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Proportion and Scale

Proportion and Scale

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A trip through the suburbs this weekend helped me see our corner of the world with fresh eyes. Yes, we have congestion here, and within walking distance are large houses on small lots. But our neighborhood has a wooded, tucked-away feel, and my shoulders relaxed as we drove home under low clouds and a gathering wind.

What makes the difference in Folkstone is having a sense of the land we lie on. The houses work in tandem with topography rather than trying to overwhelm or undo it. We are an older subdivision, too, with houses in the 2,000 to 2,500 square-feet range rather than double that amount. How much easier it is to harmonize when you have room to do it in.

There is a sense of proportion and scale here that soothes the spirit. It’s good to be reminded of this.

Neighborliness

Neighborliness

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Last night I went to our neighbor Jeanine’s house for an in-home shopping show. The clothes were beautiful, finely cut and tailored, the fabrics a pleasure to touch. At the end you get to try them on. The point of the party is to buy stuff, of course, but I went for neighborliness. For connections.

We chose our neighborhood because of its friendliness, and in large part we have stayed here for the people. In the suburbs you don’t rely on folks the way you do in the country. When we lived in Arkansas we never went “down the mountain” without asking friends what they needed from the store. That happens here only when there’s a snow storm or other natural disaster.

Buying clothes from a shopping consultant isn’t exactly like building a barn or harvesting hay, but it’s what passes for pitching in around here. It doesn’t banish the anonymity of suburban living, but it tries.

Cul-de-Sac

Cul-de-Sac

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One of the features I’ve observed through the years about the suburban landscape is the great number of cul-de-sacs. Everyone wants to live on one, I suppose. So I included them in my poem.

No longer “dead ends.”

Now they are cul-de-sacs.

“Bottom of bag,” a Catalan phrase, I learn, via French to English.

Their modern use: to calm traffic.

But what happens to traffic calmed? It bursts loose on the straightaway.

Meanwhile, the lone woman rides her bike to the circle,

round and round she goes.

She has lost count of the years.

The Fleet

The Fleet

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Because it is summer and because we have almost five drivers (our youngest will soon have her license), there are a fleet of cars outside our house.

Ah, driving! It’s what I do when I’m not walking. It’s what I used to do far more often than I do it now, when the children were younger, when my days were dictated by carpools. But it’s what I still do far too much. It is the flip-side of walking in the suburbs — driving in the suburbs.

What kind of mind is engendered by driving? It is not the calm mind that I described yesterday, a mind on a walk, a mind attuned to its environment, a mind living in the moment.

The driving mind must live in the future, must think several steps ahead. Perhaps that’s why (and I’m making a leap here), the suburbs have a reputation as lacking in ambiance. Because they are creatures of the automobile, they must live forever in the future. They have no time to be present.



photo: Planetforward

Out is Up

Out is Up

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A climb to the top of the Vienna Metro parking garage yesterday gave me pause. And not only because I was winded from the steps. It was because of what I saw from that perch. The long-planned retail and housing development beside the Vienna station is finally underway. Urban density is coming.

I have mixed feelings about urban density. I appreciate the efforts of Robert E. Simon (founder of the planned community, Reston) and other urban pioneers who have envisioned new ways of living in the suburbs. (In Simon’s case, it was to create European-style “new towns” in the middle of Virginia hunt country; his experiment has been only marginally successful.) And yes, it is true that our long driveways and wide lawns, our streets without sidewalks, do not foster walking or biking. They keep the automobile king.

But from my vantage point yesterday all I could see were bulldozers and barren soil stripped of grass and trees. The price of urban density is suburban leafiness, the openness and beauty that drew us here in the first place. But up there on the fifth level of the Metro Parking Garage, the future was clear: The way out is to build up.

White Trees at Sunset

White Trees at Sunset

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It was almost dark by the time I drove down Franklin Farm Drive with its magical, top-heavy Bradford pear trees. I had been meaning to make this pilgrimage for a week and am glad I made it before the blossoms blew away.

I counted 40 trees just on one side. Spring is extravagant here; it sends forth far more beauty than we need. Honestly, it’s hard to criticize the suburbs too much this time of year. The flowering cherries, phlox, redbud and forsythia see to that. They remind me that these outlying neighborhoods are designed to be beautiful.

I often forget this. I rail about the crazy highways and the ugly strip malls— but the suburbs happened when people left the dusty, dangerous, crowded city for a calm, green, airy substitute. The movement from city to suburb is as certain as the American push westward toward the frontier — and perhaps springs from the same place, a need to step out of the fray, to find a place we can call our own.