What's wrong with this picture?
I was shocked when I found this gem on our GIS satellite imagery. Of course, this is a local live bird's eye shot but you get the picture. You're looking at two roads that could join, eliminating a cul-de-sac effectively allowing more vehicular access for auto drivers and cyclists alike. For some reason — and historians will speculate for the next 100 years — these roads were never connected. Somehow, this is all too typical in the American urban landscape.
Of course there are reasons why this is the way it is. The first being, most-likely a regulation that required or allowed the construction of a cul-de-sac to terminate at the edge of a subdivided parcel. The second and final lynch-pin came when the city, who owned the right-of-way of the original cul-de-sac, did not require the later development (with larger cul-de-sac loop on right) to tie into the original loop. Whether it was a lack of foresight, a lacking of a desire to require high connectivity standards or a combination of these two factors, this legacy will continue to impact our nation's for decades to come. The costs of which will be hard to define, especially because we have yet to fully realize what we've actually lost?
Though multiple friends of mine love suburbia, I do not. They love suburbia because they argue that it isn't as crowded as the city and that they are happy to live at a distance from the problems of our society. Hopefully in neighborhoods without drugs or at least the crime that comes with them. I understand their concerns and though I may emphasize more when I am raising children, it is also fair to say that such a lifestyle is for those who can afford it in terms of its cost of living and its societal costs of centralizing poverty in urban cores.
Now, I won't say that if we just move people that things will get better and I am certainly not suggesting that we should just redistribute income or resources to "fix" the inequality problem. I guess my first concerns are what are the costs of continual sprawl, of increased social class separation, and the loss of most of the benefits of urban living because we're afraid of being an unlikely victim of urban crime.
Undoubtedly matters like education and crime need to be dealt with to allow urban neighborhoods to be desirable family neighborhoods again and hopefully we'll see progress on both of these fronts in our lifetimes but to call suburbia a desirable substitute seems to be, well, not well received.
Living in suburbia out of necessity, I can tell you that I miss walking to local restaurants, shops, and transit. I certainly do not miss taking the bus — which is usually early, crowded, and generally inconvenient for where one wants to go. Cracked sidewalks, graffiti, old brick blocks, neon-lighted businesses and most importantly pedestrians help make the neighborhood into a vibrant place. To say this place is safe is, well, a stretch as crimereports.com show it is not "safe" but if you take precautions, you'll most likely not be mugged, burglarized or otherwise inconvenienced by the mostly petty crime in this neighborhood.
In the burbs, there is no such thing as "neighborhood retail." One must get in a car and drive to a strip center made of asphalt, vista-walls, flat roofs, and if you're lucky, some brick fascia. The local coffee shop closes at 10 P.M. though you're in luck if you're in the mood for a burger, some fries or a taco as several fast food restaurants stay open late. There is no place for the public to interact — except while complaining that there is always a shortage of cashiers at the local grocery or while waving a variety of hand signs at each other while sitting in rush hour traffic. For those who desire it, one could try to be social at a bar or perhaps at a church but both carry stigmas.
Essentially, if you don't want to associate with others and if that's why you moved to suburbia, this place is perfect. But if you're like me and you like people, you'll quickly find that something dies inside of us when we move into such an impersonable place. There are no public gardens, public spaces, public anythings. And as for the crime, drugs and homeless — it's all in suburbia but it's hidden. The buildings may only last 30 years but that's okay because by that time, those same developers are turning out new commercial zoning the next highway exit down. Blight starts to form — first Wal-Mart moves and then everyone who occupies the strip-mall surrounding the Wal-Mart. Yes my friends, even Dublin Ohio has blighted commercial property but lucky for the most over-planned community in central Ohio, growing trees and extremely strict signage standards allow Dublin Village Center and probably a few other places to be "hidden" from our view. If we can drive past it, we can pretend it isn't there. That's our response to blight, to neighbors in need, to poverty, to our fellow human. The Midwest values of succeed so you can take care of your self and help others have been stolen by greed, by gangs, by crack, and by the fear of violence.
Though I'd love to be able to do something about this, to improve people's lives and though I may be able to do something about things like this in future jobs — there's a limit to what I can do to fix this. Building a new society of cul-de-sac neighborhoods and vast seas of asphalt parking lots may seem like a way to escape the problems of urban America but these problems are able to spread just as fast. Certainly we've tried to segregate for hundreds of years and I won't claim that this is a new phenomena, the fact that we can now travel in vehicles as blink-of-an-eye speed from suburban house to suburban office park or an urban parking garage without coming into close contact with the poor marks a change in our society. We still live in a story, a tale of two cities despite all of the reform. Perhaps they may not live in absolute poverty but it is poverty none the less. I won't argue that our nation should try to stop this as perhaps a culture of being owed a "handout" just might represent one of the worst things in our society. I just wonder what this affect of near complete separation between the rich and poor will have on our society in the decades to come. Smart money is on the fact that some suburbs will become blighted and may become the face of the 21st century ghetto. It will be interesting to see how this happens - or doesn't.
Short of government policies to restrict or encourage particular patterns of growth and renewal, it's unclear what will happen except that there will be an increasing amount of separation between the wealthy and poor and that society will adapt. Inflexible real estate will decay and or be demolished. Zoning codes with the aim of separating uses will be loosened as vacancy and blight become more and more of a reality. Hopefully communities will cooperate and stop leap-frog development that is so costly for all but this creates its own negative consequences. In short, the answers we seek will reflect the things we value. Solutions will be fragmented and range in effectiveness from maybe effective to extremely not effective. The future will be what we make of it — and hopefully there will be things we can choose that actually help better our society as a whole.
