Monday, April 04, 2005

Why do Americans hate cities?

I've been working on a project for a wealthy, moderately educated suburban county in Georgia, and one message comes through again and again: We do not want to become a city. We do not want density. We want to remain suburban.

Going beyond the contradictions inherent in endless suburban growth, what are the cultural bases for this fear of things urban and love of things suburban? As the suburbs have become ugly, congested places to live lacking in public space, how do they maintain their appeal? What exactly is it about these people's image of 'the city' that is so repulsive?

Is this just a lack of understanding that high density somewhere is exactly what permits low density somewhere else? Are there deep cultural images that are behind this fear of the city? Or is this fear of the city based on suburbanites unpleasant, first hand experience of cities?

Posted by: Louis Merlin Permanent Link  
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Comments:
Suburban society is a a slippery subject. Say that ten times fast.

Was just re-reading Kenneth Jackson's Crabgrass Fronter today, and found it to be the most thorough and believable exposition of the cultural biases against city life. Jackson jumps fairly easily from the traditions of yard care, to the desire to own property, to the Anglo-American landscape tradition.

Another terrific book, and another Jackson, is J.B. Jackson's A Sense of TIme, A Sense of Place. In very languid, conversational prose, he easily unpacks a great deal of the cultural imagery that we have loaded onto cities and the landscape. Though his work is not analytical in any sense, there is a convincing critical argument there for a deeply American desire for solitude, whether in a city, or in a suburb, or in the countryside. As he writes, "this may not be a real contradiction" between our desire for community on one hand, and the desire for escape and solitude on the other.

We can desire both, though whether we can plan our cities accordingly is another question.
# posted by Blogger David : 4/05/2005 12:57 AM
 
Both cities and suburbs are awful places to live. Why would you ever live in a place so completely infested with humans. Everywhere you turn they are breeding, making noise and consuming. Living in cities makes you do ridiculous things that everyone just thinks are normal. Things like: paying to park a vehicle, picking up dog shit, paying to have a giant machine clean roads, buy a noise making device to deter people from entering houses and cars. Terrible. The only answer is to limit birth rates so cities and burbs become unnecessary.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 6/30/2009 1:49 PM
 
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