Suburbia is death.

Soccer fields as far as the eye can see
High voltage power lines

Yards all look the same, neatly manicured and trim
houses all look the same, can't leave a field empty, gotta have more

STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS STRIP MALLS

Box stores

Suburbia is anarchy
chaos no center

a body with no heart

SUVs all the same, ribbon magnets, all the same

hot stinky pavement

Humanity peeping out at me from a drive-through window
never able to name that small feeling of unease
which outlines our lives

Suburbia is death
I need my heart to race

i can see you coming a mile away!

no finger snapping here

no life and no breath

only tires and pavement and death

charmless subdivisons in various shades of beige and then repeat the strip mall but maybe in the next one there is a chinese food place or a Target.

a tire store. Or a Payless shoe store. Or 16,334 churches on one street.

You don't recognize organized perfection when you see it?

Have you seen it yet?:scared: Suburbia's on it's way out.......

Good. Good riddance to it. It's spiritually void. It has no soul. No heartbeat. My theory is, even the people who live in suburbs who claim to be happy aren't truly happy, but they just can't put their finger on it.

It's insiduous. We've busted up some of the best farmland in the country for nail salons and all you can eat pizza.

:P

I'd like it better if it were on a bustling city street with a bagel store, a florist, an art gallery, a coffee shop, some apartment buildings, and the pulse of human freaking LIFE.

About how unsustainable the american dream of suburban life is.I think we're all gonna find out soon enough!

It's a recent documentary.

http://www.endofsuburbia.com

what would that be? totalitarianism? fascism? homeowners' associations?

maybe no one has thought about before, it IS anarchy.

Think about it: there's no CENTER to a burb for all of the place to revolve around. It's just......spread spread spread sprawl sprawl sprawl. If there's a piece of land fucking PUT something on it to make money! Lots of money! Damn any consequences! WHO CARES? No downtown, no center, just spread like a bad disease or like that slime in 1950's scifi B movies that kills everyone and just spreads its noxiousness everywhere.

And yet, it's one of the oddest forms of anarchy ever developed by humans because it contains within it the STRONGEST element of conformity you could imagine.

Anarcho-conformity.

Dear God, it's horrifying. Anarcho-conformity. I know, I know, they are contradictory, but therein lies the true horror that is suburbia.

Thank you for helping me flesh that out.

bit of good news here, we just got an independent record store here, i almost passed out when i drove by it the other day, now i'm waiting on an independent bookseller to move in.

....What you have just said is really profound.

LOL

I grew up in a 'burb of Dallas, and that's what always drove me crazy -- there was no CENTER of town. Towns need a heart, whether it be a historical downtown area, or a body of water, something for everything else to grow out of. Growing up in a place like that just makes you feel lost and rootless...god I hated it. Got out of there as fast as I could.

My soul is dying. I make frequent trips to the center of Austin, to the gorgeous hill country, to anywhere I can with life. With a center. With vitality. Color. Something.

My brother lives in Houston and when I go to visit we meet in Austin and hang out there.

The last time I was there we drove over to the hill country. Now that is a special place.

McMansions as far as the eye can see in my county. No end in site. People call it "progress", but all it is is death.

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone
Subdivisions ---
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions ---
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights...

It's good.

I should have put that on the post, sorry.

make me live in a suburb again.

I spent one year on the outskirts of a suburb and it was the most hateful experience of my life.

I think they lack character, beauty and history. They discourage walking. It's harder to develop a sense of community in a 'burb.

Streets are empty, except big ol' SUVS.

There's no one on the front porches or stoops, because there aren't any front porches or stoops.

There's no beauty in the flowers the city workers plant every few months on the little ends of the medians. They get torn apart by the wind and pollution. The mulch flies into the street. They die quickly. And no one even notices them to begin with.

My great-grandparents moved from the country to the city.

My grandparents stayed in the city.

My parents ran to the suburbs in the 70s.

And here I am.

With my child, waiting to get out.

Moved from there to a burb near Minneapolis with my new hubbie and just despised it.

