Patio Man

I am no patio man, but I grew up around them. Now, the suburb I grew up in did not completely fit the mold that the "sprawl people" David Brooks speaks of in "Patio Man and the Sprawl People" as Streamwood was roughly half developments from the 1950s and 1960s- which due to their smaller size in comparison to the newer mini McMansions had become a bastion for blue collar families, single mothers and immigrants- and half newer sprawl development. The mentality inherent to these patio men, that of reckless consumption married with unsustainable sprawl, that of children with last names as first names with schedules as jam packed as those of workaholic executives was apparent in some of the population of my suburb. It is only some of the population because as Brooks pointed out the truly classless society in "sprinkler cities" (that is cities consisting of nothing but patio men") are in the Sun Belt and suburban Chicago is far from the Sun Belt. Of course, I anecdotally know of families who did move to such cities from the town I reluctantly called home all those years so this phenomenon does not exist in a vacuum.