Stop me when I'm wrong
One of the problems being me is that I’m usually right, but often the friends and family look at me like I’m crazy. News Flash: I’m not.
Let’s take a look at the suburbs, shall we? For years I’ve been saying that I’m not a fan of the suburbs. I live in one, but I also live in one that is much more expensive than I can afford because it’s more densely populated and closer to an outer urban setting. I live right on top of my neighbor, I can walk to a downtown (albeit, a longer walk than I like) and the bus to downtown leaves just a few hundred feet from my front door.
But what I hate about the burbs is the car culture, the necessity that we must drive no matter where we go. It’s become a necessity in the northeast because of the weather. Unless you have easy access to a subway, you’re walking or standing outside in freezing cold temperatures in February. During my short time in New York I found the subway a liberating experience because I could walk to a place, travel without being fully exposed to the elements, and be dropped within a few blocks of my destination. Of course, there was always walking (at least one or two miles a day) with the option of dropping into a store if I got too cold, wet or tired.
In the burbs, you get in your car, drive to where you’re going, walk 10 or 12 yards, get back in your car and go somewhere else. Sometimes, you don’t even get out of your car, how is that healthy? Humans weren’t designed for this, they were designed to move.
That’s why the medical studies released today are interesting. They suggest that suburban living leads to obesity and health problems. I could have told them that years ago when I wrote a letter to the Ramapo Town Supervisor asking why the town didn’t have many sidewalks. He answered that the town was working to supply more (most of those in the Hassidic and Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods) but the unspoken answer was that people just wouldn’t use them. Walking in the suburbs isn’t fun, not because people don’t want to do it, but because nothing is built to human scale. It’s hard to carry home your dry cleaning or groceries when you need to walk a mile just to get to the store. It’s different if you’re walking a mile and able to do these things along your way home. Same mile, different perception. It’s part of what makes urban settings human.
The problem with urban living, however, is the schools. Here in Boston, the city schools are inferior (unless your kid gets into Boston Latin) to those in the burbs. However, there are urban environments where the schools are quite good, such as Cambridge and Brookline. This double positive comes at a steep price, most middle income people are priced out of such cities. If you’d like a nice house, not big, just nice, in one of these areas, be prepared to spend upwards of $700,000 or more. That doesn’t leave much for the average wage earner to use to live. There are nice, walkable communities, such as Newton, Lexington, Belmont, Waltham, Watertown, etc. But those with good schools are expensive, those without are less so.
The price of everything, however, comes down to schools. If we were to raise all schools to the highest level perhaps people would live where they want to live rather than where they need to live, and that would even the financial playing field. But instead of spending our money on schools, we’re handing over more than $2 billion to private firms to rebuild Iraq, we’re sending troops around the world like some conquering hero and we’re giving tax breaks to the rich. This happens even as schools are laying off teachers, cutting drama and music programs and eliminating physical education. It’s no wonder we’re growing obese.
