"It’s no surprise then that the Norman Rockwell vibe in some American suburbs hides a grimmer reality." Indeed, Americans are programmed to not reflect upon alternatives. We don't think about community, which leads us to not knowing our neighbors, which leads to a lack of trust, which leads to crime and violence, etc., etc.
I miss the living experiences I've had overseas, in the sense that there was a much greater sense of community. People were more involved and interested in the lives of their neighbors. Sure, it could border on nosiness, but when someone needed help, people were there for them. And people genuinely cared about what was happening in the lives of their neighbors.
Americans are programmed to be lonely and accept it as the norm. Your Slovakian Reddit user makes a very good point. We have land, but put it to poor use. We have people around us, but never think of creating community. It's no wonder that we've grown to distrust and in some cases revile some of our fellow compatriots.
We lead a very hollow and shallow existence in many ways, yet we almost never consider if there may be a better/different way. Those who do are passed off as "weird" or "odd," as if trying to live a life of meaning and purpose is unusual.
Your life has many trade-offs vis-a-vis living here in the US. Like anything else, it depends on what you value and what you're willing to give up for what you gain. If you're happy, and it certainly sounds as if you are, then you've made the right choice.
It always blows me away how you understand EVERYTHING. You're right about those trade-offs. They DO depend on what a person values and what they are willing to give up. What's interesting, at least to me, is how after a while, even if what we value changes, there's no going back. It feels impossible.
I don't know about understanding EVERYTHING, but we writers are observers of the human condition, no? And whoever said you really can have it all was as high as @#$%. :-)
I'd read Lewis Mumford's "The City in History" some little while before I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco. But that change made it vividly clear to me that places like L.A., San Jose, Houston, etc, were not cities at all, they were growths.
Oddly enough, growing up in San Diego in the '60's and early '70's, despite living in tract housing in suburbia, there was no lack of places nearby where I could go. There was a lake just 4 blocks down the road from where I lived, and Cowles' Mountain was too rugged at the time to be developed, especially when it was so cheap to continue spreading outwards. (CM was later designated as a park, one that is considerably larger in acreage than NY's Central Park.) When I got a little older I could take a bus that ran all the way to downtown.
Oh, and San Diego also spoiled me because there were adequate side walks everywhere there were streets. It was years before I discovered that some places simply didn't have them. So. IL is especially guilty of that latter.
By the bye, Mumford made the same point as Campbell about looking for the BIG pieces of architecture. Despite the Transamerica tower, in San Francisco it was always the bridges.
I am convinced that the thing that has saved most older cities (at least the one's that have been saved -- London seems determined to go to hell with one rabid, extended assault on any last pretense of decency -- is the geographic and physical limitations to growth. Without such limitations, the introduction of the automobile makes the suburb a possibility.
Sometimes the introduction of the automobile had to be forced upon a place. Thus, GM purchased Los Angeles' very effective public transport system, the red car trains, and deliberately mismanaged it into bankruptcy in order to force people to buy cars. This was all proven in court, where GM was ultimately fined something like $8,000.00 or $9,000.00 for a stunt that would earn them *BILLIONS*. (Folks might recall, this was the underlying conspiracy in the film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?")
I did NOT know that about GM. Daaaaaamn. I need to research that, maybe for a future Cappuccino. Am I repeating myself when I say just how much I HATE THEM?
The first things that came up when I looked up the incident again were different from the ones I'd seen some years back. They made the issue appear less cut & dried, and also placed things in a different time-line than I recall. But I didn't read too deep into things this time around; no time or interest.
Interesting what you say about places like Houston not being cities but, instead, growths. My husband, a Moroccan from the fabulous city of Marrakech, has always maintaining Houston isn't a city and said, as Stacey did, that the streets are dead and this place is boring. I honestly worry about his mental state a bit living here. I'm sure we won't be here long, and we definitely won't live out our life here.
It's not healthy. Morocco is alive with smells and colors and people. Houston is--as Gary so aptly put it--a growth. I know you're not going to be there forever, my amazing friend.
Gary H beat me to the Lewis Mumford reference, so I'll leave off that line of discourse.
