Mark Oppenheimer
The street where I live . . .
I have been thinking about turning this article I wrote about my street, West Rock Avenue, into a book, and so I have been doing a lot of reading about urbanism, town planning, and architecture. Basically, I am trying to figure out what makes some streets livable and others not. A good deal of the literature — by people including New Havener Philip Langdon, whose A Better Place to Live has given me a whole new outlook on what makes a space a happy one in which to dwell — boils down to this: don’t depend on cars. People are happier when they can walk to see neighbors, ride their bicycles, and live close enough to their neighbors that they know them.
This small-town mythology is one that I am particularly susceptible to, having grown up in a neighborhood that had many of a small town’s virtues. And I find myself, as I read these books, falling prey to an unfortunate smugness, as if growing up on streets laid out on an easily navigated grid, with houses on quarter-acres instead of large lots, is the only way to have a happy childhood.
But that can’t be right. For one thing, this mythos runs contrary to another important American mythos, the rural farm. I don’t think many of us would want to say that children growing up in the countryside, learning to milk cows by their parents’ sides, are unhappy. Nobody thinks that that’s an uninspiring or despairing way to grow up. And, to be fair, the writers I’m reading aren’t reacting against that way of life, which may be dying out; they are reacting against suburban sprawl, which until recently seemed poised to dominate the American landscape.
But what of that suburban sprawl — especially those cul-de-sac developments that have proved so popular in late-20th-century construction? Can one have a happy childhood where there are no sidewalks, where it’s too dangerous to ride a bicycle, where there are no secret passageways behind garages or corner stores at which to buy candy?
I don’t know. On the one hand, I don’t want to underestimate children’s capacity for self-mystification. I suspect that most children, at least most of those who grow up middle-class, and sheltered from anything too abysmal in the family’s home life, look back at their early years with a certain sense of awe and wonder. Those lookalike houses in Del Boca Vista Estates are not lookalike to the children inside them, who know which house has the best video-game system, which kid has the dad who makes the best forts with the dining room table and some blankets, whose parents go out late and don’t hire a babysitter (all the better for watching verboten TV channels).
On the other hand, there is empirical evidence that suburban life of this kind can lead to bad things: obesity, too much time in the car, fewer friends, less play. And teenagers—forget about it. If they can, they flee to the city. Or at least the curious ones do.
But what I don’t have are good sympathetic non-fiction books about life in suburban sprawl. For every book critical of that way of life — Langdon’s book, Duany et al.’s Suburban Nation, Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place — there seem to be exactly zero books about why it can be pleasurable to grow up in spaces that are, after all, safe, predictable, and quiet, which are all good things.
I want the other side of the story. Ideas, anyone?
Comments
18 Responses to “The street where I live . . .”
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I don’t know of any particular reading to recommend (although I wonder if something in the Emily Hiestand corpus, or Tracy Kidder’s, might actually meet those criteria), but I fully support the impulse toward a book.
I remember enjoying and admiring that Times piece (whose allusive title reminds us not to underestimate Frank Capra’s influence on American mythos you discuss; interesting in “It’s a Wonderful Life” how the bleak parallel-universe reversal of small-town coziness doesn’t require any changes to the basic layout of the place). In fact, I remember not wanting it to end.
I especially liked the way you talked about the delicacy of the ecology, about how the feeling of rightness (if you’re lucky enough to find it) can’t last. Part of what would make it a great book, I think, would be your observation of passing time.
I would suggest Appleyard’s research on what makes a street livable, the results of which have since been repeated many times by other scientists around the world.
His key finding, in my opinion, was that individuals on pleasant streets had three times as many friends as those on busier streets in the same neighborhood, with the same demographics. This makes sense if you observe the every day activities families on Whitney Avenue with those on Livingston, West Rock, or Everit.
Given that people with more friends are far healthier (each friend represents another year of life expectancy, etc.), you can make a pretty strong connection between neighborhood design and health. Although many of the writers you mention love our cities — and there are many great things about cities — the fact is that large, disinvested sections of our cities and inner-ring suburbs face high traffic and pollution, and statistically speaking are extremely unhealthy when compared with surburban or rural areas. Infants, children, mothers, older adults are the ones who suffer most.
There are alternatives to sprawl and quarter-acre lots! Don’t forget some of us were perfectly happy growing up in apartments in and around cities.
I’d like to second our anonymous commentator. Consider the point you make, Mark: “[D]on’t depend on cars. People are happier when they can walk to see neighbors, ride their bicycles, and live close enough to their neighbors that they know them.”
This credo does not just apply to small towns. In fact, it applies in many ways to big cities, especially those that support “deep” public transit systems. I grew up in the Midwood area of Brooklyn and as a result of my proximity to subway lines and a strong bus system, I had no need to learn how to drive until I graduated from college — which was in Chicago, where I also availed myself of its buses and El trains. For elementary, junior high and high school, I walked nearly every day to school (except for one year when I took a bus). When I returned to NYC for graduate school, I resided in Brooklyn and took the train to class.
