Should We Save the Suburbs?

urbanism, walkable

I call my experience here “New Ruralism”, but in truth, I’ve traded one very large city experience (Manhattan) to a microcosm city experience (downtown Staunton, VA pop. 25,000). At both locations a sidewalk leads to restaurants, cultural events, and the arts!

And yes: I know I’m lucky. I could live in the suburbs. <shudder!>

Here’s a fascinating article you should read if you are interested in the shift away from the 50+ year phenom of building car-centric “suburban” homes.

“Gen Xers and Millennials want a lifestyle closer to Friends and Seinfeld (that is, walkable and urban) than to Tony Soprano (low density and suburban). It’s not that nobody wants Tony Soprano. About 50 percent of Americans actually do want that configuration. But if we’ve built 80 percent of our housing that way, that’s the definition of oversupply. The other 50 percent of Americans want walkable urban arrangements and yet that’s just 20 percent of the housing stock. That’s called pent-up demand. So the market is just responding.” [emphasis mine]

I agree and predict places like Staunton that managed to avoid overbuilding/”modernization” will increasingly be the big winners. For all the economic and environmental considerations Americans simply have to re-think and then re-create our living arrangements.

All the more reason to reconsider older neighborhoods and homes — they were built with human scale considerations. (Walkability and “human scale” fits naturally with both of our interests in the green movement. We are becoming more involved with Staunton Green 2020, the citizen group which is working to make Staunton greener.)

Restoration Update

The city sent us an official notice regarding our stone wall. We have six months to fix it. They understand that our project cannot, and should not, be a quick repair. That kind of quickie work is what’s been so damaging already.

Instead, we’re going to first fix structural issues associated with the 1913 addition to the left of the house (see photo at bottom). If this addition falls on top of our neighbor’s home she’ll have a far greater problem than the condition of the stone wall.

We are awaiting quotes from our contractor and his scheduling availability.

Another big consideration is the foundation under the addition. At the time it was common that posts were only sunk into the ground a few inches (!). Correcting it will be both time consuming and nearly invisible to the casual observer. This is another example of This Will Take Time So Just Calm Down With Respect to Seeing “Progress”!

Meanwhile, I’ve planted a butterfly garden at the cottage (photos when it looks less ghetto) and await announcing our big news.

katie @ April 8, 2009