Levittown to Littleton

THE day after the shootings at Columbine High, many newspapers ran a 2” x 2” inset map of the school neighborhood in Littleton, Colorado. There was a grid of high-speed roads a mile to a block. There were residential cul-de-sacs squiggling into empty quadrants. And looming up in the corner like a 747 hangar was the monolithic high-school building.

Such brand-new landscapes, almost wholly unfamiliar to northeasterners, make up virtually all of the middle-class neighborhoods in any western metropolis—Phoenix, Albuquerque, Houston. What was odd was that the Littleton map generally ran amid columns of copy seeking out the root causes of the shooting, and seeking them most everywhere: guns, television, affluence, big schools, divorce, Hollywood, the Internet, Goth music. Looking for simple explanations for a tragedy like Littleton is probably a fool’s errand. But if one is going to engage in the exercise, the suburban layout described in the little map belongs on the list.

About the Author

Christopher Caldwell

Mr. Caldwell is a contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books and the author of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.

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THE day after the shootings at Columbine High, many newspapers ran a 2” x 2” inset map of the school neighborhood in Littleton, Colorado. There was a grid of high-speed roads a mile to a block. There were residential cul-de-sacs squiggling into empty quadrants. And looming up in the corner like a 747 hangar was the monolithic high-school building.

Such brand-new landscapes, almost wholly unfamiliar to northeasterners, make up virtually all of the middle-class neighborhoods in any western metropolis—Phoenix, Albuquerque, Houston. What was odd was that the Littleton map generally ran amid columns of copy seeking out the root causes of the shooting, and seeking them most everywhere: guns, television, affluence, big schools, divorce, Hollywood, the Internet, Goth music. Looking for simple explanations for a tragedy like Littleton is probably a fool’s errand. But if one is going to engage in the exercise, the suburban layout described in the little map belongs on the list.