James Poulos calls this essay "crack for humane reactionaries." Yes! Excerpt:
This is most manifest in the life of the suburban commuter who weekly spends a dozen or more hours on the road between the putative dream house and the workplace, caught in the gridlock of tens of thousands likewise trying to move from the residential-warehousing periphery to the economically productive inner rings. Space is quantifiable and we are constantly taught to covet it (though leisure is advertised too—mostly as vacation packages). You can own those two thousand square feet including two-car garage, and it is literally real, the real in real estate. But to have this space you give up time, the time that you might be spending with the kids who are housed in the image of domestic tranquility but not actually particularly well nurtured by their absentee parents, or time spent immersed in community life or making things with your own hands or doing nothing at all—a lost art. You give up time, and you often give up the far more than two thousand square feet that you don’t own but get to enjoy when you live in, say, a rented apartment in a neighborhood full of amenities nobody advertised to you, because you don’t have to buy the public pool or playground that your kids don’t need to be driven to. The language of real-estate ownership is loud, clear, and drilled into us daily; the language of public life and leisure time is rarer and more complex. [snip] Ultimately, I believe that slowness is an act of resistance, not because slowness is a good in itself but because of all that it makes room for, the things that don’t get measured and can’t be bought.
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willingness to live in a gentrifying neighborhood...and our willingness and ability to opt out of public schools
I agree with Rod on this.
When I was willing to accept these two issues, I have found I could always live near near town and where I worked. The bottom line: SCHOOLS, CRIME, and IMAGE are the prime reasons people move out of the cities for the dream home. And by biting the bullet here, I've always lived within walking distance of downtown (4-8 miles). And walking or biking is a live-changing event because it is every day. I remember one summer I put over 1000 miles on my bike.
And I've already seen the school thing changing the culture where I live. It's a big homeschooling area (because the state pays you thousands/kid to homeschool) and this is effecting the housing market as parents are no longer tied to schools if they have a SAHM. Sports too: many parents were serious about making sure their kid was on the powerhouse team with the good coach and so would try to ensure they lived in that district. No more. Now, they just homeschool and then may join whatever team they wish (state law). I think all this choice is going to create tighter communities over time.
I always think that this "soulless suburbia" criticism smacks of snobbery. Not necessarily in Solnit's hands--she makes some good points. But suburbs are not all alike, and neither are those of us who live there. My suburban neighborhood, with its cookie-cutter houses and small yards, is far more ethnically diverse than many urban areas in my expensive city. It's also a place where the driveways are covered in sidewalk chalk pictures, and people hang out on their front stoops, talking to neighbors and keeping an eye on the children and dogs romping around. We call out greetings while grilling on our back decks, and watch over each other's houses while we're away. If it's soulless out here, soullessness isn't as bad as it sounds. (Did I mention the hawks we can see from that back deck? The stars?)
Suburbia doesn't have to equal sprawl. I live in a "smart growth" county, and it makes a lot of difference. Those small yards mean more green space for everyone to enjoy, and the heavy-handed development restrictions (more crunchy than con) allow nearby family farms to stay in business selling to local markets and running pick-your-own fruit and vegetable operations.
Now I'll grant the part about long commutes, though people also underestimate the hours it can take to get around major cities on public transit. But time in the car, like any other time, can be spent in better and worse ways. Listening to world news on the radio can improve one's powers of empathy for the suffering of others, listening to beautiful music can lift one's soul. Even better, one can listen to the children in the back seat making up silly songs and reporting on the minutiae of their days at school. And here's a crazy idea--one can pray. The commute home is a great time for an examination of conscience, or even a form of vespers. I'll take the peaceful moments with God where I can find them, even if where I find them is on the interstate!
Rod and Erin:
You're NEIGHBORS! (At least, sort of.) I didn't know that.
Ever meet for lunch in Arlington? :-)
Thomas and Phillip:
Isn't one of the sad ironies of Los Angeles that some of the neighborhoods of the Inland Empire and the Mojave, 2 hours away from Hollywood/Beverly Hills/Malibu (and past the forest fires, of course), are now ALSO developing the same urban ills as South Central? (Speaking to the infrastructure or lackthereof -- I understand the main hospital for the area just closed, for example, after a disastrous inspection -- not the residents, since many of those neighborhoods are changing in racial composition anyway, from African-American to Latino.)
All parents make sacrifices; urban dwellers and suburban dwellers make different sacrifices, and all we can do is hope that the ones we picked will work out for the best. We're not childless or liberal, but we do feel that living in the city where our commute is smaller is best for our family - yes, despite the fact that cities feature homelessness and crime. If we lived in the suburbs, our middle-class income could buy us a modest three-bedroom house and a second-hand car, and (probably) access to better schools. Here in the city, we can afford a tiny (>700 square feet) one-bedroom bungalow, in a neighbourhood with abysmal public schools, and no car. Of course sometimes we worry that the children would be happier if we moved out to the 'burbs, where we could afford to give them more space of their own, even if we saw less of them. Of course sometimes we worry that the extra time that our inner-city home lets us spend with our children will not be enough to supplement and enrich the mediocre education our local school can provide. But then we think how happy we are to be reunited around the dinner table eating a meal cooked from scratch by 6pm every night, while other parents we know are still on the road, and we decide all over again that for our family, the price in commuting hours of the middle-class lifestyle is too high to pay. For *us*. We all have to do what is right for our own family, and not judge when others decide that a different choice is right for them.
I think I speak for lots of folks who commute by public transit when I saw that with a shorter commute I wouldn't work as much with my hands. If I got home 45 minutes earlier, I don't think I'd be crocheting or knitting with that time as I do on the bus. I'd probably do housework or goof off or run boring errands inefficiently.
In fact, my commute is so important to my serenity that even though my family now has a second car and I could get to work more quickly by driving I usually choose not to.
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