Wow! Harsh!

AMONG THE ATTITUDES that seem required of American intellectuals, loathing of the suburbs ranks high on the list. Since they can be despised for so many (if often incongruent) reasons, suburbs offer a target for writers with quite disparate agendas: The suburbs are racist and exclusionary; their fleshpots blunt the activist impulses of minorities who move to them; they destroy families; they distract from communal concerns by making family the focus of life; their oppressive conformity stunts individualism; they isolate the individual from the community; and on and on. That many Americans of all races continue to move to them in droves-- dynamically transforming suburban life in the process--is a reminder of the irrelevancy of much of this chatter to the way people decide to shape their lives.

-Is American literature too soft on the suburbs?

Saving the suburbs

Retrofitting Suburbia

Reader Comments:
"The only thing that will save the suburbs is to create a national train system, with stations as the center of towns. The suburbs in their current form are doomed as oil runs out, and good riddance." -Aaron S.

The appeal: "It’s difficult being a single parent in this affluent, unkind town; most cars in the high school lot are newer, the homes are bigger and the abs more toned than mine, but I live surrounded by protected open space, owls hoo hoo outside the dual paned windows, the Big Dipper ladles a sparkly light AND I can send my son to public school. I think I’ll stop whining…" -nancy berg

Miserable?: "Ironically, the question of where to put the population that is displaced can now be answered: repatriate them to the miserable, crime-infested suburbs." -jm in brooklyn

"When you’re done saving the suburbs and cities, could you give a thought to the impoverished rural areas?" -Mom / Grammy

Is it becoming too much like the city?

The congestion of the cities has slowly invaded suburbia?:
"They keep building and building and building. I was just thinking of how nice it was here, of how easy it was to get around. Now it's all congested." -Kelly, Clifton Park Resident

Did the suburb ever fulfill the American dream?

Hmmm...

Was the quality of life ever better in the suburb?

1950s: lawns, living rooms, barbecues = happiness?

Today: "If you do the math, commuting from Saratoga County to Albany is costing people $500 a month. That affects quality of life." -Paul Smithsville

"[Suburbs are] places built “to defy nature,” he said, giving everyone “their own little kingdom of grass and space” — not to mention 3,000-square-foot houses, heated swimming pools and hulking S.U.V.’s."
- Mike Tidwell, environmentalist
...to defy nature = suburb's purpose?

What is the future of suburbia?

Could we have known in the 50s that suburbia would have no future? Could we have lived without suburbia?

“If we don’t change the patterns, we’re in for a long and slow and arduous collapse.”
--Dominick Ranieri

What will U.S. suburbs look like in 40 years?

“The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins.”
"Having poured a half-century of our national wealth into a living arrangement with no future — and linked our very identity with it — we have provoked a powerful psychology of previous investment that will make it difficult for us to let go, change our behavior, and make other arrangements."
--James Kunstler

In the end, the very things that make suburban life attractive — the lush lawns, spacious houses and three-car garages — also disproportionally contribute to global warming. Suburban life, these environmentalists argue, is simply not sustainable.
-Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You

Longtime suburban residents might wonder how they suddenly became environmentally incorrect. People who moved to the suburbs in the ’50’s and ’60’s thought they were being green just by doing so, said Robert Beauregard, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University.
--Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You

Then, green “just meant open space and privacy,” Professor Beauregard said. “Those Levittowns were ‘green’ because they had lawns.”

You'd Be Proud, Celeste.
A Changing American Dream
Can We Uninvent Suburbia?

Metropolitan Fringe? Really?

Notes from Geoff Nunberg's "The Long History of the Word 'Suburb'":

Recently, urban planners have been calling the suburb "metropolitan fringe" and "edge cities"...is a new name really going to attract a new wave of suburbanites?

In Europe:
tanneries
gambling houses
slaughter houses

First middle-class setting: London around 1900...but aristocrats still saw it as vulgar and pretentious

Malvina Reynolds (singer of "Little Boxes")...calling suburbs unoriginal: unfair? Is everyone supposed to be a folk singer? Sorry.

Too similar to thesis? Taped in 1996. I can add to this, finding the differences today and using today's adaptations of the suburbs (and maybe reflections of suburbs in the last centuries) to find something out.

Example: Revolutionary Road written 1961, movie taped 2008. What are the differences? Are these effected by time and disassociation?

Hmmm...

Did a bit of damage in the ol' Oxford English today...

So, Chaucher pretty much coined the term "suburb" (or, well, "the suburbe of a toun") in Canterbury Tales! That's 1383! I can't find my copy tonight, but I'll look it up soon...

Also, I'm realizing that the original suburb (probably that to which Chaucer refers), while not the American suburb, could have been more of a class-separation tool than a population-accommodating necessity.

...so does the "sub-" reflect not only to the geography of it all but the "lesser", "lowly" people who lived there?

Maybe not. But I needed to write this.

New idea!!!

My chat with my sister left me with the idea that all hope was lost with the TZ idea...BUT, after chatting with Mr. Engholm, I'm now thinking of doing a creative thesis. Maybe a memoir of my trip (travel journal-esque), my sister's time there (but I don't know if that would be like, "oh, look how great my sister is"), or maybe just something about the whole volunteering, Peace Corps thing...which would include interviews with other volunteers.

...kudos to you if you could follow that sentence.

I could also see what her students (all girls, about my age) think of Americans and maybe focus more on the students. Hmmm.

Links:

US/Tanzania Relationship

In a rut...

So this evening I told my sister all my ideas about the TZ topic, keeping in mind that she knows a lot more than I do on the subject. And she told me it'd be very hard to relate some of the things I'm interested in to her remote village. So it's a bit frustrating, but it was better to find out now than to find myself in a rut later.

And yet I find myself in another rut...

She says that I'll have a lot of time to hang out with her students, and it would be easier to focus my paper on that.

It seems like such a good opportunity to write about TZ, but I'm just having a really hard time finding something both compelling and applicable to my situation...I know I should be waaaay further along in this process.

Journal Entry #2

Today I’m pretty much making mental pro/con lists regarding both of my possible topics. I’m realizing that one of the most difficult things with the TZ one is including the recent Bhutanese events in my analysis of a different third world country, Tanzania. Do I compare the two countries’ situations? Do I include the modernization of Bhutan (and its solution of GNH) at all? Also, how do I include experiences from my time over there without making it personal? I think I have the means to find a lot of support for my paper in Tanzania, with connections in a seriously small village and a sister to serve as my Swahili/English translator, if necessary. However, regardless of roadblocks, this topic holds more connection to my own life than the suburb idea.

But...the suburb idea is still in the running. We'll see...I like how either involves a good bit of interviewing.