You’ve got something there. I grew up in a semi-rural Texas subdivision (housing development), and witnessed it fulfill a saying: “a subdivision is good for abo

You’ve got something there. I grew up in a semi-rural Texas subdivision (housing development), and witnessed it fulfill a saying: “a subdivision is good for about 30 years: the first 10 as custom new homes, the second 10 as starter homes, and the last 10 as decent rentals.” Those neighborhoods don’t get renewed - their cheaply-built houses just get passed down the economic ladder, while the previous residents buy bigger, nicer houses further out in a new subdivision. The Dominionist worldview is, as you said, quite common in my home region, and I was told in church youth group that environmentalism was basically paganism. I nearly turned down my JHU admission because there was no on-campus parking and freshmen were strongly discouraged from having cars - I couldn’t fathom life without a car. One of the first people I met at freshman orientation was a guy from NYC who not only didn’t have a driver’s license, much less a car, neither did his parents! We managed to throughly culture shock each other, as he’d never met an Evangelical or a Texan before, and couldn’t understand why I was so apprehensive about not having access to a car. Resource constraints can have appalling results (I live near Nuremberg, so I’m well aware), but no sense of them (what I and many middle-class and up Texans grew up with) carries its own dangers to oneself and one’s world.