I’m from Phoenix, Arizona originally.  I went to middle school, high school, and got my bachelor’s degree at Arizona State.  I’ve lived in Colorado for the last 11 years.  When I go back to Phoenix now I generally find it one way. Depressing.

Every major metro area in the U.S. has sprawl, but in Phoenix, it’s an art form.  There are very, very few places you can get to without a car, and everywhere there now looks the same: beige adobe, red tile roofs, one endless soulless strip mall and big box bonanza after another.  I was in Phoenix recently to attend my best friend’s wedding.  We stayed at a four star resort in north Scottsdale (which was desert when I lived there).  There are houses all around this resort, but little else.  A trip to the grocery store is a 15 minute drive, one way (I timed it).  Most of Phoenix is this way, nearly devoid of character and totally slaved to the car, no human scale at all.

We saw a sign while driving to the grocery store that said “mixed-use development!!!” under this is said “retail AND office space!”.  This is what passes for “mixed use” in most of Phoenix.  My husband commented that is was similar to the “We have both types of music: Country AND Western” famous line.

There are a few bright spots, downtown Scottsdale is a human scaled area which is just now adding housing (VERY expensive condos but they are cool), the Willo neighborhood close to downtown Phoenix, Verrado–a new urbanist neighborhood in Buckeye (way the hell out west of downtown), and downtown Tempe which has housing in walking distance to offices and retail.  In Denver though, there’s a million walkable neighborhoods (new and old) with great access to public transit, not to mention the investment we’ve made in our rail line that will connect all the metro area.  I feel Denver is much more progressive, enviornmental, and human oriented city than Phoenix currently is.  I’m glad I live in a place that values me more than my car (at least in SOME places!).  

I worked for a large reptile wholesaler for a time.  This particular wholesaler had a fondness for very large pythons.  There were several gargantuan Burmese pythons at this place.  Female Burmese pythons can get really, really huge–20 foot plus huge and wider around than a truck tire.  While they are mellow snakes not prone to biting (Thank God), that huge body is controlled by a tiny little brain.  As a result, any time we would go to feed the Burmese, it would require two people.  One person to feed, one to “spot”.  The spotter’s job was to get the snake off you should it mistake you for its dinner. 

Now the Burmese, they ate pigs.  Yeah, pigs.  Small pigs, but still, PIGS.  One warm summer day, I got to work and was greeted by the nastiest smell in the universe.  The large female Burm had upchucked her pig.  I had to clean it as the other employee was incapacitated by repeated bouts of his own barfing (poor guy).  So yeah, it was as gross as you can imagine.

Fast forward four years and I have a kid.  For those of you who don’t have children, let me describe some of the things that will get on other things with a small child around.  They will piss on the floor.  They will barf on the sofa, the car, your bed.  They will wipe boogers on the walls.  They are friggin gross.  However, because of my prior experience and survival of cleaning up huge snake vomit, I was inured to this aspect of child rearing.  So there’s a silver lining to snake barf.

My husband’s comment watching our daughter listen to his iPod:

“We had to listen to the same band five songs in a row and then turn it over for another five songs”. LOL.

There’s an interesting essay in this month’s issue of Metropolis called Where’s Home.  It explores the meaning of this emotional idea in a country where people move–on average–every five years.  We are such a transient country I think in part because of two things: Hope springs eternal in the U.S. (a nice thing) and our culture, which focuses on the accumulation of things and being happy at all costs (the two things are not really related but the advertisers sure like us to think they are), the American idea of–You Can Always Do Better (not such a nice thing).

There have been people moving out of Bradburn since we’ve lived here the past four years.  A lot of that time it’s because of a job change and the people who are moving really don’t want to.  One lovely couple that lived on my street got a job offer they couldn’t refuse in a Midwest state and hated to leave but luckily found another new urbanist community in their new state and love it there also.  Other times moving is due to divorce or other sad life events.   But there have been a few that have moved because they just thought it was time, they wanted something different.