In brief, it was more than easy in NYC to forego a car and operate by foot, bike, and mass transit. Alas, this is not the case for every big city: Los Angeles comes to mind. But I’ve used the transit systems of Boston, Washington, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and sundry other cities and find it would not be at all difficult to recreate a “small town” effect in a big city, with individual neighborhoods providing the amenities of the “small town.” Cities also offer the added benefit, one that small towns actually can’t always support, of sufficient population density to maintain small businesses, a crucial component to local happiness.
“But what I don’t have are good sympathetic non-fiction books about life in suburban sprawl…. I want the other side of the story. Ideas, anyone?”
Why not just ask the people who live in them? The best criticism against the critics of suburban sprawl, in my opinion, is the simple fact that it is extremely popular to live there.
Brian - that depends on what you mean by popular. Most historians and critics of suburban development point out how subsidies, the financial-military-industrial complex and other structural issues effectively force individuals to live there, at the expense of others. For example, are you familiar with the history of racism and development?
Critics also tend interpret sprawl in shades of gray: not all subdivisions are created equal. Hillhouse Avenue, for example, was one of the nation’s very first subdivisions.
@Design New Haven: Now, now. I was being half-facetious. And believe me, I am totally on your side. All I was saying by “popular” is that many people live in suburbs, and many of them live there by choice. Given that the idea that the suburbs suck has been around for about as long as the suburbs have, it would be interesting to ask those who live there why they chose to do so, and how their actual life in the suburbs measures up to their expectations of it. Do you not agree that this would be interesting?
I definitely agree. I think the reasons why people live in many suburbs (and enjoy it, relatively speaking, if they are lucky enough to be there) are well documented: cost, schools, quality of housing, reasonably pleasant open space, public resources, ease of transportation, the list goes on and on.
I just had two points: 1) it is impossible to generalize — every city in the world suffers at least in part from the same issues of isolation, segregation, blandness and inefficiency that the suburbs do, and a few people (often incorrectly) argue that they are even worse, and 2) there are deep political and structural factors that gave birth to the American suburb, which can be criticized in a variety of different ways — including by analyzing the extent to which people “choose” where they want to live. It’s not a choice unless you have options.
From anyone’s experience, as well as from the evidence we accumulate from the lives of friends and neighbors, we can say with certainty that no formula works for everyone. Plenty of people grew up healthy and happy in the suburbs; others did not. The same is true for a car-less Manhattan and for a farm in rural Kansas.
I grew up in a suburb close to a city (Philadelphia). From the age of 12 on, we were all allowed to go downtown by bus, subway, or train. At 16 we all got driver’s licenses and did the things in cars that teenagers do. We also walked back and forth to one another’s houses.
Was this the best of all possible worlds? I won’t speculate, but at least it offered the pleasures of urbanity and (auto)mobility equally.
To suggest that one plan is better than another is to risk falling into the trap of city-planners who proclaim to know what is best.
Uncertainty, sloppiness, and randomness: these are vital.
Willard, suggestions by those with a long-term vision for the community are helpful if they are based in objective analysis, forecasting and community consensus. Refer to Cynthia Farrar’s work on deliberative polling.
Randomness, sloppiness, differences and economic chaos are vital to an extent, but these are also what lead to world wars, starvation, rainforest extinction, massive resource depletion.
Not to mention the unsustainable commercial and residential real estate development patterns, promoted and subsidized by world governments, which were the overriding, direct cause of the ongoing worldwide economic crisis (a crisis that is resulting in untold deaths and human suffering around the globe).
Even though the human race has a penchant for thinking that the world was created through benevolent randomness or uncertainty, it came out of a discrete set of underlying circumstances. Same goes for any social problem.
So I would rather see our planners and officials risk falling into the trap of lacking nuance now and then, than throw out value comparisons altogether and let the chips fall where they may (mostly because there are those in power who know how to make the chips fall in particular patterns - as they have throughout the course of urban history).
Just remember: “long-term vision for the community” includes the worst excesses of “urban redevelopment” in many American cities; housing projects now being dismantled; the worst excesses of centralization in formerly Communist countries; the Corbusier utopian visions of modernity, etc.
Is there any other group of people more narcissistic than architects and (some, not all) city planners?
Willard:
I get the point and agree with you about the need for balance in government, but what I don’t get is this: As bad as we all know some of the excesses of 20th century design were (some negative, others have proven to be positive), why do you choose to downplay the fact that the past 60 years of suburban development are the direct result of a much larger, far more coordinated government social program?
