The Comforting Loneliness of Suburban Anti-Places

There is a lot that has been said about "placemaking," a concept in Urban Planning regarding how to make a public area into a distinct memorable place that people want to inhabit. A good public place is social, usable, comfortable, accessible, and memorable. As a human being inhabiting a body, and not a high-speed vehicle, you feel at-scale, and like the place is an appropriate place for you to be. Some good public places are Rittenhouse Square, Washington Square Park, or Shibuya Station. Singaporean Youtuber Teh Siew Dai made a good video about this.¹

The classic American suburban strip mall sprawl alongside a stroad is, of course, the extreme opposite of this. The classic photo of "Anywhere, USA" is so iconic because it really does look like basically anywhere in America. Most of America is an unplace, an anti-place, a place that has been unmade. The noise from the road is so loud you can't hear a conversation. There is nowhere desirable to sit, if there is even a sidewalk at all. It feels dangerous existing there. Even in the vast expanses of parking lots, any of those cars could pull out and hit you if you aren't vigilant. All of the stores are the same massive chains you see across the entire country on every road in every state, so nothing ever stands out. All natural landmarks have been demolished and paved over. Everything is vast and empty. Everything single part of the experience is unpleasant. These are not places where you are meant to be, they are liminalities you are meant to pass through. The existence of such a between-ness wouldn't be inherently offensive were it not such a large plurality of all public spaces in North America.

If it is not the ugly stroad, then it is the vast zones endlessly identical single-family houses. The cul-de-sacs and segregated subdivisions. The homes do not exist for the exterior but for the interior. You cannot walk from your home here to anywhere else. It is a desert of public places. It is endless private places with nothing in-between. These towns are nothing but a storage unit for your own private place sitting in its sector in the warehouse of private places. To leave your private place, you must get inside your car—a high-speed private place on wheels—and do the most dangerous thing you can do on a daily basis in order to get to a job, another person's private place in their own private place storage warehouse, or to one of many carbon copy businesses stored on the side of a road in an expansive anti-place.

None of this is an original analysis, of course. It has all been said a million times by Strong Towns and any number of Urbanist non-profits and online hobbyists. Millennials of particular backgrounds were raised in these suburbs, hated it, moved to big cities, and now spend all their time online hating on the built environment of the European settlements in North America. Rightfully so, of course. Settlers have done a terrible job with urban planning on this continent.²

Living in a big city, I don't usually spend much time in these sorts of anti-places. I don’t own a car and it’s usually easier for me to walk to a small unique locally owned business than to get to a big mega chain. But sometimes, I do find myself trekking through the suburban desert. Sometimes a medical appointment was only able to be scheduled at an office in the suburbs, or I’m visiting someone who lives in the burbs for whatever reason.

There is a depressing cloud that sets upon you from these environments. There is a feeling of disconnect from the world. An immediate derealization. I feel as though I have ventured outside of the world into a space between worlds not meant to be inhabited by anything living. Like I am swimming through the void of space without a suit on. Immediately everything feels hopeless, pointless, senseless. There are no stakes to my actions. No greater meaning to life. Other people do not exist, there is only that which I interact with.

And in this is a strange comfort. This lonely sense of desolation. When you are outside the world, it is somehow relaxing, despite the terrifying loud rushing of cars running past. In the city, you must think about the humanity of other people. You are in the world buzzing with so many kinds that matter so much and you are a part of this complex vibrating interlocking system of lives. In nature, you must think about the ecosystem, the way that you are an animal just like the birds and bugs and beavers, and you depend on these plants and animals to live, and your role in this ecosystem can sustain or destroy a miraculous gift for everyone. A sense of unity with the earth and the responsibility that comes with it.

In the Suburban Anti-Place, you are free from that. You are outside of the world. You don’t have to think about anything. You can just give up. You can just be in quiet perfect comfort in your Private Place that is only exactly as you want it. You can never interact with another person or living animal. You can be alone and sad and free and peaceful. You can drive to the Qdoba and eat some shitty food or stock up on Costco rice. You don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. You can just give up. You can just stop thinking about the suffering of others. You can just stop thinking about the fate of the earth. None of this affects you. You don’t live on earth. You live in the void. You live in the Anti-Place. Objects come from Amazon. Food comes from wherever. It’s a nihilistic nothingness. A cold but heavy blanket. No more worries. No more bright vibrant colors. Nothingness.

I know a lot of autistic people who prefer this. It’s far less overstimulating. I think there must be something better for the environment and the autonomy and mental health of children than this that’s still not so overstimulating as cities. I do wonder how much poverty reduction and traffic reduction in cities would improve that problem. Usually when I visit someone in the suburbs it’s someone who is autistic and wishes to never leave their home except when necessary. Which is valid. Good for them. Manage your sensory needs as you need.

But I know that most people living in the suburbs are not there to manage sensory needs. I wonder how much this apartness from the world affects people who live there continuously. That sense of “politics is happening there, but not here.” Whenever there is a major Black Lives Matter protest always online I see people asking what they can do to help when they don’t live near the protests. Sometimes it’s an earnest ask of what is possible to contribute, and often it’s not genuine, but a way of shirking responsibility. I can’t help. I can’t influence politics. I don’t live in that world. I’m too far away. That isn’t happening here. I’m not a part of the story.

If suburbs were compressed into villages, would it reinhabit these people into the world?

I wonder if that comforting detachment is what motivates so many people to live the suburban life. I think for a lot of Jews two generations ago it probably was. After all that struggle and trauma and strife, wouldn’t it be nice to just give up? To just leave the world behind? Finish out the rest of life dissociated and distant from everything that ever hurt you?

I think about this comment I often get from people I meet who live in suburbs, when they learn that I live in the city. “Oh, wow, I could never do that. Isn't it dangerous? Isn’t it unsafe? Isn’t it dirty?” It’s far more dangerous to drive everywhere on dangerous stroads. It’s far more dangerous to allow your muscles decondition due to lack of walking. It’s far dirtier on the side of the stroad that you never walk on. It’s far more dangerous to be isolated.

But isn’t it so much safer to live apart from the world, where nobody can ever hurt you? After all, who is even around to try.

1. Also his channel is just generally fantastic. I love his video on Singapore's "LRT" and his video on "Informal Crossings" where he literally machines a full scale model of an intersection instead of just using computer graphics to illustrate his point and it's just so beautiful he brings so much energy and dedication to his videos and also a much needed perspective that isn't so focused on North American and Europe all the time. ↩︎
2. Although, it does often feel ironic that as much love as is directed towards the Netherlands for their objectively excellent urban planning, very little attention is given to the excellent urban planning in, say, China, who have figured out far more efficient ways to build out massive transit networks all over the country without needing to colonize Indonesia to fund it. Not to mention that the car-centric (sub)urban design of North America was often created by the literal parents and grandparents of white urbanists, given the timelines. ↩︎