JOEL KOTKIN: Why Suburbia Irks Some Conservatives. “There may be more than a bit of class prejudice at work here. British Tories long have disliked suburbs and their denizens. In a 1905 book, ‘The Suburbans,’ the poet T.W.H. Crossland launched a vitriolic attack on the ‘low and inferior species,’ the ‘soulless’ class of ‘clerks’ who were spreading into the new, comfortable houses in the suburbs, mucking up the aesthetics of the British countryside.”

Robert Bruegmann’s book, Sprawl: A Compact History talks about this very phenomenon. I wrote a column on the subject here.