Rethinking Suburban Living

So now I want to move.

Not move away, but to a neighborhood that honors community and place.

The past few weeks, while reading James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere, I find myself cursed with a heightened awareness of the disastrous effects of short-sighted, automobile-centric, suburban planning.

The bleak vision of this book lies in how Kunstler illustrates, through many examples, how towns have been ruined by poor planning and zoning codes which have separated people from the real function of the town.

For example, most suburban areas have separated residential, commercial, and educational zones.  You might find a school in a residential neighborhood, but you won't find a general store in a residential neighborhood.  Of course, you wouldn't find single-family residences within industrial zones either.  That's probably a good thing, keeping say homes clear of the UOP plant, right?

Kunstler calls for "new urbanist" developments that integrate residential and commercial use.  And these communities will be developed to encourage walking and bike-riding as principal modes of transport within the community. 

Today, for example, I had to get some packing tape.  Out of habit I got in my car, and drove down to the dollar store (about 1/2 mile) to get the item I was looking for (and a few others I couldn't pass up).

Also, today I took my dog for a walk through the local park and through some of the sidewalks in my neighborhood.  Sure it was cold and there were some NFL playoff games on, but on my walk I encountered NO ONE.  There is no reason for anyone to walk, unless they, like me, are just exercising their dog.

There are no natural gathering places in my neighborhood.  The park is sprawling and the commercial centers are on the far ends of a busy main arterial street (Golf Road).  95% of the time I go to the commercial center for groceries or other household items, I drive (30% of the time, ironically, I get gas!).  

The warning Kunstler gives is multi-layered.  First, Americans are becoming compartmentalized and alienated from community by the way our towns are set up as slaves to the automobile culture.  We are naturally social beings, yet we live in a way that does not honor our need and desire for community. Second, eventually our way of life will implode - we need a plan for when the oil runs out.  We need to cut down on automobile emissions.  We need to be be better stewards of our earth before it's too late.  This may be the most difficult step.  Collectively, Americans especially, we have a lot of ingrained habits that have led us to this point.  Change means less driving.  Change means a "redo" on many of our current neighborhood plans. Change means rethinking and reevaluating our current quality of life in different terms. 

Hope is out there.  Kunstler devotes the last chapter to identifying movements that are bucking the "suburban sprawl" trend and individuals who are leading the way to develop communities that embrace pre-automobile values.  Here are two to check out:

• Seaside, Florida - the first to embrace Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND)
• Northwest Landing, Dupont, Washington - a development by Peter Calthorpe that is an example of the "Pedestrian Pocket" scheme which creates forward-thinking, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and links them with regional transportation.  

So, what's happening locally?  The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning recognizes the need for new planning for better livability.  At least there is a plan in place, right?  It seems like a lot of partnerships between local business, city government, and real estate developers will need to happen in order to proceed with these "looks-good-on-paper" plans.  

The name of the plan?  GO TO 2040.  

Let's hope by then it's not too late.

Driven to Drive

So, it seems my prediction from last blog is true.  There is no other technology that shapes suburban life like the automobile.  Period.

I am discovering that The Geography of Nowhere is somewhat about the banality of the suburban landscape.  It is much more about how we live in our automobile-driven society and why we live where we do.  We've been sold a bill of goods that has preaches that our suburban life is the latest version of the ever-elusive-but-always-pursued "American Dream".  What startles me reflecting on it is how our present way of life is one ironically chasing after a bucolic ideal while finding ourselves mired in a lifestyle that is as fast-paced and stressful as any we can imagine.  In looking for restful peace we chase after restless business.

As it turns out, everything about suburban culture as we know it seems to have been driven by the automobile.  

Henry Ford made the automobile affordable to the masses.  When the Great Depression hit, you could buy a Model T for less than $300 (down from over $800 when they first came out).  The car represented freedom.  The car also represented profits.  If everyone can afford a car, then businessmen like Ford would surmise that everyone should have one.  If everyone can afford a pair of jeans, then everyone should have one.  If everyone can afford a waffle iron, then every family should have one.  Fill in the blank - there you have the American consumer-driven economy.  But first and foremost, you need a car to get to the store to buy the things you can now afford to buy because you can buy them.

