The story has a country mouse inviting his cousin the city mouse to his place on a farm. At dinner, the city mouse is disappointed at how spare the offerings were - just a few kernels of corn and dried berries - and makes a suggestion that the country mouse visit the city to take in all that it offers. The country mouse agrees and accompanies the city mouse back to his metropolitan home.
Upon arriving at city mouse's alley home in the city, the country mouse is treated to a lavish dinner with cheeses, breads, meats, and fruits. Just as they were beginning dinner, an alley cat comes out and the two mice scurry to a corner hole to wait for the danger to pass. Once the coast is clear they return to the feast but are again interrupted and seek shelter from danger.
The country mouse decides enough is enough and leaves, acknowledging the bounty of the city but preferring the peace of the country.
I thought of this story as I was reading the opening chapters of James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere. I am sitting here wondering, "Where's the suburban mouse?"
How would a suburban mouse change this story? Well, a lot. One of the reasons the suburbs popped up was to have the peacefulness of country living while still having access to all that the city has to offer. You could, in essence, have it all.
Enter the suburban plan of Riverside, Illinois. Kunstler notes that in "Riverside, you could wake to the crowing of your own rooster, but you could also enjoy a hot morning bath while someone else - say, an Irish servant girl - gathered your eggs and cooked breakfast. Then it was an easy twenty-minute train ride to business in the city" (51).
Riverside was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, both of whom had achieved recent notoriety by designing New York City's Central Park. The 1869 design of Riverside was meant to blend in naturally with the undulations of the landscape and celebrate the major natural feature that ran through the middle of the development, the Des Plaines River. Also running through the development are railroad tracks for freight and commuter use. Key elements in the planning of the community was to have the train stations and park areas within 10 minutes walking distance. Key idea here: walking distance. This was a place where every tree was planted strategically, where the park paths were terraced, where zoning laws prevented fences from being built, where people actually walked to get where they needed to go.
(Slight digression here - can't help thinking about the Missing Persons hit "Walking in LA" in which the message repeated is that "Nobody walks in LA")
Who walks in the suburbs? Seriously? I have experimented with getting around the NW suburbs by solely riding my bike, but that effort always ends quickly. The streets just are not rider-friendly. Even less pedestrian-friendly - have you ever tried walking or riding north on Wolf Road through the traffic circle?
The first suburbs, like Riverside, arrived in this country long before the automobile did. In the chapter entitled "Eden Updated", Kunstler points out that many of the considerations in Post-WW2 suburban development are meant to accommodate the automobile, yet leave the inhabitants wanting:
The perfect modern suburban street has no trees planted along the edge that might pose a hazard to the motorist incapable of keeping his Buick within the thirty-six-foot-wide street. The street does not terminate in any fixed objective that might be pleasant to look at or offer a visual sense of destination - no statues, fountains, or groves of trees. Such decorative focal points might invite automotive catastrophe, not to mention the inconvenience of driving around them. With no trees arching over the excessively wide streets, and no focal points to direct the eye, and cars whizzing by at potentially lethal speeds, the modern suburban street is a bleak, inhospitable, and hazardous environment for the pedestrian. (50)So where is the suburban mouse?
Either in his car or in his house.
Does the suburban mouse ever walk?
Oh, how funny do you talk!
My guess is that Kunstler will continue to target the automobile and car culture as anathema to the idealized suburban lifestyle envisioned by Olmstead and Vaux. Now that I know the "enemy", I see a chapter coming up entitled "Joyride". I wonder what that will cover?
