Atrios and Kevin Drum have been ruminating on urban vs. suburban living patterns. This matters for all sorts of reasons, not the least being that suburbia is a real political battleground, while urban centers are routinely not just Democratic, but often even–yipes!–liberal. Hence, insight here matters–at least potentially. So, if you’ll sit through a bit of a recap, I promise to talk a bit about Desperate Houswives and Sex In The City.
They are talking about why urbs and suburbs don’t seem to mix, when it seems like there’s good reason they ought to. And I say that there’s a lot here that parallels the failures of Kerry and Democrats generally to translate reasonable ideas into winning campaign.
So, Atrios said:
It will always puzzle me how much of our country chooses to organize their existence, that a certain kind of suburban living has been elevated to the ideal existence. Discussions of this often end up devolving into a strawman dichotomy of “suburbia” versus “Manhattan.” This is due to a number of factors, including the fact that other options for existence have been reduced and we frequently lack a common language to discuss these things in terms which people can collectively understand….
What puzzles me is the fact that there are relatively minor changes to how we construct our suburbs which would both allow some people (not everyone probably) to reduce their degree of auto dependency while simultaneously adding a bit of nearby “small townness” for the rest of the nearby residents. One can transform an absolutely tiny piece of land into something more resembling a town – build a few blocks of mixed residential/commercial development with street level shops – without fundamentally transforming the way most people live….
Many of the early suburbs already have this (and many such earlier suburbs tend to be incredibly pricey, and not just because of their proximity to the urban core) pattern of development, but it’s rarely replicated these days.
And, Drum weighs in:
I don’t think it’s the fault of developers. After all, if you could build a shopping center on a piece of land, and then in addition build some apartments (or co-ops) on top of the shops and maybe some commercial office space as well, that would be a gold mine, wouldn’t it? Landowners would love it.
Is it the fault of city councils? That doesn’t really make sense either. It’s common knowledge that residential developments are money sinks, using up way more in services than they pay in tax dollars. That’s why most cities are so hellbent on letting commercial developers build anything they want. Without them, most cities would go broke.
That pretty much leaves one option: residents of suburbs themselves don’t like the idea of mixed-use development and they let their planning boards know it in no uncertain terms. What’s more, since developers don’t seem to be fighting residents very hard about this, I have to assume they’re skeptical that they could rent out all the space. If they really thought they could make a buck off developments like this, they’d be bribing city councilmen left and right.
In other words, I suspect that just because people visit Downtown Disney on their vacations, it doesn’t mean they’re pining away for small town life.They aren’t pining away for roller coasters in their backyards, either. In the end, some people like cities and some people like suburbs, and it’s just a matter of taste. The people who like cities whine about gentrification and white flight, and the people who like suburbs whine about anything that increases noise or traffic congestion. Both sides seem pretty dedicated to keeping their own patches of land just the way they are.
Which is too bad, because those mixed-use “community oriented” developments that Atrios is talking about always seem sort of cool to me. I must be in a pretty tiny minority, though, because most people seem to loathe either suburbs or cities and fight to the death against any encroachment from whichever living pattern they hate. I have a feeling the reason those mixed use communities don’t exist is because instead of being the best of both worlds, most people think of them as the worst of both.
Now, the problem I have with Drum here is the problem I often have with him–the texture of his thought is reminiscent of oatmeal. He says “it’s just a matter of taste,” even though he himself admits that “most people seem to loathe either suburbs or cities and fight to the death” over matters of taste! Well, maybe in New Yorker stories, or The Silence of the Lambs, but in real life, taste just doesn’t quite capture what’s involved, IMHO.
Here’s Atrios looking for something more than porridge:
I used to live where Kevin does, in the kingdom of Irvine (a place I could talk about ad nauseum if I thought anyone cared). While I was there I was told an anecdote. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, so don’t take any of the precise facts as gospel, but the basic gist is true.
Larry Agran, who has served as mayor a couple of times, had at some point pushed to put an urban corridor some place in the city. From what I remember this wasn’t even a serious mixed-used multi-block area, but instead a few blocks on one street which would have street level commercial/retail and perhaps some apartment blocks on either end. Artist renditions of this were printed up, and the opponents of this plan (which, it must be made clear, would’ve involved an infintesimal portion of the land of Irvine) took these renditions and for their ad campaign added in pictures of panhandlers, the homeless, etc… The point was that anything even slightly resembling a “city,” even a tiny version, was going to attract The Wrong Types.