As a native Californian, former ex-pat and current Texas resident (not entirely on purpose), I have a well-developed hate-hate relationship with suburbia. I remember the avenues and bluff-top promenades of Long Beach with great fondness. Homes were built with detached garages off well-traveled, well-lit, trash-free alleys, so the city's broad streets featured uninterrupted curbs and sidewalks. In Rome and Brussels, we lived in apartment buildings that were energetic communities in microcosm, and in the connected townhouses that line the streets and squares of Northern Europe—always with ready access to public transit that could take you anywhere in the city for a couple hundred lira or a few francs.
Isolation was simply not a concept back then. Our neighbors in Rome delighted in the chatter of i ragazzi Americani in the elevator coming home from an afternoon at the local park. And once in Brussels, "le prince" (an ex-royal of indeterminate origin) who lived in the adjacent townhome on our square, knocked on our door and asked politely if he could borrow our aged and near-toothless cat for a few days. Seems he had mice in his dry cellar.
When I returned stateside, I lived first in Manhattan, and later in close-in, well-worn neighborhoods in various cities across the mid-section of the country. Even in Texas, I was able to avoid the suburbs. I'll never forget the look of sheer disbelief a Dallas relocation agent gave me when I stated my preference for a neighborhood on a decent bus line. And in Houston, I was an avowed inner Looper, not because I was the least bit elitist, but because I felt more secure, grounded somehow, in older neighborhoods with mature trees, sidewalks, parks every dozen or so blocks, and never more than a 10-minute walk to a grocery store. I left the Heights, my "town" in the middle of the city, only because I felt threatened and targeted, and because my little bungalow although the perfect size for one woman and a couple of cats, just wasn't big enough for an older couple with half a dozen four-legged companions. Even after multiple break-ins, my last straw was when, over the course of two nights, all of my rickety, distressed rocking chairs were stolen off my porch, along with several potted, barely blooming begonias. I mean, who nicks sad rocking chairs and pitiful begonias? Or why?
We moved to a small town (pop 17,000 pre-Covid) on the west bank of the Brazos, to a quiet, older neighborhood with live oaks and magnolias, a place where we could breathe and think more expansively—decidedly ex-urbia and not the least bit suburban. But where there were once longhorns and deer grazing fearlessly in the fields, and the occasional gator lumbering across the two-lane road from bayou to river bank, the relentless march of master-planned developments with their entirely faux communal vibe has already overtaken us. Between the city and the town is a wasteland of failing malls, heat-heaved pavement, nail salon-dominated strip centers and endless, treeless subdivisions with McMansions set sideways on sad little lots, watched perpetually by Ring doorbells, power-mad HOAs, and the underclass that hoovers up whatever delivery UPS, FEDEX and Amazon have left on the doorstep.
I miss the cities, especially my old world memories of them. But I've come to realize that I miss my very likely out-dated notion of country more.
Kelly, there is a big-ass cappuccino waiting for you here, if ever you visit. You and I are going to have a long jaw over coffee, comparing notes. Without us even knowing, our paths have crossed and recrossed so many times.
So, I was born in Pasadena, California. I lived for years in Houston, including the Heights (807 Merrill). Never lived in Rome, although I've been there eight million times. Amelia isn't too far from Rome. And I love what you wrote here. LOVE love it.
Your Brazos neighborhood sounds so idyllic. I could probably handle Houston again if I lived there, but the idea of going back on a more or less permanent basis ... that's the stuff that keeps me awake at night.
You're a natural writer, you know. I totally see that.
You are so sweet to indulge my meanderings around Umbria, Lazio, and Harris and Fort Bend counties. I just knew I recognized a kindred soul in you when I visited Cappuccino for the first time (courtesy of Tony Brophy, of course).
You wouldn't recognize the Heights these days. I left on December 31, 2013 and since then, my sleepy little block off Harvard has gone the way of the loco flippers and mad builders. The picturesque Gulf Coast bungalow is a thing of the past, I'm afraid. Lot line-to-lot line monstrosities are going up every day on 5,000 sf parcels and, of course, property values have sky-rocketed pushing out generations of Heights residents... so sad. It's like watching the death of a culture.
