census tract, yes. Now, that number would include
things like common areas, undeveloped woods,
roads, that sort of thing. But the feeling of
the place is absolutely defined by that space.
But that's my question. 2 .6 acres is kind of
an awkward size, isn't it? It's way too big to
mow with a regular push mower. Oh, yeah. But
it's too small to be a real functioning farm.
That's the uncanny valley we were talking about
at the start. It's what landscape architects
sometimes call too big to brood, too small to
farm. I have never heard that before. You can't
run a commercial agricultural operation on it,
but it creates a huge amount of maintenance.
It promotes a very specific lifestyle. The person
on the writing mower for four hours every Saturday.
That's the one. It's land for the sake of having
land, not for production. Which brings us to
the third rule. Rule number three, population
growth. This is key. The exurb has to be growing
and not just growing, but growing faster than
the average for the central metropolitan area.
So it's not a sleepy, static country town. Exactly.
That's what distinguishes it from a dying rural
town. A rural town might have low density and
even a few commuters. But if its population is
shrinking or just flat, it's not an exurb. The
exurb is the frontier. It's actively expanding.
It is eating the landscape. It's the active front
of the city's expansion. Correct. It's where
the bulldozers are working. So why? We have the
definition. We have the checklist. But I really
want to understand the motivation. The commute
sounds like a nightmare. The yard maintenance
sounds exhausting. Why do people choose to move
to the absolute edge? Well, the Canadian research
we have from 2022 touches on this. They define
it a bit differently. They look for a gross population
density of less than 150 people per square kilometer.
But the key element is the same. The commute.
The commute. Their definition requires that more
than 50 percent of the workers living there are
commuting into the core metro area. More than
half. That's a staggering number. It's huge.
And it implies very conscious tradeoff. People
are trading their time for space. They're trading
the convenience and culture of the city for the
perceived safety, the quiet and the status of
having that country life, even if that country
life is a little bit synthetic. Suburban style
development on rural development land. That's
a direct quote from one of the sources. It's
a simulation of the rural experience. It's wanting
to have your cake and eat it, too. But the bakery
where they make the cake is a two hour drive
away. Now, I think a lot of Americans, and I
am definitely guilty of this, we tend to think
that we invented sprawl. We look at places like
Los Angeles or Phoenix and just assume this is
a uniquely American problem, you know, caused
by cheap gas and a love for pickup trucks. But
the sources we have suggest that's just not true.
Not at all. It is absolutely a global phenomena.
Now, the specific flavor of it changes from place
to place. But the underlying dynamic, the city
expanding into its hinterland, that's happening
everywhere. So let's look at China, because the
scale of everything in China just, it consistently
breaks my brain. It breaks everyone's brain.
It's hard to comprehend. We have this study on
the city of Xiamen, and they break down the city
into these density tiers. In the urban core,
the density is over 51 persons per hectare. Which
is very dense. That's high -rise apartment living.
That's what we'd picture as a major city. Right.
Then you move out to the suburban zone, and it
drops to about 8 persons per hectare. But then
you get to the exurban areas, and the definition
is anything less than 8 persons per hectare.
Okay. Now notice the difference there. In the
U .S., the Brookings definition was based on
2 .6 acres per person. In China, their definition
of low -density exurbia is anything under 8 people
per hectare. A hectare is about 2 .5 acres. So
their empty exurbs are still significantly denser
than most American suburbs. Wait, say that again?
Their exurb is denser than our suburb? In many
cases, yes. If you dropped a typical American
exurb and subdivision into the outskirts of Xiamen,
they would probably classify it as, you know,
a park or uninhabited wilderness. That's wild.
It is. But for the Chinese urban planners, that
psychological drop -off from 51 people per hectare
down to eight is the same dynamic. It marks that
transition from the known city to the developing
edge. There's a really interesting detail in
that Chinese source material, something about
rural revitalization. It specifically mentions
the problem of vacant houses in rural exurbs.
