"Suburb" does not always equal "Sprawl"

Local right wing columnist Patrick McIlheran gets his wires a bit crossed when it comes to what sprawl really and truly is ("Sprawl had the middle class living like lords"). So I dropped him a line:

Hello Patrick,

I read your column with great interest today because I agree with the spirit of your headline if not the semantics.

Suburbs are not inherently "bad." In fact, I think suburbs can and should be excellent places to live - - they certainly were in the days when your in-laws' neighborhood was laid out. While there may be people out there (urbanists?) who characterize even the carefully planned and designed communities built in the 40s through the 60s (and even into the 70s) as "sprawl," I'm not one of them.

I'm with you: Suburbs were a boon to the middle class. I grew up in a wonderland. Walked to the drug store to buy comics, biked to the pool, spent long afternoons playing ball at the local diamond, skipped stones in the Wisconsin River, etc.

The old drug store is still there, but they don't sell comics anymore. They don't sell much of anything anymore, actually. The "local" Wal-Mart and Walgreen's get most of the prescription drug business now.

With that said: The bucolic environment you describe in your column is most assuredly not "sprawl" as we know it today. Your in-laws live in a post-Garden City commuter suburb that was built in a more thoughtful time, laid out to serve a community complete with amenities that modern developers don't bother with. You describe the ideal to which many anti-sprawl folks aspire!

But they don't build 'em like that anymore.

For one thing, the taxpayer revolt you regularly celebrate (spreading outward from Proposition 13) put an abrupt end to the developers' practice of creating parks, retention ponds and green spaces in the subdivisions they built. They would typically deed these crucial community amenities back to the municipalities, but local governments could no longer support them post-Prop 13; now they simply don't build them. To add insult to injury, a recent change to the way developers pay impact fees (they now pay for lots SOLD, not lots BUILT) means local municipalities are cutting back even further on community amenities. Whereas developers used to build neighborhoods and communities (as they did in the days that your in-laws' neighborhood was built), they now simply plop down groupings of houses on wide, curvy streets - no sidewalks - connected to a single over-burdened collector road.

You describe the sort of suburb that is disappearing: A walkable neighborhood, access to a commuter train(!), situated in a traditional street grid that creates the "inner" feel, old-growth trees planted a half-century ago by forward-thinking developers, etc. By all means, lets have MORE of those.

The modern reality, however, is sprawl. Subdivision "pods" are situated just off noisy collector roads (traffic-dispersing street grids are passe). Roads within subdivisions are built wide and curvy for maximum speed and noise (kids and other pedestrians be damned). Sidewalks? You must be joking. Parks and public spaces are an afterthought if included at all (every ball game means parents have to drive their kids to the diamond). The elderly, once they can no longer drive, are trapped in their homes or independent living facilities and no longer interact with younger people; young people must rely on mom and dad's car to get anywhere, and when they turn 16 are almost routinely given a car to drive (you are well aware of the tragic statistics for these new drivers).

Furthermore, arbitrarily scattered subdivisions here, there and everywhere make locating commercial development problematic (no one wants Target or Wal-Mart traffic further plugging their single-access collector road) so property taxes skyrocket. Consequently, suburbs eventually end up desperate, taking whatever commercial development is offered without careful integration into the existing community (ask the developer to take time to create a commercial site plan that works with the surrounding infrastructure and community and you are "anti-development"). Formerly public spaces where people used to linger and interact (and learn empathy and tolerance) while running errands and "getting things done" are now single-use entities flung out on the fringes, surrounded by huge seas of asphalt.

They sell comic books here. Sometimes.

You describe "a leafy, unattainably ritzy district" that your in-laws observed long ago with envy; happy ending - -  hard work and the American Dream prevailed and they attained the same conditions eventually when they moved into their present neighborhood. How can you miss the irony of later describing your in-laws current suburban wonderland as something "I know I could never afford"? That would make it for you pretty much a "a leafy, unattainably ritzy district"; however, the American Dream circa 2007 evidently limits your choices to farther out in the exurbs, where you'll find vehicle-centric pod-subdivisions with big back yards, impressive square footage and little else.

We have to do better than that.

Long live the suburb -

John Michlig