We moved to St. Paul after a year and I've lived in several neighborhoods ever since and I love them all. You can walk or ride your bike to work, school, grocery store, restaurants, bars, eye doctor. Whatever you need. I live in the oldest part of town and there's interesting architecture. There are young, old, rich, poor, white, black, and brown people all around me. I'm within walking distance of three colleges and I can use their library or swimming pool. On warm nights we are all out sitting on our steps or porches. Almost every street has a block party in the summer where they block off the streets and we have a potluck, the little kids have bike races, and sometimes a fire station will bring a firetruck by and let the kids play on it. Sometimes local candidates for office will come by to talk about issues.

It's different from what I grew up with, but I really like it. I live in an apartment with my 13 y.o. and the rent's not bad. I work out of my home so I don't have to drive.

Ex-husband lives about eight blocks from me and my daughter now, which is just about right.

their lives watching tv.
cause if you don't join stuff, there is no life.
sheesh, i hate the sururbs. i used to find them facinating when i was a kid because ihad never seen such space, but yuck, they're all the same. and apparently, that's the point.

Ahmen, Sibling!

Just don't call me late to supper.

My stepmother always said that.

:P

Lost in the high street, where the dogs run
Roaming suburban boys
Mother’s got a hairdo to be done
She says they’re too old for toys
Stood by the bus stop with a felt pen
In this suburban hell
And in the distance a police car
To break the suburban spell

Let’s take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia
You can’t hide, run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia

Break the window by the town hall
Listen, the siren screams
There in the distance, like a roll call
Of all the suburban dreams

Let’s take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia
You can’t hide, run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia

I only wanted something else to do but hang around
I only wanted something else to do but hang around
I only wanted something else to do but hang around
I only wanted something else to do but hang around

It’s on the front page of the papers
This is their hour of need
Where’s a policeman when you need one
To blame the colour tv?

Let’s take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia
You can’t hide, run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia

Take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia
You can’t hide, run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia

Run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia
You can’t hide
In suburbia
In suburbia
In suburbia
In suburbia
In suburbia

I grew up in the suburbs. I live in the suburbs. I'm fine.



capri pants...minivan...preschool...home depot...



No. Really. I'm fine.

:7

'Specially for you, Bouncy!





"In the middle distance, check out the new playground for this Coatesville, PA, conventional apartment 'complex.' In perfect conformity with our knucklehead zoning laws, the playground occupies its own separate pod so as not to 'contaminate' the other 'activities' in the 'complex' with 'undesirable' byproducts -- i.e. the squeals of children at play. I like to imagine the attached parking lot implies that children will drive to the 'facility' themselves. But of course, the truth is that Mom will drive them there. Since they won't be walking, the tots will have to play extra-hard on the jungle gym to work off the calories from those super-sized Happy Meals they get off-site in the nearby fried food ghetto. Thanks to Sandy Sorlien of Philadelphia's University of the Arts for the photo."

Plus, he has some ironic landscape paintings ...





http://www.kunstler.com/

Anarchy is individualistic, random and empowers people. The suburbs remove all originality and uniqueness. They are top-down uniformity. Suburbia is fascism.

It's a strange kind of pseudo-anarchy. It's like the WORST aspects of anarchy and none of the good. Anarcho-conformity.

Blows your mind, eh? I came up with that term.

I just looked at your other post to the person who made a similar statement to mine.
The fact that there is no city center is reflective of the fact that the people who live there aren't in charge of their community. The power in the community doesn't rest with the people who live there. The power rests in the hands of some corproate planners who built the subdivision, the strip mall, and decided when the right time was to put a new Barnes and Nobles at that spot. The town had no center or soul because it is a community built by corporations based on corproate values, which is fascism.

That explains the lack of soul, the lack of vibrancy, the lack of a beating heart.

It's not human, but it's inhabited by humans.

It is hell.

We are born, we consume, breed and then die. Those who attempt to break this cycle are considered 'odd', 'weird' and 'out of the mainstream'.

The suburban experience seens to be intent on heightening these capitalist ideals of "born, consume and die" with it's commercialism, lack of identity and souless malls.

I wonder if suburbia is a symptom rather than the cause of the soulessness or vice-versa?

I hope you get out sooner rather than later.