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What's popular in places considered ghettos - whether that's the inner city or Appalachia - is having a decent quality of life.

I don't like all suburbs, just like I don't like all parts of cities.

One of the problems with the fiasco of suburbia is that it destroyed our understanding of the distinction between the country and the town, between the urban and the rural. They're not the same thing.

But instead of that stuff you get relationships with people and neighbors that you would never get in a city. People in small towns are a lot more open.

I think there are two prevailing views of the suburbs in the States: either they're this sort of tedious place, where everyone is the same, buys the same food and drives around in their little minivans, or the view is that the suburbs are extremely perverse in a humorous way.

If you say city to people, people have no problem thinking of the city as rife with problematic, screwed-up people, but if you say suburbs - and I'm not the first person to say this, it's been said over and over again in literature - there's a sense of normalcy.

In Paris, where I live, the inner neighborhoods are only available to the white elite. The poor and dispossessed are shuffled out to suburbs and never seen.

I never really thought of my neighborhood in South Philly as being a neighborhood; it was more a state of mind. For people who aren't familiar with those kinds of places, it's a whole different thing. Like, 42nd Street in New York City is a state of mind.

I grew up in the suburbs, so I figured 'Why not try downtown living?' And, honestly, I love it. I've been very pleasantly surprised at how much downtown Indianapolis has to offer.

We've always been suburb people, and we lived in the East Bay when I was in Oakland. This time around, we're staying in the city, and my kids are getting that city life experience, which is something you don't get too much of in Alabama.