The result of this structure is that people only meet people they want to know.The entire idea behind suburbia is the exile of important features of regular life from geographic proximity to the home. Because the car has enabled us to move between great distances with a relatively low cost, the dichotomy between "access" and "no access" has been broken by "significantly delayed access." And as a result, people end up at exactly the wrong distance to form communities. In a city, everything is easily accesible; in the country, only a few things are accessible, but they are all nearby. In the suburbs, everything is accessible, but accessing anything is a pain in the ass.
The result is the near impossibility of spontaneity. "Out" does not exist as a place in suburbia; the relatively high cost in time of transportation means that people perpetually exist in some particular place before retreating back at the end of the day to their far-away home. The consequence is the hyper-scheduling of life, the ordering of activities into predetermined blocks, and the play-date theory of adult life.
Unsurprisingly, the near-randomly selected members of a neighborhood rarely align with anyone's personal preferences for a social network, and so geographic communities are completely dissolved. It should surprise no one that "communities" that consist solely of a list of appointments are not communities at all.
2 comments:
I wholeheartedly agree. I have spoken to my neighbors approximately 5 times in the last 7 years. They live about 40 meters away from my front door, but if I'm leaving my house, I'm *leaving* my house. Planned trips indeed. I think one of the few redeeming features of a suburban neighborhood is the cul-de-sac; however, they fall depressingly short of comparable features of the countryside and city. Forget the breakdown of the family--suburban sprawl may be the biggest detriment to modern American culture.
I wholeheartedly agree. I have spoken to my neighbors approximately 5 times in the last 7 years. They live about 40 meters away from my front door, but if I'm leaving my house, I'm *leaving* my house. Planned trips indeed. I think one of the few redeeming features of a suburban neighborhood is the cul-de-sac; however, they fall depressingly short of comparable features of the countryside and city. Forget the breakdown of the family--suburban sprawl may be the biggest detriment to modern American culture.
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