Over the years, I have heard many arguments for living in the city.
“But there’s so much more to do!”
“There’s so much more culture”
“Suburbs are killing the planet”
“But…the diversity!”
Frankly, none of these arguments have ever swayed me. At all.
And, they still don’t.
I mean, $20 cocktails cocktails are nice and all, but also, ALDI has entire bottles of wine for $3.
Sangria, even.
It’s hard to get much more cultural than sangria.
As for the planet, I care about the earth, but not that much—if all it takes to melt the polar ice caps is one person driving from Chesterfield to downtown, then we’re definitely all going to die, anyway. I might as well do what I want.
Besides, if Bill Gates would give up just one trip on his private jet by flying international first class, I’m pretty sure that would offset my carbon emissions for the next twenty years. I’m…thinking that might the fairer sacrifice, rather than me living in a yurt in north city and collecting rainwater.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m the crazy one here. But that kind of seems like the better place to start.
And as for the diversity?
That argument gives my social skills way too much credit.
I lived in my last house for eight years without ever learning the next door neighbor’s name.
Besides, the most diverse neighborhood I ever lived in was as a kid in the exurbs—the acres of comfortable, inoffensive tract housing made my neighborhood a hotspot for corporate transplants. Our street was a regular Benetton ad of chemists and engineers, all waiting to get their bearings enough to enough to move someplace better.
They came from all over. Japan. India. Dayton. Atlanta.
We had the full diversity of the white collar experience on parade every day; convoys of Toyota Siennas arriving home at 5:30 every evening to fix dinner and help kids with homework.
Socioeconomically, it might have been a monolith, but culturally, the U.N. had nothing on that slice of exurbia.
However, one benefit of the city that people don’t talk about nearly enough?
Car watching.
…
Exurban commutes absolutely eat cars.
It doesn’t matter how much money the neighbors do or don’t have; if every person on the block has to drive 80 miles a day to get to and from work, the automotive landscape flattens.
Nothing is going to be more than ten years old, because no car can survive more than ten years. Nobody is going to take any chances, or buy anything too weird, because two hours a day in a car is a big commitment. A convertible might be fun for five miles, and a ‘97 Pathfinder might be a neat trip down memory lane, but for 40 miles of rush hour traffic, sound-deadening and modern comforts become king. Every neighborhood, every parking lot is filled with the same ten or so cars, because there are roughly ten makes and models that make sense in that context. There are roughly ten cars in the universe well-suited to that much time on I-270.
But in the city?
The automotive landscape comes alive.
When a person only has to drive five miles to work, “practicality” no longer means the same thing.
There are old cars. New cars. Cheap cars. Expensive cars. Big trucks. Tiny convertibles. There are perfectly maintained 80’s econoboxes, and new Suburbans that have been beat to hell from parking garage scrapes.
It is a vast cornucopia of cars; the ultimate treat for somebody who had every automotive make and model memorized before she knew the alphabet.
So, as a car lover, this has been quite the delight, indeed.