Suburbs

Today I'm going to try to put into words my philosophical disagreement with the American concept of suburbs. 

To be frank, I've never liked the suburbs at an instinctual level.  When I'm out in the 'burbs' there's a feeling, an uncomfortable dread, a sense of being out of place.  I just want out.  I can be in the country, walking the streets of a small town, or in the heart of a metropolis like London or Tokyo and I don't have that dread. 

The questions I ask myself are: What is it about a suburb that doesn't fulfill my basic needs as a human being?  What about the suburbs goes against the double helix of evolved wants and needs of our species? 

What created suburbs?  They are an outgrowth of two things, automobiles and desegregation. 

For me that's just not enough.  Human beings evolved as communal creatures, dependent on each other in so many ways that we have trouble comprehending the extent to which the social net has been frayed.  Think about it, the idea that a family unit is a man, a woman, and children is not in our nature.  We're from clans and tribes where many adults raised and cared for and disciplined and taught the children.  We're accustomed to birth and death as a part of our lives, and sadness that accompanies the death of an adult is not supposed to be the partner of despair brought on by the total collapse of that family.  When an American “Nuclear” family encounters a bump in road whether it be job loss, major medical catastrophe, death, divorce, etc., the children are crushed under the weight of pressure and loneliness and backlash from the impact of those events.  When someone in village had problems, everyone helped out and brought that person up, or took care of the family, or took in the children and continued raising them.  It really does take a village and Hillary was as right as rain despite the derision she endured.  I think we'd have a lot less mental health problems in this nation if our children had many more adults in a close-knit group for which to serve as behavioral examples.

So, we have small towns populated by people who know each other well and help out and are probably related in various ways.  Or we have cities with major support networks including charities, hospitals and hospices, rec centers, schools, parks, etc.  Neither the cities nor the small towns have everything needed to substitute for our basic tribal needs, but some of it's there, and the biologically imperative human interactions are available, frequent, and often healthy.

But many millions of Americans don't live in these small towns or in the cities, they live in a nebulous sheltered region called suburbs.

Now granted, there are isolated cases where our tribal needs can be met in the suburbs, but as a general rule they are designed as functional destroyers of our basic biological needs. 

First, the support networks of human interaction are missing in the suburbs – there isn't a tight-knit group of people offering mutual support and absorbing, across a community, the traumas of life.  Instead, the suburbs are an invention of competition, where everyone is competing with everyone else for possessions and status.  “Keeping up with the Joneses,” originally an early 20^th Century cartoon became the catch phrase for generations of American suburban Dreamers.  Competition doesn't equal support, it just can't, no matter how many times you watch Brian's Song, it's a better fable than it is a reality.  Suburbs begat high-stakes beauty pageants, exclusive invite-only preschools, cheer-leading rivalries, and American Idol.

What happens when someone in the suburbs runs into a situation of need?  Well, here you go:

Six years ago, Brian Lavelle moved out of the city of Cleveland to the nearby suburb of Lakewood for what he thought would be a better life. Back then, Lavelle, 38, was a forklift operator in a steel mill making $14 an hour. He had a house, a car and was saving for his retirement. Then, three years ago, the steel mill closed and Lavelle found that the life he dreamed of was just that, a dream. The suburbs, he quickly learned, are a tough place to live if you're poor. For starters, there isn't much of a safety net in his community. Food pantries, job-retraining centers and low-cost health clinics are hard to come by. He can't afford either gas or car insurance, and inadequate public transportation hurts him, too. Not long ago, he was offered a job in another suburb, "but it just wasn't doable." The commute by public bus would have taken him three hours each way.

 

Second, they shield their residents from the realities of the world.  A New York Times story from several years ago reported on a study of perceptions among Americans.  When asked the question, “Are you in the Top 5 Percent of Wage Earners?” an astounding 20% responded yes.  When asked, “Will you be in the Top 5 Percent of Wage Earners within five years?” another 19% responded yes.  That makes 39% of American people who believe that policies directed toward the top 5 Percent of Americans are directed toward them.  How can that happen?

Well, what you get in the suburbs is an isolated existence, where you are surrounded by people of the same class as you, incomes and education equivalent to you, with a values structure similar to yours.  Also, because these are planned communities, the retail services and restaurants are tailored to fit the suburb. Anyone who lives there can drive to any store nearby and buy just about anything in it, no problem.  Same for restaurants – you might have to wait a bit and carry around a vibrating neon sign to let you know when your table's ready, but you're not going to be bankrupted by the bill.

So, you naturally come to the belief that everything in your world is within your grasp . . . you're the king and the kingdom is ripe.  What empowerment!

In the city, by contrast, wealth and poverty mix.  Within ten blocks of me, right here in Minneapolis I can see estates owned by the grandchildren of grain and retail magnates, people with money they don't even understand.  They're driven by chauffeurs, live-in nannies raise their children, and weekend trips anywhere in the world is a reality, not a dream.  I can also see, within that same distance from my home, men and women who line up daily at the soup kitchen and beg at corners for change. 

I can get a breakfast burrito within walking distance for a couple quarters, but I can also go to a trendy restaurant where the reservations are made months in advance, no prices are on the menu, and the bill will easily stretch out over $300 a person.  I can buy a $9.00 watch from a guy selling from a card table on the street, or I can stop in and pick up a $600,000 Ulysse Nardin.  Get the picture?  I know where I stand and have no illusions about my own wealth.

