The 5 American lifestyles — The Messy City

Smart businesses know that customers come in many different stripes. An example I used to use is that of Toyota, which at one point had 20 different models of cars in addition to its upscale brand Lexus and “hip” brand Scion. Toyota wasn’t trying to make one or two cars and assume people will like them – it understood that it needed a product to fit the wide variety of potential buyers.

In housing and real estate, we’ve tended to be much more uniform and not appreciative of the differences in customers. If you are a two parent, two kid family, it’s clearly understood that you want a four bedroom house with a lot of land. If you are a single person you obviously must want a loft apartment in the city.

Nuance is rare.

It’s even worse with public perception and the media. Since journalists tend to simplify every argument into an “us” versus “them” mentality, we get the reductionist city person or country person phenomenon. Occasionally (if we’re lucky) that broadens to city or suburb or country.