For many the American dream is symbolized by a house in the suburbs, or better yet a mansion, cars, jewels, boats, the good life filled with possessions. To me, that never really worked, as I child I always felt kind of trapped and isolated by our large suburban home. I felt disconnected from my community and neighbors. My dream was a smaller home downtown above a store that I owned. A place that fostered better connections between people. Sometimes I would sketch out suburban style homes because that is mostly what I saw, it was my "single story" in this culture, but this idea never went away and I often found myself dreaming that it would be the ideal lifestyle. I'm a big advocate of working from home, but not in the suburbs it's like going into voluntary isolation, yuck! It's so much better when you need to get revitalized and refreshed during your work day to have a neighborhood coffee shop, cafe, and/or park a few steps away! I've never found houses with big set backs from the road with the most dominant feature being a garage door, to be attractive. I never understood the idea of single story strip malls (they are all so soulless), often with apartments behind them, separated by big walls. It seemed like such a waste. So blah. As a kid and adult when I would see the downtown’s of older towns and cities and look at people living above shops and restaurants, etc. it always seemed far more vital, inviting, and interesting than strip malls and apartment complexes. Likewise older neighborhoods with homes closer to the streets with front porches rather than two car garages where always far more attractive to me than suburbia. Why did we ever stop building that way? Over the past few decades we have built so much ugliness in America. Fortunately that is changing and through new urbanization or smart growth far more interesting and inviting places are being built. Sometimes they work well, sometimes not. The photo above and on the home page are of Celebration Florida, the downtown area is delightful. It's one of my favorite places to go when I'm near Disney World. But like Disney (who designed it) it is fantasy. There is no industry in Celebration, no gas station, not even groceries. There are also stand alone office parks and apartments which leave me wondering why they built them that way rather than combining them. It is largely a bedroom resort community that looks like a small town rather than actually being a small town. So although it's a very nice looking step in the right direction, it could have gone further. A nearby community in Orlando called Baldwin Park did much better, they have a very nice main street full of shops with condo's above, off the main street is a large parking area, that parking area not only serves Main Street but a large grocery store that is hidden behind some of the main street shops. I was very impressed with how it was done. Other great examples to me are urban revitalization projects that are happening in towns and cities around the USA often on old industrial land. Two great examples are The Pearl District in Portland Oregon and The Capital River Front in Washington D.C. This style of development not only revitalizes cities and towns, it is far greener than suburbs and strip malls. It is my dream for America that we stop the strip mall and suburban blight, and get back more and more to creating delightful, inviting AND sustainable cities, towns, and villages.
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