In the Hidden Corners of My Hometown

This West Coast modernist design just sprouts in the middle of a post-WWII development.

Flailing my way through protracted unemployment, I recently started driving DoorDash to get cash moving in. My community is too small to produce enough business for me to live off my gig, but it brings in enough to keep groceries on the table. The gig has provided another important education I didn’t realize I needed: despite living in one small city for over twenty years, I’ve discovered how much of town I just don’t know.

My central Nebraska city has a population slightly above 30,000 people. By current American standards, that’s dinky, but on a historical basis, actually quite large. Legendary ancient cities like Chichen Itza or Babylon topped out around 20,000 people, the practical maximum for societies where the majority needed to farm, and urban infrastructure had to primarily support pedestrians and mule carts. Modernity can support much larger populations, though, mostly because of cars, electricity, and Portland cement.

Modernity has also produced something that ancient cities could’ve never supported: single use zoning. When cars put much larger distances within easy reach, citizens building a business in front of their house, a stable in back, and extra rooms for an inn on the side, makes less sense. American communities are now built in sprawling, monolithic ways that discourage visitors. There’s little reason to visit huge swaths of one’s own city without a prior invitation.

This results in acres upon acres, streets upon streets, where I’ve never visited—until now. DoorDash invites me into single-use residential neighborhoods I’ve never previously had purpose or permission to enter. Visiting these quarters for the first time, I witness eclectic architecture, some of it deliberately either minimalist or rococo, and differing ideas about how large the surrounding yard should be. I’ve also witnessed that, the newer the community, the less likely to contain sidewalks.

Very large lawns, without sidewalks or parks, encourage children to play close to home. Current urban design (which, often, means no design, just vibes) discourages children from one of childhood’s primal impulses, the desire to explore. Wandering away from home may be impractical in new developments and, depending on traffic patterns, unsafe. This means children only have opportunities to meet friends and make connections in officially approved spaces, mainly school and, for some, religious congregations.

Just one of a development of identical crackerbox duplexes with postage stamp lawns,
no sidewalks, and no curbside parking—completely hostile to visitors or teenagers.

The extreme opposite, I’ve observed, is small houses, mainly duplexes, on small lots. These are single-story houses with attached garages, requiring a large physical footprint. However, these developments also lack sidewalks, which means not only no pedestrians, but no curbside parking for guests. These houses seemingly go mainly to young families as starter homes, so maybe they don’t entertain much. But it dampens their ability to perform time-honored neighborhood rituals of group bonding through hospitality.

Small starter homes have no parking and no place to set up picnic tables. Larger homes for established families have space and parking, but are so far away that neighbors can scarcely see one another. Either way, these designs discourage traditional neighborhood activities, like block parties or tenants’ unions, and functionally prevent neighbors from getting to know one another. The McMansions, in particular, look awkward, flexing their design flourishes to impress neighbors they’ll never meet.

Traveling to shared spaces, like work or school, requires either an overland hike without sidewalks, or car rides that create traffic jams. My city is small enough that “jams” are fleeting annoyances. But larger unplanned cities like Houston, which is over forty percent paved, can be dangerous during the morning commute. Ambulances trapped in rush-hour traffic have become a notable part of the Houston experience. So was the city’s inability to drain after Hurricane Harvey.

Current urban design standards divide routine activities. This isn’t entirely awful, as most people wouldn’t want to live beside a lead smelter, kimchi cannery, or hog abattoir. But most people also can’t walk to restaurants, shops, or even their neighbors’ houses. All daily business happens enclosed in hermetically sealed, climate-controlled metal capsules. Ordinary people have diminished opportunities to make friends, discover quirky experimental businesses, or, as I’ve learned recently, see most of their own town.

Old cities like central London, Paris, or New York south of Houston Street are designed around human needs: useful sidewalks, homes designed to double as business sites, and multi-story structures that utilize vertical space as assertively as horizontal. We can’t just regress, because history goes proceeds, even when we wish it wouldn’t. But we can look to older spaces for inspiration for innovative ways to utilize newer, more current spaces that aren’t hostile to visitors.