Trapped in Suburbia

Cary Tennis in Salon Magazine recently expressed well the profound sense of uneasiness that many feel after buying a McMansion in the suburbs.

But then, after all your hard work and some measure of feeling deprived of the good things in life, you get a job with a big salary and someone who sells real estate puts you in her car and drives you around and some person inside you -- not the careful-planning you but this other more spontaneous and sensuous you, a you who always wanted to live in a big house with a yard -- sees a big, pretty house with a lawn and goes, "Wow!" And you buy it.

And as soon as you move in you feel a profound sense of loss. You can't put your finger on it but the place you are in does not make you happy. The place you are in is big and pretty. So that makes it hard to explain. Why does big and pretty not make you happy?

It doesn't make you happy because it's not made for humans. It's made for cars. These suburban houses are basically huge garages with attached living quarters for servants -- meaning us. We are the servants. We work for the cars who live there. The cars have a very good life. We make sure of that. But our lives are not so good there.

These are slums of the future. They can be saved, but it will take converting some of the bigger homes in to shops, pubs, and schools that can be in walking distance. (Oil hit $110/barrel today, double what it was a year ago.)