Tuesday, July 08, 2003
The City of the Future
I've started rereading The Crying of Lot 49, a book I enjoyed a great deal the first time. It's remarkable what can leap out at you the second time through. Though I'm sure I noticed Pynchon's descriptions of the Peninsula, that region between San Francisco and Los Angeles (though closer to SF) the first time through, now that I'm actually living right in the middle of it all (Palo Alto to be exact) it just seems amazingly accurate. In terms of weather and scenery, of course, it's close to perfect--mountains and ocean all nearby, between 75-85 degrees 10 months out of the year, no humidity to speak of--but there's a desolation here I don't think outsiders quite get. It's the suburbs, to be sure, but it's more sprawling, more atomized than i think you'd find elsewhere. Homes, shopping areas, industry, all in discrete areas, all relatively far apart--it goes without saying there would be no life here without cars. I'm not sure there's life here with cars, come to think of it. There will be times when you're driving along, and for a good ten miles all you'll see is sprawling corporate campuses, with light industry here and there. The architecture is invariably the same, that combination of blue and green-tinted glass and brushed metal that seems oh-so-modern in theory but is really quite depressing when repeated on such a scale. The whole effect is something like SimCity--absolutely separate zones of industry, houses, and commerce that must look very lively and interesting from the air but in reality is a set of no more than 80-100 building types. The notion that people (or Sims) prefer all aspects of their cities to be kept completely segregated from one another always seemed a bit odd to me (though admittedly i probably wouldn't like living next to a steel mill), yet here it is in real life, playing out precisely this way. I guess in one way it's not so surprising, undoubtedly most of the programmers grew up in this area and make their homes here, surely this would have some effect on their conception of urban dynamics.
Putting aside SimCity for the moment, I'm curious: How did we get here? Is this really what people want? I guess one could argue that this is the market at play, people want to live near their places of work, and away from the supposed stress and confusion of the "big city". And they want a "nice" place to raise their children, the kind of place that apparently can't be found in a major metropolitan area. But is any of this true? Is there any intuitive reason suburban life is somehow preferable to life in a large city? Why are cities supposedly bad places for children? I mean, I guess you wouldn't want your 6-year old riding the subways at 4 in the morning, but that seems easily avoided. Wouldn't a parent gravitate to a city, as a means of ensuring as much stimulation and growth as possible for their child? Is it really better for a child to be dependent on a parent for all transportation until the age of 16, at which point they instead roam far and wide in search of excitement that's nowhere to be found for miles?
It's a stunningly original piece so far, no? A twentysomething liberal fulminating about suburban dystopias and California car culture. But really, has anyone done survey work here? Has anyone asked suburban residents if this is really the life they envisioned? Is home ownership really that important? And once again, how did we get here? I suppose I could go on a long rant about the alienating, atomizing effects of present-day capitalism, but i really don't have the energy, and anyway, it's been said before by people far more talented than I. So i guess i'll end with a question I don't have the answer for. Can we go back? Can people be encouraged to live in cities, to actually want to take part in a vibrant, dynamic community of millions of people? Would they even want to?