Did the Suburbs Eat My Community?

I recently moved into a tiny studio apartment in Japantown, San Jose – a neighborhood where the elm-lined streets welcomed me eerily back to suburbia. Upon first inspection of the neighborhood I feared I might only encounter my neighbors if they were out mowing their lawns or trimming bushes—a far cry from the urban atmospheres I had inhabited since college, but not unlike the neighborhood in which I grew up. Though I enjoyed childhood in the suburbs, I find it pretty easy to point out their negative environmental and societal impacts: dependence on the car, disconnection with nature and neighbors, and disincentive to support local, non-franchised businesses.

So I’ve been avoiding the suburbs, but my new eco-cube apartment—just 140 square feet—and my short bike commute to work provide me with the opportunity to live more sustainably overall, even if the suburban City of San Jose is far from green. San Jose has the tenth largest population in the US, yet the population density is only 5,256 per square mile, making it more sprawl than San Francisco, a city three times as dense.

My suburban re-entry brought me recently to a screening of Radiant City – a film about suburbia’s challenges. A member of San Jose’s city council hosted the screening and posters around town quoted the movie as an “enlightening and disturbingly funny critique of North American suburban sprawl.” Would this be like holding a mirror up to the lifestyle of San Jose residents?

In fact, the film features interviews with residents of a suburban development in Canada who are putting on a community musical about the joys and woes of suburban living. One of the main interviewees is the musical’s lead—who on-stage sings songs about mowing his lawn and off-stage has a family, a four-bedroom home, and commutes to the city via SUV and crowded highway for work. (A cartoon popup flashes the fact that “every year the average North American driver spends 55 8-hour work days driving”)

His wife also features prominently. She is visibly stressed in nearly every scene; worried about getting the kids to their next appointment and whether the second car will be out of the shop in time for the weekend. She is also mad about the musical her husband is rehearsing for, feeling that the story is obviously making fun of the life they and their neighbors have chosen together.

Their story is interspersed with commentary from experts on urban planning and the history of cities, who explain very clearly that suburban neighbors hardly do anything together. Their massive houses store enough tools and entertainment so as to eliminate the neighbor as valuable or community as necessary. And a person never really has to encounter another person if they like. Simply wake up, enter car, drive to work, take elevator to cubicle, and reverse.

As Mark Kingwell, a popular Canadian philosopher, notes in the film: “My particular worry I guess would be the deteriorating sense of citizenship when people live so isolated from themselves…. Community becomes just a word in the overheated rhetoric of advertising for most of these developments. Community is shorthand for clusters of houses with people inside them not talking to each other. It’s not at all community in any meaningful or deep sense.”

In short, the film comes down hard on the suburbs and their deleterious effects on the well-being of people, community, and society. In the Question & Answer session afterward I asked one of the San Jose council members whether there is any hope for real communities to thrive in San Jose given the disconnectedness of our suburban layout? Not to mention our increasing online presence where one can seek out virtual communities of all kinds, rather than the real collection of folks outside?

“What neighborhood do you live in?” he asked. When I told him Japantown, he remarked that my very own neighborhood was the model for a community development plan set to be rolled out across San Jose. Apparently the city’s General Plan calls for San Jose to be divided up into 77 “Urban Villages” carved out of natural clusters of businesses, community structures such as libraries, and residential neighborhoods. Each village will receive support in organizing community festivals and encouraging local business.

Cultural festivals and walkable sidewalks give Japantown some community cred. Photo courtesy of raider3_anime via Flickr.

To add a web-layer to the village structure, the city is also piloting NeighborGoods networks in several villages. NeighborGoods is a site that allows residents to post or search items and services for sharing. For example, rather than buying my own set of power tools I might go on and borrow a set from Joe down the block. One of the council members at the screening remarked, “we tend to think of the internet as an isolating force, but that’s not true—there are all sorts of place-based news and sharing resources being developed on the internet.” An uplifting thought for the future of community.

Finally, what I didn’t say earlier about my move to Japantown was how quickly I discovered community along the main business corridor of the neighborhood. Within a few days of moving in I discovered Jackson Street –where not a single chain restaurant exists and the sidewalks bustle with shoppers at the Japanese and Hawaiian merchant stores. There is a small farmers market every Sunday, and a Hawaiian music center where I enrolled in Ukulele classes (seriously). If every little village could operate like Japantown, and if we could connect just a bit more with or neighbors—online and on the sidewalk—San Jose and other American cities might just have a brighter community future ahead.