Kaid Benfield's Blog
The night the 'burbs come to town
October 31, 2007
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
Tonight's the night. Hallowe'en!
As I mentioned in my first post, we live in a walkable neighborhood in a relatively quiet, residential part of Washington. There are quite a few things that make it accessible to walkers. For example, although the houses are not particularly small, they are on modestly sized lots, convenient to each other. The front doors are relatively close to the sidewalks. And, yes, by the way, we have sidewalks, far from a given in the world of today's newer neighborhoods. Here's a larger-scale version of the photo I put in that first post.
These things make it perfect for trick-or-treating.
(As an aside, it violates every fiber of my being to use "trick or treat" as a verb. But do read on.)
In Washington, it is easy to tell the city cars from the suburban cars, because they have different license plates. City dwellers have DC tags, suburbanites have tags from Virginia or Maryland. I expect to see a lot of the latter in the neighborhood tonight.
That's because, in many cases, their neighborhoods are not walkable. Now, it's not the residents' fault - people choose to live in suburbs for all sorts of understandable reasons. But so many have been built without much attention to walking. Driveways are longer - in some cases much longer - and may require traversing dark areas. There may be no sidewalks at all. Or, in what I think is really schizo, they may have a sidewalk, but only on one side of the street. Go figure. I mean, how do the developers know which side of the street the walkers are going to live on? Anyway, some of these developments are not the best places for your kids to go trick-or-treating, if you consider walking door-to-door to be part of the experience.
So tonight they will drive their kids to neighborhoods like ours and send them around to knock on our doors. I'm tempted to give the interlopers lumps of coal, but there's no way we're going to take it out on the kids. Maybe some of them will even like the differences, and tell their parents.
And, besides, I have a better idea. How about, one day next spring, we round up all the kids in our neighborhood, pick an appropriate suburban subdivision, and go play ball on the suburbanites' front yards? Now that might be fun.
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- Kaid Benfield
- Director, Smart Growth Program
- Washington, DC
- I was raised in the mountains of western North Carolina, surrounded by some of the...
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Comments
Elizabeth Schilling — Oct 31 2007 09:37 PM
There are a few of us out here in Virginia who don't live in the front-lawn-as-bball-field suburbs. Kids traipsed down the sidewalks both sides of our street tonight, where duplexes and smaller single family homes make the candy-to-effort ratio especially attractive.
Actually, there were more kids out than in the past several years, though the weather was comparably mild. I wonder if the experience of living in places like this is finally trumping the fear of the neighbors that seems to be a cultural gift from the 'burbs.
Kaid Benfield — Nov 1 2007 08:23 AM
That is a great point. We need more suburbs like yours.