Now, aside from being a great Larry Agran fan (gave him money for his 1992 Presidential bid), why do I get to this level of detail along with Atrios? Because I want to underscore what’s going on here: it’s demonization, and it’s very heart and soul of Orange County (read “post-WWII, Southernized non-South GOP”) politics. The book to read on this is Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right by Lisa McGirr. Someone I know well wrote for Publishers Weekly:
Federal spending, beginning in WWII and continuing with massive Cold War defense contracts and military bases, was the driving force behind Orange County’s booming economy. A frontier-era mythos of rugged individualism, nurtured on hatred of eastern elites who funded western growth before Uncle Sam conveniently hid this dependency. The local dominance of unfettered private development chaotically disorganized in the county’s northwest, corporately planned elsewhere [particularly Irvine] destroyed existing communities, producing an impoverished public sphere, a vacuum conservative churches and political activism helped fill. Migrants primarily from nonindustrial regions became more conservative in reaction to the stresses of suburban modernity, while selectively assimilating benefits. Racial and class homogeneity nurtured a comforting conformity consciously defended against outside threats.
United by enemies, libertarian and social conservatives rarely confronted their differences. Against this complex, contradictory background, McGirr charts the evolution of a movement culture through various stages, issues and forms of organizing. Incisive yet fair, this represents an important landmark in advancing a nuanced understanding of how antimodernist ideologies continue to thrive.
Now, interestingly enough, Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City provide neat little windows onto this world–what it is and what it isn’t. One of the SoCal Kossacks at our meetup last weekend lamented the constrained roles that actressess like Teri Hatcher had to play on Desperate Housewives, and I surely agree in those terms. A comparison was also made to the roles in Sex and the City, which also, of course, featured women in mutually supportive roles vs. the competitive hostility and/or alienation of Housewives.
But constrained roles can still allow for great acting, and there’s certainly a very wicked (in a good sense) reason for the constraints of Desperate Housewives–it is a classic suburban melodrama, presented as dark comedy, most assuredly from an urban sensibility and perspective. Putting the two shows side by side, we see that the physically constrained, even (to some) claustrophobic city of Sex is the realm of incredible psychic freedom and power–despite whatever dangers and disappointments it brings. OTOH, the bucolic, wide-opened suburbs of Housewives is psychically claustrophobic.
And what of taste? What of the preferences and desires that Drum has neatly analyzed to explain why the worlds stay apart? Well, in the very first episode, Gabrielle explains to her gardener-lover, that yes, her super-successful businessman-husband gave her everything she ever wanted. The problem was, she wanted all the wrong things.
More to the core: Desperate Housewives is driven by secrets. Sex and the City is driven by exposure and revelation. And that’s the paradigm for the modern suburban/urban split that Drum and Atrios are talking about.
Logically, the two can interpenetrate. In fact, they must. But psychologically–psychologically, the entire logic of Desperate Housewives is based on denying, suppressing, resisting with everything possible–not least the suicide of the narrator in episode one–precisely what must be.
My conclusion–hey, I don’t have a conclusion. My conclusion is that we need more conversations. Conversations draw people in. Conversations are what urban life is all about. Conversations are what create the textures of community on which liberal politics thrives. If we want to do better in suburbia, we need to engage people in more conversations. And if we want to diversify our settlement patterns–which Peak Oil alone tells us should–that will not come from top-down policymakes, but from reinvigorated public dialogue–and not just the high-faluting kind they write books about, but even just plain folks talking about…whatever. Even just Desperate Housewives. The more people converse, and deepen their hunger for more conversation, the more they hunger to connect, the more they will open themselves up, and overcome the instinctive turn to fear.
Yes. Conversations. Thing is, the way to get people engaged is to simply ask their opinion. Not too many people in politics bother to ask. Money yes, opinion no. Huge rush to “converse” around election time, back to the daily grind after. No sense of involvement, no discussion of what our great-grandchildren’s world will look like.