It's from this vantage that people like me get so flabbergasted by Americans voting against their own financial interests. . . . voting for the very policies that empower companies to auction off their jobs to other countries and then turn around and tell them that it's for the best.  Unbelievable.

Third, they promote an unsustainable America.  Fossil fuel isn't going to get any cheaper and it's not going to become more readily available as the world catches up to America.  So, McMansion owners and suburban commuters are going to be feeling the crunch first, yet they are going to be the most resistant to those changes which would be better for community and lifestyle, mainly concentrating the population into tighter areas for more effective mass transit while opening up vast regions for both wilderness recovery and sustainable agriculture. 

None of that is suburb friendly. 

I could say much more, but I've gone on long enough.

- rick, city dweller.

Comments

[Cherise]

Hi Rick,
Great post, but I am worried you feel you can't really open up and tell us how you feel. Don't hold back! ;) te he.
From a Small Town/Country Girl

[Mark]

I know you and I disagree on this subject. Maybe it is because I am from a small town and realy believe in building community. Maybe it is because my experience with the 'burb' of Eagan isn't at all like your vision here. I have nieghbor's who don't have college degrees, mechanics, retired Army Lt. Col's, stay at home mom's, preacher (who used to be an adict), musicians, painters, and I could continue...but the thing is this, we all get together and help each other out. Recently a nieghbor was diagnosed w/ a brain tumor...the who 'hood supported them in anything they needed during his recovery. Another nieghbor just lost his 20 year old daughter under suspicious circumstanses and we're all there for him. I've had nieghbors help sheet rock, haul rocks/dirt/landscaping materials, etc. So forgive me if I don't quite share your bleak outlook of 'burb' life.

And BTW, I live only 2 miles from work door to door. And yes, I have biked to work.

[CV Rick]

I said education levels, not degrees. It's my opinion that some random degree from a state college (that'd include me, by the way) is not equivalent to a degree from an ivy league school - because of the quality of education and the value of life's contacts based on the networking that time in school provides. It's more about the class-level of the people you associate with than the amount of time in a school.

[Success Warrior]

I live in a small town with no options and no sense of community.

[CV Rick]

Yeah, that's a problem Success Warrior . . . but I feel the reason is that you live in a community unnaturally created to satisfy a particular vice. There can't be much community in that.

[Mark]

well I consider my degree form the U a pretty good one, especially in Engineering, but I don't "lord" that over anyone, especially the guy across the street who is a bus mechanic, or the guy up the street who is in the building trades. We have a few doctors in the 'hood too, but they are so down to earth it doesn't even seem that "beeter". They have an education in something that I could never try to be "level" with.

[Success Warrior]

You don't have to use your degree in Engineering to lord over anyone when you are the beer darts champion. =)

[Mark]

true, true.....

[CV Rick]

I guess a near-future blog post is going to be on the value of education in America.

[Success Warrior]

Education in America?

That's a joke, right?

[Tim Mulcahy]

There's a book you should read called "The Geography of Nowhere." It's about the history of suburban sprawl and how as a society we are building structures that no one cares about in homogenous communities.

It isn't that people don't care about each other, its that we are building communities around cars where work and stores are separate from home life, where community activity are guilt around malls. The book was written at a time when inner cities were dying.

Cities are undergoing a resurgence and planners are getting back to the concept of mixed use partly to allow people to work and shop within walking distance from their homes, but I think the book still has something to say.

In Minnesota, where I live, we are planning for an additional million people in the next ten years. We need to ask ourselves how these people will be housed. Will we put them further from the inner city in an additional ring of suburbs, forcing them to spend up to four hours each day, travelling to and from work? Or will we create more balanced communities with public mass transit where people can get to and from their jobs more easily.

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting study in late 2006 that said the number one thing that made people happy was a short commute. You couldn't pay them enough money to counter that.

[CV Rick]

Two days in a row someone has told me to read Kunstler. First, John recommends his brilliant blog, Clusterfuck Nation. In the large, comprehensive post I read he was talking about changing mindsets and figuring out how to live without the automobile, not live with a different kind of auto.

Then you suggest one of his books, Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. Not one to ignore signs, I just ordered it and bookmarked the blog.

Thank you.

The things you learn by writing what you feel.

[Success Warrior]

Tim,

I have a five mile commute and I love it. I wouldn't want to live much further than that. I can't imagine wasting hours of my life each day traveling to and from work. No way.

[graeme]

I have always lived in smaller towns, but I share your disdain for the 'burbs. This post reminds me of the little bit I know of Jane Jacobs.

[Mark]

sorry, still love my 'burb. Everything I want(95%)is w/in a 3 mile radius for what I want, work, home improvemnt store, resturants (including familiy owned greasy spoon), parks, heck even a place to play hockey. Personally I think it is all about how you live and what you expect out of where you live. But I also understand the issues involved in this lifestyle and see issues down the road as oil becomes nearer and dearer.

[John]

Happy to help spread a little 'burb-truth. :) The thing that sucks is that I'm just as bad about this stuff as anyone. I commute 45 mintes each way between the city and a small town. But since I'm not going the opposite direction I burn less gas. And I'm actively trying to find a way to live close to where I work. But that also means either shifting the driving burden to my partner or making him disrupt his employment. Putting intention into action is always the rub.