Ah, yes, the hollow village phenomenon. Explain
that, because... If the exurb is supposed to
be this hotspot of growth, why on earth are there
vacant houses? It's because development in China
can happen by government decree or through these
massive waves of speculation. It moves incredibly
fast. You might build the roads, build the high
rises, build the houses. But the people don't
come. Or they don't stay. If the jobs aren't
quite there yet, or if that economic tether to
the main city isn't strong enough or convenient
enough, people will leave. Or, more commonly,
the younger generation will move into the true
city for better opportunities, leaving that exurban
village to slowly hollow out. So the government
has to step in to fix it. Well, the source mentions
this rural revitalization strategy. It's a form
of state intervention to try and pump life back
into these fringe areas to prevent them from
becoming modern ghost towns. Right. It's a reminder
that exurbs aren't these inevitable success stories.
They're fragile. They can fail. Speaking of failing
exurbs. or at least excerpts with a really strange
trajectory. We have to talk about Russia. Rublyovka.
Just the name of it, it sounds expensive. Rublyovka.
It is the Beverly Hills of Moscow, but probably
with higher walls and a lot more security guards
with guns. The source calls it Moscow's poshest
neighborhood. And this lines up perfectly with
that original 1955 Spiktorsky definition we started
with. It's the wealthy fleeing the city. It's
the classic oligarch sanctuary. Back in the 90s
and the early 2000s, if you made a fortune in
that post -Soviet boom, you moved to Rublyovka,
you built a palace, and I mean sometimes literally
a palace behind a 20 -foot fence, it was the
ultimate status symbol. But the source we're
looking at has a twist. It describes it as shockingly
empty as money pours out of Russia. And this
is what's so fascinating. The excerpt in this
case is acting as a kind of barometer for geopolitical
stability. What do you mean by that? When the
country's elite feel secure and stable, They
invest in the exurb. They build their roots,
their legacy estates. But when they feel unsafe,
you know, because of sanctions, war, political
instability, they flee. But they don't just move
back to an apartment in Moscow. No, they flee
the country entirely. They move their money and
themselves to Dubai or to London or wherever
they can. So Rublyovka becomes this museum of
fleeing capital. That's a perfect way to put
it. You have these massive opulent estates that
are just sitting dark. It's the prosperous ring
turning into a ghost ring. It completely challenges
that idea from the Brookings report that an exer
must be a place of growth. It can also be a place
of rapid flight. OK, let's pivot from there to
India, to Mumbai, because this seems to be a
totally different driver. In Russia, it's oligarchs
fleeing. In China, it's massive state planning.
In India, it sounds like it's all about the car.
The rapidly motorizing middle class. That is
the key phrase from the study we have on Mumbai.
Historically, major Indian cities have been incredibly
dense, right? Yeah. Very transit -oriented or
walkable, just out of sheer necessity. Absolutely.
For centuries, that was the only way they could
function. But as the middle class grows and gains
disposable income, what is the first major purchase
they want to make? A car? A private vehicle.
It represents status, comfort, freedom, air conditioning,
and the heat. And as soon as you have a car,
the entire geometry of your life changes. You
are no longer tethered to the train station or
the bus stop. You can drive until you qualify
for a mortgage. You drive until you qualify.
That's exactly right. The excerpt in a place
like Mumbai is being birthed by the traffic jam.
People are willing to move further and further
out because they finally can. They're accepting
that brutal commute to get the housing and the
space they desire. So it's almost like they're
mimicking the American suburban trajectory from
the 1950s. They are, but it's happening at a
much higher density and with, you know, far more
chaotic and underdeveloped infrastructure. It's
the same pattern just playing out in a very different
context. It's just amazing to see that same core
dynamic, that tradeoff between time and space,
the reliance on the commute playing out in such
radically different cultures. It seems to be
a human universal. We want space, but we need
the city's money. But here's the problem. And
this is where we get into the friction section
of our deep dive. That space that everyone wants.
It isn't empty. No, it's not. When we look at
a map and we see a big green patch, our brain
just registers empty. But it's not empty. It's
an ecosystem. And nature. Nature has opinions
about us moving in. Checkles. It has very strong
opinions. The sources talk about the ecological
interface. Let's start with the invisible stuff
before we get to the bears. Let's talk about
carbon. Right. So this study from Zyman specifically
focuses on vegetation carbon storage. And I feel
like a lot of people have this misconception.
They think, well, I'm moving to the exurbs. I'm
going to have a big lawn. I'll have some trees.