I think the conversations are beginning at ground level, and given the right invititation more and more people will become engaged. Until some jackass starts classifying them into red or blue, or groups, or genders, and opens their big mouth and says “poll”.
Just talk. Ask questions. You know, like normal people.
Perhaps one of the reasons that single-use zoning is in many respects a defining element of suburbia is that it caters to individuals’ desires for non-interaction, the safety of knowing that one can step outside without having to deal with “others”.
Now, I put that word in quotes for a specific reason: “others” here means not only those who are unlike ourselves (by class, race, or beliefs), but frequently also any other person. The former is well-documented and analyzed endlessly in our current age; the latter may have been a reaction and response to visions described some 50 years ago in David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd and William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man: the preference to exist in a space where one is freed from the perceived restraints of forced social activity. Large swaths of single-use zoning for residential and commercial use, kept well-apart from one another, make random encounters much less likely.
While most progressives would tend to decry this type of personal isolationism, our thinking here may be self-reinforcing. Liberals and progressives tend to value exposure to differing ideas and the cross-pollenization afforded by such interactions. That is in many ways the critical feature of the urban experience (whether big city or small town). One usually can’t help but be exposed to a greater diversity because of well-structured mixed-use — or closely adjacent single-use — zoning areas. A short walk down the block to go to the store, in a densely packed environment, will likely involve some degree of interaction with others. (This is not to say that there aren’t many urban areas that are incredibly insular and suspicious of “outsiders”.)
In a sense, then, it comes down to a belief that Democrats generally value that form of urban experience (whether they live in that environment or not), while the newer forms of Republicans reject it, probably out of a combination of ignorance and fear — fear of the unknown as well as fear that their bubble world may explode when subjected to the scrutiny and questioning of “others”.
Of course, a national campaign platform that made a major issue of single- versus mixed-use zoning would be lucky to generate interest among even a tiny fraction of the population, so if we discuss it at all, we’d best stick to framing it with pithy catch phrases that make it seem as though we’re not being too wonkish.
There is substantial empirical evidence that rightwingers are more clanish and less open to social others. It’s challenging to tease out the causal relations, but it seems most plausible that they go both ways–those who are more rightwing tend to be more clanish, and those who live more clanish lives tend to become more rightwing.
So there’s very likely inertia on both sides–those who live in suburban surroundings feel more comfortable there, are more conservative, and tend to want to burrow deeper, while urbanites thrive on a more dynamic environment, and seek more of the same.
But these are just general tendencies. The natural rebelliousness of adolescence is one obvious opening for counter-tendencies, for example. It’s no accident that MTV started out scared of putting black faces in front of its predominantly-white suburban audience in the early 80s, only to discover in spite of itself that white suburban teenagers loved their virtual encounters with black stars, just as their parents had before them.
This is a classic example of both the social group isolation and the individual isolation in tension with the desire to break out.
The question is–as it long has been–can we make something more of such openings.
Maybe this is because I was raised by suburb liberals, but I think isolationism was an unintended byproduct of suburbia. I mean, most people I know want more space in their home. So they move to a suburb near a city.
In cities, you have less personal space. Bumping into strangers is not something you choose, but it happens. Move to the suburbs for a few years. Without realizing it, you stop talking to immigrants. Or people of x race or y interest group. Urbanites have more trust in people outside their race/religion/age/etc because they interact more, intentional or not.
This is an excellent and timely topic, by the way. Check out the CityComforts, whose blog and book talk about the bumping into factor of all towns and cities.
I think it was unintended by many who moved there. Others, I’m sure, were very intent on escaping from “those people.” As for those who planned it, I think this is very contestable. See, for example, America’s Undeclared War: What’s Killing Our Cities and How We Can Stop It. Here’s a review I wrote:
To begin, Lazare observes that standard explanations of urban decay–topped by incompetence, corruption and often contradictory theories of development–are implausible in light of the thriving cities of a century ago that were even more beset by such ills. Given the time-frame, an easy culprit suggests itself–the automobile. But that’s only an intermediary cause in Lazare’s book. The root cause is an anti-urban tradition in American politics dating back to the settlement patterns and culture of Colonial Virginia, and embedded in our political institutions.
