I Liked My Backyard

"At the building scale, does it offer a variety of housing choices to accommodate a diverse population with varied needs and ideas about public and private space, or are the choices too similar and the expectations of behavior too conformist?"

I grew up in suburbia, and I enjoyed it. I liked my backyard, front yard, neighbors and my own bedroom with my own walls. While our house was a stand alone house, I didn't feel segregated. We created stairs and ladders that would take me over my fence to my neighbors backyard (safer 10 year old fence hopping) and in essence acted as an extension of our own property. Our elementary school was in the center of my neighborhood and everyone walked to school, knew the crossing guards by name and knew half of the dogs names that joined on the daily walk. We had neighborhood pools which acted as the equivalent of a European Piazza but was just more retrofitted for hot Texas summers.

And in the Dallas suburbs there are choices. There are neighborhoods with front facing garages that require more interaction with neighbors. There are neighborhoods that pride themselves on all having (almost) zero net energy houses (granted these are multi-million dollar homes). And then you have the neighborhoods where the home owner association dues are almost as much as the houses. I did not have any problems with where I grew up because it was all I knew, all my friends knew and the only type of living that was near us.

After having studied abroad twice, in Barcelona and Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy, I am able to compare living styles a bit better now. And to be honest, I still liked my suburbia. The convenience of being able to walk everywhere from my apartment in Barcelona was nice, but the noise of the neighbors didn't make me want to get to know them any better (loud music at 4 am just isn't what it used to be). And then the opposite which was Castiglion Fiorentino, which is a very small hill town in Italy about an hour outside of Florence, which was half abandoned buildings and seniors (70 years +) who really kept to themselves even though they shared walls. Because it was a small town, the closest grocery store and laundromats were over a 45 minute walk away, so even in this urban living environment, seclusion was still present.

Overall, I think conformist behavior happens not because of the home, but because of the people around you. Granted, suburbia might be more inclined to this behavior for the simple fact of more space between residences, but when you have an open door, fence hopping, community pool policy, suburbia really was a fun place to grow up.

Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy