As opposed to slow.
Now, I grew up in the suburbs--suburbs around the country. I even lived in a suburb of Palm Springs. Outside of Tulsa, outside of Milwaukee, outside of St. Louis. So far outside of Dallas I think I went into the city once while we lived there. I went to high school inside the city of Houston but lived in a suburb. Even in Macon, Georgia, I lived in "North Macon" which wasn't its own town, but was definitely a bedroom community. There are many thousands of nice people living in suburbia. But the longer I live in the city....
I live in a streetcar suburb, built at the turn of the century and designed for commuting downtown (by streetcar) and for easy access to services right at home. Mixed use buildings on Grand, markets in walking distance, restaurants, specialty stores like cleaners and bakeries nearby. This sort of place, which now most people would call the inner city, is designed around the idea that during the average day, you shouldn't have to drive to get everything done--because when it was built, nobody was driving. It still holds true today--I do use my car, but I don't have to in order to survive. There is a pharmacy 5 blocks away; we can have lunch at several places, or there's a grocery store two blocks north (now, it's not one I like to shop at, but I'm snotty and will travel across the park to go to one I do like--but it's still easy biking distance if I am so inclined). The point is, I have a choice. I can take the car and go to the zoo with the kids, or I can stick around the house and walk to the library, post office, coffee house, church, the kids' school...
I can live slow.
When we lived in the suburbs (my parents, siblings, and I, that is), we couldn't walk anywhere but to a neighbor's house. We couldn't even buy stamps or a bagel or a movie ticket (granted, I can't do that where I live either at this point, although when the neighborhood was built, I could) without getting in the car. Everything was a 10 to 45 minute car trip away. And with no public transportation available at all, it was imperative that we own two (or three, or, at one point, four) cars so that all the drivers could do what they needed to do.
This made life the opposite of slow. Thirty minute drive to school; 30 minute drive home. So you don't get home from school until almost 4, and then you realize you haven't been to the grocery store for milk. Somebody run and do that and then somebody else stand in front of the open freezer and think about what to pop in the oven for dinner. I will give my parents credit: we ate dinner as a family 6 out of 7 nights while I was still living at home. But there wasn't much time to linger. The girls' (Bevin and Colleen this time, not Sophia and Maeve) friends lived far away, Ian had football practice, I had a soccer game. Our parish church was at least a 20 minute drive and big enough that nobody really knew each other. We were tied to our cars anyway and there wasn't time to do the sort of slow lingering after mass that I'm used to nowadays. No time to volunteer to be on a committee or council because that would have been yet another weeknight a month sucked away.
These days, well, if you read my blog you know how we live. The freezer is filled with deer meat and frozen produce, not convenience food. The girls' friends live two or three houses away. Our parish is 10 blocks south and integral to our lives. We do have two cars and will continue to have two cars until Leo is in school, most likely (since Mike's job is not at a single location but is consultant work, he needs that sort of flexibility as well), but there are many days when we don't go anywhere...but are not stranded.
During the school year, Sophia and Maeve take Irish dance at a local Catholic grade school, but during the summer, we have to hike out to the dance studio (since the school is closed for the summer). It's a highway trip, about 25 minutes, and that doesn't bug me as much as when we get close, we're on this horrendous arterial road called Manchester. It is lined with every shopping center under the sun, with cars ducking in and out constantly. There is traffic on that road all the time. All the friggin time. Forget turning left without a protected light. Be prepared to sit through a couple of intervals of lights, in fact, to get where you're going.
We just visit. I can't imagine if I had to take Manchester to leave my neighborhood, to go to the grocery store, church, post office, and so forth. It would wear me out. I know it would because when we visit my brother down in a suburb of Houston, I can see how I would walk from his house to the grocery store--it's probably not much further away than the library is from my house, frankly. But you can't get there from here, as they say. It's on a freeway feeder road with no sidewalks...and I'd have to cross a 6 lane arterial road as well. I have to get in the car and take, no joke, 15 minutes to drive there. Aren't you tired just thinking of it?
Mike and I were talking about this and came up with two reasons why people wouldn't live in the city, and later I considered a third. Yards is the first--which I will admit we do not have and there's no way to pretend we do. Secondly, crime. There is crime in higher density areas. But I was looking on the crime map a few weeks back and realized that here in "the most dangerous city in America" as St. Louis often gets named, my area's crime is focused on burglary, car break ins, and some simple assaults (meaning no guns). Not so great, sure, but people get broken into out in the suburbs, too. And cars aren't really safe anywhere. I think I'd rather know my neighbors (who aren't exhausted from a 45 minute commute and fear each other) and know they have my back.
The third thing that came to me later was the schools. We have lousy schools. But we have low property taxes...Mike's uncle pays enough in property taxes up in suburban Milwaukee to more than cover a year of Catholic school tuition. Seriously. Or you could luck out and find yourself a cute little Montessori charter school. It could happen.
I rambled here more than I wanted to; I could probably start an entire blog with the theme "why I live in the city and why you should reconsider your address in the exurbs" but I'm not trying to be confrontational.
My final point, what I'd planned to say at the beginning, is this:
When you eat up farmland to put down quarter acre plots and McMansions, there is less room to grow food. It doesn't make sense to continue to spread out so thinly when there is room in the cities--nearly all midwestern cities. It is not good stewardship of the earth. And you pay for it, one way or another.
