What's good for Peter is good for Paul . . .

There's a lot of anger in the comments on the posts that suggest that

a)  I don't see the benefits of a gigantic lawn
b)  DC should build some good parks if it wants to keep families with children

Apparently, this was somehow interpreted as advocating that everyone in the country who does not currently live in northwest DC should be herded up at gunpoint and forced to buy a condo here.

I was very careful about how I phrased that first post.  I don't get the attraction of a big lawn.  I've never had one, and havng grown up in Manhattan, I don't find it restful to be permanently ensconced somewhere where I have few near neighbors; it gives me that kind of eerie feeling you get in the horror movie right before the villain attacks.  I spent six months living in the suburbs when I first moved to DC, and this was enough to convince me that, barring the sudden and unexpected production of three small children, I will probably not return there.

But I did not state that no one actually enjoys having a large lawn, or that there was anything wrong with people who want one.  Differences of opinion, as Grandma used to say, are what makes marriages and horse racing. 

There does not need to be this hostile contest between urbanites and suburbanites/exurbanites/rural people, where each claims that theirs is the only worthwhile way of life.  Developing better rail networks to allow DC to enjoy higher, more productive population densities does not mean that the Thought Police will be sweeping house to house in Peoria to grab the family minivan.  Having parks to allow families with children to stay longer--and anchor the kind of civic improvements that make cities thrive--will not actually magnetically suck all the families out of Tyson's Corner into the whirling vortex of Northwest.

I understand that there are urbanites who contemptuously declare that everyone in the country needs to get out of their car, like, RIGHT NOW.  Those people are wrong, and pretty damn obnoxious.  But so are the people who react to a post about building parks in DC with vicious diatribes about how horrible cities are and how he wouldn't live in one if you paid him a million dollars.  It's exactly the same kind of lifestyle totalitarianism.  And it's really, really unnecessary.  Proving that there is nothing wrong with your lifestyle does not require you to angrily trash mine.