I doubt I'll get back to the old country anytime soon, but if I do, Amelia (or wherever you are next) will be on my itinerary along with La Vela in Trevignano Romana where Tony holds court, of course.
BTW, we are also like-minded when it comes to the cultural, socio-economical and political issues you take on. Brava, girl! I'm right beside you on the barricades.
Where I'm trapped (momentarily, if there's any kind of justice in the universe) the lack of reliable and timely public trans is only rivaled by the lack of sidewalks and access to resources.
There is one walkable area here. It's quickly become unaffordable. There is a second, less inviting area that has some vibe, but there's a lack of affordable housing. These two neighborhoods are on opposite edges of the city. They were the first two neighborhoods to be connected by "lite rail" which are actually express type busses. They were already the two priciest joints in town.
Supposedly there are more lines to be developed, but the PTB make them fight for funding regularly.
This was probably the most validating article I’ve read. I’m originally from a small town in Mexico and went to school in Europe. When I moved to the suburbs of Texas - I’ve been so confused about this hollow place. I’m incredibly isolated, and it is so difficult create community. I’m the outlier, the strange one, the “foreigner” who doesn’t get it. But I think it’s the other way around they don’t get what they are missing and how their lives could be so much richer and we don’t have to live car bound going from one empty street to the other.
I cannot over emphasize the strangeness of “green lawns” and empty streets. Sometimes I feel as though I live alone since I’ll go days or weeks not seeing anyone on the street. Sigh.
Loved the article, but where is Amelia? That you live at?
And how do we change this? Or get out of this world of dead suburbia??
Every city in America is “beginning” to look the same. They all have a Walmart, a Target, a McDonalds, you get the idea. In my opinion what’s killing our country (one of the things) is greed plain and simple. Incredible waste, access, caring only for oneself, no flexibility about anyone else’s opinion, only one way, my way and you are the problem not me. Even if you weren’t here when bad events happened, it’s your fault so don’t even try to be a good guy because you can’t. Guilt by association.
"It’s no surprise then that the Norman Rockwell vibe in some American suburbs hides a grimmer reality." Indeed, Americans are programmed to not reflect upon alternatives. We don't think about community, which leads us to not knowing our neighbors, which leads to a lack of trust, which leads to crime and violence, etc., etc.
I miss the living experiences I've had overseas, in the sense that there was a much greater sense of community. People were more involved and interested in the lives of their neighbors. Sure, it could border on nosiness, but when someone needed help, people were there for them. And people genuinely cared about what was happening in the lives of their neighbors.
Americans are programmed to be lonely and accept it as the norm. Your Slovakian Reddit user makes a very good point. We have land, but put it to poor use. We have people around us, but never think of creating community. It's no wonder that we've grown to distrust and in some cases revile some of our fellow compatriots.
We lead a very hollow and shallow existence in many ways, yet we almost never consider if there may be a better/different way. Those who do are passed off as "weird" or "odd," as if trying to live a life of meaning and purpose is unusual.
Your life has many trade-offs vis-a-vis living here in the US. Like anything else, it depends on what you value and what you're willing to give up for what you gain. If you're happy, and it certainly sounds as if you are, then you've made the right choice.
And that, my dear, is all that matters. :-)
It always blows me away how you understand EVERYTHING. You're right about those trade-offs. They DO depend on what a person values and what they are willing to give up. What's interesting, at least to me, is how after a while, even if what we value changes, there's no going back. It feels impossible.
Everything you said here was spot-on.
I don't know about understanding EVERYTHING, but we writers are observers of the human condition, no? And whoever said you really can have it all was as high as @#$%. :-)
I'd read Lewis Mumford's "The City in History" some little while before I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco. But that change made it vividly clear to me that places like L.A., San Jose, Houston, etc, were not cities at all, they were growths.
Oddly enough, growing up in San Diego in the '60's and early '70's, despite living in tract housing in suburbia, there was no lack of places nearby where I could go. There was a lake just 4 blocks down the road from where I lived, and Cowles' Mountain was too rugged at the time to be developed, especially when it was so cheap to continue spreading outwards. (CM was later designated as a park, one that is considerably larger in acreage than NY's Central Park.) When I got a little older I could take a bus that ran all the way to downtown.