In European history, cities emerged as bastions of progress and freedom in stark contrast to the feudal order that ruled outside their walls. Hence the medieval proverb, “City air makes one free.” Two of America’s early settlement patterns reflected city-based values. New England’s close-knit settlement patterns reflected the Puritan conception “of Christianity not as a faith of lonely believers wandering in the desert but as a highly social religion revolving around the congregation and community.” In the Middle Atlantic, practical considerations led to crowded waterfront development–easily trumping William Penn’s spacious plans for Philadelphia. But Virginia’s fragmented shoreline with countless inlets and no grand harbor reinforced the anti-urban political culture of the royalist Cavaliers who settled there in small, scattered settlements dominated by plantations. Isolation atrophied their connections to commercial society, creating “a vicious cycle in which declining business abilities led to a growing sense of isolation, dependency, and, finally, hostility.”
The heart of Lazare’s book concerns the interaction between historical and technological developments with the continuing influence of this tradition, which he traces with particular emphasis on figures and movements widely regarded as liberal or progressive, from Jefferson to the Populists, Progressives and FDR. While one could argue that Lazare goes too–for example, portraying Jefferson as a backward-looking, reactionary “Tory radical,” neglecting progressive aspects of his thought–his main point appears unassailable: a profound anti-urban bias has severely limited the scope of progressive politics throughout American history.
Against this backdrop, Henry Ford’s anti-urbanism, anti-Semitism, and obsession with his employees morality emerge not as quirks but as defining characteristics of what he intended his automobiles to do: take America back to a future free from urban corruptions. Cars were tremendously inefficient, spectacularly moreso in cities, but the true costs weren’t paid by their owners as everyone else was forced to adapt–gradually making other forms of transportation more costly and inefficient. (Still, even today hidden subsidies for cars are calculated as high as $10 per gallon.) The ultimate adaptation was FDR’s subsidies of suburban housing (slashing downpayments, extending mortgage periods, deducting mortgage costs from income tax, etc.) and early plans for an interstate highway system, which when finally realized paved the way for rapid urban collapse in the 1960s.
Naturally, such massive subsidies produce tremendous misallocation of resources–draining cities of people, investments and jobs is but one consequence, along with excess pollution and global warming. The same is true of earlier anti-urban policies. In warring against our cities, Lazare amply demonstrates, we war against the richest of human possibilities.
…his main point appears unassailable: a profound anti-urban bias has severely limited the scope of progressive politics throughout American history.
That seems like quite a reach. So desire for home ownership had little to do with the migration outwards? Given the choice and wherewithal, people will almost always buy a home regardless of location rather than rent. And how much land – much less housing stock – was or is both affordable and available in urban areas? Were “FDR’s subsidies” directed to a specific type of housing, or was suburban housing the only affordable housing available?
I’d really like to meet the planner who could comfortably fit even one million people into an urban environment. Absent mile-high buildings the force of increased population alone requires outward expansion. As for the automobile, what transportation system could possibly have been designed to accomodate the needs of the population?
I suppose we could still farm with horses, but I doubt it would be nearly as productive.
I’m having a very hard time seeing how this:
Is directly contradicted by this:
For one thing, the whole “throughout American history” comment obviously provides for a much wider historical scope than the period of 20th Century homeownership.
For another thing, a “bias [that] has severely limited the scope” is precisely the sort of social/cultural influence that social scientists talk about interacting with more basic human needs and desires all the time–indeed, it’s the very interaction of such forces and needs that creates the social construct of “homeownership” in the first place.
It’s not that these aren’t good questions to be asking, but they seem to come from an either/or framework that’s oblivious to entire realm of causality that historians and other social scientists have spent generations exploring.
Furthermore, when you ask
the number of implicit misunderstandings jumps another quantum level. First, the subsidies began in the 1930s, during the midst of the Depression. Suburban development didn’t take off as a mass phenomena until after WWII, feuled by a whole new set of subsidies, largely in the form of the GI Bill (which, btw, had a defacto racist component to it, because the housing it made available to white GIs was not available to black GIs).
Second, FDR’s subsidies radically altered the affordability of existing housing. It altered the entire nature of the housing market. Such a profound restructuring necessarily created new opportunities, some of which were developed and exploited, some of which were not. And it’s precisely at this level that historical anti-urban biases can be expected to manifest.
