Are the suburbs killing the idea of community?
There is the presumption that suburbanites are living these lives of quiet desperation and isolation, and they really hate being there. You see trotted out ideas about community being missing. And to have community, you’ve got to be in Manhattan. There are a lot of ex-Manhattanites that would challenge that theory very seriously.
The article is interesting from a contrarian point of view, but I’m not sure that I agree with the conclusion that everyone wants to go live in the suburbs. Like all things, it’s an extremely personal decision that factors in all elements of your life (family, social, work, etc.).
I grew up in the suburbs, left for college, moved back to the suburbs after graduation for about a year and a half, and now live in Chicago. There’s a lot of upside to living in the suburbs, but in the end it ultimately came down to my commute time. Working downtown with the only viable option being taking the Metra meant a total of 3 hours a day commuting. This left me with less sleep in the morning, less free time in the afternoon/evening and being a lot more tired as a result.
On the upside, I liked being able to drive everywhere and not worry about parking. I know it’s bad for the environment, but whatever. I like the convenience of knowing I don’t have to rely on mass transit. I also — at times — enjoyed the space provided by suburban sprawl. It’s nice to have a driveway, yard and generally more living room to put your stuff at a cheaper price.
The downside though is the complete lack of culture, or rather the complete uniformity of suburban life. Everything is geared toward family lifestyles. When you’re single (as in “not married”), you really find life in the suburbs quite boring. The restaurants are boring. The movie theater will never show an indie film. And good luck trying to find ethnic produce at Jewel or Dominick’s. And that’s just the tip of it.
Are there things I dislike about Chicago? Sure. Outside of traffic, which I will eternally curse, I do regret the lack of abundant green spaces (and, what’s that smell?) and then there’s the high cost of living only made worse by the highest tax rate in the nation. You don’t have to try hard to find things to gripe about here.
But getting back to Gordon’s point about community. I think the idea of community isn’t just dead in the suburbs, but it’s also (maybe?) dead in the cities as well.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I’ve always felt that a sense of community completely depends upon your willingness to seek out and find people like yourself and engage with those people. If you’re not doing that, or your life is perhaps too involved with other things, then you won’t get that community feeling.
The reason why I feel like community might be dying in the city is because when I look at my current generation, I don’t see us becoming more socially involved in traditional community settings. We’ve retreated to the Internet. Even on public transportation we’ve narrowed our vision and hearing to iPhones/iPods. I often wonder what riding the CTA was like 30 years ago, before we had mobile devices that created this media bubble we immerse ourselves in routinely.
For a while, I had a theory that the Internet would become the new townhall or front porch of sorts. I’ve since discarded that theory. When you look at where people are congregating to form communities online, it’s often based on interest, not geography. If anything’s killing the traditional idea of community and people being more active in the place they live, I’d say the Internet is the leading factor.
But I don’t know that’s a bad thing! In fact, it just goes to show how outdated our models for government are and maybe we’ll one day acknowledge the fact that the Internet has been a disruptive force not just for media, but also government. Perhaps it’s time we started to ask the question if our ideas of representation and democracy need to change as we’re becoming untethered emotionally from our physical location.