Suburban Cities

Small towns always tend to entice me. Like when I'm in Portland, I find myself in them, and never wanting to leave. It's like I want one or the other. I cannot have mixture and melting of lifestyles.

I want to be out in the middle of the country side, in a small town with a dolled-up downtown, and ruins of former industry littering the streetscape. One where there is no aspect of planning, but that is okay, because there are no Urban Growth Boundaries to fill; there are no housing crises because of gentrification; there are no drivers to economic gain other than simply being there because that's where you landed, and that's your port of harbor.

Or I want to be in the middle of it all. Where the trolleys clank past, and buzzers and alarms keep you on your toes 24/7. Where at any minute anything could be going on, and you would never know it, or you'd be right in the middle of it. The background noise becomes a staple of your life, and eventually it becomes like static, always there. There are always things to see; always things to do; always a new "place" to be discovered.

On Monday everything seems to be shutdown here in Chehalis. I'm here on a Tuesday (thank goodness), but on all the signs on the doors it always says "Mondays- Closed". I wonder why that is. It is only in a small town would you find that uniform quirkiness of businesses and work weeks. In cities, all kinds of places are open during all times of the day, never being the same, spelling out diversity in the very fabric of the business of the metropolis.

It isn't that in the suburbs that businesses are open all the time. Nor is it that they are closed all the time.

In the suburbs there simply are no businesses.

It was weird at first, but sitting here in a small town, I can now see it. Everything is within proximity of the living areas. Granted, walking would be somewhat of a chore, but there is space when you move. You are easily within 5 minutes drive of any business in town.

In urban areas, everything is there. All at once. It is so compact, so focused, that everything is within easy walking distance, and everything is never but a five minute walk of where you live. You can easily access the things you need, and the things you want.

In suburbs, there are just oceans of houses. When you descend into one unit it's like you are delving into a maze. a maze with no public buildings, no public parks, no public space. The houses are all compact, and all privately owned. You can't walk into one for a quick break or snack! That would be trespassing! You can't deviate off of the quickest path! There's only more houses of the same stature for you to look at. And it takes forever to leave.

In one instance I remember driving out into Mount Hood National Forest. I looked up the quickest directions, and set off. But then I sat. At red light after red light, waiting to just LEAVE! There were no convenient highways to take me there, and the houses just strettttttttttttched for 10s of minutes. It came to be about half an hour until I was out of Gresham! I thought that Gresham was this nice little hamlet on the outskirts of Portland! Something like Troutdale, but a little bigger.

Was I wrong.

It was sprawl city. I just looked it up, and it's population is around 100,000 people. 100,000 people! That's a little smaller than the entire city of Vancouver! And there are two other "suburbs" of Portland that are like this! They are bedroom communities, much like Vancouver, but west of the city.

When I take US 26 out westward towards the coast I always find this surprising about Hillsboro and Beaverton. They also take forever to get out of. It just so happens that US 26 is a limited access highway, so it takes slightly less time.

I have a hard enough time reckoning a place out of a suburb city that is, in it's entirety, outside of the state of Oregon, and therefore has a head start on creating an identity of place. I wonder how it must be living in those other places, where all you have in terms of identity is your neighbor.