Over the last month, I have been living with my parents as I transition between living in my Ann Arbor lease and starting my first professional job in Vermont. They live in a condominium complex in the outer ring suburbs of Metro Detroit in Oakland County. It’s a very pretty neighborhood with quaint townhouses, a verdant landscape, and many convenient amenities such as a pool, tennis courts, and a nearby trail that follows a creek to a nearby downtown. It is a nice place to be. Yet, over the last few weeks, I have felt intense boredom, loneliness, and general discontent with my daily schedule. It has involved a lot of sleeping in, scrolling the internet, and finding anything of note to keep myself occupied. A lot of this can be explained by my lack of connections in the area as I have mostly been in Ann Arbor for the last 4 years. However, the suburban design and system are a key reason why I have not found much to enjoy over the last few weeks. These are a few recurring themes of note I have seen while living in the suburbs.
Lack of Neighborhood life
As I already mentioned, the neighborhood my parents live in is an aesthetically pleasing 1970s development of townhomes, there is a gentle density that theoretically could support a cohesive and friendly community of neighbors. Instead, after living in the neighborhood for 3 years, there is no apparent community to engage with, only a handful of neighbors who on occasion appear outside of their homes. There are no obvious places for gathering except for the clubhouse at the entrance of the neighborhood, which in order to be used, must be reserved in advance. There is no street life, only passing cars and dog walkers who are not readily available to talk to due to their canine counterparts. This effectively means that there is no one to interact with in the neighborhood besides those who are in your household. For the potential the neighborhood has to create community, it is an eerily quiet scene, one that is not welcoming in the slightest to a relative outsider. There are little to no opportunities for spontaneous social interactions, killing any chance of community building.
The Faux Lifestyle Center
So if the neighborhood is not the place to form community or connections, where does one go to do so? Suburbia’s answer is the Lifestyle Center. These are strip malls that masquerade as centers of congregation. Most have some combination of restaurants, shops, smoothie bars, and convenience stores, containing everything one might want for social or personal needs. Then these lifestyle centers are bustling with life, right? On the contrary, these lifestyle centers are devoid of any activity. The spontaneous, organic, vibrant city life associated with downtown areas is noticeably absent in these centers. On any given day, a lifestyle center’s green looks like this:
Empty. Desolate. Lonely. A beautiful sunny fall day does not draw a single person to one of the only public spaces for miles. It seems puzzling at first, but there is an obvious reason why these lifestyle centers are dead zones for the urban vibrancy they purport to offer.
Parking! Parking! Parking!
If there is one thing that the suburbs do not lack, it is parking. Regardless of your destination, you are sure to find a parking spot that has a vacant spot on either side. In fact, there is so much parking, that it swallows up the places it serves. Here is a satellite photo of the lifestyle center I previously mentioned:
It is no surprise that there is no street life when the small patch of grass is surrounded by a disinviting scenery of an endless sea of asphalt and metal. The oversaturation of parking is a commonality across all commercial areas, there is no reprieve from the stranglehold car infrastructure has on suburban land-use policy. I would not want to walk in that environment either.
Remnants of something worth fighting for
While I have not been charitable to the current state of land use in suburbia in this piece, I want to mention that there are parts of areas that have the potential to be retrofitted into something that is more sustainable and welcoming for those outside of a car. The best example of this is downtown Rochester, what once was a small downtown center of an exurb of Detroit has been swallowed up by suburbia, and its downtown core is now split by a road. However, the built environment has the potential to be rebuilt to get the best out of the downtown and create an attractive walkable city. But until there is a political will to drastically change how land use is dictated, the suburbs will continue to be alienating, and lonely, with each family occupying their fortress of tranquility.
If someone is financially comfortable and is part of a strong social network, I can squint and make out a happy existence within the suburban context. But for someone who is trying to find community, or is not financially secure, or enjoys the amenities of urban life or the tranquility of the rural experience, they will not find much to enjoy in the suburban landscape. I do not intend to live a month in suburbia again, I know I would not enjoy it.
The photo of the mall with all the parking is harrowing...