America and the suburban dream.... (highway, houses, major, park)
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I was just thinking of how many of us live the American life enjoying our open space and everything that America offers.
When I think of California especially and suburban living, I think of malls and big box centers and suburban homes and colleges and the large pressence of Caucasians and Hispanics and as well as other ethnicities in the burbs.
Of course, California has rural life and urban life, but for the majority it's suburban.
Anyways, I like the suburban life and in California you also get the bonus of good weather and the beach.
The convenience of having a car, good sized suburban homes, convenent shopping centers like malls and big box centers, drive through restaurants, and plenty of entertainment options.
For families there is mini golf, parks, bowling alleys, and movie theaters.
For older people, there are bars and coffee shops and hiking and many different restaurants.
Then in largely populated suburban areas like OC you have Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland. Seaworld in San Diego. Universal Studios in LA.
And now in suburban homes we have video gaming systems, instant movies through our tv, and ways to enjoy ourselves more in our suburban.
These are great blessings!
Of course, there are benefits in rural areas like enjoying more of nature, but you lose a lack of suburban amenities.
And in urban areas, you get more amenities, but also lose space and the quietness of burbs.
I don't know how much of a blessing a video game system is -- and it's not exclusive to suburbs anyway, nor is much of the stuff you mentioned -- but I do enjoy sinking my bare feet into my own lawn.
Oh, wait ... I did that when I lived in the city, too.
What is the function of all that space if you're inside playing videogames?
Means on days when you don't want to drive you have tv, movies, video gaming, and prob other stuff to do in the burbs.
Back in the day, consoles weren't big and you had arcades. Now the arcades are pretty much in our houses. Some malls and bowling alleys and movie theaters and mini golf places still have arcades.
In my own opinion, suburbs offer the worst of both worlds.
The big benefit of the city is proximity to numerous amenities, coupled with options to access them besides driving. The big benefit of rural areas is the lack of neighbors and the closeness of nature.
Suburbs offer neither. As with rural areas, you're usually dependent upon a car to get around, with few options in terms of walking or mass transit. As with the city, you have neighbors in close proximity, and public "green space" in fully-developed areas is nearly as scarce as within cities.
This thread reminds me, however, of a hypothesis I've had bouncing through my head for awhile - that humans have a certain amount of "mental space" which we can claim, and our major societal changes have been essentially changing that spatial geography.
In most societies, the private space, such as it was, was a one-room house, with what we would call the "living room" being public space such as the village square. We see reflections of this in the modern era in colleges, where the hallways of dorms end up the space for socialization.
On the whole, however, the modern era has been about taking the square footage assigned to the commons and pulling it indoors. Thus as houses have gotten larger and more comfortable, people have spent less and less time socializing outside of them.
The most modern innovation has been with the proliferation of computers, the internet, and cellular devices. Mental square footage is now retreating from the real world, and into "cyberspace" (I hate that term, but it actually works here). People excessively into online connections really do seem to spend less time fixated on their IRL surroundings, so I'd think as time passes this will lead to house size shrinking once again.
'open space' is code for parking lots and eight lane highways.
The H***! In my community, open space is open space, not parking lots or highways.
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