I'm in Elk River, MN now. Heading to St. Cloud for an Ingress operation. Its disgusting. Just 15 minutes has sickened me. Ugh, leaving now.
I was hoping you'd provide some photo so I could finally find out what one of these so-called exurbs is. Regardless, I can't imagine myself being sickened by a general class of place, especially the type that I might live in.
Based on what where you live appears to be like, if you want to see an exurb you probably should just look out your window. But as for Elk River:
If you search it on Google Maps and note the outline you'll get a good idea, Elk River is not a "community" by any reasonable definition of the word. What it is is a bunch of incorporated land that surrounds a crossroads of two major highways that run through it. These highways include lots of businesses to attract travelers, but of course mostly gas stations, fast food restaurants, and in other exurbs maybe a chain store or two (Targets are pretty common in exurbs here, Wal-Marts more common outside of Minnesota.) The actual "downtown" of Elk River does kind of resemble the type of rural downtown Averroes posted in the cyclists thread, but it's a small part of the incorporated city and mostly consists of things like law offices, accounting firms, a post office and a few small banks. Typically the only real small retail business you'll find is something like a bait and tackle shop or farming equipment and supplies store, no doubt a couple gun shops. This makes up a very small portion of the actual incorporated city. The rest is whatever sprawls from these roads. A hodgepodge of things sprawl from them, trailer parks, subdivisions with McMansions, some parks and golf courses and country clubs, but they all are pretty detached from everywhere else in the incorporated city. The incorporated city also includes some actual rural territory and farm land, as it's an artificial hodgepodge of things. Obviously somewhere like this can't support all the people who live there in those trailer parks and subdivisions economically, so a pretty high proportion are commuters, probably to some middle ring suburb. Most of them are likely either employed in some type of manufacturing plant or middle management office job. College education rates aren't particularly high, but poverty and unemployment are low due to only commuters finding it desirable to live there. There's several bars, but either rednecky type watering hole places or sports bars, no hip clubs or dance places, or anything that attracts youngs. No non-chain coffee shops either and the only movie theaters in the general area are big chain ones sitting on the side of major highways that won't show anything remotely non-mainstream.
The people who live there probably do so either because they can buy a bigger house than they'd be able to afford in the middle ring suburbs to the inner metro and city, or because they want to do outdorsy things like hunt, fish and camp on the weekends. The lack of a nightlife or arts community means not many youngs, at least single youngs, younger married couples might find it OK especially if from a more rural background, but your typical mid-to-late 20s married couple in Elk River is obviously completely different people from a couple of the same age in Minneapolis. Public transportation in general is poor, good chance there's a bus route through the main city but it probably only runs on the hour and only goes to other cities rather than multiple stops in one, there's also the Northstar line but it too in this region is infrequent. It's actually possible to go all the way from Minneapolis to St. Cloud on only public transport, but this will likely take you three hours (a drive would be less than half that) and you won't be able to stop at anywhere but stations until you get to St. Cloud (plus this is on a main route, no hope of public transit out in say Delano or Buffalo.) The only public amenity more used than in the city is public schools, but as these don't have the problems of inner city schools and are probably well funded enough from local education boards and property taxes cuts or denial of increases to education funding don't scare the voters out here like it does in the inner cities with trouble schools or even inner ring suburbs. The fact that the whole area is lily-white (some exurbs have Hispanic populations, but they are always newer immigrants and don't vote) and lacks any type of "intellectual" population or arts community and lack of benefits from public services that would provide white Democrats results in staunch Republicanism. They probably aren't on balance significantly more religious than metro area people in general, but the lack of progressive culture means no progressive churches, and thus anyone who does go is going to be pretty socially conservative and right wing in general. Even people raised in more liberal mainline denominations like the ELCA if they live here and do attend are likely to be drawn away by evangelical churches that might provide more family-friendly features and networking benefits, and anyone who lives in this type of area won't be scared by conservative theology. Because of this you have a base of rabidly conservative voters (who nominated people like Bachmann) and a bunch of not all that educated and low information Republican voters (who vote for people like Bachmann because they often don't know any better), and rabidly right wing politicians that embarrass anyone from the region who pays attention are the norm. And the whole area is quite bland, cookie cutter, and in general just plain ugly.
