Our local city mag had an article on the back page this week about the Richmond suburbs. The author was lamenting how the small once rural area of Richmond called Short Pump has now just turned into one big mall.
Articles and attitudes like these annoy the hell out of me with how pretentious they are.
It's not that I don't agree with the assessment that yes...I basically live in a sterile environment with tons of stores and restaurants and McMansions that have all popped up in the last 15 years or so.
But so what? How is where I live different from the ten gazillion other suburbs just like it that have sprung up across America?
I know that's the point. There's nothing original about the new suburbs. They all look alike. They're all clean and pretty and perfect and homogenous. But the last time I was up in NYC there was a Starbucks on every corner. Miami was a lot like Atlanta, which was a lot like a big Richmond. I don't see much originality anywhere in America anymore.
Who is to blame? The big corporations that replace the mom and pop stores, or the people who shop at them? The builders who make the Agrestics or the families who buy the houses because they like the space and the amenities?
And as for the "sterile" quality of where I live? Well, for a few years I did live in New York and although I did sometimes love being in the middle of all those people, I really hated it when say...the homeless guy next to me pissed his pants on the subway or when the crazy lady on the corner called me a fat bitch because I didn't give her change as I passed her by. (And she wasn't so skinny herself.) Or how about the wall street brokers who lived in the apartment next to us who loved rap music and made our lives hell with bass for three years. That was fun. There's something to be said for pretty and perfect. Hell, back in high school I had great character, but cheerleaders still won homecoming queen. It's human nature.
I could choose to live in the city and get a tiny yard and a house that will need massive repairs and either send my kids to crappy schools or pay big bucks for private schools. My house would be "charming", though. In quotation marks! I'd be really hip, too. The next thing you know I'd have to start eating organic...but wait...the Whole Foods is coming to Short Pump!
What would be really cool is if our city magazine would stop acting like none of their readers actually live in the suburbs. Some interesting, creative people DO actually live outside the city limits and if more people and groups fostered that creativity my little retail burb might become more than just a bunch of stores and big houses and turn into a really great place to live.
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7 comments:
Well, first of all, consider who the magazine's intended demographic is. Second, I think the point is that suburbia, by its very nature, does not foster or support the creativity and individuality you crave. Many people don't want that because with it comes with elements of society that people are scared or threatened by. As a result, many people who live in communities such as yours create, enforce and live by rules that stifles that creativity and individuality. Like I said, you want your house and your conveniences to be located at the corner of West 4th and Bowery. Unfortunately that isn't going to happen.
MAH
I don't think the focus of the article was really on the people who live in the west end, although she basically said that children who live in the suburbs are bound to grow up empty and soulless.
But even so, I actually disagree with you. As much as I like to poke fun of where I live, there's a lot more diversity than you'd think. Just in the houses on my block and down the street there are white families, black families, adoptive families, multi-generational families, Jewish families, Christian families...pretty much the only thing they ALL have in common is that they're families.
They aren't all white bread conformists. Speaking for myself, our reason for living where we do was practical. Lots of house for the money. Good schools. Central location to family and friends.
To say that creativity isn't fostered by suburbia implies that creativity is fostered by things outside of you. By what exactly? I actually agree with this, but I'm not sure I see how my creativity is going to be fostered more by living next to other yuppies in the fan than other yuppies in the west end. Do you really think such vastly different population lives in the six, seven hundred thousand dollar houses in the fan than in Wyndham? The difference is that the people in fan just have to pay extra for St. Catherine's and Collegiate.
Oh, but yes. I would like my house smack dab next to Washington Square Park.
I mean. If I can choose. :)
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