My wife, my daughters, and I went a couple of weekends ago to a birthday party for another friend’s child — and it’s got me all down about the place where I live.
We live in the upper floor of a two-story house downtown, renting out the basement apartment. Not counting our deck or the front and rear arctic entryways, our floor is about 800 square feet. We have two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a combined living room and dining room. I sometimes wish we had more space inside for the kids to run around, but we do alright in the space we have. I suppose any larger would just mean more cleaning.
Our friends, on the other hand, live on a large lot off of Farmers Loop Road. Their children’s bedroom is smaller than our children’s, but they also have a playroom downstairs which I did not see. Their bedroom is smaller than ours, but they have an adjoining office where they can work or read in solitude. And their yard — well, their land, really — is plentiful, large enough that they can pretend they don’t have neighbors and their children (and guest children) have a large playground adjacent to the house.
Part of me is envious. We have a fenced yard, but it’s on the small side. We have two playgrounds within 15-20 minutes’ walk and Weeks Field a bit closer, but nothing visible from our windows. Other than to the yard, we cannot simply send the kids outside to play, since (1) there are far too many cars on our street, and (2) there are far too few people on the street to watch out for the safety of neighboring children. Our suburban friends, on the other hand, can send their kids out to play with minimal supervision at any time.
Of course, the drawback of living on some large plot of land is that little but the wilderness would be within walking distance. We would be more isolated and more reliant on our car. And we would further de-populate the city, thus providing incentives for businesses to locate outside the urban core, in turn giving city dwellers still less reason to want to live there.
We have here an exercise in game theory — a branch of mathematics that anlalyzes behavior in circumstances where an individual’s best choice depends on the choices of others. If many people choose to live in the city, then they are more likely to try to make the city a pleasant place to live. The city’s appeal will increase, and more people will choose to live there. (At some point, the crowding starts to make the city less appealing, so that negative feedback brings the system into equilibrium.)
On the other hand, if too few people are convinced that cities are worthwhile (which seems to be the case in Fairbanks), then little effort will go into their good planning. They will in fact become worse places, due largely to the neglect of those who would live there but instead just drive through.
If city-dwellers had real clout, we would have a grocery store in every neighborhood and frequent buses to take us all over. Instead, we have all major retail on the periphery of town, where it is convenient to suburbanites, and a lack of meaningful destinations in the core. Instead, we have suburban flight that leaves city-dwellers not only without the benefit of a 20-acre wood around them, but without the joys that a good city can bring: shopping, restaurants, public space, and enjoyable street life.
I wonder sometimes if Fairbanks is tipped irredemably toward the suburban lifestyle, tipped so much that high-quality city life has no chance at emerging. I think about our choice to live downtown and wonder sometimes if we are the chumps.
Maybe there are too many variables in the situation you describe to reduce it to some set of game theory equations that it is possible to solve. Solving equations with three variables can be tough enough. In the Greater Fairbanks situation there are people with different incomes, different attitudes about ways their time is best spnt, different family situations, different recreational interests, different social needs and desires, different requirements for education, etc. Game theory might work if you made some drastic simplifying assumptions. How about chaos theory? Or just picking a few variables that you want to concentrate on and try to influence, getting others on your “team,” and leaving the operation of the remaining elements to fate, etc. (Or however you handle philosophically those things that are beyond your control.)
I’m not really proposing to reduce the city-versus-suburban problem to a single variable in some game theory equation. Truly, there are too many. I only wanted to draw out one aspect of that complicated game.
Here’s another: car ownership. Imagine that nobody owns a car. (We need only crack open the history books, or look at modern Venice.) Streets are narrow, because they don’t have to accommodate two tons of speeding steel, and most daily destinations are close together, because people lack means to get far easily from the nearest train station. Here, it’s against the interest of most individuals to buy a car, because it will be too inconvenient to drive and park.
But somebody is going to find it worthwhile — status? power? — and once he does, he’ll start making the street a more dangerous place for people to walk. They, too, will want cars, which make the street still less attractive to pedestrians. To increase safety and accommodate drivers, the city widens streets. Parking spaces, parking lots, driveways, and garages are built. These things take up space — I’ve read a figure of seventy times the space (I think) of pedestrian requirements. Naturally, people cannot live as closely to their destinations and each other as they did formerly.
Also, stores that might have been small and local can now gain economies of scale by centralizing and expanding their operations to places that the maximum number of people can drive to. So the smart move for the resident is now to buy a car.
Also, you suggest picking a few variables I want to work on and can influence. My wife said the same thing, sort of: I should stop focusing on the ideal of some magical pre-WWII eastern-seaboard city, and focus instead on what can be done, here and now, with what we have.
In fact, that’s my intent. I just think it’s worthwhile to draw out some of the processes that affect our current civic state, and that sometimes requires reference to an ideal. Rousseau did it, too.
Oh we just did this over the last 2 years… Sold in-town house for the suburban house… It sucked! All emphasis was placed on driving to get to where you need to be…
To much time in the car actually takes away from the amount of time that you can spend in that lovely home in the hills. So, we sold it & moved back downtown. Sold the extra car, so now we are a 1 car family again… I figure it will save us ‘at least’ $2000 per month. Enough said.
I think that many people like many different things, and yes if Fairbanks placed more emphasis on the town, things would turn in our favor. For our family, there is no comparrison. Stay strong & we will see a change in the downtown atmosphere. If we don’t do it, then who will?
Excellent post. Makes me think about 1) time as a commodity, as in the time that you spend in a car going to the suburban shopping should you chose to live out there versus the time saved living in the core district. Also, 2) quality of life, clearly a large number of people put greater weight to having the big backyard and open spaces for themselves and their kids so they make specific sacrifices. I should point out that plenty of people have had great lives without a pasture or field behind their houses or even a back yard of any kind. I love the arguments you put forth regarding the decision making you’ve done with your family. If only city planners in your area, and others, did the same. Of course, in Fbx, I can’t imagine they are anything but a bunch of big sign loving, big box store hugging dipshits. Pardon my french.
On the other hand, I haven’t had a shooting in my neighborhood in the ‘burbs….. ever. You have shootings, assaults, and assorted nonsense in yours THAT NEVER EVEN MAKES THE NEWSPAPER. Would you go to Weeks Field after dark, unarmed?
A couple years ago there was a rash of robberies in the cul-de-sac on 9th behind the police station. Burglary is so common in the area that the police wouldn’t even investigate. Victims had to go to the station to file reports.
From your vague description I would estimate that you live within a few blocks of at least 3 drug infested apartment buildings.
I don’t live in FBX, but I consider it to by “my” town. When the citizens decide to get serious about crime (which means dragging the police department in that direction kicking and screaming, and in opposition to them) I’d consider moving back into town.
Right now, and for the last several years, FPD is oriented toward DUIs in order to generate revenue for the city. They need to start busting some crack houses and making Fairbanks generally unfriendly to the drug dealers and small-time thugs who are quite comfortable at the moment.
Brian, you’ve really got good points about crime in the city. I don’t have time to give a full reply right now, but I’ll devote a full post to this topic — in the next week, if life goes smoothly enough.
Another factor is your choice to live in an area where your idea of the good life in in the minority. Here in Anchorage, that is also true, but we can live in mid-town where we can walk and bike to a lot of places and there are lots of like minded people.
When we spent six sabbatical months in Portland we were in a far more friendly place in terms of urban community thinking.
I think the ideal is to adapt the condo association concept – a collection of units with common areas, rec rooms, pools, green space, etc. with owner representation on boards – to more diverse options for varying ages and income levels. Maybe a hybrid of condo and commune.
Paul -
Great Post. Very interesting and well thought out. We as city residents are forced to live with the fact that non-city residents come in and go out every day of the year – and city residents pay for the infrastructure required to maintain basic minimums. It is an issue, that I’m now more than ever discovering, is not easy to change.