How Far Is Too Far?

I am getting a new apartment in Los Angeles this weekend, actually, hopefully, ideally, renting a room in a house that rents out all of the rooms to individual tenants- and USC grad students only if everything goes according to plan.

But the age-old question of location, location, location had me thinking- how far is too far? Points A and B being your place of residence and your consistent destination- work, school, your kid's school, your place of worship, your favorite protesting spot, whatever.

For some of you who know me, I have lived in 11, soon to be 12 places in 26 years. And for the most part my family and I have selected our dwellings within reasonable proximity to our locations that we would frequent often i.e. work, school, and church. When I say reasonable proximity I mean about 15-20 minutes. We never lived in any big, big cities, so traveling times were pretty consistent, with weather being the only variable- black ice? add at least 5 minutes for safety.

It threw us for a loop when we moved to Connecticut and people lived in different towns, but knew each other as if they were in the same zip code. Like I said, we lived in small towns and yes people from Wausau knew people from Merrill, but they went to different churches, their kids to different schools, etc., To live in Avon, but to go to church in Canton was very strange to us. The Connecticut way of life still remains very strange to me. I'm surprised no one has spontaneously combusted yet.

When I moved to Chicago on my own it took me a good hour to get to work via public transportation- bus + the Red line, not counting delays due to linework, which was a constant in the summer of 2006.

Sometimes I took my car, but during the holidays working retail in Lincoln Park made it impossible to find a spot for my car, so I relied on the ease of the public transportation. And when my car was damaged beyond repair my prior experience using public transportation made the journey less of a hassle and more of just a part of my going-to-work routine.

When I moved to the suburb of Naperville I chose an apartment whose location was only ten minutes driving time away, but unfortunately was not located on a road that was safe enough to get to on foot.

Now it takes me about half an hour (on foot) to get to my current job. Some people are horrified when I tell them how long it takes and more than three people have offered to pick me up on their way to work. But my walk not only gives me exercise, it also gives me a chance to wake up and really immerse myself in my surroundings.

But my latest relocation had me thinking. The champions of New Urbanism argue that our auto-dependent society has allowed people to live farther from their jobs- not necessarily a bad thing at the end of the day- but not great for the environment either when you consider how many emissions and pollutions one can accrue over simply a five-day work week when mass transit is possible.

Note I didn't say plausible as many people in the suburbs can attest to- I don't even want to know how few suburbs even have a bus line running through or within reasonable walking distance of the major sub-divisions.

Unlike say, Chicago (how I love their transportation department!) where one is hard pressed to find a major neighborhood that is not near some form of public transportation. And New York? Fugghedaboudit! In one ill-planned trip I managed to get from Wall Street to the West Side to midtown with the help of the NY subway system and my own dogged determination.

We have family friends who live up in the Bay Area and the father commutes two hours-each way! each day to get to his job. This is beyond crazy to me. Yes, I understand the need to have your kids be in "good schools," "safe neighborhoods," etc., But Dad has to schlep two hours each way each day? Oi. . . This is not uncommon for people in the Bay Area- my housemate's dad, when he (my housemate) was growing up- would ride his motorcycle- come rain or shine between the lanes of stalled cars (think the opening scene from Office Space)- two hours to get to his job.

I have no doubt that this is true for families across the country, especially in bigger, non-mass-transit oriented cities, especially in the South like Atlanta and Charlotte. But I think that it is a time for a revolution.

Hopefully as part of the "green" movement more funding will be devoted to mass transit, and innovative forms of it- light rail, anyone? And two hour one-way commutes will become a thing of the past. Here's hoping.

Recommended Reading: Last Harvest

I confess that this post is filled with gushing praise, but once you have read the author's work, I am sure that his writing will elicit at least a murmur of approval.

I wasn't sure where to start learning about urban planning other than what I found on wikipedia.org. But one day I was poking around Borders and I came across the book, Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville by Witold Rybczynski. The concept intrigued me. Mr. Rybczynski followed the process of a residential subdivision in rural Pennsylvania (he teaches at UPenn School of Design) and what can happen from the time a developer sets his or her sights on a piece of land to the sign that says "coming soon" until people move into the new houses and beyond.

Mr. Rybczynski's writing is both well-informed and accessible. He paints well-fleshed out (pun intended) portraits of the different people involved in this process, but spares no fools gladly. When one person begins to nitpick decisions and design schemes to the point of simply being obstinate, there is an air of Mr. Rybczynski wryly thinking said person doth protest too much without condemning or humiliating said person. He also shows the human side of the developers, conveying both their desire for a profit and their fear that their unique business vision may not materialize the way that they hoped.

The development in question tries to apply new urbanist principles, with mixed results.

The writing is not plagued with academic jargon nor does it feel like it is dumbed down for non-planning professionals. Mr. Rybczynski writes to inform and his style is descriptive but succinct.

I honestly had no idea about suburban development before I read this book. I had a vague idea that somebody or some nameless corporation bought land, from who, unknown, and then started building houses. Often times I would be driving by an empty field and then a few months later, it felt like, there were houses erected and I thought where did they come from? I was also unclear what roles an architect, a developer, and a contractor played in residential development. Sometimes I thought they were all the same people. This is what you get when you study da Vinci and Damien Hirst instead of something vaguely more practical. I can spot a Corbusier or a Mies van der Rohe at twenty paces. Architects, I know. Construction processes, sometimes fuzzy.

Suburban development shows no signs of stopping (a summary of why so many people live in the suburbs vs. the cities is forthcoming on this blog). But it doesn't mean that we are doomed to a world of cookie-cutter suburbs. New urbanism offers a viable alternative to a Stepford-like community. The question remains though, who is willing to literally buy into the concept?

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is even remotely interested in how residential development decisions are made. Or for anyone who is interested in new urbanism. (I would also recommend checking out wikipedia's site on new urbanism for more on that subject.)

In addition, Mr. Rybczynski is a brilliant critic. I told you there would be gushing. He also writes for slate.com and his work there is equally excellent. I would highly recommend his piece on the suggestion that the rehabiliation of New Orleans follow in the footsteps of Denver's Stapleton development, which is a community that has adopted some new urbanist principles. http://www.slate.com/id/2148311/

Or frankly any of his other pieces on their site or elsewhere. His eulogy for Jane Jacobs is touching. He has also written several other books and for many other publications including the NY Times, Time, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker. Unlike some professors whose work you have to read with a can of Red Bull in order to stay awake, Professor Rybczynski's work is enlightening without being demanding.

As I don't want to oversell this, you can also read reviews of this book on amazon.com