This past week my distaste for suburbia has come out tenfold it's typical capacity, for many reasons.
I'm reading the book, Radical Together by David Platt. (As a side note, I read Radical about a month ago, and since then every book I've read has been a disappointment; it's good to be reading Platt again.) If you know anything about
David Platt, it is probably that he challenges everyone to have God's heart for the nations. It's been opening my eyes more to the ignorance of people around me, and convicting me of my own ignorance as well. By no means do I want to say that everyone that lives in the suburbs is ignorant, but I can imagine that they are more susceptible to ignorance. It's a lot easier to forget about the poor and dying when you have food and health in abundance. (As a side note, it's obvious that being poor in America doesn't necessarily mean being sick, just as being wealthy doesn't prevent sickness in itself.)
I recently had a conversation with a couple of friends about urban living compared to suburban living. The vast majority of my friends live in the suburbs and wish they lived in the city . It had been a long time since I'd had a conversation with people that consider the suburbs better than the city. It was a couple minutes in to our conversation about "better" houses and "better" neighborhoods that I realized we had different working definitions of those things. It'a a subjective conversation, but I think it comes down to this: I value diversity (in race, opinions, personalities, goals, values and lifestyles), character, history, and excitement. Other people may value security, safety and unity (please, give me more to add if you have anything). Of course, living in the city may mean I have to give up some of these things, but honestly, I'd exchange safety or excitement any day.
I spent The 4th in Excelsior, MN. As soon as we got off the freeway I regretted it. These were some things I observed:
Suburbs are ridiculously far away from everything else in the world. There are usually three targets, an upscale grocery store, and a thousand houses. In Excelsior, however, there is even less than that. There's a lake (all the good suburban neighborhoods are in a lake), and a little town filled with over-priced boutiques and gift shops. I mean why? At my house, when we're out of of peanut butter, we walk to the nearest convenient store, or drive a mile to Walgreens. What are these poor people supposed to do? I can't imagine the need to buy expensive figurines comes up often enough for it to be necessary to have an entire street full of gift shops, and not a single peanut butter-selling shop.
Pedestrians don't understand how four way stops work. They were all walking every which way. I know that could be mostly to do with the crowds from the holiday, but I doubt the same chaos would ensue in the city.
Drivers don't know how four way stops work. I just... How is that possible?
Drivers don't know how to park parallel to the street. I'm not talking about parallel parking (I've long known that you can't expect people that don't live in the city to know how to parallel park), I'm talking about pulling up to the side of the road.
The people walk painfully slow.
Even dogs have more expensive clothes than me.
The stereotypes about city living and suburban living just aren't true. I lived my entire life in North Minneapolis and no one ever tried to break into our house. But this week I moved to the suburbs and came home to this a broken door. Thank you suburbs.