Third, if government action suddenly makes certain kinds of economic activity much more lucrative, government has multiple choices about how to respond. Building outward to secure more land for homeowners can be left to the free market, letting speculators reap enormous profits, or it can be managed for any number of different sets of social concerns. Again, this is a level at which anti-urban bias can enter the picture.
I could go on, but this should be enough to give you the flavor of my problem with your response. It’s not that the issues you raise don’t matter. It’s simply that they’ve already been considered by folks like Lazare and the other critics and analysts whose work he draws on.
Finally, there’s a whole ‘nother dimension to all this: not just the local urban core/suburban surround configuration, but the general dispersal of the American population into a vast array of widely-spaced urban centers that mostly lack the sort of dense urban culture that pre-automobile cities had by default. The people who built Los Angeles, for example, never had any intention to emulate the virtues of New York, even as part of a mix appealing to other virtues as well. And Los Angeles is all the poorer for it, down to this very day. But LA is a positive jewel compared to the outlying communities around it–be they OC economic analogues of Connecticut or Inland Empire analogues of New Jersey.
Definitely not the same crop. I totally misread the post. Your reference to your review below clarifies what you’re talking about. I’m beginning to understand your conversation.
It’s sometimes very hard to untangle misunderstandings online. I really had no idea if I was clarifying things for you, or only making matters worse. You try, but without the nonverbal cues of face-to-face conversation, or at least tone of voice, sometimes you just don’t have a clue until the other person posts again.
I agree with you. Think of the style of houses that have popped up in fast-growing suburbs in the past 20 years. You have a quarter-acre treed lot so you never have to actually see your neighbors. There are generally no sidewalks so you don’t run into people out walking their babies or to the corner store. There are no more front porches where neighbors sit and wave to one another…they have been replaced by backyard decks. We drive right up to the house, push a button and drive into the garage. It’s sad, really.
I’ve lived in my house for over a year and have met precious few of my neighbors.
People are starting to notice exactly what you just did.
But sidewalks! Why did these go away – and why no more porches! You are so right about that.
The movie “Crash” illustrates that people are getting fed up with being so disconnected. And they’re just starting to figure out they in fact ARE disconnected.
I was raised in So Cal in the 60’s and 70’s, and my family moved a lot because of economic reasons. I don’t know what the overall answers are to the problems and dilemmas, but I know what some of the factors are.
The way you’re describing mixed use zones, it conjures a vision of small town main street, mom and pop stores. The problem, at least in the LA area, is that none of those stores could compete. In the old neighborhoods where they did have small groceries and dairies, they all went out of business.
When real estate was booming and neighborhoods were re-zoned, they weren’t filled with small retail areas. They’d have huge apartment buildings go up within three feet of the property lines, or houses would be leveled for parking lots, strip malls, and car dealerships. Re-zoning always had the effect of either lowering the property values or making them skyrocket so you couldn’t afford to live in your own neighborhood any more.
As prices rose, people moved to Orange county with their families because it was affordable. As the middle class left the cities, the poorer areas became drained and more dangerous. This was exacerbated by the drug prohibition enriching gangs. Things became more segregated and lead to more racism and separatism.
I don’t think there’s some big, mysterious ideological divide that drives people in different directions. I think it’s mostly economic forces. The gap between rich and poor increases and the city becomes the home of the two extremes for the most part.
Suburbia was not created all at once, nor by a single dynamic. But the deeper point you make cuts across many of them–the move to suburbia is seldom one of aesthetic, sociological or ideological choice.
But, once that choice is made, it then has consequences. One of the findings highlighted in the book I refered to is that people who moved to Orange County tended to become more politically conservative within a few years of moving there.
Responding more specifically, I think what you’re drawing us toward is a recognition of the need for what’s called “smart growth,” however much people might have to argue over what that precisely means.
Right — once the move is made, people become more isolated, the differences more pronounced, and the problems worse. I think smart growth is good. They’re building a mixed-use area in my neighborhood now and I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.
But I also think fixing some of the underlying economic problems would help even more. Attitudes always constrict when people feel their financial status is precarious. They dig in, hold on, and tend to “us/them” attitudes.
