Suberbia(2/5)

My city is as James Howard Kunstler to a certain extent. Yes I live in the city but no it is not so busy in my area or so "highly designed". The part of Riverside, California I live in is called the Victoria Area. There is about two grocery and three retail stores within walking distance, and there are plenty of fast food and convient stores, maybe one too many, but where i live my neighborhood is not so busy. Walking down my street, the houses are all designed with the same layout and same landscape. They are all one story and are all one story unless they added on or redesigned. The houses that are on my block do not have sidewalks but the houses that do have sidewalks do not have fences. There are trees in every frontyard that over shadow the streets and make the neighborhood seem so calming. Most of the neighbors know each other and except for the few bad neighborhood rebels the area is so peaceful. Unlike other areas in Riverside such as Orangecrest or Mission Grove, my neighborhood is an older neighborhood bulit to be a community and not just a place to show off how much money you have or how popular you are. And although every area have their rich and poor neighborhooods, this area has a very fine line between the rich and the poor. This is because as I said the houses were all designed the same and people from all professions, ages, race, and background live around here. The schools im my neighborhood we're built long ago, the high school that I went to was the first community college in my area so it was one of the first educational building in my area. But the school being built today look as though they are trying to keep people in, almost like prisons with no windows and stone walls. The area is not overwhelmed and people from all over the area seem to know each other. There are no unnecessary stairs or plants and the houses are bulit all alike not to be like cabins in the woods. I do not fully agree with James Howard Kunstler but I do agree that there are some areas that need to be fixed. These new buildings and homes are not personable, they look as though they are built just to push people together, not to be a good area for people to live. Older built neighborhoods and structures have this "personality" that people want, it is the "personality" that gets people to want to come and stay for their enjoyment. Not a place where people go to work and then leave right away. In that sense yes the structures and new building that are "wrong", but the old neighborhoods and and building are not all necessarily in the "wrong".