Retrofitting Suburbia

A thought had occured to me some time ago as I was shopping with my family along the mulitudes of stores near where I live. Of course, we used a car to get there even though it is within reasonable distance from our home to walk to. The problem: the stores are arranged along a highway that would be suicidal to cross. And thus my idea came into frutition.

There should be a pedestrian bridge spanning over the highway to allow residents on one end of the subdivision to cross safely and access the retail and other businesses on the other side. The structure should be tall enough to grant clearance to most vehicles, especially the freight trucks that occasionaly use the roads on their routes. Also, they would need to be accesible to the disabled, a ramp that works its way up and down would work, and may also do well for those who ride bikes too. A fence along both sides of the bridge may have to be put up to prevent things from being tossed over, since the suburbs are prone to idle youth doing dangerous things.

These bridges will be established at major intersections where crosswalks use to be and maybe be connected via a sidewalk that runs alongside the highway (at a safe distance), thus encouraging people who wish to bear the journey to safely walk or bike to their destinations. This setup would be useful for people only out to window shop or are only looking to buy a few things that can be carried by hand. The utility of the bridges may become more apparent once petroleum yields get to the point that gasoline consumption will have to be cut severely and the residents from several neighboring subdivisions will utilize them as convenient and safe ways to access the businesses and retail that cater to them, all without a car.

Maybe it will happen in the future. I can expect and perhaps demand these changes occur for the suburbs so that when difficult times come, we are more able to be connected to eachother and function as a large independent community.

An ideal neighborhood

I don't know why I bring myself to do it, but I couldn't help but peruse the skyscaperpage.com message board which is a hotbed of anti-suburbanist thinking and a safehouse for density fetishists. One of the things that makes me angry is the insistence that living in the city is the only viable option in the future and anything else is purely selfish and harmful, not to mention a betrayal 0f your soul (because everything happens in the city).

Seriously, those people need to understand that their view is one of many options people choose to live by and that city life has its flaws too (I woudln't bother attempting to make that argument to those people because like Christian Conservatives and Hard Leftists, they are too set in on their opinions to bother thinking in other people's terms).

Anyway, most of the forum's ideal way of life is generally centered around a condominium or high-rise aparment in a preferrably tall building located within 2 miles of the city center surrounded by amenities and retail within walking distance where you'll never need a car and take mass transit for all your long-distance needs, even for travel. Big loads will be delivered to you, you'll be surrounded by a diverse cultural mecca, you'll never be alone. It's a bohemian paradise!

Well count me out of it, please. City life sounds good and is good if you're into that sort of life. I personally am not and make no qualms about living it the suburban way. Of course I would love to be a bit more responsible to my environement at least, such as owning a car that is either a hybrid or runs on bio-diesel, and making my future home more energy efficient and such (the last item would have to be approved by homeowner's associations which are very draconic to their aesthetic standards). However, I can make a compromise on how much of the urban life I want around me.

First I'll deal with where I live. The least I would want to do with is a townhome with at least a foot space away from the neighbors (none of that butting walls against walls deal, I like not know what heated conversations the couple next door might be having). I forbid the concept of apartments or condominiums (I don't like being that close to other tenants, sorry), and if I have to I don't want to live anywhere higher than the 5th floor. I don't mind living above a retail section, like homes above stores and restaurants, those are fun and could offer some distractions and social camaraderie. I would still like to own my car and have a place to put it for the purpose of long travels and large haul travel, plus I like to have a sense of freedom to move around that isn't limited to my energy or the city schedule. For my other travel needs, the bus or other means of mass transit will do for trips to work or other general purpose travel (I'll walk the rest). I would also love to have a small patch of green space behind or on the roof of my home so I can plant my own things and turn the place into my private away spot (this may be biased from my parent's home's backyard which is overrun with many different plants and has a vegetable garden in the back). Finally, I would rather my home be at least 2 miles away from the city center because I like the sense of detachment from the main scene as well (I personally prefer not to be in the middle of everything). In essence I am describing the environment of a small town in a condensed form.

So shortlisted:

1. Townhome, no smaller than 700 square feet
2. No abutting against neighbors.
3. If all else, no property above the 5th floor.
4. Will be fine if living above retail.
5. Have a small garden behind or on the roof of home.
6. Would still like to own a car, and will take mass transit or walk for most trips.
7. Be located somewhat far from the city center (more than 2 miles).

See, that doesn't sound awful now does it?

Strip Malls and Short-Sightedness

One of my biggest peeves with sprawl deals with the omnipresent strip retail centers that spring up around any subdivision. When residents bring in traffic to the area, retail comes in at breakneck speed and build along the roads and around intersections vying for your attention and money. There is one problem, most of them do not have a sense of timing other than quick profits. Unless it is sorely needed (like the Barnes & Noble), most do not even consider what contribution they are making to the community at large.

