Reading Suburban Nation in the Medieval City
“But how will you walk to the grocery store? I don’t even see one near you!” This was the first comment my brother-in-law made when we sent him the Google Maps view of our new house two years ago. We were proud first-time homeowners, but his question reflected one of the largest differences in the culture between his town and ours. He was right. Our home was in the sprawl of suburbia, and there were almost no businesses that could be reached safely on foot.
Among its other innovative policy ideas, the American Solidarity Party has a robust section on housing and urban planning in its platform. It states that “we call for policies that privilege local production, and for the reform of zoning laws and development policies in order to discourage urban and suburban sprawl, allowing communities to thrive without the requirement of private automobiles.” In order to help me better understand this plank, fellow Pelican and Colorado chair Ian Rutherford suggested I read Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany et al. As it turns out, the medieval city of Tarnow, where I am wrapping up a three week trip to visit family, has proven to be an ideal backdrop for many of the urban planning priorities outlined in the book.
The thrust of Duany’s argument is that “we shape our cities and then our cities shape us.” Suburban sprawl wreaks havoc on every aspect of planning from aesthetics to functionality, and in particular it is disadvantageous to those “too young, too old, or too poor to drive.” Children become “prisoners” of the suburbs that provide no chance for independent play and exploration. Commuters must waste long hours to get to and from work. Senior citizens need to choose between staying immobile in their former communities or being sequestered in retirement communities. And the poor are “left behind in the cities, on the bottom tier of our increasingly polarized society.” Though the book is 23 years old, and doesn’t account for many of the commuting changes that have occurred post-pandemic, it’s remarkable how relevant the text still feels and how many of its problems we have yet to make headway solving.
Though the book includes examples of thoughtfully constructed towns in the United States, and I myself have experienced a decade of the beauty of a car-free existence in New York City, I’ve been particularly struck by the functionality of my husband’s hometown in Tarnow, Poland, and the additional layering of family and community that it provides. Last week as we waited for the bus (the bus stop is a 5 minute walk from his front door, and it gets you to the heart of the city in about 10 minutes), we ran into one of his cousin’s daughters walking home from visiting her grandma. My in-law’s home is next to the local elementary school, so that their grandchildren will be able to come home to grandma’s house while they wait for their parents to finish work. We walked to Mass on Sunday and ran into one of my husband’s high school classmates. At the same time my in-laws enjoy what many of us associate with suburban properties–a yard, a garden, and a large plot of land. And, yes–the grocery store is one block away.
Duany puts forward his theory, not unique to him and his co-authors, that the increasing “splintering [of Americans] into insular factions” is in part affected by our changing physical landscape, our sequestered and economically stratified suburbs. In stark contrast, I sat in Tarnow’s medieval town square last weekend and watched children playing pick-up soccer, elderly couples dancing to a free swing concert, and families strolling by the shops while enjoying ice cream. All were included because no one was limited by the design of the local highway or a lack of public transportation. The result was an Old Town as vibrant and useful to its residents today as it was in the sixteenth century.
