THE LAB

Top-Rated Traveling Destination of All Times: The City Center

Every time that I have ever gathered up my baseball cap, camera, guide book, comfortable sneakers, and other such shameless Hello-I’m-American garb to cavort around the world as a tourist, I always find myself running straight towards the nearest city center.

It seems that all travelers want to hit up the epicenter of cultural activity in any place they’re checking out. In fact, it’s not terribly often that you find tourists meandering around the cookie-cutter-type neighborhoods that we associate with the great land of Suburbia. Actually, I don’t know of anybody who has ever traveled to Surburbia unless they had some sort of ulterior motive (i.e. family visitations).

Obviously then, we humans have a sort of fascination with ‘centers.’ We want to be where other people are, we want to make connections, and we want to be in a place made unique, colorful, and vibrant by a group of people with shared goals and interests.

To simplify what I’ve just said, we are attracted to community.

Culture is a byproduct of community, and tourists flock to areas of cultural significance. Community champions creativity and art, and travelers love art, architecture, sculpture, etc. New communities offer exotic traditions and ways of living, and globe-trotters drool over the idea of cultivating l a sense of kinship with the locals and sense of belonging in that particular place. In other words, travelers want to take part in a new, exciting, and different kind of community!

Ah yes, we people are social creatures….

…but then WHY do we condemn and exile ourselves in everyday life to an existence in the afore-mentioned Land of Suburbia?

If human beings are so inherently attracted to community and town centers, why are we increasingly developing into a world society of urban sprawl which is, essentially, the very antithesis of community?

This question has bothered me for some time. Urban sprawl has never made sense to me. I’ve driven through areas where every house looks exactly the same as the last, where the only stores to found are the character-less, dull-looking, and blank fronts of mass produced chain business.

You’ve all seen it too: White, boxy house with white picket fence with small, green backyard and two cars in the driveway, then another white, boxy house with white picket fence, green backyard, and two cars in the driveway, and then another, and another, and …. suddenly, a Wal-Mart, then more white houses, then a Starbucks, then more houses, then the golden arches of McDonalds…

It goes on and on, like a nightmare, blank, soul-less houses staring at you for as far as the eye can see…. Makes me shiver. Why do we do it??

The answer, according to my own deductions, can be found in our history. It all started in a little country called America…

Once upon a time in America…

Once upon a time, a long time ago, Americans lived in tight-knit, little communities usually built up around a town square of some sort. To be perfectly honest, they didn’t have much of a choice initially. If newcomers to America’s shores wanted to survive in their wild new home, they had to sometimes depend on their neighbors. They lived in communities so that they could support one another and in turn, be supported.

At some point, this idea of living in symbiotic, mutually beneficial proximity to one’s neighbors changed. People started spreading out, moving further away from the town centers that had always been the epicenter of community. Community didn’t follow the movers to Suburbia. Suddenly, small town America was gone. What happened?

You could argue, or at least I’m going to argue, that the decline of community – traditionally defined as a group of people living in a similar area – in America was due to two influencing factors: the American foundational philosophy of ‘Rags to Riches,’ and the invention of the automobile.

Pulled Up By the Bootstraps

America was the land of opportunity. It was seen as a land where the social hierarchy of old could be completely redesigned. Your average Joe-Schmoe could own land, could be wealthy, and could be ranked as a high class citizen, something that couldn’t happen if you weren’t born into wealth across the pond in Europe.

From the start, there was a sort of mythological belief that America was the place where every individual could go from rags to riches.

The Declaration of Independence further secured this idea in stating that, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed…with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and Happiness.” Every individual had the chance to pursue ‘life,’ ‘liberty,’ and ‘happiness’ no matter who they were (unless they were indigenous American peoples, black slaves, or women, that is).

What I’m getting at is that the Declaration of Independence combined with the Rags to Riches philosophy fostered a sense of individualism and even competition among Americans. They were all competing against one another for those select seats at the top of the social food chain.

Of course, you throw in a capitalist economic system which also champions the individual, and you have the basis for incentive to decentralize communities. Why would any one in pursuit of the American Dream – the white house with the white picket fence and the nice backyard – ever settle to live in the crowded, noisy streets of the city? Or for that matter, if you can have three acres instead of one for the same price but further away from town, why would you settle for one?

Across the world, land is wealth. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Americans, in pursuing wealth, also pursued their own little lot of earth no matter where it was located.

Zoom zoom…

The decentralization of communities was further hastened by the invention of the automobile right around the end of the 19th century and ultimately the mass production of automobiles via Henry Fords Assembly line. Mass production of automobiles meant that automobile prices declined, and you can bet that every Pull-Yourself-Up-By-Your-Bootstraps-minded American wanted to get their paws on a car. Cars made it that much easier for people to get out to their nice lot of land far from the town center.

Cars essentially meant that people could live much further than walking distance away from town centers and all the amenities that come with them. This lead to the ‘sprawl’. Our cities suddenly became horizontal cities that were built out instead of up. Fast food restaurants started to pop up, big all in one shopping centers like Wal-Mart started to pop up, and pretty soon, there was no need to ever visit the town center! Unless, of course, you were a tourist on vacation.

And They Lived Happily Ever After in Suburbia

I sincerely hope that the importance of community and a physical center will not merely be categorized as a roadside tourist attraction. Our history and current trajectory dictate that urban sprawl might continue, but I sincerely hope people aren’t content with the way technology and national psyche have brought us to live in Suburbia Land. Community is important, and place is an important part of community. True, we have our online communities these days, but manifesting them in the real world is so much more satisfying than only connecting through fiber optic cables.

My hope is that people, after getting a taste of urban sprawl, will realize having your own little parcel of land without human connection is really worth very little. Perhaps we will see a full resurgence of centralization, where people come back together to be together, especially if gas prices continue to be a contentious issue for peoples’ wallets!

I guess we’ll see!

If you want to hear a decent talk on urban sprawl, take a look at James H Kunstler’s opinion of the matter on Ted Talks.

Next week I think I might tackle the “Ingredients of Community” – what elements are important to cook up a vibrant community! Feel free to check back into ‘the Lab’ to see what they are!

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