Did you know: General Motors bought many of the privately owned streetcar companies in major cities in order to dismantle tracks and replace streetcars with bus routes.

Did you know: Robert Moses almost single-handedly transformed Long Island from a countryside haven into a massive parking lot with his aggressive and short-sighted development of highways and bridges that spurred unchecked growth.

Did you know: After WWII, the Federal Housing Authority awarded many veterans favorable mortgage deals in new suburban developments as many families moved from the cities to the suburbs. (Correction: white veterans)

Okay - I'm spreading my ideas thin here, but what I am learning is that the automobile industry; in concert with tire companies, oil companies, and steel companies; have basically led us to live a life of consumption.  Working so we can afford to buy cars to get to work.  Working so we can buy gas for the cars.  Working so we can afford to make payments on our house that has a garage for our car.  Working so we can drive our car to the store to buy products for our house in the suburbs.  Working so we can afford in-home entertainment to further isolate ourselves in our homes and alienate ourselves from our neighbors.  

The thing is, we can never work enough to have enough - and the car drives us to drive more.

Land transformed for driving and parking.

Walking through the suburbs?

I remember somewhere in the back of my literary memory a story about a city mouse and a country mouse.  Turns out - with a quick Google Search to confirm - I remembered correctly.  Here's the brief version of Aesop's fable:

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? 

Here is everywhere

I grew up in the suburban landscape of West Omaha. When I try to think about how my hometown really distinguishes itself visually or culturally from the Northwest Chicago suburb I live in now, I can't really come up with many differences.

In Omaha we had Baker's and Albertsons as the major supermarkets.  Here we have Dominick's and Jewel. In Omaha I would go down 114th and Dodge on summer nights to get a Dairy Queen or meet friends at the Burger King.  No different here - just drive down Elmhurst.  In Omaha I used to take the bus to Westroads Shopping Center to go to a movie with friends or shop for stuff. Same here - the Pace 208 Route is literally two blocks away and will take you straight to Woodfield. My kids do the same.

Reflecting on places I've been in the past couple years, West Omaha and the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago don't really look that much different than other places I've been: Colorado Springs, Tucson, Rockford, Indianapolis, Louisville, St. Louis, Lincoln.  Sure, each place has its iconic landmark (Air Force Academy, Gateway Arch, State Capitol, etc.), but the rest of the outlying area is strip mall after strip mall after strip mall.  Yawn.  Even in Puerto Rico, I was astounded at the number of strip malls in suburban San Juan and Caguas.  You wouldn't believe how many K-Marts and Church's Chicken restaurants are there!

Another aspect of the suburban landscape that I have been pondering is the relative impermanence of structures.  Buildings out here just aren't made with "forever" in mind.  I look at the lot on Busse Highway and Greenwood in Park Ridge: There used to be a thriving auto dealership there; now there's a gravel lot.  I look at the huge vacant lot off Northwest Highway where the Littelfuse factory used to be.  They've moved, but I can't help thinking about the space - all the conversations, all the hours spent there, all the energy that was once concentrated in that space now quiet and desolate.  What out here is built to last?  What out here will stay?  What out here can we count on as permanent?

So as I was putting together the list of book-length arguments for class, James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere definitely caught my attention. The questions I hope to find answers to are embedded in my fascination with and aversion to the homogeneity and impermanence of the suburban landscape. Even more importantly, what does this say about us, the people who live and work in the American suburbs?  What values or beliefs are  reflected in the way we plan, build, use, and dispose of our commercial and community structures?

Is any hope for the future here?  As developments like Randhurst Village are re-purposing commercial properties for a more "Main Street" feel, even these developments have the exact same vibe as the one in the next suburb (Streets of Woodfield, Deer Park Town Center, etc.).  I am looking forward to seeing what, if anything, is being done in some communities to reclaim a unique sense of commercial and community identity.

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Extra: Here's James Howard Kunstler appearing on the Colbert Report in 2008: