Home?

As the years pass and I get older, I find myself ever more removed from the world of white picket fences. I don't mean physically, because I haven't moved in years, but mentally I find the idea ever more distasteful. The modern suburbia, where it's no longer even a smaller community attached to a larger city, but simply a large acreage swath of houses checker boarded onto the landscape, reminds me of pimples on a teenaged face. The red tile favored for western roofs only serves to reinforce this type of imagery.

I love my neighborhood. Granted, you could get away with calling Dana Point a suburb, but it isn't. Due to the way Orange County was settled, Dana Point is far enough south that it wasn't an LA spillover, and the farms were further north as well. Dana Point was centered around cattle and then became a vacation get away for those up north. As such, it developed as its own little community and still carries a lot of that feel today. Sure, there are modern developments here, and plenty of gated communities, but they're small enough to walk into and out of. A few dozen homes rather than hundreds, and centered within the city limits rather than sitting outside the limits until the city expands around them. I essentially live in the downtown, although there really isn't a downtown. But I can walk out of my place to restaurants and shops and parks and schools and the beach and the harbor all within the time it would take someone in Rancho Santa Margarita to get to drive to the front gate of their development.

The standard suburban ideal scares me. The thought of living that sort of life, complete with wife, kids and a dog, make me claustrophobic. It reeks of being forced to live a life planned by a dominant culture rather than a personal ideal.

I'm not a huge urban person. New York is not the city for me. Neither is downtown LA...well L.A. in general. But I've seen some great urban options. Downtown Seattle is great. San Francisco has some appealing neighborhoods as well. A lot of the cities around here have put some money into reviving their old downtowns. Fullerton and Orange both have great areas with condos right in the thick of shops, parks and nightlife. I guess you could say that I like urbanity light. Not huge cities, but the more concentrated areas of big cities. Or not right downtown, but a few blocks from it so I could walk or bike (uh, ride my razor scooter) there.

Maybe you're thinking something along the lines of "Well, that's because you're single and living close to the action is great now. But, if you get married and have kids you're going to want space for them to play and good schools for them to go to and a safe place to live." and you're right. But the error comes in thinking that's what you get in the suburbs and can't get in a more urban setting. It really depends on the urban setting. The reason we typically associate lack of those things with urban areas is because people who had the drive and ability to make things happen decided to take the easy route and walk away years ago, resulting in a country wide epidemic of urban blight. But things are changing, and there are urban neighborhoods that are safe, near to parks (if you're thinking "yeah, but a park is no back yard, then you haven't seen what a modern suburb laughingly calls a yard. See picture below) and by good schools. It's much less a matter of population density than one of population profile. If you construct an urban area to attract people with education, ambition, and energy they will move there. I've seen it happen in several places here in California, including San Diego, which has a great downtown. And while that sort of life will bring challenges for raising kids, I don't see it as worse than the challenges that many suburban dwellers face, such as stress and time removed from family due to long commutes, teenage boredom resulting in illicit behavior of all kinds, lack of culture, be it activities or simply diversity, and a keeping up with the Joneses mentality where the only way to be different is to be more lavish because everyone is living the same life on the surface.

Bad












More Bad



















Good















More Good













and it should look like this inside :-)