Oh how this system of development annoys me like a splinter under the fingernail! (Sorry, I think I channeled a 19th Century op-ed writer for a second.) First, it completely destroys any sense of community. There is no separation between the allegedly different municipalities and all of the same chains dominate the landscape everywhere. Additionally, independent businesses in these areas are all but impossible to grow. Rather, large chains dominate the landscape and sap dollars from the local population to send to corporate headquarters, rather than reinvesting in the community. Furthermore, you absolutely have to have a car. Although Denver does have a light-rail system, you need to drive to the closest station and the closest super market is likely to be several miles from where you live. Walking along the street and interacting with your neighbors doing the same is just about impossible here.
The worst part, though, is that suburbs like this usually serve to only insulate the inhabitants from the realities of the communities, cities, states, and country that they live in. Aside from the racial segregation that - in my experience - accompanies this kind of development model, you also have economic segregation. Feather River community is for families with a net income of X, Happy Deer community is for families with a net income of Y, and Golden Eagle community is for families with a net income of Z. Of course, low-income or homeless people are nowhere to be seen, leaving the inhabitants of these areas free to continue on in blissful ignorance of the stark realities of the outside world. "What income inequality? Everyone I know is doing pretty well!"
If I sound unduly upset regarding the disease of suburbia, it is only because I grew up a victim of it myself. Only after I lived in more racially and economically integrated communities did I realize just how wrong the perceptions of reality I developed in my youth were. And it's not that my parents and occasional teachers didn't try to tell me - from time to time - that there were other people and things outside the bounds of my home town. Rather, it was simply that the reality I dealt with on a daily basis inexorably cast its imprint on my mind. I find it rational to believe that the same phenomenon occurs with at least the majority of suburban residents. Does anyone reading this disagree? Please let me know.
Here's hoping that we soon recognize the social and cultural harm that the system of suburban sprawl inflicts on our country and, more importantly, the people living here.
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Note: I did not want to address the environmental impact of suburban sprawl here, as that is deserving of it's own post entirely.
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Ed. note on 2010.05.04: I don't intend this column to be an indictment of the people who live in suburbs (aside from my observations regarding what might be labeled "suburb bias"), but rather an indictment of the practice of urban sprawl. People who live in the suburbs usually do so because the value offering is good (i.e. bigger home, better schools, less money). However, those benefits can be replicated in more urban settings (perhaps with the exception of bigger homes) and we should discourage urban sprawl because of the social and environmental costs.
4 comments:
agree 100% my friend, well said.
"The tide of concrete" is a very fitting phrase, and I appreciate your observations on this phenomena. Those cookie-cutter tracks homes are divorced from nature and it's organic spacing. So boring to me, which is why we live on a unique hill where almost every house and plot of land is different.
But I do agree these suburban development schemes are way too calculated, planned to make developers the most amount of profit with the least amount of work, and often little thought about healthy environmentally concerns. In fact, that cheapness is why most Californians have no basement, cuz most of the developers were to cheap to include them!
And about the income divisive neighborhoods I don't have as much to say... money divides us all in different ways; if it wasn't in housing, it's in restaurants, & recreational events, everywhere but parks. How much $ you make usually determines where you spend it; always has. But if we all lived in a park, maybe that'd be different! I too am an idealist...
I completely disagree. All of the best art and culture comes from suburbia. The leaders of every cultural revolution in the USA have emerged from suburbia. Suburban feminists have taught us that feminism is about the right to choose to be irrelevant.
Seriously, our economy relies on suburban neighborhoods to house our most precious resource: blindered idiots with disposable income. Without those sheep, there would be no money to fund the roads and utility lines that connect those hotbeds of human desperation. And without all those unhappy people compartmentalized into regional asset-collection cells, funding for everything would falter--at least everything that keeps them miserable enough to spend their money.
No exploration, no growth, and only an increasing reliance on healthcare to keep them involved. They are only casually human, sometimes; mobile ATMs that can vote--but mostly don't.
Extremely well articulated man...that is dead on. The suburban lifestyle -- homogenous, nondescript, sterile, sheltered, chain-dominated -- is nothing to celebrate. A cross-country trip like yours really does reveal the scale of the sprawl. Community after community, if you can call them that, reveal one chain after another. We pride ourselves, as Americans, as Westerners, on being unique, special individuals but most of us choose to live in places that are anything but. Luckily urban renewal all across the country is stemming the tide, if slowly.
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