Wow Do I Hate the Suburbs!

I was born in Oshawa, Ontario. From an early age, I knew it was a shithole. I hate to be so blunt, but there is little redemption in a city built around a factory and where city blocks are nothing more than interconnecting stripmalls dotted with grotesque post-war cookie cutter duplexes. There is little affluence, no culture, and whatever ethnicity the city has inherited through urban sprawl has quickly been ghettoized. Oshawa is rapidly becoming the template for 'urban planning gone wrong'. Planning in this case is a misnomer. There seems to be little foresight in any development that is undertaken, apart from how it increases the city tax base. I have watched for the last 10 years as the city limits have crept upwards and outwards with little or no regard for community development or environmental sensitivity. There is no sense of place. Oshawa has always and will continue to look like just another corporate cut-out suburban cliche. The terrifying thing is that Oshawa and her mistake is being repeated across the country. That mistake is the experiment called the suburb which has not been shut-down. Well dammit it's time.
The suburb is a human desert-a wasteland-the epitome of the middle of nowhere and nowhere anyone should have to live. It forces us to live within four walls, separated from human contact-outside of the fake plastic smile we give our neighbour as we cut our lawn for the third time in a week. And lawns, don't get me started on those, our obsession with manicuring grass to make it look like carpet is so nauseating to me-it's a whole other blog. Life in the 'burbs is defined by a cocoon-like state. Your house is a shell to protect you from the big bad ugly city and so is your car-fuck people drive to work now in Hummers-a military vehicle-are we mad??!!! Simply put, the suburb has to be the worst form of human organization and socio-ecomomic development. They are atrociously inefficient when it comes to the use of space (in Ontario especially as we continue to pave over what is widely regarded as some of the best farm land IN THE WORLD!!) and they perpetuate the sick reliance on fossil fuels. I can't fathom how much life is wasted while we sit in cars parked for hours on highways built to support a tenth of the volume that exists due to the deluge of houses being built far outside what is a "reasonable" commute to ones place of employment. What is to be done?

I write this blog with the knowledge that soon I won't have to hear the symphony of lawnmowers on my street very much longer as myself and my wife are moving to the big bad ugly city. This is allows us to ditch our car for public transit and move into a neighbourhood where you rub shoulders with your humanity. I find the city much more welcoming than the burbs. People in the city I think are happier. You have more time, there is more to do and your not trapped in your car for 3 hours a day. Man, 3 hours x 5 days x 4 weeks x 12 months x say 25 years? That a whole lot more life.

A friend of mine watched a movie a while ago called The End of Suburbia. The premise is that life as we know it in North America is going to suddenly and drastically change because of an expiry date on the amount of fossil fuels available to support so many houses and cars getting to those houses. I guess I'm just getting a head start on the escape, cause wow, when there's no more natural gas for my neighbour to fire up his barbecue, man there's a gonna be a war. The irony is that the suburbs have involved little real long-term planning. The de-construction and re-alignment of how millions of people are currently living due to the fact that the burbs are unsustainable is going to require a Herculean amount of resources and yes-planning. But all I can say is that a city like Oshawa, and all the great people who do live here deserve better. We all deserve better. See you on the subway soon.