Oh, and San Diego also spoiled me because there were adequate side walks everywhere there were streets. It was years before I discovered that some places simply didn't have them. So. IL is especially guilty of that latter.
By the bye, Mumford made the same point as Campbell about looking for the BIG pieces of architecture. Despite the Transamerica tower, in San Francisco it was always the bridges.
I am convinced that the thing that has saved most older cities (at least the one's that have been saved -- London seems determined to go to hell with one rabid, extended assault on any last pretense of decency -- is the geographic and physical limitations to growth. Without such limitations, the introduction of the automobile makes the suburb a possibility.
Sometimes the introduction of the automobile had to be forced upon a place. Thus, GM purchased Los Angeles' very effective public transport system, the red car trains, and deliberately mismanaged it into bankruptcy in order to force people to buy cars. This was all proven in court, where GM was ultimately fined something like $8,000.00 or $9,000.00 for a stunt that would earn them *BILLIONS*. (Folks might recall, this was the underlying conspiracy in the film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?")
I did NOT know that about GM. Daaaaaamn. I need to research that, maybe for a future Cappuccino. Am I repeating myself when I say just how much I HATE THEM?
The first things that came up when I looked up the incident again were different from the ones I'd seen some years back. They made the issue appear less cut & dried, and also placed things in a different time-line than I recall. But I didn't read too deep into things this time around; no time or interest.
So, happy hunting!
Interesting what you say about places like Houston not being cities but, instead, growths. My husband, a Moroccan from the fabulous city of Marrakech, has always maintaining Houston isn't a city and said, as Stacey did, that the streets are dead and this place is boring. I honestly worry about his mental state a bit living here. I'm sure we won't be here long, and we definitely won't live out our life here.
It's not healthy. Morocco is alive with smells and colors and people. Houston is--as Gary so aptly put it--a growth. I know you're not going to be there forever, my amazing friend.
Agree in full
Gary H beat me to the Lewis Mumford reference, so I'll leave off that line of discourse.
As a native Californian, former ex-pat and current Texas resident (not entirely on purpose), I have a well-developed hate-hate relationship with suburbia. I remember the avenues and bluff-top promenades of Long Beach with great fondness. Homes were built with detached garages off well-traveled, well-lit, trash-free alleys, so the city's broad streets featured uninterrupted curbs and sidewalks. In Rome and Brussels, we lived in apartment buildings that were energetic communities in microcosm, and in the connected townhouses that line the streets and squares of Northern Europe—always with ready access to public transit that could take you anywhere in the city for a couple hundred lira or a few francs.
Isolation was simply not a concept back then. Our neighbors in Rome delighted in the chatter of i ragazzi Americani in the elevator coming home from an afternoon at the local park. And once in Brussels, "le prince" (an ex-royal of indeterminate origin) who lived in the adjacent townhome on our square, knocked on our door and asked politely if he could borrow our aged and near-toothless cat for a few days. Seems he had mice in his dry cellar.
When I returned stateside, I lived first in Manhattan, and later in close-in, well-worn neighborhoods in various cities across the mid-section of the country. Even in Texas, I was able to avoid the suburbs. I'll never forget the look of sheer disbelief a Dallas relocation agent gave me when I stated my preference for a neighborhood on a decent bus line. And in Houston, I was an avowed inner Looper, not because I was the least bit elitist, but because I felt more secure, grounded somehow, in older neighborhoods with mature trees, sidewalks, parks every dozen or so blocks, and never more than a 10-minute walk to a grocery store. I left the Heights, my "town" in the middle of the city, only because I felt threatened and targeted, and because my little bungalow although the perfect size for one woman and a couple of cats, just wasn't big enough for an older couple with half a dozen four-legged companions. Even after multiple break-ins, my last straw was when, over the course of two nights, all of my rickety, distressed rocking chairs were stolen off my porch, along with several potted, barely blooming begonias. I mean, who nicks sad rocking chairs and pitiful begonias? Or why?
