Maybe it's just you
After today’s lecture, I was reminded of the old adage, “wherever you go, there you are”. Does the suburban environment causing unhappiness and alienation in some people or do unhappy people exist everywhere? The relationship between a suburban environment and dissatisfaction is probably not causal, but coincidental. Mass consumerist culture took off in post-war America at the same time as the proliferation of suburb neighborhoods. The middle class was born in this environment- along with household appliances and automation that gave people more leisure time. Suddenly, people had the luxury of time to be unhappy and dissatisfied with life. This phenomenon is not true mental illness but it is the suburban malaise of the housewife or the midlife crisis of the middle-management executive.
I have never lived in a suburban development (although my hometown is suburban in nature); I can, however, verify through experience that you can be dissatisfied in the most urban, socially-charged environment, or conversely, happy in suburb. Usually, architecture is just the backdrop.
I agree with you, I think that suburbia gets a bad reputation because the majority of the people who live there are typically middle-aged (give or take) have families and have settled into routines, so their daily lives become slightly more monotonous than what younger people crave, which is why the urban environment is such a draw. It's different from what the majority of us grew up in, and it seems new and exciting and full of activities.
ReplyDeleteYeah you hit the nail on the head with this post. Architecture can't solve all of the problems that our professors tell us it can, especially one's that deal with the human psyche
ReplyDeleteMatt had a similar reaction and mentioned you in his blog entry and I agree with both of you. The black and white advertisement has an almost scary smile.
ReplyDeleteFranco showed some advertisements of beer being in a suburban home but there were a lot of ads post World War II about how appliances could shorten the amount of time that it used to take to do chores (washing dishes, washing clothes, microwaves that could cook food faster, TV microwave dinners, televisions to entertain you instead of radio) and you described the malaise of the housewife - perhaps this was a symptom of too much idle time.
Can confirm, unhappy people are everywhere. There are dozens of us.
ReplyDeleteSpeak for yourself, boy.
DeleteI agree, while there can be functional problems with suburbs, all suburbs aren't inherently a bad place to live. A lot of it deals with personal preference and location.
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