People aren’t very nice or open-minded when they feel threatened, even if the threat is a made-up one, such as the news and our leaders always reinforcing how dangerous things are. I think this is a problem that’s going to require a lot of different fixes.
The economic underpinings are certainly very important, every bit as important as you say. But it’s also important to note they are not a separate issue. Urban centers are, traditonally, job machines (as well as business opportunity machines). And they are efficiently (densely and accessibly) packed.
Here’s a passage from a review I wrote of Lazare’s book for the LA IMC several years ago:
Dude! I think I’m totally agreeing with you, but the conversation has officially surpassed my education level. I’m downthread yapping about Veronica Mars. Now I’m going to have to look up the Fordist system!
She’s gotta go through all this grief to get to the bottom of the secrets she cares about, but you’ve only gotta click this link for an decent little briefing on Fordism.
There are many dynamics. I live in a “suburb.” Maybe not technically, I’m in the city limits – but it is an area of miles of houses and nothing else. The nearest “shop” is a convenience store a mile away, and the grocery store is two miles away.
A shopping center is planned much nearer, and I’ll hate to see it built. Why? Because for the 20+ years I’ve lived here it’s been a little patch of wilderness – a wooded area with a pond and cows grazing. It’s stayed that way because the developers have fought among themselves – and with the city about environmental restrictions, so in the meantime, we had the trees and the wildflowers and the cows.
We moved here because we were young and with a young child and it was the only place we could afford to buy a house. Those nearer the city center, with less homogeneity, cost much more than we could afford. The close-in neighborhoods we could have afforded would have left us surrounded by crack houses and gangs. In fact, that’s why we moved – our daughter was getting old enough to want to go out and play, to meet other children, but we had gangsters fighting in our front yard some nights, repeated attempts to break in our house, and packs of large, unmanageable dogs roaming the streets (which people had bought to protect themselves against the frequent burglaries, but then let them run wild.)
I was a little depressed to move out of the city to the suburbs so vilified in our youth, but there seemed no choice. What I found here was a lot of hippies at the settling down, raising kids stage of their lives. We’re not particularly conservative. The R who (mis)represents us was opposed only by a token candidate who filed and disappeared – but my precinct voted for the disappearing “not the Republican.” I was also a Jesse Jackson delegate to our county convention years ago – because that’s who got the most votes in our precinct. We’re ethnically and racially diverse.
I like having a back yard to grow a garden and listening to the birds wake me in the morning. It’s hard to give that up for concrete and exhaust fumes – not Manhattan, but pretty much any city center. I know my neighbors, some for twenty years, and we are very different in some ways but have interesting conversations from time to time.
My point (and I do have one, as they say) is that suburbs aren’t all the same, people’s motivations for wanting to live there can be as simple as this was the place they could afford to buy a house and that seemed like a good place to raise their kids. Boring, conventional reasons, but true. It seems like I’ve always heard Orange County described as very conservative – I’ve heard that about Orange County even here in Texas, so that makes me think that it is, and has been for a long time conservative enough to be worth remarking on. I wonder if it is really a good choice to represent “suburbs.”
Your point about other suburbs is well taken. I’ve lived in a few different states and am currently in a suburb more like the one you describe with more rural aspects and enjoyments.
So I’d agree Orange County isn’t exactly representative. What it is, in my view, is a perfect example of what happens when the gap between rich and poor is dramatically widened.
If we look at what happened in California, we can see it being repeated all over the country. More slowly and not quite as dramatically, but following the same pattern. It should serve as a lesson to us.
When I was a kid, OC still had farms and Orange Groves. Whole housing tracts — hell, whole cities — were thrown up practically overnight. Mostly to accomodate the droves of middle class who could no longer afford to live in their homes because of the huge wealth gap and the real estate boom.
I think it’s a good idea to remember that Reagan was running the state before he took his act national. A lot of the prejudice and fear the right are thriving on now was fostered back then. California was very much affected by the notion that the poor and the immigrants were responsible for everyone’s problems and sucking the resources out of the state.
The middle class who couldn’t afford to live in the city were the ones moving down to OC. And the govenor and his ilk were telling them their financial difficulties were “their” fault. OC was and is really conservative, spawning both the mega-churches and hard core skinheads. It’s like a damned social-science petri-dish on what happens when you squeeze people financially and then fill their heads with right-wing rhetoric.
Social causality is almost always like that. There are central tendencies, lots of variation, and other factors, either reinforcing or cross-cutting.
I’ve had many of the same inclinations myself, and really miss not having my own garden. I think that a lot of people like my parents–city-raised, first-generation, liberal Democrats–thought they’d have a lifestyle somewhat like yours. Some found what you did, most had to do a lot more to make it with those other than their immediate neighbors.
As for your concluding point, I like to say that Orange County is prototypical, rather than typical. The sort of wingnut social conservative politics that is so widespread in America today was present there in the early 1960s. Not everything in suburbia goes that way, but it has been a predominant trend, starting off as a far outlier. It doesn’t represent everything about the suburbs, but it does represent the polar opposite of urban political liberalism.
Continuing the intersection between TV and geography, I have to say that I’ve never watched “The OC,” but do like “Veronica Mars,” which presents Orange County an urban feel, much the same way Raymond Chandler did with LA generations ago. It does a good job of reflecting the fact the county is increasingly unable to keep itself as homogeneous as it once was. The show itself has some interesting contradictions, and now that it’s been renewed, we’ll have a chance to see how it handles them.
I really like that show. It really provides an unsentimental portrait of the high-school years and an unflinching look at class issues. All hung on a pretty cool Nancy Drew type format, of course.
Thank you for the thought-provoking commentary on what these two shows say about suburban vs. urban living. I’ve never, knock on wood, had to live in a suburb, but from what I’ve seen of them, riding as fast as possible out of them, I certainly find them “psychically claustrophobic.” And from twenty-plus years of living in either Tokyo or Manhattan, I can attest that urban life is absolutely about “psychic freedom,” “conversation,” and making “connections.”
I’ve been working on a magazine article about the way 9/11 is being handled in recent works of fiction. It’s struck me — and not for the first time — how differently “9/11 changed everything” for New Yorkers as opposed to most of the rest of the country, and the novels I’m reading support this observation. For New Yorkers (and Parisians and Londoners, the people who seem to be writing the most about 9/11), 9/11 proved that connecting to our fellow human beings is ultimately all that matters, even if these connections can be destroyed in a few short hours on a sunny September morning. Small wonder that we were as anti-Iraq War as Europeans, who also understand the value of living together in cramped quarters. For the majority of Americans, however, 9/11 seems to have reinforced their “psychic claustrophobia.” Their fear of others is now so strong, they aren’t at all troubled by our imprisoning, torturing and killing untold numbers of foreigners in their name. As long as it’s NIMBY, who cares?
What is the difference between a suburb and the so-called “ex-urbs” we heard so much about after the Nov. election?
Are the ex-urbs even more socially isolating, ie not at all focused on the social institutions of the suburbs?
They’re a figment of the punditocracy. Pundits never talk about anything real if they can possibly avoid it, and so they make up words for things that don’t exist. Technically–i.e. if you look in a dictionary–what lies beyond the suburbs. But all that lies beyond the suburbs is more suburbs. Or open space. Or another city. Or, if you’re lucky, mayber a mountain range. But no ex-urbs, cause they don’t exist.
Moral: If you’re going to get an “x” of any kind, you’ve got to do more than just plant somre more lawn.
Although, one could argue that ex-urbs are where the suburbs and x-files intersect. Not that they are, really, but that’s what they should be. David Lynch territory. Or “Wild Palms.”
ha! I like the x-files reference.
City and Small Townishness.
Well, I have spent three years now in what I could call my suburban nightmare.
In the seventies, when Boston introduced busing as a way to alleviate racial disparity in education, white, middle and upper class people moved away in droves, leaving a “family vaccum” in some areas. As the perception of gang violence, and increased violence in urban areas increased during the eighties, the perception of cities as hostile to family life, developers “sold” the idea of suburbia to families, especially women, as safe havens to raise children. Another plus was the lower tax rates, and nice friendly schools far away from racial infighting.
