[Originally printed in Mayday Magazine, June 2009.]
Suburbia: a place to escape from the dangers of the city to enjoy a pseudo country life with neat lawns, no crime and white picket fences - just like in the good old days portrayed in the sitcoms. Unfortunately, this is all a pipedream. Suburban living has one of the best public relations campaign but the reality is far from perfect.
Currently, almost half of Canada’s population are suburbanites. In 1976, writer Erma Bombeck wrote ‘The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank’. It chronicled the issues of living in bedroom communities. Thirty-three years later the same issues remain, and new ones have arrived, but people still flock to the suburbs.
The major problem with suburban living is that it is neither sustainable, nor environmentally efficient. The suburbs were created during the post-war boom when there was abundant, cheap oil. From the beginning it was a terrible allocation of resources, but those who could afford it quickly moved out into false country living while their jobs remained in the cities they fled.
To keep up with all the people that needed to travel from suburbia to the city, the government built highways. This in turn made it easier to ship things out to the suburbs, like people and building materials. This created more urban sprawl, and furthered the need for more roads. It was a vicious cycle. All these people trying to travel from the city to the suburbs during long commutes also caused major traffic issues. Basically, the suburbs had the disadvantages of both the urban and rural settings.
The land these sprawling acres of “McMansions” (the carbon-copy mega-dwellings characteristic of suburban homes) were built on arable land that could have been used for crops. Despite having plenty of land, most suburban properties have few trees, fewer kitchen gardens, and lots of lawn that needs to be cut. Any plants that are on the property are usually the ornamental type that dies within the decade. Despite the healthy, country living it claims, people are rarely outside. It is slightly eerie to walk around the suburbs during most of the day, as it resembles a ghost town.
Suburbanites are completely dependant on their motor vehicles. The dependence comes form the fact that amenities are out of the way. To get anywhere, without walking 20 minutes or more, you must have a vehicle. Public transportation is not economical with such a low population density. The suburbs create more carbon emissions that the city, and because of the car-intensive culture, the average suburbanite weighs almost 3 kg (6 lbs) more than the average urban dweller. Also, car-dependency leaves the elderly in a precarious situation because they are away from needed services.
People leave the cities because of the crime, but this motive tends to be counterproductive. A bored, younger population with no place to go, suburban teens tend to get into trouble including vandalism and petty theft. This is particularly true in older suburbs that have become ghettos.
The suburbs also lack places for children to play, like parks. The parks that do exist are rarely more than a mowed field with a small jungle gym. The fear of crime that brought their parents out of the city also makes them fearful of letting their children play unsupervised. In order to make sure their children are “properly socialized” they join playgroups. But, instead of children finding another child they get along with, despite any social circumstances, the parents choose who the child plays with based on if they get along with the other children’s parents.
Despite the stereotype that the suburbs are ethnically monotonous, this is not always true. Recent studies have shown many immigrant families are moving to suburbia to raise their families. While the people are no longer ethnically homogeneous, the homes certainly are. Suburban homes seem based off of about two or three similar blueprints. Because of this, the suburbs feel like they have no real personality, just street after winding street of McMansions with no community feel to them. The roads are never in a straight line either, even though that is the shortest distance between two points. Who hasn’t been snagged before among a suburban neighbourhood’s pointless cul-de-sacs? Finally, there is a skewed population density inside suburban homes as well; large, four bedroom houses with only two people living there.
In the old television sitcoms, some kid on his bike delivered the paper by throwing it onto the porch from the street, without ever stopping his bike. Regrettably, this now only exists in TV land. And while it is possible to toss a bundle of paper the necessary distance to the front porch of most McMansions, the homeowners strongly insist that it is placed in the mailbox that’s reachable from the door. Is spite of the fact that there are many young people in the suburbs; it is nearly impossible to find youths wiling to deliver papers in these areas. The suburbs are not exactly carrier-friendly.
Increasingly, the mail doesn’t come to your door anymore, but is deposited in a series of lockboxes that belongs in a bank. The sprawl of suburbia has made house-to-house mail delivery unsustainable, and therefore obsolete.
For a young paper or flyer carrier, the job is tough and, on occasion, dangerous. There are no sidewalks, so you are stuck walking on the road. This can be a hazard in bad conditions, especially since the roads are the last to be ploughed. Equally daunting are the long driveways at each house and the extra space between each McMansion. The average city block is 152 metres (500′), while the average suburban block is 201 metres (660′). The extra distance really adds up after a couple of blocks.
Regardless of being known as paradise, in the long run suburbia is not an economically or environmentally sustainable way of life. As such, it is a way of life that may have no future.
