Horizontal Cities

Suburbia is finally getting its due from social critics.

Nick Gillespie from the July 2000 issue

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In the years since my wedding--since my Suburban Shame got the better of me --my parents passed inevitably into old age, and with it, sickness and death; my father died in 1997 and my mother just last summer. In their last years, they needed more and more help simply to make it through the days, and they benefited greatly from all the new stores and services that had come to Middletown since they had moved there in the mid-'60s--not just better pharmacies and home-delivery arrangements but gourmet coffee shops; massive, always-open supermarkets; book superstores; and ethnic restaurants that ranged beyond pizza joints and the occasional Hunan Palace. Their quality of life was immeasurably improved by the same forces of development that are still alternately ignored and castigated by the anti-suburb crowd.

More than anything, though, my parents benefited mightily from their neighbors, some of whom had lived side by side with them for decades, others who had moved in far more recently. My folks had helped these people out over the years, and that kindness was more than repaid. At my mother's funeral last summer, my parents' neighbors and friends--many of whom helped raise me, many of whom I hadn't seen in years, and most of whom I will in all likelihood never see again--came out to pay their last respects, to tell me what my parents had meant to them.

As I left Middletown a few days after the funeral, I drove out on State Highway 35, passing the strip malls, the fast-food restaurants, the kwik marts, the gas stations, even the cemetery where my parents now rest. It is understandable, perhaps, why such landscapes failed to make any sort of positive impression on commentators for so long. Similarly, it is exciting that such landscapes--and the people who inhabit them--are beginning to get a longer, more informed second look. As the suburbs grow in size and population, such understanding will increasingly be a prerequisite for a full appreciation of American culture.