In other words, few ever consider the long term impacts of their presence. This is why many strip centers go up quickly and cheaply with garishly bland exteriors and expansive asphalt parking lots. This overall will be a losing combination in the long run for half the retailers who decide to rent space in these strip centers. Case in point: up some part south of my old neighborhood is an old retail zone set up to service the older neighborhoods. There were myriads of stores selling sundry goods and simple services, yet there were too many. One particular strip center used to house a 6-screen theatre and gym and several successful restaurants along with many stores. Now only the restaurant remains since it is the only business that faces the highway and thus gets visibility. The rest stand empty without tenants and will remain that way for some time. Throughout my trips around Houston I often see the same problem, strip centers, usually the old ones empty and dilapidating, with most businesses moving to newer developments with more lucrative prospects.

Oftentimes I would suggest the solution to these problems was to raze the unprofitable strip centers and revert them back to the land it once was. It was countered many times as being too expensive since the infrasctructure that was established there would be costly to remove. If I were a developer I would have set up a limited parcel of land to put up my retail and make sure it is the place people want to shop in and thus become a center of the community in its own right, therefore making it a long-term investment to the community than another fleeting statement of sink-or-swim entrepeneurship. It would make the area more beautiful and the community a lot more like one.

On a future post, I'll posit my idea on what the ideal suburban strip center should be like.

A Good Supermarket

As I had mentioned briefly before, there is a big box store that I have taken to my liking ever since I had resorted to shopping there to sustain my college diet. The store is a supermarket chain called H-E-B (est. 1905) that I have known since my childhood and since the last ten years have improved and expanded its market share. In my young childhood I remember H-E-B as being a rather poor-quality supermarket (on the level of Gerlands) due to its brand of "Pantry Foods" stores which were like the Wal-Mart of supermarkets: disheveled commodities, sticky floors, and bargain basement food. Well, luckily, they have changed that and have revamped their small-scale stores and upgraded most of them in the "Market" brand stores replete with Post-Modernist architecture.

The experience of shopping through an H-E-B is like that of any supermarket, however, these stores seem to make grocery shopping a little more exciting and enjoyable than most other chains. The layout is typical of most supermarkets: fresh produce on one end, followed by meats, dairy, and frozen products, and the dry goods somewhere in between. H-E-B typically sets it differently by having split entrances, one solely at the fresh produce end and the other at the checkouts so that way in most cases the shopper is forced to traverse the entire store in one trip, although that isn't necessary since they add short cuts between sections to facilitate those who wish to bypass them. The store in my old neighborhood employs this system more stringently than the one I shop in at Austin. This holistic manner of shopping turns what is a mundane task into an activity of leisure (or so I hope).

The simple act of changing the way traffic flows is the saving grace for H-E-B. Once you realize that it also has good prices (not to mention stellar deals if you're looking to make entire meals on a budget), a decent selection - if you're snobbish they also have the urban upscale Central Market brand (only in Texas though), and an honorable involvment in charitable efforts.

That is why I prefer getting my groceries at H-E-B.

Why Wal-Mart sucks.

Okay, this may not come to a surprise to most of you, but I too don't like Wal-Mart. While they have done some good things such as shown after Hurricane Katrina, on the whole, the store and the company are something to be viewed with caution.

I think Wal-Mart was okay for some time, but up when every regular store was upgraded, nee upsized, into the Super Wal-Mart did I begin to take offensive at the commercial juggernaut it has become. It goes without saying that these relatively new Super stores are huge, and they attempt to sell nearly every living commodity within it from groceries to computers to auto parts to eyeglasses. It used to be that mega-sellers such as the defunct Auchan (the French import "hypermart") were a novelty or as in Sam's Club, which I do like, sells things in large quantities. I think the precedent the Super Wal-Mart has begun will spell doom for many retailers who are more specialized. Imagine the future where everything to be bought is found under one roof. Sounds awful? That's what Super Wal-Mart might become too soon - the only store you'll ever need.

The only advantage a Super Wal-Mart has over most retailers is the fact that they are cheap, and that is sometimes a good thing only if it is cheap for a good reason, not because the labor was suddenly outsourced to China for cents on the dollar so top officials could rake in the profits. Even the alleged choices Wal-Mart brings is questionable at best. When a store attempts to sell everything, they are bound to put aside certain products to make others more visible. Consolidation of genres like what most big box retailers are do increase the number of choices you can have, but one step too far, like the Super Wal-Mart and you'll see choices sacrificed for the ability to sell more types of products. The only thing this sort of Wal-Mart is good for is cheap gas. That's it.

