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This article was written in response to an article
that appeared in the New York Times on August 15, 2005 titled “Living
Large, by Design, in the Middle of Nowhere.” Please click
here
to read the article.
After
I read "Living Large by Design , in the Middle of Nowhere"
in the today’s New York Times I felt upset. After all the
dreaming I've done about the possibility for a re-densification
of America’s built environment, it's upsetting to read about
the vast disconnect between the way I hope things can be, and the
way things actually are.
I understand the fundamental tug of suburban living. I was, after
all, raised in the suburbs and I recall my own delight at the experience
of growing up in a single-family home, living through a remodel,
having my own bathroom, shopping at the big grocery store. Now,
nearly a decade after leaving suburban San Diego I feel I may finally
have acculturated to city living, but it took me years to become
get used to the lack of space and vista that is a hallmark of urban
life. Even now I feel cramped and frustrated by the inescapability
of the cars and other people on the streets of my neighborhood.
And if I were to try raise a child in the city, I would worry that
they would lack the aloneness and quiet that defined my own childhood.
I understand why people want to raise their families in the suburbs.
That disclosure aside,
I am too aware of the costs of the low-density development profiled
in the New York Times article to let it pass without some kind of
protest. But what kind of protest would someone like me (who is
a product of suburban no-man’s land) make? How is it that
I, who should really be singing the praises of such places, think
that their proliferation is a problem? How is it that I have come
to such a different conclusion about the exurbs than the one my
countrymen and women seem to draw when they buy into these communities
in Florida and Arizona?
I think that much of our difference in opinion originates in our
different economic backgrounds. My family, on both my mother and
father's side, has been relatively affluent for at least three generations.
My grandparents all attended college, and my Grandfathers both hold
professional degrees. Generations of affluence breed a suspicion
of middle class values, in this case, a suspicion of the most dearly
cherished American desire for the large, single family home in a
safe and sequestered suburb. Because this is a dream that my family
has lived now for nearly 100 years, it is hardly the object of deep
emotional longing for me that it must be for more recently prosperous
people. I can only imagine how much people living in cramped, overcrowded
places must desire the sort of lifestyle portrayed in the TV sitcom
set in suburbia... I'm sure that I can't understand that kind of
desire.
That someone like me should be able to tell someone who has never
had such a home what they should or should not want is truly absurd.
It is a bit like the US prohibiting other nations from the R&D
of nuclear weapons. Who are we to regulate WMDs, when we ourselves
developed them?
But in the same way that we Americans can attest to the extreme
danger inherent to possession of nuclear weapons, so do I as an
individual feel compelled to warn those who would potentially buy
into the sanitization of the new exurbs to be careful what they
wish for.
Somehow, I want to express to them the sense that their grandchildren
will regret the decision that they made, the way I regret the legacy
of my own Grandparent's post-war mode of suburban development. I
have reached this point of criticism earlier than most because of
my own family's residence in comfortable suburbs has been a given
for so long. But I do not doubt that generations of Americans will
follow me in the conviction that the sort of development we are
building in Florida right now is deeply troubling.
I find it significant that the residents to the new exurbs are no
longer just white people, but people of all ethnicities in search
of security, comfort, and space. The desire for the American Dream
has much more to do with being human than it does to do with being
a member of a certain ethnic/cultural tradition. As humans, we are
seeking space and security-- it is not just WASPs who want to bebe
WASP-Y. No matter how “colorful” or “multigenerational”
one’s ethnic heritage may be, acculturating to the sanitized,
privatized suburbs is possible and can be accomplished in a single
generation. The terrain of our new suburban land makes us all alike,
and liberates us from our messy past and future, allowing us to
all be part of the same geopolitical culture.
I believe that as humans, we all desire the expansiveness of suburban
space, and the conceit that we are brave settlers of a new, uncharted
land. I also believe that once this fantasy is attained, that we
all equally tire of the monotony of such places. For the past 7
years I have lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a city which is
virtually jammed with former suburbanites who have made a reverse
migration back to the city. These reverse-urbanites like chaos and
the abundance of things to do that the city offers. They like to
be able to walk to the market, they like to sit on the lawn in front
of city hall and people watch. And when they travel, they like to
go to so-called “colorful” countries. Thailand, Mexico,
Tibet, India. They like the richness of cultures and the cramped
way they all flow together in our public spaces.
Another
thing which binds the white residents of Cambridge, unsurprisingly,
is that they are both wealthy and extremely well educated. Of all
the people in the world, there are few who have so much choice about
what they do with their lives than they. Many of them, like me,
come from long traditions of well-to-do, well-educated families,
and for most they should have enough money was never really in doubt.
And even if it were, their education and personal connections were
such that they would be able to make it quickly if they were ever
lacking. Many of them also have lived in the sort of communities
that the new exurbs are attempting to replicate on a large scale.
They grew up in the comfortable world of WASP America, and yet they
have willfully chosen to move away from it.
I think that there is something telling about all of this. Perhaps
we WASPs, the affluent Americans who have lived here for generations,
can be seen as a sort-of canary in the gold mine. If the low-density
suburbs are really that great, why is it that so many of us have
left them behind? Though few of my contemporaries and friends express
dissatisfaction with their sububan hometowns in word, none of them
have chosen to return to such places as of yet. The vast majority
of my friends, once they graduated from college was to move to the
place in America most antithetical to the suburbs: New York City.
Though I suspect that today’s newly affluent Americans will
need to move to the suburbs and find out the problems of low-density,
car-reliant living for themselves, it would be wonderful if somehow
they could look at all of us who made the reverse migration in the
last 20 years, and think twice about their decision. If the American
dream is so great, why is it that so many of the wealthiest and
most educated Americans have turned away from it and decided to
live in apartments and condos big cities?
It
all puts me in mind of a story I heard when I was in Turkey, about
a town in the center of the country which had a long tradition of
carpet weaving. Every household in the town whether or not they
were descended from weavers, tended to have a houseful of ancient,
somewhat dirty carpets covering the floors. The carpets had been
a staple piece of furniture in the town for as long as anyone could
remember. As the town slowly began to modernize, and developers
began to build the high-rise apartment buildings typical in Turkish
towns, one of the developers had a brilliant idea. He made an offer
to the residents of the town who were moving to his buildings that
he would provide them with wall-to-wall synthetic carpeting in their
unit for free if they would trade in the old carpets that had lain
on the floors of their homes for generations. Looking at the dirty
old carpets, this seemed like a good idea to the new residents,
and before long almost everyone had been relocated to high-rise
apartments with wall-to-wall carpeting. The developer made a fortune
reselling the cleaned carpets as priceless antiques.
For at least fifty years now, I feel developers in contemporary
America have had us all duped in a similar swindle, facilitated
by free propaganda from the media and retail industries that stand
to gain by our constant relocation and upgrading. Now that some
of us who have been duped the longest are finally realizing what
we have lost and are trying to rouse the others who have been cheated,
it’s already too late. The great carpet trade is too alluring
to be stopped, and we have no way of making ourselves heard over
the clinking whir of the machine.
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