Week 15: Suburban Life

I've spent my whole life in Northern Virginia.  I live in the heart of the suburbs as my house is close to multiple metro stops, I-66, and the toll road.  My house is in a typical suburban neighborhood; the houses are all pretty similiar, they have small yards, there is a community center, and a school and shopping center are both within walking distance.  I work in Loudon County and over the years I've watch suburbia spread across Northern Virginia.  What once was open farm lands is now home to sprawling subdivisons of cookie-cutter type houses.  The book talks about suburbanization and I have definitely seen the effects of this in my hometown.  More and more people work in the city each year and they need places to live.  Because of an increase in highways and other methods of easy transportation, people can live farther from the city but still easily commute back and forth.  One of the interesting points that the book brought up was how people move from "first suburbs" to newer outer-ring suburbs and to smaller urban areas.  This definitely seems to have happened around DC as people want to move farther from the city that they work in.  In the area that I live, I have noticed that people seem to value houses and shopping areas more than they value trees and open green spaces.