So with low prices and less choice, what good does it actually offer, not much. Even the experience of shopping in a Super Wal-Mart is bad too. For those who never stepped foot in one, imagine shopping in a building the size of four football fields (probably larger than actual size, but it feels that way) with groceries on one side, consumer products on the other and random junk in between. It's large, bright, loud, and immensely bland. It takes the life out of a "run to the store". It's very easy to get lost in one too; even stores of comparable size like Sam's Club are more navigable. The many times I have shopped in there I have never enjoyed it, sometimes feeling very uncomfortable while traversing from one side to the other getting what is needed for the week. If there is a place in the Super Wal-Mart I appreciate better, it is the parking lot. That area has more romance than what is found in the store.

So why do I still buy stuff there if I hate it so much, you may ask? Well, it is still by a certain degree more affordable than most other alternatives and I for one am a person who won't get my idealism in the way of practicality. If it saves me some money for other uses, I would go for it, and it could be used for some good like a charitable donation or buying something I really want from a more politically correct source.

If you can avoid the Super Wal-Mart without any sizeable harm, then more power to you. For those who can't, hopefully a better alternative may arise, or enough racket can be raised against the company to change their policies and practices for the better.

A History of My Neighborhood

Wow, it's been some time since I last posted. Apparently college is still pulling its tricks on me to take my time away . . . somehow.

So, as a basic starting point on issues revolving around the current state and future of urban/suburban lifestyles, I will introduce to all of you a verbal panorama of my neighborhood from the time I moved in to the present.

The year was 1989, and I was about four years old. Up to that year, my family primarily lived in an apartment in the city limits, and with a change in jobs and a need to find a better environment to raise two growing children, my parents started looking around for a place to settle down into. The place was a development called Copperfield, which at the time I assume was primarily a small bedroom community from the late 1970s which before then used to be fields where rice was grown, not too unusual an origin for most suburban developments. The time we moved in Copperfield was experiencing it's second stage of growth and our future home was still under construction (the final stage took place in the mid 1990s and the place stopped expanding). At the time, the location was rather quiet and isolated. The highway abutting the area had only three lanes, the commercial establishments have been limited to a small strip center anchored by a liquor store, a Randalls, and a Mexican restaurant, a Shell station, a McDonald's, and a Wal-Mart. So back then, the conditions made for a rather tranquil existence for the time being, and my residency there for the first few years were interesting and involved at best, interacting with the neighbors and their children, seasonal block parties, and the such.

So what has changed since then? Well, for one thing, the highway has expanded considerably, now to a hefty seven lanes and since my sophomore year of high school (2000-2001), the farm road intersecting it had quickly grown from the modest two lane narrow sideroad, to equal the highway in its girth. With that increase in capacity also led to an increase in traffic, which during my last full-time years at Copperfield, turned to area into a commuter's headache. Stop lights at nearly every possible "intersection" guaranteed traffic will crawl across the stretch south of the intersection with the farm road. With the increase in traffic came the irresistable need for commercial developers to put up their businesses along the road, so in came the plethora of drive-through establishments, countless strip malls, gas stations in every corner, and the arrival of big boxes near the end to top of the developmental order. Initially, the increase in business opportunity and variety was heralded with celebration, as was the case when the neighborhood was treated to a fireworks show to commemorate the opening of a Target and its surrounding strip development during my elementary school years. The later stuff came in without much fanfare. The only thing left is an indoor shopping mall, but space has so far been unavailable for that part.

Much of the changes have occured during my time in high school, and discussion among my friends have sometimes turned towards the topic of how sprawl if effecting our community. Over time, our quiet bedroom community turned into another off-the-highway neighborhood with its requisite development. With the big box rush during my junior year (hallmarked by the simultaneous arrival of a Lowe's and Home Depot, next to one another!), and the upgrade of the Wal-Mart to a Super Center, leaving the old location to be filled in with the other categories like a Linen & Things, Best Buy, Office Max, PetsMart, and a Barnes & Noble, the last of which I was clearly happy to have nearby, the transformation was complete. The only significant event to occur in my neighborhood since then was the arrival of a Golden Corral, which happened while I was in my freshman year of college, friends and family described the accounts of long lines on opening day which was amazing to me.

So in reflection what sort of impact has sprawl created in the place I grew up in? There is the advantage of convenience, I couldn't deny, products that used to require a Saturday trip to a mall some distance away is now reduced to a casual visit in the afternoon or evening. A lot of the stuff we needed and could want are within a mile from home. However, at the same time, the spirit of the sleepy community has disappeared in the roar of traffic and ceaseless light pollution at night. Sirens are now more common than hearing the distant freight train, the neighborly behaviors amongst the residents have since gone away, and life in general has turned blander and generic.

Such is the fate of established small communities swallowed by the growing city limits (although Copperfield as of today still hasn't been incorporated in to the city).

Useless Idiots

I guess I'll kick it off with a vent at a group of people who I think do not serve well the cause of fixing the problems of sprawl. I bring you the members of the SkyscraperPage.com forums. Well, at least ninety percent of them deserve this.

