We Shape our Suburbs and then our Suburbs Shape Us
We have often said this in relation to church buildings.
We build our places of worship and then they can so easily exert control over us and even dictate how we live our life of faith. By calling them ’sanctuaries’ we already give shape to how we will view them. I could give many examples here, but probably the most obvious is that once we have a building of a certain size we feel the need to fill it and to keep on filling it – so we can build a bigger one. This in turn determines how we see our mission and what form our ecclesiology takes. I’m sure there are some exceptions to this rule, but our buildings definitely shape us. For those of us who meet in homes this applies equally but there are different strengths and weaknesses.
So I have been pondering how our suburbs shape us.
I’m sure that the type of buildings we erect and the form of the suburb gives shape to our interactions. Its noticeable that in almost all of today’s homes the primary living areas are at the rear – away from the rest of the world and that these days very little living is done ‘out front’. A second obvious factor is the remote controlled garage door phenomenon. Now almost everyone has a garage with access to the house and no need to be seen at all by the neighbours.
I’m sure this has changed the way we interact in communities. I have noticed that two of the families in our street use their garages as outdoor living areas and they are subtantially more ‘interactive’ with the rest of the street than those who live ‘out the back’.
I remember reading Simon Holt’s book God Next Door and appreciating his observation on the loss of the front porch. Now we have the rear alfresco area in its place. I began to wonder about a social experiment where a group of 4 or 5 families moved into the same street and intentionally built ‘back to front’ houses with living and alfresco areas at the front and where the primary social activity occurred out there. I began to wonder how it might affect the vibe of the street if half of it were built this way.
What do you observe about your own suburb in terms of how its form affects the shaping of its community
What you’ve described is more about how the design of our home affects us than the design of our neighbourhood.
Sometimes I used to look across our large backyard, over the fence and into the large backyard behind us, and over to the one beyond them. I thought, imagine if we took all the fences out. We’d have almost an oval if we then removed a few trees.
Comment by Eric — August 7, 2008 @ 8:20 pm