Personal Spaces 0

Atrios, over at Eschaton, frequently remarks how zoning and development practices militate against friendly, welcoming, walkable public spaces–parks, boulevards, shopping districts, and the like.

I live in just such an area.

Where I live was developed around a golf course over the course of two decades or so. (I live in one of several comparatively modest townhouse condo complexes scattered about the space.)

From the deepest depths, it takes over five minutes to drive to the entrance. It take 30-45 minutes to walk to the nearest bus stop, here in the largest city in Virginia. A round-trip drive to the nearest grocery store, less than half a mile from the entrance, to pick up that one item you need to finish a recipe, takes half an hour.

You can tell which areas developed first: The newer the houses, the bigger and uglier–and less welcoming looking–the design.

Lauren Sandler and Carlin Flora, in a piece analyzing the American Dream (marriage, suburbs, kids, cars), see parallels in the architecture of McMansions to the loss of public space that Atrios so frequently notes. They cite Andres Duany, coauthor of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. A nugget:

Today’s houses are “fully equipped to compensate and mitigate the loss of the public realm,” Duany says. Fifty years ago homes averaged 1,700 square feet. Now that figure is up to 2,700, and interior architecture, in Duany’s mind, exists to mimic an urban world where few Americans dwell today. The double-height entry hall is the surrogate of the town square; the media room supplants the theater; the master suite practically exists as its own townhouse. Multiple dining areas further service our separation from the outside world: The breakfast nook is the diner; the formal dining room is the special-occasion white-tablecloth restaurant; even the kitchen island functions like a European tabac. “If you had a public realm,” Duany says, “you wouldn’t have to buy more house.” Duany’s own work in the New Urbanist movement—planning walkable, mixed-use areas designed to recapture a sense of community—may be the best bet for a resurgence of the public realm. But even a semi-utopian like Duany has a hard time imagining how to reverse the course of American sprawl en masse.