I have to admit when people tell me they are moving and I ask why (because I’m nosy like that, ask any of my neighbors) and they don’t say a reason that’s really beyond their control, it comes, like a reflex almost to me (I say it in my head, not out loud)–”How could you? Why would anyone want to leave?”.  Sometimes I joke our neighborhood is like “Hotel California” (the “you can check out but never leave” part).  I also silently think–if you can’t be happy in this neighborhood I can’t imagine you will be happy anywhere–which is of course, judgemental–different strokes for different folks and all that.

Moving often doesn’t allow for people to develop a true connection to place, which has a variety of negative effects–social isolation, less community involvement, less care for the environment.  I can’t help to think this is part of the reason so much of our grand country looks like unmitigated crapola–endless series of strip malls, big box stores, horrific, cheap housing that isn’t.  It looks like that because people don’t really care too much–they’re just going to move somewhere else soon.  Except there isn’t anywhere “else” really in this country–it all (with some exceptions of course) pretty much looks the same–crappy.

My 6 year old lost her first tooth today prompting her to ask this question:

“Is there any scientific proof the Tooth Fairy exists or is it just the parents?”

She hasn’t asked about Santa yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.

My  husband and I were watching CNN this weekend.  They briefly covered the wedding of one of the President’s daughters.  During the piece they showed images of the town it was held in and commented that the gift shops on the town’s small main street were sold out of items like mugs and mouse pads commemerating the event.  This struck me as odd as they are not royals and we are not England.  I said,

“Who would buy such an item?” and my husband replied,

“The same people who buy dinner plates with Marylin Monroe on them”.

I am a skeptic about absolutely everything.  I rarely take someone’s word, especially if I don’t know them or am unsure about their credentials to be making the claim they are making.  This has saved me thousands of dollars over the years. 

Yesterday I went to a quick change oil place and got a new pitch I hadn’t heard before.  They asked me how much I’d gone over my last oil change, which was about 1,000 miles.  They tsked and told me there was “built up gunk” in my engine and I needed to do an “oil flush” for an extra $15.  Then they showed me a sample of my motor oil which they said was “dirty” exemplifying the horrifyingly personal moral failing of my filthy engine.  I thought, “well, yeah of course it’s dirty it’s in a friggin engine, and isn’t that part of the point of getting an oil change?” but didn’t say anything as I figured it would be futile.  I told them I would consider the procedure for next time (translation: I think you’re full of crap and I’m going to go ask Dr. Google about this “required maintenance” before I fork over a dime).   They tried three more times in the 20 minutes I was there to convince me that not only did my engine need “flushing” but that my power steering fluid, transmission fluid, etc.. also required this car colonic–total cost: $200.

So I get home, and I do what I do with everything I’m not sure of: I research it.  And gee, guess what?  Found multiple sources stating basically this.  Saved myself $200 bucks with the BS detector.  A couple of other examples of skeptical savings:

1. Extended warranties.  Best Buy especially really pushes these, a very small percentage of people ever use them, they are not worth the money. 

2. Car rental insurance.  Agents telling you to get insurance are usually full of crap–your personal car insurance will almost always cover rental cars (make sure to check of course).

3. The “we can’t qualify you for the interest rate we first stated” trick at car dealerships.  They try to do this after you have taken the car home so you’ve gotten attached to it–don’t EVER take a new car home without the financing in place (and even then they may still try this), and know your credit rating before stepping in the door.  Better yet, don’t finance through car dealerships at all, secure financing through someone else, then go in to buy (don’t tell them you have the cash until after you negotiate a price however).

January: Grow the last of the winter amaryllis. Get royal pissed off when amaryllis ordered from fancy amaryllis breeder in Florida are not the Orange Sovereign you ordered (which matches your decorating scheme) but pink striped flowers which are nice but pedestrian.  Stare wistfully out window imagining trees with leaves on them.  Dream about the smell of pansies.

