1. Dr. Pat Deneen regards David Brooks’ repudiation of the suburbs as a Porcher victory, as Mr. Pomocon reports below.
2. But every pomocon must know that I repudiated David’s (my sort-of friend’s) account of the suburbs in his fairly bizarre flop PARADISE DRIVE. He tried to give theological significance–quoting Moltmann on the theology of hope–to the restless striving of Patio Man and other Americans on “paradise drive.” I said–as you can read in my STUCK WITH VIRTUE–that the book failed to describe accurately suburban and especially exurban life. David didn’t find real Christianity in the megachurches, for example, but that’s because it’s not something he would have been looking for. So in my own descriptions of southern exurban life (in, say, Kennesaw or Woodstock, GA) I explain that people are more at home with their families and in their churches (not to mention in their country) than David seems to think. It’s no wonder David would become disenchanted with the eschatology of consumerism, just as the most perceptive Porchers will become disenchanted with the eschatology they find implicit in the fantasy of exurb as wasteland. The Brooks of PARADISE DRIVE and the Porchers tend to be opposed forms of extremists about America. Now that Brooks has sobered up, can Deneen be far behind?
3. Dr. Pat Deneen lives in the family-friendly suburb of Waynewood in Fairfax County, VA. What makes DC suburbs more rootless than most (of course) is that they’re popoulated by people made extra-mobile by their employment by the government (political appointees, military people, foreign service officers, etc). Still Waynewood is a very nice place, with a very strong sense of place among its unusually large number of long-time residents. My family almost moved to Waynewood (my dad worked for the CIA) when I was around 11, but he couldn’t quite swing the 40K asking price of a nice house. I hear prices have gone up some.
4. Mr. Poulos’s description of Shirlington filled me with the Porchers’ favorite emotion–selective nostalgia. I lived in Parkfairfax in Alexandria–across the Shirley Highway from Shirlington–until I was 11. We had breakfast after church at the Hot Shoppe in Shirlington. There was a great Jewish deli with the best pickles I’ve ever tasted. And there was a middlebrow department store (Hecht’s) and some modest retail stores. We used the barber shop and often visited the soda fountain of the People’s drug store. I don’t think it was possible to get a real drink in “my” Shirlington. Needly to say, my neighborly Shirlington has been transformed any number of times in the last 40 some years in the hyper-bobo direction, and nothing I remember from ‘dem days is left. Alexandria has changed a little too, of course. My own view is that Shirlington has gotten worse, but Alexandria has gotten better. The new Delray is probably better than the old, and my St. Rita’s church has certainly improved.
5. I don’t live in a suburb (or anywhere near DC or Georgetown or Alexandria or Arlington etc.) now.
July 13th, 2010 | 12:32 pm
Geez, Stephen, it’s a joke, son. It’s hardly ad hominem to play with the irony that the enemy of the suburbs lives there and their defender doesn’t. And I was trying to point out the enduring and modest way of life of Waynewood. My father was on the stingy and cautious side–the joke is.
July 13th, 2010 | 2:20 pm
There’s no need to envy my socio-economic status – such as it is. Though, if any are inclined to take pity on my relative dearth of disposable income, they can join me ripping out the old plywood walls and 2x4s in our basement, which has been taking on water in the midst of a drought.
Peter’s right, I don’t much like the burbs and yet I live in them. That’s part of my woeful socio-economic status at work: I couldn’t afford to live in a decent “town” in the DC area, even if there were more than just a few. The sprawl of this area long ago ate up most of them (though there were too few to begin with), except for a few spots that only the likes of Brooks can afford, such as Chevy Chase and Bethesda.
Still, Waynewood is not the worst of the worst, and why we decided to settle there. It’s got more stability than a lot of DC ‘burbs, with a pretty good sense of community that includes a neighborhood Independence Day parade, block parties, occasional “progressive dinners,” a neighborhood-generated Directory, a neighborhood-run pool, a neighborhood-based elementary school, and so forth. I’ve heard it described as “Mayberry,” and while that’s an exaggeration, it’s closer to Mayberry than Levittown.
Like a lot of professor types (and not only professor types), I have joined a profession that is pretty rootless. I once interviewed for a job that would have been close to the town I grew up in, and still today wish I’d be offered. It wouldn’t have had the prestige of Princeton or Georgetown, but would have been close to family and home. I didn’t get that offer, so live – like most people – in the land of second- or third-best options. That doesn’t mean I have to love the ‘burbs, or that there’s anything to sober up from, other than the upcoming ISI conference (in lovely Annapolis, MD, decidedly not a suburb, and thus, a desirable destination) that I’ll be attending with Peter and which experience suggests will have plentiful beverages.
