The Suburbs
Note: I originally posted this on my old blog in 2006. Last night I heard this program on NPR, which totally resonates with my own feelings on this matter. Check it out, the first speaker, Joel Hirschhorn is the author of “Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs. Steal Your Time, Health and Money.” is dead on.
Most of our suburban lifestyle looks fine on the outside, but has all of the grim horror of The Matrix’s real world if you take a closer look.
I’ve become convinced that the suburbs are simply a construct meant to divert most of the income of the citizens of the United States directly into the bank accounts of Fortune 500 companies.
Consider the fact that the houses are built, all at once, by large development firms.
There are no small businesses or shops, only homes built cheaply and arranged like cilia. Try looking at your local suburbs from space in Google Earth*. These neighborhoods, like Governor’s Ranch and Columbine, outside of Denver, Colorado, are like middle income housing versions of the gooey life support pods in The Matrix. They function to hold people in one place and in such a way that their life energy can be harnessed for Big Businesses and that none, absolutely none, of the income of the people that live there gets wasted.
Oil companies profiteer because people need to drive their cars 10 to 20 miles to get to their jobs.
Companies like WalMart, Target, Toy ‘R’ Us, and Barnes & Noble profiteer because the citizens flock to these meccas of commercialism from the outlying burbs like refugees to the compound in The Road Warrior.
If you go out for dinner, make it Chiles or perhaps the Macaroni Grill.
There isn’t any other place for these people to go. And pretty much everything that these people make goes to big companies based somewhere else instead of back into their own local economy.
*If you are interested in seeing what some of these neighborhoods look like from space, download Google Earth (now available for the Mac as well as Windows) and enter
columbine high school, CO, 80123
