“Subdivided” points to ugliness of Salem

Sometimes, well often, when I'm driving around un-beautiful Salem, Oregon, I look at the atrocity of Commercial Street, Lancaster Drive, or the shuttered stores of downtown, and think "Who the hell foisted this ugliness on us?"

It's amazing, really.

We've gotten so used to the sterility, car-centeredness, garish billboards, utilitarian strip malls, treeless parking lots, and people-devoid sidewalks of the typical American town, the monstrosity of it all has left us numb to truly noticing it.

That's why it takes a documentary like "Subdivided," which Laurel and I saw a few nights ago at Salem's Progressive Films Series, to open eyes.

The movie is about the rise of isolated cookie-cutter suburbs and the decline of creative urban neighborhoods with a genuine sense of community.

Now, we're not exactly poster children for the new urbanism. We live on ten acres five miles from the Salem city limits, sucking up fossil fuel every time we drive into town – notwithstanding our hybrid cars.

But someday, when maintaining our uneasy care yard and the rest of our property gets too much for us, I can see us comfortably settling into a condo or townhouse within easy walking distance of the necessities of life: a coffeehouse, natural food store, bookstore, parks, walking/biking trails.

"Subdivided" showed that lots of people much younger than us also want a lifestyle that isn't centered on a three car garage, a postage stamp yard, and fences (both physical and mental) that separate neighbors.

One striking image in the movie recreates the filmmaker's experience of suburban isolation. Here he describes it in an interview.

When I moved back to the Dallas area (after living in California), one of my first experiences with people in my new subdivision was when I saw this guy across the street mowing his lawn. I figured this would be a good opportunity to introduce myself, but as I walked across the street and the guy saw me, he turned and mowed his way into the back yard.

This is by no means something isolated to North Texas - during research for the film I learned about attitudes like this all over the U.S. in suburban residential areas.

Years later, it says in the movie, he still hadn't met his neighbors. To our neighborhood's credit, we're more tightly connected than that – largely because our development has a commonly owned area and easements for riding/hiking trails that meander behind most of the lots.

Architects interviewed in "Subdivided" point out that this is important: having a focal point where people gather. In suburbia, that doesn't exist. Stores are just a place to run into and out of.

By contrast, in the small town where I grew up, going to the grocery store was a social event. Almost always you'd meet people there who you knew well. Shooting the breeze was as important as buying the milk.

We've got some of that here in Spring Lake Estates, which makes our 1970's era development pleasingly different from most semi-rural neighborhoods.

A community lake and picnic area is our focal point. Laurel and I walk around it daily. Most of the year we rarely see anyone else, but during the summer children and families flock to the common property. Then, conversations are common.

Where is there anything like this in Salem? A public gathering spot that draws people not for a commercial reason, but simply because it's a pleasant place to be.

In college I spent a semester abroad, in a Yugoslavian town on the Adriatic Sea, Zadar. In the late afternoon and evening people would promenade along the seawall. I recall that girls would walk in one direction, and boys in another, for maximum meeting potential.

In downtown Salem youth hang out at the Coffee House Café and a few other "with it" spots. I enjoy seeing them in their black-clad, cigarette-smoking, body-pierced splendor.

Thank god, someone is on the sidewalks of Salem. I even enjoy being accosted by panhandlers; that's how boring downtown is most of the time.

Salem, like every American town suffering from the stultifying effects of suburban subdivisions, has a chance to come alive again. The riverfront area has the potential to be a gathering point now that the Boise Cascade plant is slated to be replaced by a mixed-use development and public areas.

Connecting with people. Disconnecting from cars. Getting out and mingling. Good urban (and suburban) design is pretty simple. We just need to do it.

Comments

[pril]

I grew up in a suburb of LA that was designed and built, for the most part, in the 1930s. Our little "area" had a plaza within walking distance of almost everyone, that had a small grocery store, gas station, two commercial buildings, a fancy restaraunt, a cafe, a pizza place, a pharmacy/stationery store, a bank or two and a big Roman-looking fountain to sort of announce that this was a little place. It was three blocks from the high school, five from the elementary school, a quarter mile from the ocean. It really was a sort of social hub for everyone in the area. You'd see your friends and neighbors there, errands could easily be run there. Anything else of use was at least five miles away in any direction.

San Pedro, Los Angeles' own "small town" on the harbor, had little sort of common areas sprinkled all over it. These are mostly closed down or gone now, but included usually a little store, and some offices, and the neighborhoods used them. I miss being able to walk to a deli for a great sandwich or down to the post office to send off a package.

Neither of the places in Oregon that i've lived in had these little areas that people gathered at to socialize. And they haven't exactly been suburbs, either.

[Rain]

We live in rural Oregon and there is community. We know our neighbors, talk to them when we meet on the road, sometimes help each other out. When I moved out here, I was coming from a Portland suburb where I did know the neighbors names, sometimes got together, but didn't know their private business. Living in the country was an eye-opener as people knew far more about each other than where I'd come from. I do think some developments have community centers which would help people connect but in most neighborhoods, where people work away, it's true that it's hard to meet anyone and many do not want to know their neighbors.

I often think how ugly we let our world develop also. Even electric power lines. They ruin photographs and maybe are essential but they never take into account physical beauty. Then there are all those people who cannot keep their empty pop can or wrapper in their vehicle and have to toss it out. A lot of people are pigs for how they damage the environment where they have to live.

[HarryVanderpool]

Brian said:
>>>But someday, when maintaining our uneasy care yard and the rest of our property gets too much for us, I can see us comfortably settling into a condo or townhouse within easy walking distance of the necessities of life: a coffeehouse, natural food store, bookstore, parks, walking/biking trails.<<<

OOHHHH!!!! Did someone leave a window open?
I just felt a cold chill down my spine.
S S S Scarryyyyyyyy!!!!
I will never leave my property until the day I die.
Well,,, unless we were to buy a couple hundred acres EVEN FARTHER away from TOWN.

:-;

[Texas Ambassador to the Pacific Northwest]

So true...My wife and I moved here from Austin, Texas four years ago. I am just amazed of how much there IS NOT in Salem. Don't get me wrong, I love the "small town" feeling of the place, but Salem is devoid of just about everything cultural. A cultural wasteland, if you will. The new flashing billboards don't help. Ugh!

[Geronimo Tagatac]

The Salem City Council is still living in a world that is quickly passing. In a time when gas prices are headed toward $5 a gallon, the housing market is in free fall and the airline industry is eliminating flights to hundreds of US towns, the mayor and city council have provided millions of dollars in subsidies for MacMansion developers, the building of outlying shopping malls and the much vaunted, soon to be discontinued commercial air service to Salem.

Yes, developers are putting condos and some pricey apartments downtown. The problem is that there are no basic services, grocery stores, etc. in the central part of Salem, unlike Portland, Corvallis and Eugene.

Lots of people in Salem would like to bike commute to work, but the lack of downtown bike lines makes that hazardous. Salem's city council can't think of anything that isn't based on cheap oil and gas.

Talk about Jurassic Park in city hall!