I'm helping the environment. That is the common
and very mistaken belief. But you can't just
look at what's there now. You have to compare
it to the baseline, to what was there before
the subdivision was built. If that land was a
mature forest or a wetland, it was acting as
a massive carbon sponge. It was aggressively
pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and locking
it away in the soil and the biomass. But when
you build an XSERV on it... When you subdivide
it, even if you keep some of the big trees for
aesthetics, you are fundamentally disrupting
that entire system. You're sealing huge patches
of soil with asphalt driveways and foundations.
You're replacing the complex carbon -rich undergrowth
with a simple monoculture lawn. And a lawn just
doesn't sequester carbon in the same way a forest
does? Not even close. And that's before you even
add the massive carbon cost of every single resident
commuting an hour each way to work in a gasoline
-powered car. So environmentally, the exurb is
kind of the worst of both worlds. In many ways,
yes. You lose the density and efficiency of the
city, and you degrade the ecological function
of the country. But carbon is abstract. You know,
you can't see it. You know what you can see.
I have a feeling I know where this is going.
Bear -ubs. The New Jersey conflict. This story
from New York Magazine from 2007 is just, it's
incredible. The headline is, Dog vs. Bear Release
the Hounds. Sounds like something from a satirical
newspaper. It totally does. Yeah. But it's real.
So set the scene for us. Why New Jersey, of all
places? Well, New Jersey is the most densely
populated state in the entire country, but the
northwestern corners of the state is actually
very rugged and forested. It's part of the Appalachian
Highlands. So prime bear country. Prime black
bear habitat. And as the exurbs pushed further
and further out from New York City, pushing into
those hills places that used to be just hunting
cabins and deep woods, they ran right into the
bear's living room. And the people moving into
these new homes, they're not exactly grizzled
mountain folk. Not at all. They are commuters
from the city and the suburbs. They're meeting
there for the aesthetic of nature. They want
to sit on their deck and watch a deer frolicking
in the morning mist. They want Bambi. They want
Bambi. What they get is a 400 -pound bear. that
has figured out how to demolish their $300 specialized
bear -proof trash can and is now sniffing around
their back door, terrifying their golden retriever.
And this creates a massive political conflict,
I assume. Huge. On one side, you have the new
residents screaming at the town council, do something
about the bears, it's not safe. And on the other
side, you have conservationists and, frankly,
the bears themselves, saying, you moved into
the woods, what on earth did you expect to find
here? So what was the solution mentioned in the
article, this release the hounds idea? They were
bringing in a specialized breed of dog called
Corellian bear dogs. Okay. These are fearless
dogs that are bred specifically to harass bears,
to bark at them, nip at them, and basically chase
them away from human areas without actually killing
them. It's a form of non -lethal aversion conditioning.
So we are literally deploying tactical special
ops dogs to enforce zoning laws between humans
and nature. It just perfectly highlights the
fundamental absurdity and the conflict of the
excerpt. We want the beautiful backdrop of nature.
but we want it completely sanitized for our convenience.
We want the view from the cabin, but we don't
want the wildlife that comes with the cabin.
Exactly. We want the Disneyfication of the wild.
And it's not just bears in New Jersey. It's the
catastrophic wildfire risks in the exurbs of
California. It's the water usage debates in the
exurbs of Arizona. We are imposing a high -intensity,
resource -heavy lifestyle on landscapes that
simply cannot support it. There's another kind
of friction here, though. It's not just man versus
nature. It's also man versus himself or maybe
man versus loneliness. It's social isolation
component. Yeah. We talked about how these places
are often called bedroom towns. But let's dig
into what that actually feels like day to day.
The source material notes the limited urban nature
for social interaction. Think about a traditional
city neighborhood. You walk to the corner store.
You bump into your neighbor on the stoop. You
see other parents at the playground. There are
what sociologists call third places. Like the
coffee shop, the bar, the library. Exactly. Neutral
grounds that aren't home or work, where community
just sort of happens organically. But in the
excerpt, with those 2 .6 acre lots. You don't
bump into anyone. Your entire life is mediated
by your car. You get in your car, you're attached
garage, you drive to work, you park in a parking
garage, you drive home, you pull back into your
garage and door closes. If you see your neighbor,
it's through a windshield as they drive by. One
of our sources lists the TV show South Park in
its see also section, which I thought was hilarious
at first. But actually, it's surprisingly relevant.