Regardless of how I feel, I think the age of the suburb is coming to an end. We won’t have the spare wealth to continue the build-out, nor the fuel to waste getting us there and back again. We’re going to need neighborhoods with schools and stores and some work, and farms that aren’t too far away from where we live and work. I think it’s foolish to develop a philosophical defense of the suburbs when it’s practically indefensible. What we do next – including trying to salvage what we can from terrible sunk costs of the last half-century of foolishness – is the real sobering exercise that awaits us.
July 13th, 2010 | 2:27 pm
As a Georgetown graduate student of “Dr. Pat’s” and a ten-year resident of Fairlington, which is just up the hill from Shirlington, I enjoyed this entry– particularly your reminiscences of old Shirlington. Agree with you on the “new” Shirlington — it is a bit plastic, but Del Ray is a keeper, and I’m also partial to Old Town Alexandria. Sadly, Hecht’s and People’s are long gone, as is the deli. Can’t complain about Best Buns Bakery, though.
July 13th, 2010 | 2:43 pm
One important point I have added in my followup post to the excellent reactions that have come in is that there is a world of difference between defending suburbs and advocating MORE suburbanization. Even if suburbs are as American as apple pie and all the rest, it’s possible in theory to have too much even of this good thing, and in practice, ‘studies show’ (as they say) that suburbia has gone wild, and not in a very natural or reasonable way.
July 14th, 2010 | 9:58 pm
Prof. Lawler,
I apologize for my comment, since they appear to pit you and Prof. Deneen against each other. That was not my intent, but my words were carelessly chosen.
Please remove my comment.
July 17th, 2010 | 2:21 pm
We could restrict our criticisms of suburbia to its inefficiency or to the high irony of calling a row of houses on even setbacks that ripped out every tree on the site: “Oak Place” or to the generally lousy construction that has crept into them in the last 30 years but if nothing else, one thing is certain: As a form of human land development, it takes the cake for brassy ugliness.
Not to mention that it is one of the MO’s of the sub prime fiasco. No verification loans are a perfect financing plan for a form of land development that generally ignores prudent limits and flouts environmental stewardship. Are there exceptions? Sure, but the pattern has a declining curve.
July 17th, 2010 | 4:29 pm
DW is pretty much right on how we should restrict our criticisms. And his make good sense.
July 18th, 2010 | 3:49 am
In his comment above, James Poulos links to a follow-up post where he writes:
<>
Mr. Poulos:
We are agreed: Nuts you are! That aside, I dispute your contention that an argument for building walkable mixed-use settlements is necessarily anti-car. You are quite right that there are walkable neighborhoods in L.A. (and many many many places) in which cars are an integral part of daily life; but they were virtually all built before 1945. However, my point—single but tripartite (and compound, with subordinate clauses and parenthetical supplements)—is different: a) human settlements built after 1945 are inherently anti-pedestrian because they separate uses in such a way that cars are necessities rather than conveniences, and the thoroughfares on which cars travel hostile to and dangerous for pedestrians; b) such conditions are ubiquitous in post-1945 settlements because they are almost everywhere required by zoning codes that govern the making of new human settlements (though, more insidiously, they are now also cultural biases and habits embedded in numerous ancillary institutions, and also sometimes inexplicably defended by otherwise very smart people); and c) because walking is an activity more essential to human beings (and human well-being) than driving a car, single-use-zoned automobile suburbs represent a wrong-headed way to make human settlements.
It is self-evident that pedestrians are afterthoughts if not irritants in modern single-use-zoned automobile suburbs; but it’s a non sequitur to argue that walkable mixed-use towns and city neighborhoods are necessarily anti-car. With or without cars, in various densities of our choosing, human beings should make walkable mixed-use settlements. If you think through the consequences and implications of doing otherwise, I hope you will agree.
July 18th, 2010 | 3:54 am
Hmmm… Somehow my citation of James Poulos did not make it into my post. Here is the excerpt that prompted my remarks:
I have to gasp when Bess warns that “an argument for suburban form is at the very least an argument for separating daily uses and making them conveniently accessible to each other only by automobile. If Poulos is defending that, he is—in my humble opinion—nuts.” Nuts I am, then. I’m all for energy innovation, and for walkable neighborhoods, but I’m not anti-car. LA reveals that walkable neighborhoods can exist quite freely and well within metropolises where cars are an integral part of life.
July 26th, 2010 | 7:52 pm
I spent my first few years in St. Bernard Heights. I thought they ruined Shirlington when they built the Peoples Drug Store there. It was really just the first part of sprawl spreading from Shirlington.
Surely there’s someone still living who thinks Shirlington itself was a bad development, despoiling the countryside, an example of sprawl; and that everyone should have stayed in DC or gone back where they came from.
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