We moved to a small town (pop 17,000 pre-Covid) on the west bank of the Brazos, to a quiet, older neighborhood with live oaks and magnolias, a place where we could breathe and think more expansively—decidedly ex-urbia and not the least bit suburban. But where there were once longhorns and deer grazing fearlessly in the fields, and the occasional gator lumbering across the two-lane road from bayou to river bank, the relentless march of master-planned developments with their entirely faux communal vibe has already overtaken us. Between the city and the town is a wasteland of failing malls, heat-heaved pavement, nail salon-dominated strip centers and endless, treeless subdivisions with McMansions set sideways on sad little lots, watched perpetually by Ring doorbells, power-mad HOAs, and the underclass that hoovers up whatever delivery UPS, FEDEX and Amazon have left on the doorstep.
I miss the cities, especially my old world memories of them. But I've come to realize that I miss my very likely out-dated notion of country more.
Kelly, there is a big-ass cappuccino waiting for you here, if ever you visit. You and I are going to have a long jaw over coffee, comparing notes. Without us even knowing, our paths have crossed and recrossed so many times.
So, I was born in Pasadena, California. I lived for years in Houston, including the Heights (807 Merrill). Never lived in Rome, although I've been there eight million times. Amelia isn't too far from Rome. And I love what you wrote here. LOVE love it.
Your Brazos neighborhood sounds so idyllic. I could probably handle Houston again if I lived there, but the idea of going back on a more or less permanent basis ... that's the stuff that keeps me awake at night.
You're a natural writer, you know. I totally see that.
You are so sweet to indulge my meanderings around Umbria, Lazio, and Harris and Fort Bend counties. I just knew I recognized a kindred soul in you when I visited Cappuccino for the first time (courtesy of Tony Brophy, of course).
You wouldn't recognize the Heights these days. I left on December 31, 2013 and since then, my sleepy little block off Harvard has gone the way of the loco flippers and mad builders. The picturesque Gulf Coast bungalow is a thing of the past, I'm afraid. Lot line-to-lot line monstrosities are going up every day on 5,000 sf parcels and, of course, property values have sky-rocketed pushing out generations of Heights residents... so sad. It's like watching the death of a culture.
I doubt I'll get back to the old country anytime soon, but if I do, Amelia (or wherever you are next) will be on my itinerary along with La Vela in Trevignano Romana where Tony holds court, of course.
BTW, we are also like-minded when it comes to the cultural, socio-economical and political issues you take on. Brava, girl! I'm right beside you on the barricades.
The cul du sac is an evil thing.
Everything has been built for cars, not humans.
Where I'm trapped (momentarily, if there's any kind of justice in the universe) the lack of reliable and timely public trans is only rivaled by the lack of sidewalks and access to resources.
There is one walkable area here. It's quickly become unaffordable. There is a second, less inviting area that has some vibe, but there's a lack of affordable housing. These two neighborhoods are on opposite edges of the city. They were the first two neighborhoods to be connected by "lite rail" which are actually express type busses. They were already the two priciest joints in town.
Supposedly there are more lines to be developed, but the PTB make them fight for funding regularly.
We can't wait to be gone.
And I WANT you to be gone. I know what it feels like to be trapped in hell. This I ardently do not want for you, dearest Dorothy.
This was probably the most validating article I’ve read. I’m originally from a small town in Mexico and went to school in Europe. When I moved to the suburbs of Texas - I’ve been so confused about this hollow place. I’m incredibly isolated, and it is so difficult create community. I’m the outlier, the strange one, the “foreigner” who doesn’t get it. But I think it’s the other way around they don’t get what they are missing and how their lives could be so much richer and we don’t have to live car bound going from one empty street to the other.
I cannot over emphasize the strangeness of “green lawns” and empty streets. Sometimes I feel as though I live alone since I’ll go days or weeks not seeing anyone on the street. Sigh.
Loved the article, but where is Amelia? That you live at?
And how do we change this? Or get out of this world of dead suburbia??
Every city in America is “beginning” to look the same. They all have a Walmart, a Target, a McDonalds, you get the idea. In my opinion what’s killing our country (one of the things) is greed plain and simple. Incredible waste, access, caring only for oneself, no flexibility about anyone else’s opinion, only one way, my way and you are the problem not me. Even if you weren’t here when bad events happened, it’s your fault so don’t even try to be a good guy because you can’t. Guilt by association.