Corbusier’s visions were never realized (except in Las Vegas). The West hasn’t had any dictatorships, so examples from the Soviet Union or China don’t have much relevance here. And at its peak, American public housing represented about 1% of the U.S. housing stock. Though there were exceptions, the majority of this public housing was, and still is, a very nice place to live. Most families moved in, accumulated great wealth, and moved out.
In contrast, massive government programs such as FHA mortgages, interstate highways, etc., had a direct role in producing much of the other 99% of America’s housing. What were the results of those subsidies and social programs? Who benefited? At who’s expense and health? Should these programs continue? Why should the public at large subsidize 90% of the cost of every new highway, whether they drive on it or not? Why should the public provide massive subsidies for homeownership on empty farmland if so many of our school systems are failing precisely because the availability of those subsidies and free highways cause the people who might be able to fix the system to leave?
These are the questions that the community and the Obama administration are now beginning to ask in earnest, rather than swallowing solutions that have been spoonfed (and in multiple cases, force-fed) to the public over the past few decades by Detroit, Pulte Homes, Caterpillar, Monsanto and the rest of the military-industrial complex.
A literary interpretation could certainly help inform the discussion.
People, like any other living organism, instinctively detect crowded living conditions and try to leave in search of open space. There’s actually a significant and measurable physiological stress response to overcrowding in worms- they actually stop growing, shut down their reproductive development and go into an arrested state until conditions become more favorable.
Some worms, as well as people, can handle- and even thrive in- high-density living situations. Others can’t. Some just need a temporary seasonal respite- the Catskills, the Hamptons, Silver Sands. Others simply appear to need large, sprawling lots and impersonal, cordial relationships with neighbors. Having lived in the suburbs for much of my life, I can say that I was not deprived of social opportunities that didn’t require a car (lots of kids in neighborhoods with good schools), we biked everywhere without fear of having our bikes stolen out from under us in broad daylight (a real concern in my current New Haven neighborhood), and on any clear night you could see a sky full of stars.
Rather than pinning our hopes on an unattainable version of urbanism where everyone happily chooses to live in cities, we should look for practical solutions like high-quality mass transit that connects major and minor towns, safety and traffic enforcement so that those who bike commute along the Canal trail don’t have to worry about getting mugged during rush hour and increased emphasis on services like zipcar which de-emphasize personal automobile ownership while recognizing the need for cars once in a while. We need to come to terms with the fact that this is not Europe, because the solution is not one size fits all.
Sorry to go on so long, but Design New Haven posed the question “Why should the public at large subsidize 90% of the cost of every new highway, whether they drive on it or not?”. To me, one answer among many is because the highway makes it possible for us to grow cotton and wheat and oranges and apples in the places they do best. Rail is impractical for rapid transport of small amounts of perishable cargo.
I definitely agree with your points about livable communities, Judi. Nobody likes overcrowding, and everyone has a different definition of what that is. And as you point out, there is indeed a big mismatch between consumer demand and the available products.
Some people want pleasant, quiet neighborhoods where they can see the stars, farm a few acres, retire and write a good book about the contemplative life. Other people want urban centers where they can walk everywhere all day long, have short and pleasant commutes, see hundreds of their friends every week, be exposed to social and economic opportunities, get plenty of exercise while going about their daily life, drive a half hour to go kayaking every weekend (or take a train to the beach), and write a good book about the contemplative life.
But one thing all the surveys (and demand) show is that many more people in this country would prefer to live in closely knit, interesting, densely-populated neighborhoods with plenty of services, great public open space and opportunities within walking distance, perhaps including their jobs — and that those areas just aren’t being provided by the current market because of fundamental structural issues in the economy. Primarily, the underlying structural issue is the massive federal subsidy being funneled to suburban development, farmland destruction and highways, without any accountability for the results. Who benefits? The wealthiest Americans, the corporate interests such as roadbuilders and oil companies, and existing suburban landowners, at the direct expense of the youngest, newest, oldest, and poorest populations. The former control our national politics, so that’s the way things will be for a while.
Yes, if you have money, you can choose between a pleasant city center (Downtown, East Rock, Westville, Boston, San Francisco, Manhattan) or an exurb with plenty of space — but there are a lot of people stuck in the “middle,” living in marginalized neighborhoods, in impoverished aging suburbs, trailer parks or in semi-abandoned motels at the city outskirts or countryside — far more than any of us would like to admit. Many families are spending 30-40% of their incomes just to operate their cars. In California, some of the poor are literally living out of their cars! If we write a novel on the suburbs, we should be sure to include those people too.
Anyhow, what needs to be addressed are the long-term sustainability and equity issues around having everyone “choose” what they want. Again, that “choice” is supposed; in reality it is influenced by the top-down, federally-mandated structural issues of financing for homeownership and new home construction instead of renovation; subsidies for banks and large roads (that “improve traffic flow” for some but that everyone else actually pays the cost of); racism, massive inequities within the education system, and the like.
Even if everyone wanted to live on a 20 acre estate an hour’s drive outside of NYC, there simply aren’t enough resources for that ever to happen (though a lot of very wealthy people benefit when the public can be convinced that there are).
So just as in Ancient Rome (or increasingly, right here in this country), the reality is that you might have a few families living like that (out of choice!) and the rest of the population living 30 people to a room.
Providing as many choices as possible in the marketplace is certainly a great benefit, but it must be balanced with the reality of economics and politics. While it may seem that choices are widely available, in reality they are only available for a few, and the disparities grow wider every year. With energy costs rising, we will all be forced to take dramatic new approaches, some of which you suggest.
On a couple of your other points:
You are correct that roads are needed for the transport of goods — but our current road system (superhighways like Whalley Avenue in the heart of our cities; limited access speedways leading through unpopulated wilderness) is completely unsustainable by virtually any measure (e.g., literally hundreds of thousands of crumbling bridges, according to Senator Dodd). We drive more miles per day on average than the Canadians, and then wonder why literally hundreds of billions of dollars get permanently sucked out of our economy every year to build 150-story buildings in the Middle East.
You also write that “we biked everywhere without fear of having our bikes stolen out from under us in broad daylight.” Great, but it is really a stretch to generalize that because of a tiny handful of bicycle robberies among the millions of bicycle trips per year in New Haven, urban areas are more hostile to biking or exercise when you also consider the higher death and fatality rates in the suburbs (due primarily to traffic). Just in the past fewyears, several students have been killed while bicycling or walking on supposedly “safe” suburban roads in the suburbs. Perceptions of safety is important (even if they are inaccurate), but they are heavily influenced by federal subsidies, too.
Anyhow, the thoughts are a bit disconnected - but this isn’t the place to edit an essay and I hope I’ve addressed a few of your points.
Mark,
I’m in sympathy with your basic description of the suburbs: it was a happy place to be as a child, up until teens, for me. And it’s also a comfortable place to raise children — I’m writing this in a nice suburban town west of Philly where my stepson is raising his family. If I asked him and his wife why they like it here, I’m sure I’d hear about how convenient it is for their lifestyle, and free of crime, and affordable for them, etc. The kids have made friends; there are helpful neighbors, etc. When I think of myself in my teens wanting to get out of the suburbs (I didn’t drive and without a car the suburbs were deadly dull) and see myself now still out of place in these comfortable surroundings I do ask why. It comes down, I think, to architecture. The sameness of it all is debilitating, to me. There’s nowhere to walk that isn’t past someone else’s property, which looks enough like all the other properites. I liked your description of how kids don’t see it that way, but as an adult I need a bit more sensory stimulation from my surroundings.
But I think the question your book idea raises is a bit more philosophical — unless you want to take it in the direction of design new haven about the social meanings of residential areas and the political reasons for the kinds of projects that have been funded, in transportation and housing, and so forth — which asks: what makes ‘happiness’ (that thing we’re given full leave to pursue by our nation’s Constitution)? Is it ‘convenience’ ‘transportation’ ‘proximity to workplace’ ‘interesting neighbors’? As several of the comments above indicate, there are innumerable takes on what makes someone happy with an environment and another unhappy. Interviewing people about their situation is to write a subjective account, no matter how many subjects are consulted. So my question about the topic is: is there a thesis? Is it to be written with the idea that there is a ‘best living arrangement’ for all, or with the idea that there is no such thing? Which I guess is a way of saying, is the outlook utopian or not?
[…] be reading this – probably knows my unfortunate This American Life sleep dependency. Mark Oppenheimer (whom I have not lived with, but coincidently/ironically/unsurprisingly I have fallen asleep to) […]
I would argue that your premise is a bit presumptuous. The presumption is that there would be an audience for that sort of book. It would imply that people need to know why the suburbs are good, which would imply that people would ask whether or not suburbs are good.
In asking this question, it means that you are not accepting, in the same way suburbanites are, that suburbs are a great thing. They have chosen to live there. They have abandoned bad areas and moved to good areas. It was their choice, a conscious decision. Who are we to question their decision?
Asking them to consider that the choices they have made may not have been the best, that the places that they spend their time are not the best, and that their lives are not adding value to the planet, would just be an exercise in futility.
Their choice of home is not a reminder of past craziness, like an awkward tattoo. Their choice of home is a reflection of their accomplishments in life, the status they have been able to achieve, the results of the efforts of their parents to provide them a better life than they had had.
It would take an extreme and sudden change in values to get them to ask that question. Life in this country has been leveled to a point that sudden changes no longer bother us. Therefore there will never be an audience for such a book, therefore such a book will never be written.
You might as well write a book asking if yellow is the best color for the sun to be.
great site