My first year in Seattle, the Monorail was dying a slow painful death. I remember a conversation where one woman I was chatting with felt it was the wrong thing for Seattle because "East Coast intellectuals shouldn't parachute in here and all of a sudden be an expert on what Seattle needs."

While I've never been exactly sure what she was basing this on, I thought her statement spoke volumes about the tensions between east and west.

To the extent that people aren't curious about things that happen outside their back yards, sure, there can be a knowledge gap.