Field guides · Residential Backbone Families · L1.1-D
L1.1-D

Exurban Working Homeowners

Spread-out roads where owning outright is common, everything is a drive, and nobody arrives anywhere without meaning to.

Free · Yours to print · Seven field notes follow over two weeks
Residential Backbone Families · One of 5
In this guide
IDo now
IIWho lives here
IIIWhere it is cracking
IVWhat to say
VA story to share
VIFor you
IIWho lives here

Read on the street, not on a spreadsheet.

Setting

Houses sit apart here, and nearly all of them are detached, though about one in six is a manufactured home that somebody owns the same way.

Work

Production and transportation set the rhythm out here, and about two in five of the jobs near these roads are in one or the other.

What they are hungry for

Somebody close enough that stopping is not a decision, which is the one thing the distances out here take away.

A neighbor you might meetInvented, so no one is a case study
Dale and Kristen

Early forties, seven years into the mortgage, both working, with children old enough to be left. He loads trucks on a shift that starts before light; she does office work the far side of a long drive.

IIIWhere it is crackingSigns, not proof of anything

You cannot know the reason from the sidewalk.

The vehicle that stopped moving
The light left on all day
The mail somebody else brings in
The rest of
the guide

What to do this week, what to say, and why the news is good on this particular street.

The full guide carries the four first actions, three real conversation scenarios with the notes underneath each line, a story worth telling here, and the Gospel written into what this street is actually carrying. It is free, and it opens in the browser.

Where to next