However, developers could not keep out gang violence, drugs, and criminal behavior, so increased tax bases were needed to deal with the encroachment of undesirable behavior. Long commutes, strategic planning of schedules, shopping trips, loss of municipal services, public transportation, and increased reliance on cars, later SUV’s and minivan’s, and ever increasing costs associated with maintaining the suburban lifestyle increased. While women in the city chose work out of a sense of liberation, women in the suburbs had to work, and choose whatever was available, close to kids and schools, (often lower paying) or jump through logistical hoops to maintain long commute hours, kids schedules, and somehow find time to connect to husband and family.
The alternative, to stay home, means an alternative schedule, shopping trips, scheduling play dates, pre-school, a nightmarish schedule of sport games, extracurricular activities, support local team sports, socializing is whatever your kids are involved in. Then there is church. Diversity means more about what church you attend than any sort of racial characteristic.
Churches can provide the sensory input you crave, so devoid of sensation is suburban life. In the country, with nature you have stars and trees, you can contemplate the peacefulness and every blade of grass or flower is an opportunity to experience a wonder. In the country you have landscape, you can create, you can be a mother not only to your own offspring, but there is room for plants, gardening, there is quiet enough to create your home environment out of the surrounding relationships you forge out of necessity because you must seek out human contact, and you must value them. In the country, you must value your neighbor check in on them, look after them and tend to relationships, out of a need for survival, but also out of affinity with the natural grounding the landscape has on you.
In the city you get along with your neighbor through a respect for personal space. You meet sensation at every turn. churches are quieter in the city, they are a place for reflection not networking. They are a place to escape the noise and bustle, not increase the volume. They are a sanctuary from the judgment of life’s consequences and peers, not the peer group that will judge you.
Urban life gives you opportunities to be human, to help out your fellow man every day, drop a coin in a cup, open a door, help someone get across a street. In the city, you are always with your brother and sister, you are always their keeper. You accept unconditional love, that “those people” (whoever they may be) will come around and make something of themselves because there is so much possibility in the ever moving, breathing, pulsing, vibrant city. You are always in discourse with, or constant interchange with your fellow brothers and sisters. You also see the fruits of that discourse, the interchange of ideas, the skyline, museums, sculpture, the monolithic government buildings, the public libraries. They belong to all. Even the poorest of the poor, the homeless, all belong, are part of the interchange and life of the breathing living city.
The suburbs have stripped away life, estranged women even from their own children, their families, they no longer live in the neighborhood of their family, relatives must fly in to visit with the kids, at great cost to the family. No longer can women commune in an organic or creative setting, every meeting must be properly structured according to the coach, the dance instructor, the church meeting, the organization.
Women are no longer able to creatively explore their potential, they must carry the burden of the developers planning (and profits) on their backs. Many developments do not even have sidewalks, so there are no paths to explore, mom is cut off, forced into a hostile roadway with her stroller, creating an anxious experience for baby and mom, rather than a joyful pastime, a stroll.
There are no local markets, no green grocers, no community gardens, and the lots are too small to grow much of anything. If you are creative, you must seek out a place to show your work, women and men equally are now working drones, non-sexual, non creative, eviscerated from both nature, and humanity.
Everyone begins to dress the same, because if you are too attractive you get notice, (obviously in a sensory-free environment people seek out beauty).
That which is unique is both desired and hated at the same time. Hated out of contempt and jealousy, but also a sense of superiority for the “pseudo-creation” that is the suburban life, sterile, yes, sterile because the costs force you to plan carefully on your next child, limit meaningful participation (you see there is nothing for you to worry about honey, there are no issues here) limit your voice, direct your creative energy, so much you now have to plan a date to have sex with your husband.
As for men, do they like working long hours, long commutes, do they feel estranged or are they truly happy with the way tings are? I cannot say, but the numbers of women in the suburbs on pills, drugs, and with alcohol problems is increasing, obesity rises, and all the problems families thought they were escaping are now called by innocuous names such as dysfunctionalism, post-traumatic disorder, divorce, teen angst, mental illness, and estrangement.
See the craziness they escaped just packed it’s bags and went with them, so who are the crazy ones now?
The only thing I think you missed is the part about watching Oprah!, Doctor Phil and Desparate Housewives.