Guess I hit a nerve... or was that the Potomac?

When I blogged about some of the factors that lead 20-somethings to choose living in the District or in NOVA, I thought I was just adding an interculturalist perspective to a pretty well-established fact - that people do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, including deciding where to live based on what kind of environment feels "right." In turn, those feelings can be based on cultural preferences formed in childhood that can be difficult to break. I've lived in apartments for most of my life, and to this day I intensely dislike being alone in a single-family home, especially at night, and even more so if there's a thunderstorm. I also know lots of people who cannot bring themselves to think of an apartment or condo as a real home, because a real home to them is a single-family home with a yard and a driveway. There's nothing wrong with either perspective, in fact it adds to the richness of life.
So why are so many people commenting on that, and primarily arguing for why their residential choice is the best, more rational one? I'm sure the mention on DCBlogs had something to do with it, but I doubt that's the whole story. It's a very concrete topic, for one. Additionally, intercultural studies as an academic discipline tends to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Political correctness is all about what unites us, whereas interculturalism by necessity looks at the less-obvious things that divide us. For that reason it's tempting to sweep it all under the rug - if you ignore it long enough, maybe it will go away! But talking about differences is the only way to reach across them. So keep on commenting and challenging us to refine our arguments, just keep it polite. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.