While I still enjoy the forums for its roundup of news and topics on skyscrapers, which I am an avowed fan of, whenever the topic comes across the urban/suburban divide, it suddenly gets ugly. Much like the Red/Blue conflict over last year's election, what seems initially to be a group of wonderful, diverse, amicable people turns into this horde of conformist, unbending, uncompromising urbanists who worship the many things urban. Everytime someone who evens remotely likes suburban life speaks up, the horde comes down upon them saying how wrong they are and how dare they consider a lifestyle so wasteful, so selfish, so devoid of "life", so bourgeois. Why can't they live, they ask, in a condo tower or row house where you can have everything you need in a 100 foot radius and take the train if you want to "go out", participate in a vibrant cultural neighborhood (which only happens in a city), and feel smug over the piece of shit scum who dare reside in a 3000-square tract home with a yard and who drives their own car for transport while all the while leeching off of the funds that should always stay at the glorious city?

My goodness, why can't they just wake up and see how they are leading such horrible lives?

Good fucking god, this is the sort of rhetoric tossed around that can turn many off from ever addressing the issues of sprawl properly. To them it is a matter of proclaiming superiority over a certain class of people while at the same time thinking they are doing them a service by showing them the light. The same approach is used by evangelists who see the unbaptized as sinners and wish to take them into their flock and heal them from their misdirected lives thinking they will win the favor of their god for doing so.

For a cosmetically diverse forum, the members sure have a horribly monolithic way of thinking. Many of them are density fetishists who would climax at the prospect of their cities achieving Manhattan (should I dare say Hong Kong or Tokyo) style density. A good portion also are against the private use of automobiles, preferring instead to do their travel by walking, biking, and mass transit (the first two I'm fine with, the third not so much). A whole lot of them are young adults who at the same time are disaffected suburbanites that have fled their familiy's homes for the prospect of living it up in the city.

To these people, the city is not a location but an entire paradigm that should be touted as truth. This is the core of their philosophy in which I disagree. To them the suburbs and the sprawl associated are a malignant tumor that must be excised and its denizens all crammed back into the city limits. They can't conceive of a way to create or reform suburbs into a better working body, instead, all people have to live in the city and the landscape of urban living must in their own image.

How stultifying and unimaginative. Truth monstrously distorted into stereotypes both good and bad just to serve their urban "crusade".

So with that out of my system. I'll continue discussing the issues plauging suburbs and the sprawl that is affecting it in both good and bad ways, however, instead of the simplistic "move closer to the city" rhetoric or the idiotic "let's continue expanding" method done today, I'll bring about ideas that perhaps could be considered outside of the city-limits thinking and hopefully allow a preservation of lifestyle choices that would be more considerate than just choosing between an apartment, condo, row house, or large tract home.

Consider it the centrist way of approaching the urban/suburban divide.

Back in Austin

So I'm now settled into an apartment in Far West and am currently blogging through a leeched wireless connection from somewhere around the apartment block. A warning to those with wireless routers, please secure your connections so you don't have people freeloading off of you or hack into your computer. Just a friendly reminder.

Also, my sinus seems to be flaring up again upon stepping foot in Austin. It's official, I am allergic to Austin. In general, I am not a big fan of Austin, despite its laid back nature and eccentricity. I like those qualities, but combined with its jumbled nature and awful transit system (the buses are fine, the highways are not), the city is simply annoying at best.

Anyhow, with a semblance of stability I might be able to put up the suburban musings I have been meaning to write about, so stay tuned.

Virtual Crack

Man, I'm surprised at how addicting Wikipedia can get. It may not be as thorough as some encyclopedias, but it has something books can't do, allow instant linking to other articles of related relevance. I nearly forgone sleep looking at various entries and clicking on tangential articles and that led to poring over lists and reading those articles and so forth.

For those who like trivia and random information, this site will own you sooner or later.

Amorphous Mass

Onto the subject of aesthetics (and making sure this blog lives up to its name), one thing I will talk about from time to time is about urban sprawl. Sprawl effects every suburban environment in one way or another. While it brings businesses and other amenities closer to residents, it also beings traffic, pollution, noise, and ugliness into the landscape. Because of how quickly and cheaply they come up, sprawl development comes out inadequately planned making the negative effects very prominent and often overshadowing the advantages of having that particular store or business within a mile of your home.

If done right and well, development can enhance a community and enrich the area, but with sprawl seen just be going down the highway, it turns the landscape into a sea of concrete and corporate blandness.

Over the next week or so, I'll kick off the topic and post some observations about sprawl and how it affects the suburban neighborhood I live in, which I will leave soon to go back to college in an urban area, the city. Among the subjects slated for discussion will be a history of how much my neighborhood changed since my family moved in, a visit to a Super Walmart, and half-occupied strip malls.

Hope to see y'all there!