South Park is this isolated mountain town. It's
cut off from everything. It perfectly represents
that island mentality. When you live in a place
that is so geographically removed, you can develop
a very insular, unique culture. But the risk
in the modern exurb is that you get the isolation
without the community. In South Park, for all
its weirdness, everyone knows everyone. Right.
In a brand new exurban subdivision, you might
be totally isolated and completely anonymous.
That sounds like a potential recipe for a mental
health crisis. It can be. It's particularly difficult
for demographics who can't drive, teenagers for
one, and the elderly. If you can't get in the
car, you're effectively trapped. You become a
prisoner of the subdivision. So if the exurb
is ecologically damaging, socially isolating,
and eternally prone to bear attacks, why is it
still seen as the future? Or is it the future?
That is the multi -trillion dollar question,
isn't it? And how do we even track it accurately?
Well, the sources do mention that we're moving
beyond that old census data. We now have things
like the Oak Ridge National Laboratory land scan
data. And GIS geographic information systems.
This is a huge leap forward. We can now use high
-resolution satellite imagery to literally watch
the exurbs spread across the landscape in near
real time. So we can see the lights at night
expanding outward. We can see the lights. We
can track the heat signature of the land changing
as forests and fields become asphalt and rooftops.
We are watching it happen from space. We're watching
the agglomerations spread. That's the word the
scientists use. It almost sounds like a medical
condition. It does sound a bit like a disease,
doesn't it? It does. But in the northeastern
U .S., in that megalopolis from Boston to D .C.,
The sources mention something very specific.
This isn't just sprawl spreading into empty space.
No, that's a really important distinction. Out
west, you might be building an exurb on what
was previously empty desert. In the northeast
or in much of Europe, you are building on top
of centuries of history. You're not just building
a subdivision. You're expanding into and around
towns that have been there for 300 years. And
the exurb effectively consumes that pre -existing
rural structure. The old farming village with
the white church steeple. It gets surrounded
by cul -de -sacs. The old general store on the
town green. It becomes a boutique selling expensive
scented candles. to the new commuter residents.
So the XRV acts as a gentrifier of the rural
landscape itself. It's a complete cultural and
economic transformation. The place might still
look like a historic village, but it now functions
like a wealthy distant suburb. The original character
gets hollowed out. Okay, wow. We have covered
a lot of ground here. We've gone from August
Pektorski's 1955 elites to Chinese ghost villages
and tactical bear dogs. It's been a wild ride
out to the fringe. It really has. Let's try to
summarize this whole thing. If you had to boil
it down, what is the story of the excerpt? I
think the story is still that word interface.
It started as a luxury escape for the very few.
It evolved into a mass market solution for the
demand for cheap, spacious housing. But no matter
its form, it remains the friction point. It is
the place where the definition urban is in a
constant active battle with the reality of rural.
It's the active edge of the city. It's the active
edge. And I think what's most important to remember
is that it's incredibly fragile. That's the thought
I want to end on. Because we saw that ghost town
link in the source material. We talked about
those massive Russian mansions sitting empty.
We have to ask ourselves, is any of this permanent?
Right. The entire exurban experiment depends
completely on that tether we talked about. It
relies on cheap gas, on the personal automobile,
and on the high -paying job waiting in the city
center. So what happens if that tether breaks?
If energy costs skyrocket? And that two -hour
commute becomes financially impossible. What
if the economy shifts or if remote work completely
changes the need to be physically near the city
at all? Does that 2 .6 -acre lot suddenly become
a massive liability instead of an asset? Does
it revert to the wild? Does the forest start
to creep back in and reclaim the lawns? In the
end, does the bear win? Chuckles. In the long
run, the bear usually wins. That is a haunting
thought to leave you with next time you're on
that drive. and you pass a brand new subdivision
in the middle of a cornfield. Are you looking
at the future, or are you looking at a future
ruin? Only time, and I suppose the bears will
tell. Thank you for taking this drive out to
the edge with us. It was a pleasure. We'll see
you on the next deep dive.