February: Obsessivley peruse seed catalogs.  Look at old photos of gardens from years past again and again to remember what they were like and what you liked about the color combinations.  Visit the butterfly pavilion which has a huge indoor greenhouse because you miss the smell of dirt.

March: Look every day for swelling buds on the crabapples.  Once they get large enough take shears and cut off several branches for indoor forcing.  Explain why you smash the end of the branches to your husband who is not in the least interested.  Check the nursery across the street every day as you drive by for the first pansies.  Buy two six packs the second they appear (March 21st).

April: Watch the daffodils grow, delight in the tulip buds breaking from the soil, you planted them last fall and they said they were orange–they better be.  Imagine what you will do to the rabbit that eats them.  Trim up all the perennials, notice how the Rose of Sharon looks so much like a dead twig but you know it isn’t so leave it alone.  Threaten husband not to pick ANYTHING unless asking you first what it is–he thinks everything not growing in the exact spot it was planted is a weed.

May: Try to wait until that frost free date (around May 10th), but never make it.  Come home with flats and flats of annuals on May 3rd.  Start planting containers.  They take more than a week to finish. When neighbor sees you pulling up to the front of the house and unloading flowers for the fourth time in two days, says you need an intervention.

June: Not happy with your own garden, add perennials to the pocket park down the street.  Yell at neighbor who lets dog piss on them.

July: Water containers twice a day.  Assess perennials and pull stuff out you don’t like, add new stuff because you can’t help yourself.

August: Relax to enjoy your efforts, watch hummingbird feed at the lobelia in your hanging baskets.

September: Think how much you like asters, you really should plant more but don’t have the room.

October: Assess which perennials look good in the fall–plumbago has the nicest red leaves.  Buy fall pansies even though you know for a fact they will most likely freeze solid.

November: For two days am relieved not to have to water, fertilize, or deadhead anything, then start thinking about what annuals you will plant next year.  Start amaryllis so they bloom in time for Christmas.

December: Go to fantastic orchid greenhouse and buy $30 orchid you will kill in two months, is the one plant you can’t seem to take care of.

Man did I get a kick out of this letter and answer on Salon.  It’s an advice column, and the advisor is surprisingly with-it in regards to new urbanism.  The comments section is amusing, most people have little or no sympathy for what they see as a rich dude bitching, but it just illustrates how many people really don’t get it–they don’t think about or understand how much our daily environment affects us.  I of course, also wrote a letter.

Then the infamous Gawker picked up on it, saying the advisor suggested the advisee move to “Fantasy Land“.  Guess what Gawker?  I live there, and it may be a fantasy, but it’s not imgainary.  Look it up–Bradburn Village in Westminster, Colorado–and yeah it rocks, so stick that in your cap and go back to hating everything (which is admittedly why I like you!).

Humans.  We’re an interesting lot.  No other one species in the history of the Earth has dominated it like we have.  Why is this?  Humans are the most socially adept animals in Earth’s history—we combine intelligence, tool-making, the ability to cooperate, and the ability to pass down information from one group or generation to the next.  We survived and prospered because we are social.  As a result, deep down in each one of us is the evolutionary need to belong, to be connected to other people.

The author of a new book, The Geography of Bliss, travelled to different places to see what makes people happy.  The short version?  Other people. Places that have great senses of community are the happiest.  This makes total sense to me of course because it supports my own personal experience.

I was sitting in one of my neighborhood parks the other day, just hanging out.  I’d spoken to, geeze, I don’t know, probably 7 different neighbors I knew in the prior hour on my walk around the neighborhood.  People I knew were everywhere, walking dogs, riding bikes, etc.. I know all these neighbors because the design of Bradburn Village facilitates easy social interaction.  I heaved a big sigh of contentment and I realized why: This is my place. This is where I truly feel I belong, I have a strong connection to this place as a result of my connections to my neighbors. Some of those connections are casual–the “Hi” variety–others are now close friendships.   Do I think this sense of connection can occur in a non new (or old) urbanist neighborhood?  Yes, of course, but I bet it’s harder.