Week 9 Mass Housing and Suburbia

Courtcatagnus’ clip from Revolutionary Road was a great cinematic parallel to the Keats’ reading. While portraying the prototypical suburban tragedy, both the film and the reading capture what seems to have become common rhetoric orbiting the concepts of suburbia and its sundry modern characteristics. As mentioned in American Babylon, Self posits that families did not “merely or only flee the city, they were drawn into suburban city building by material and ideological incentives” (Self, 2). A personal criticism I have of both the Keats’ reading and Revolutionary Road, is their comparable simplistic interpretations of a complicated, and multifaceted phenomenon, embedded in American cultural dwelling practices. When comparing the dual domestic lifestyles separated between “Elm Street” and “Rolling Knolls,” Keats purports that women living on Elm Street were able to carry their social lives to “different parts of town,” and that this “variety,” lent richness and perspective to their own lives (Keats, 278). He continues by claiming that this environment, in of itself, specifically grants women opportunities to experience culturally enriched surroundings and diversity, without ever mentioning the isolating factors that correlate to staunch urban individualism, and anomie. By exclaiming that friendships being recruited within the neighborhood, and establishing daily routines with people whose company you enjoy because they are similar to you is inherently a bad thing, is a facile statement to proclaim, and one that overlooks individual family wants and needs. While I am in no way trying to deny the fact that many people, particularly women, were subjected to torturous constraints and varying levels of isolation through suburbia’s acute separation from itself and the “outside” world (not to mention the blatant racism and bigotry  that plagued these convenances), I am merely trying to expose that many people sought refuge in these “cookie-cutter” homes and “detatched” lifestyle, and ultimately found it on their continuous lawn archipelagos.

This is apparent in the “Picture Window Paradise” reading, where Miner presents the fascinating history of Levittown, Pennsylvania. What was so apparent to me in this piece was the level of pragmatism and precision that went into constructing these premade housing packages that, once collected, could literally be assembled in an astonishing sixteen minutes. While monotony was certainly a reoccurring theme, and a criticism Levitt and sons heard about consistently in their Levittown, New York development, they really took it into account when trying to modify their new development ways they could overhaul the homogeny, and simultaneously, upkeep their rate of production. Stylistic approaches such as winding roads and irregular shaped intersections were constructed to break up sight lines, and give the suburbia a garden community feel (Miner, 282). The fact that Levittown, Penssylvania is still a vibrant and bustling suburban neighborhood, that has actually metamorphasized into a personalized and eclectic melange of inhabitants that make up its community, is a testament to American dwelling affinities, and disproves the notion that something as monistic as the built environment can ascertain lodging satisfaction. No one house can be built to satisfy the individual needs of an entire community, however, a safe and secure space can be alloted to a family, and over time, that family can transform the ordinary space into a home.

Week 4 Response

The “Living Downtown” readings this weel provided unique historical/architectural approaches toward examining the transformation of dwelling and its effects on social interaction over time. A critical overarching theme among the readings dealt with the concepts of  inclusivity and exclusivity. The “French Flat” discussed by Cromley, presented New Yorkers at that time with many unsure feelings about its uses and what it represented. An extension to Cromley’s analysis that I would have liked to have seen discussed or at least mentioned, was the fundamental urban dichotomy between Anglo-American cities and French cities. At that time, English and American cities alike, were being evacuated by their upper-middle classes to pursue the concept of the bourgeoisie suburban utopia, while the French bourgeoisie remained concentrated in the urban core. I believe this fundamental philosophical difference elucidates many of the “fears” the middle-class New Yorkers had about “mixing with people less prosperous than themselves” (Cromley, 106). Similarly, Blackmar goes into detail about the different kinds of reactions American’s had toward trying to deal with class differences, and particularly, how the “social meaning” of house has evolved over time.

As the bourgeoisie began establishing exclusive communities out in the perimeter of the city, they also fundamentally altered the way in which home and business was conducted. As Blackmar explains, before the era of financial institutions, propertied New Yorkers needed to affirm their social standings by reciprocal obligations that were founded on the basis of kin networks and associations extended to their fellow community (Blackmar, 109). However, as the bourgeoisie continued to move out from the locations in which their business remained to be conducted, they transformed the way in which home was defined and business conducted. Along with the clear, binary lines between private and public slowly beginning to unravel, the social meaning of house evolved from a place of exchange and interaction, to a private, domestic space sequestered from the world outside its walls.

Week 2 Response

Unfortunately, I have not received my book in the mail yet, so my Douglas synthesis will have to wait. This aside, the remaining readings for this week certainly framed very unique stances on our quest to unravel the mystique of home and dwelling.

Despite Heidegger’s equivocal style, I felt that he presented some very interesting notions concerning society’s way of speaking about building and dwelling, both metaphorically and etymologically. According to Heidegger, “dwelling is never thought of as the basic character of human being,” and while I am not equipped to debate for or against humanity’s ontological relation to dwelling, his dissection of the word Bauen and its historical emphasis on dwelling and remaining in place, was an intriguing insight into humanity’s quest for permanence and identity. We build constructs because we are dwellers, and it is these constructs that provide the “free sphere” that safeguards each thing in its nature. Through applying this analysis to our modern housing shortage dilemma, Heidegger expounds that our contemporary contention lies not within the shortage itself, but rather that people assigned new meaning of what it is to dwell. I believe that Heidegger’s search for the link between the root meaning in words to our discourse of dwelling and home is fundamental to understanding the complex nature of what housing and shelter has meant to humanity throughout time.