20060528 Disappointment with suburbs leads some back to small towns by Diane Reynolds Carroll County Times

Disappointment with suburbs leads some back to small towns

By Diane Reynolds, Times Staff Writer Sunday, May 28, 2006

As Americans fled to the suburbs in the decades after World War II, small towns suffered, according to Linda Semu, associate professor of sociology at McDaniel College.

As small towns became depopulated, many downtown retail stores closed, said Semu. Family-owned businesses were unable to compete with large chains that could buy products at deeper discounts and sell them at lower prices.

But some began to sour on the suburbs. As described by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck in their book "Suburban Nation," the suburban dream for many turned out to be a nightmare.

Suburban migration continues, however. Much of it is now exurban migration as people move beyond suburbs ringing cities to suburbs on cornfields near towns far from major urban centers.

With a better understanding of the social costs of suburbanization, rising energy prices and a growing appreciation of the livability of small towns like Union Bridge, some residents express optimism that the coming wave of suburbanization can be managed in a way that will enhance life for everyone.

Sobering reality

Many sociologists and urban planners have taken a close look at the suburban building binge of the last half-century and found it wanting.

A scathing 1996 article by Karl Zinsmeister in The American Enterprise sums up many of the problems caused by suburbanization.

Individuals and families get isolated in cul-de-sac communities. People become dependent on cars, because there is nowhere to walk, no sidewalks to walk on, and no community to walk in. People don't see their neighbors.

Men began working far from their homes, and, Zinsmeister argued, mothers quickly fled the overwhelming isolation of the suburban lives - where they were trapped with the daunting task of raising children without the traditional supports of friends and family - to seek jobs where at least they interacted with other adults. As women left the home, children were increasingly farmed out to paid caretakers, and large suburban houses stood empty day after day.

Children suffered, too. With nowhere to walk, they became completely dependent on adults with cars to do the simplest things. They turned to television to experience the community that was missing from their lives, Zinsmeister argued.

"In this respect," quotes author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "families living in today's richest suburbs are barely better off than families living in the slums."

By 1996, a Gallup poll showed that more people - 37 percent - wanted to live in a small town than wanted to live in a suburb - 25 percent.

But suburbanization had led to boarded-up main streets in the very small towns people decided they were longing for.

In the 1990s, new urbanism began to become more popular as planners discovered that houses on smaller lots, with big front porches and garages tucked behind homes, led to more neighborliness and interaction, improving people's quality of life, according to Philip Langdon, author of "A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb."

Small-town alternative

Read the entire article here: Disappointment with suburbs leads some back to small towns

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20060528 Disappointment with suburbs leads some back to small towns by Diane Reynolds Carroll County Times