Wow. Interesting stuff. I saw some of the same type of thing when I was in Ohio last weekend. Since I've been gone there has been a lot of development not far from where my dad lives, in one of these unplaces. Dad and his wife are eager to show me all the stores they have now, and it's pretty much just like seeing a strip mall here in Phoenix: grocery chain, dollar store, Payless Shoes, Michael's, Linens 'n Things, Pier One, cel phone store, etc.

We also saw new homes going up in areas that used to be farm fields when I lived in Ohio. Granted, these homes are a little nicer than the cookie cutter development homes: they have nicer yards, are farther apart from one another and appear to be individual rather than part of a planned development of fifty or more homes at once. However, what I found most interesting in your post today is the risk factor involved in moving out where they live, far away from everything. I think you're right, and I hadn't thought about it much until now.

I remember once when I was a freshman in high school my friend who lived in the country had a sleepover, and I felt so trapped at her house: there was nothing to walk to, no friends who lived around the corner, no place I could go grab a soda. I imagine I would feel the same way as an adult now.

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did you read imomus' entry yesterday or the day before that about "American texture"? I feel like there is definite intertextuality between your post and his...

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DING! It started as a response to both that and his next post about "creative ghettos" vs. real ghettos. I tend to agree with the latter essay more than the former,* but when you combine them the culmulative point is right on.

To me the unclave is a product of both economic and cultural disparity and the people who flock to them are not necessarily the priveleged ones. I mean, when the expensive mobile home park in suburban Joliet a more rich and varied visual sense (and has more signs of creative intelligence) than a hillside of prefab mansions, you know know you've moved into nothere.

I realize that as an American I've trained myself to focus on the soulful in the most bland landscape and tune out the static of bland. And I noticed the bland crappy bits around London and Paris, though few reach American suburb standards. So my disagreement with his snobbery is informed by my own myopia.

I'm also assuming an oppresive ghetto with culture is better than a bland suburb, which is most definitely the myopia of privelege. Except while I can see a former ghetto kid being okay with say, Naperville, which still has a nominal downtown, I can't see them tolerating an unclave.

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Oh but didn't David Brooks write a book positing these developments as the new American paradise?

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I'd like to see Dave spend a year 20 minutes outside Atlanta, IL in a condo by I-55 on the salary of a WalMart manager. Dude would blow his brains out by April.

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I grew up in central Illinois, not very far from Route 66 and I liked your post because it reminded me why I left so many years ago. I was starting to feel homesick, but now I've regained my senses. Thanks!

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Oh I can understand feeling homesick if you lived in, say, Funk's and managed the music pub in Bloomington. Yes, it may be a sleepy life, but it's not a zombie life. It's the areas where it takes 20 minutes at 60 MPH along a road of nothing to go from 200 homes which look exactly alike to a Blockbuster and 7/11 that would make me run.

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I grew up in Heyworth IL (b/w Bloomington and Decatur). Population before the tract housing: 1500. Still no 7/11 there. Downtown Normal was a godsend for me. I got lucky and was able to go to Illinois State's lab school but it was a 45 minute drive of nothing each way. Can't say there's much there I miss except family and a few friends still around from high school. I don't miss corn.

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I don't know...I've lived in a lot of different environments and I can tell you that there are just as many ignorant people leading empty lives in cities as there are in suburbia. I don't think proximity to, say, sushi bars and independent record stores are the key to leading satisfying or even intellectually-stimulating lives. I don't even see how the "daily points of reference" for the majority of urban bo-bos headed home to Wicker Park/Andersonville/Lakeview/wherever on the train, sealed off from their fellow riders via their ipods or laptops are even that more varied. Are these guys headed to Lawndale or West Pullman on the weekends? Eating lunch in Pilsen or Devon or passing more black folks on the street doesn't really count as truly expanded horizons for me.

Actually, I really do agree with this post for the most part, and there's no way in hell I would want to live out in one of these described developments. It just seems the slightest bit condescending and stereotypical.

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Yes, people can be selfish, ignorant or bigoted in any environment, my point is interaction with others beyond one's immediate family does affect the awareness, empathy and boundaries informing ones central mindset are modified.

I think a diverse, dense and open community makes it easier to achieve at least shallow enlightenment, but it's not required. After encountering people from all types of backgrounds and hearing the arguments of a few sociology students, I've come to think that this sort of social conditioning can occur in many types of population densities. What counts is how the society encourages individuals to see themselves as part of a greater whole. Thus I don't buy the stereotype of a suburb as inherently dead minded. Or a small town as naturally small minded. Even someone who spends most of their time alone tilling the land can be educated in the other by the agricultural process.

Plus they have a clear reason for being alone. I think most people crave social interaction and need a good reason if they don't have it.

This is the basis of my dislike of non-places. They aren't isolating for any reason beyond everything being streamlined into utilitarian function to save money. Social patterns narrow not because someone is more or less open, but because unformity, isolation and dehumanization is cheaper.

A remote farm is still a distinct place in societies pattern, one can build a personality upon it. When the world beyond the front door is a mass of monotonous, anonymous homes, miles of blank highway in every direction and the dullest of chain stores beyond that, it's hard to identify with it.

Folks don't go out there thinking this is what they're going to get. They see a cheap home and area with potential. They think, as we all do, that the distances don't matter. Which they may not, if there's no hardship. Some people can feel connection to a small town 100 miles away. But when gas prices make that trip a financial rarity, the paucity of one's surroundings can become grim. Just ask any teen about their perception of their hometown pre and post car.

Plsu people crave non-corporate spaces. When I was growing up in Orlando, there was a dearth of places for young people to hang outside of school. Folks flocked to the mall and movies, but when a plaza opened downtown with a coffee shop next to it, several crowds of social teens flooded it. In these unplaces, there are no spaces which aren't private property, run for profit. This too create a disconnect of basic socialization.

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Much clearer this time, thanks! Like I said, the initial post often came across as a standard anti-suburbia rant ("...the sole shape to your life outside the pew and the cubicle" in particular seemed pretty harsh and not entirely truthful) but I really do understand and mostly agree with what you're getting at (having spent plenty of time on the Orange Blossom Trail myself).

Although, I do have to say that next to the definition of dehumanization in the dictionary you could put a picture of people crushed onto the red line in the morning on their way to the Loop....speaking of which, it's time for me to leave the office and join the rest of the human cattle!

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