Keep in mind that I know nothing about urban design. I know that I hated living in the suburbs and never intend to again. I know that I like the biking/shared transportation plan and that my intense distaste for driving, particularly solo driving, was a major factor in my hate for suburbia. That and my disaffection for chains. But that’s more than enough lead in for this book.
Suburban Nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream is a political argument. I do not say this to discredit it. On the contrary, I strongly agree with it. I agreed with its position before I read it, and it has refined my understanding of the issues and ideas involved.
The authors claim that the structures we inhabit affect our behavior. A claim that is difficult to dispute. Suburbs force people to drive. Perhaps more than anything else, that is the heart of suburbia. These are areas designed with the heavy use of cars as a core assumption. Huge parking lots, miles of road, and, in general, vast empty spaces between everything. They argue convincingly that social malaise, environmental destruction, and a dessicated public sphere are the nearly unavoidable results of this structure.
They also explain how widening roads lengthens commutes. My sole criticism of it is its glossed-over approach to gentrification, and its lack of a viable solution to such.
After reading this, I have found myself looking differently at the places around me. Noting things that I had liked, other things that I had considered odd, but hadn’t really thought about. And thinking about their effects and what they meant. It’s persuasive, and articulate, and it spoke to me on a very personal level.
It makes an interesting pairing to read that in close temporal proximity to Fast Food Nation
Thinking back to my time in Schaumburg, which was spent almost exclusively online, or in the car, and comparing that to my life now, where I walk to a friend’s place on a regular basis, and often run into friends, and buy food on that walk, I can see quite clearly what they’re talking about.
I can see how the inability to go anywhere on my own might very well have led to an unhappy childhood, and a very frustrated adolescence. How going everywhere by car might result in a life empty of friends.
The key here is to live somewhere that you want to spend time, both in the apartment and out of it. I managed that best in chicago with my first apartment. I let a job I didn’t like, and didn’t expect to like, rearrange the rest of my life. And from there on, I stepped closer, and closer to a place I’d like to live.
Anyway, good book. I recommend it highly to the introspective, the observant, and the visionary.
Some parts of me agree with the argument that book presents. I might have to add that book to a list of others that I’m looking at reading. Hey, by the way, I’m visiting pittsburgh this weekend. If you are around, would you like to meet up?