New Neighbor

My dog Lucy and I (she’s a 14 ½ year-old beagle) came face to face with a coyote this morning, right in our own front yard. The coyote, which was the size of a large German Shepherd, stopped in its tracks, looked at us for two seconds, and continued on its way. I went running into my house like a crazed lunatic, dragging poor Lucy behind me. The truth is, coyotes pose very little (if any) threat to humans. However, there have been many coyote sightings in our small town of late, and even an incident in which a small white poodle was killed by a coyote one evening. In fact, this is the third time I have seen a coyote on my street in the five years I have lived here. When I called the police to report it, they told me what I already knew: that coyotes have been squeezed out of their homes by housing developments and they are just wild animals looking for places to live. This ties in well to a discussion about the suburban movement that my husband and I had en route to visit friends in Philadelphia this weekend.

In researching the post-World War II housing boom, I have found that suburbanization has had a tremendous impact on American society, and lays claim to some important aspects of our history. Prior to World War II, suburban areas existed mostly for the wealthy – those who could afford to purchase land, live in single-family homes, and pay for transportation to the nearby city. After World War II, as access to cars became more widespread, more land became available for development. Builders no longer had to focus on tracts that were within walking distance of streetcars. As more land became available, prices became more affordable. Banks also opened up their lending policies, and the dream of suburban life became irresistible to many middle class families. Over the years, suburbanization has been strongly condemned, blamed for sucking the middle class out of the cities and draining urban areas of valuable people and resources. The suburbs provided an escape for those middle class people, however, and it’s hard to fault them for wanting to retreat from the traffic, noise, crowds and often filth of the cities in favor of the bucolic landscape of the suburbs. Home ownership became a signpost of achieving the American Dream. It continues to be a goal for most Americans.

While many historians and architects still find post-World War II housing to be without purpose or significance, it is important to think about how the change in housing styles may have represented social changes in American society. These homes were being built for middle class working families. There was no requirement for maids’ quarters, for example, or distinct public and private sections of the home. In a Colonial style house, there is no flow between the sleeping quarters (upstairs) and the living areas (ground floor). Many Colonial homes (even small ones) had two staircases – a grand staircase off the foyer and a hidden “back staircase” between the kitchen and upstairs. These elements would allow for a more traditional, perhaps dignified reception of guests. While the Split-Level and its brethren were endowed with formal living rooms, their flow into the dining and kitchen areas made them less stuffy than their parlor predecessors. I hear talk, lately, of people eliminating formal living rooms and/or dining rooms altogether to make the spaces less formal and flow into each other more easily. It is possible that middle class families, while desiring more elegance in the exterior appearance of their homes, are recognizing that less conformity with traditional designs inside their homes is more conducive to comfortable modern living.

Interestingly, as transportation has continued to improve, and as corporations have found their own havens in the suburbs, even larger more remote tracts of land, such as former farms and forests, have given way to housing development. Whereas the suburban development of the early-to mid-20th century seemed to have been driven by a desire to replicate (on a smaller scale) the goods and services one could find in the City, while also enjoying individual home ownership, the new exurban development shows that the housing comes first, and the strip mall follows. People are willing to lengthen their commute time significantly in order to be able to afford the largest house possible. I have seen news segments about people in the Poconos who ride a bus two hours (or more) each way to work in New York City so they can have their own huge house. I have also, in my travels, witnessed many exurban developments that look like the houses were literally plopped down on their lots by aliens. All, or most, of the trees are gone, replaced by large plastic-clad behemoths.

Thanks to Toll Brothers and their compatriots, these McMansions have cropped up around most major cities. In fact, the McMansion movement of the past 20 or so years is currently bearing the brunt of public architectural outrage that used to be reserved for Split-Levels and the like. Many people reject Split-Levels and Raised Ranches as cookie-cutter homes that represent the worst aspects of our manufactured society. The rage against McMansions incorporates this same rejection but also has to do with the physical affront on our senses that these houses impose. Because of their monstrous size on small plots of land, they actually encroach on our ability to enjoy our own space. If we think of the suburbs as an escape from the City to a more bucolic, greener landscape, houses that then reduce the greenery of that landscape can be seen as a threat. Even the coyotes appear to be moving on.