Suburbs--not that bad

In case this doesn't load correctly, this is State Farm's "Never" Commercial

So there's that.

I'm going to talk about my own experiences in this post, and why I don't think the 'burbs are terrible. I have always lived in the suburbs. As a small child I lived in Snellville outside Atlanta, then we moved to Gastonia outside Charlotte (a serious downgrade!) and then to Lake Wylie further outside Charlotte. Lake Wylie neighbors Clover, which is still decidedly rural. Of course I also spent a semester living in Barcelona, which is very different from American urban living, but is nevertheless the most urban living experience I have.

Commuting
Many people in the suburbs do not commute into the city. My parents, for instance have never commuted into the city. For the most part, the only people commuting into the city are "urban professionals" such as some doctors, engineers, or business leaders–and even then they don't all go into the city. Hourly wage people rarely commute into the city, and most suburbs (besides the dreaded "bedroom community") have several other local businesses which keep even more people staying the in suburb (e.g. lawyers, schoolteachers, pharmacists etc.)

Even then, the people who have to commute tend to live closer in. In Charlotte, for instance, most of the employed in medicine work at one of Charlotte's two major hospitals. Because of this, the neighborhoods around those hospitals are almost entirely populated by people who work in medicine. The higher income of the medical industry shows up in those neighborhoods as well.

Isolation

The Cul-de-sac is a strategy I have only seen in suburbia. For those of you that don't know what it is, it's a round bit of asphalt at the dead end of a street used to provide street frontage to put more lots in at the end of that street in the subdivision. You can go no deeper into a subdivision than into the Cul-de-sac. Lots on the Cul-de-sac have a higher value than those which are not. These are the most isolated lots available, so why do people want them more?

In my experience, they want that isolation. They want to know that their kids can play in the street, or that they have more quiet as few cars will pass down the street. This generally reflects the mindset of people in suburbia. That house is seen as a retreat from a busy world. I know that the true, shut-in, stay-at-home housewife must exist somewhere, but I have not met her. The stay-at-home moms I have met (and there are a lot of working women in the suburbs as well!!) are anything but shut-in. They're arguably the backbone of the community, as you can bet that these women are behind organizing most community events, which brings me to my last point about suburban isolation. Community happens–it's just not in the street or the apartment hallway. We all get in our minivans and go to church every Sunday, or to little league games on Saturday morning, or Friday Night High School Football. Yes, these events are certainly less promiscuous than the bar scene, but they're also a lot more inclusive and diverse than a bar scene (even in Clemson, a certain kind of person is at Nick's, a certain kind of person is at TD's, etc.).

"The American Dream"

I'm not sure how to title this section, as I'm talking the idea of the small house on a small lot as a farcical representation of success. Here's the thing though–you can't measure your success against other people. That's just dumb. My idea of success and your idea of success probably aren't the same. Last night I was chatting with my Mom about what we were talking about in class (because we're close like that) and she told me about how she felt about the homes we've lived in over the years. Now we pick on Mom because she's like Scarlet O'Hara, she's all about the land. For her, success is having land. Now my parents have never been well off, so she tells me about how the house I was born in was on a quarter acre lot (in Snellville), and that she was thrilled that a few years later we could afford to move to a home on a third acre lot. By the time she started talking how much it meant to her that our current house of more than a decade sits on an entire acre, she was getting teary-eyed. 

Now land is not my measure of success–I *hate* lawns with passion usually reserved only for Nazis. But if a suburban home makes somebody happy, who am I to argue with that?