A Box of Your Own

“For literally nothing down—other than a simple two per cent and a promise to pay, and pay, and pay until the end of your life—you too . . . can find a box of your own in one of the fresh-air slums we're building around the edges of America's cities. “ - John C. Keats

I am unsure whether I was disgusted or amused with “The New American Nightmare.” I was amused with his manner of writing but frankly, I’ve never been a fan of suburbia (who is??) and I was dreading reading anything about it. In my mind, just like suburbia, the content would be a drag. I personally did not grow up in a suburb and neither did my much older siblings. After this reading I truly believe that it attributes to the way we are as people - the ideas we have and the different forms of people we are willing to interact with.

Suburbia is discussed or critiqued in two ways: 

• One is environmental determinism,the idea that an architecturally regimented environment equals a regimented and homogeneous population, so that identical houses inevitably produce identical inhabitants.
• The other is the expansion of the Frankfurt School mass culture critique to postwar consumer society.

My focus is on the first. Keats jokes that all other houses will be precisely like yours, inhabited by people whose age, income, number of children, problems, habits, conversation, dress, possessions and perhaps even blood type are also precisely like yours. He discusses how ironically developments are creating stratified societies of singular monotony, yet our nation has been dependent on and prides itself on a lack of stratified society - diversity. Interesting how things like this always play out…

I’ll confess and agree with him that with every new development jobs are created which means money is circulated but like he also says, prosperity is material and potentially temporary. This is where I love his reflection and contrast on how a development cannot be called a community. A community being a place that implies balance of men, women and children where work and pleasure can be had and the needs of all societies members are served for betterment. Generally, housing developments lack recreational areas, churches, schools, or other cohesive influences. In their homogeneous nature, no one has anything to offer anyone else - ideas, values, meaning, growth. Where is the community in that? I’ll pass on the box of my own in hopes that some of the boxes that do exist, become something better over time (wishful thinking from the other readings).

"Little Boxes"

Comic depicting various activities and services that can be applied in differing communities