Suburban Nation

Today I began to read quietly, and then with increasing excitement, through the pages of  "Suburban Nation". So completely are we defined by our surroundings that I had the odd sense that my recent life had been exposed to the world in the pages of the introduction, that the authors had taken careful note of my anxieties, apprehensions and frustrations over the course of a given week and codified them into treatise on how not to be.

Where once developers in America were revered as visionaries and immortalized as founding fathers, they now suffered public reputations as vandals and charlatans. They confront angry suburbanites, opposing all growth because the only growth they know is more of the same placeless, faceless and forgettable they have seen bleeding its way across the country. Modern zoning laws, banning most forms of mixed use neighborhoods, prevent the emergence of new Palmer Squares in favor of parking lots. This, and ignorance, greed and not infrequently, the conspicuous absence of any real plan have come together to turn suburban America into a vast cell block, house arrest for the upwardly mobile.

It was poignant and nostalgic to see the old town I once lived in, Mariemont, Ohio, in the pages of the text as an example of successful planning. The blueprint on display was from the early 1920's, but I could still identify the exact location of our old house, the field where we played soccer, the old hotel and the village square. At the time I was too young to understand the blessing, it seemed too normal and expected that life should be this way. At the time, I didn't understand what it meant to be able to walk to school, to see pedestrians out and about, to know your neighbors and to hear the chimes of a community clock tower.