Some city neighborhoods are walkable, mixed-use, dense places, with coffeehouses, bookstores, arts venues, and liberals.  This is the “boburb,” the natural home of the “bourgeois bohemians” – people with a bourgeois work ethic but bohemian cultural tastes. By contrast, far out in the suburbs are car-dependent, residential-only, spread-out gated communities where swim clubs, golf courses, megachurches, and conservative families abide.  Both kinds of communities are full of college-educated middle and upper-middle class people.  So why do some choose one way to live, and some the other?  This study of Louisville aims to discover why.

Dr. Beau Weston, Van Winkle Professor of Sociology at Centre College will be presenting this work, which is based on a forthcoming book.