The past 18 months have been pretty rough on my body. Beginning with my attempt to market a book proposal, passing through the bowel-churning highs and lows of initial feedback from editors and the signing of a contract (the day I sat in that HarperCollins boardroom is etched in my memory forever -- a room full of people who knew the book business, all of whom seemed as excited about my project as I was) and then of course the long, lonely winter of actually writing the darned thing (two or three times by last count), physical health was something that fell somewhat to the wayside. My skin dried out. I gained about 25 pounds. According to my wife, I've even been a little moody (hard to believe, really).
Like most of the rest of the planet, I passed the first few days of January filled with resolve to do things a little differently. To never let a piece of paper pass through my hands twice (deal with it first time around). To avoid writing novel-length emails (I suspect my editor would throw up a cheer if he knew this). To improve my fitness. As a long-time runner, it's slightly embarrassing, and a sign of just how far I've fallen, that my running program now consists of, well, walking.
It's just getting nicely underway, as they say in hockey, but my nightly walks are becoming somewhat ingrained and, predictably, they're leading to some work-like thoughts. Most of my favourite routes take me through the inner quarters of urban Kitchener, among narrow streets of houses, most of which look to be roughly 100 years old, perhaps give or take a decade. The houses are mixed in among an old industrial core that these days has become somewhat moribund. Everything is made overseas now, it seems, so there's less call for locally made stuff (as energy costs soar, this will change a bit -- but this is a subject for another blog, perhaps someone else's).
Last night, because of some other kid-related errands I had to run, I embarked on a different route, a little farther from the core, in a younger neighbourhood. Houses here looked as though they had been built in the 1970s perhaps. The walk was much less pleasant and engaging. I found that I spent most of it with my head bent forward, lost in my thoughts, oblivious to my surroundings, just wanting to get through the number of minutes of movement that I had contracted with myself so that I could get back home and back to work.
Tonight, back in more familiar haunts, the streets near my house, I was immediately struck by the contrast. I was surrounded by mixed architecture so interesting that every time I became lost in thoughts my head was jerked upward by some new and interesting sight -- a stately corner house with multiple balconies, perhaps even a tower of sorts on one side, beautiful leaded glass panels on the front windows. Not only were the houses more interesting, but I had a much stronger sense of actually being in a neighbourhood with such a palpable feeling of intimacy that I felt slightly awkward being there, as if I'd inadvertently just plodded into someone's living room.
The main contributor to this nice sense of intimacy and presence was, I think, the scale of the street and the houses. Unlike the newer neighbourhoods (and now this would include very modern 'burbs), the frontage of the houses was very narrow. With porches so close to the sidewalk that I could almost reach out and touch them, I was not only able to see inside rooms, but my other senses were engaged as well. I could sometimes hear music coming from inside the houses. Often, I could smell dinners cooking, or the inviting aroma of wood smoke from crackling fireplaces. In a way that is just not true of modern suburbia, I was there, in a real place.
Everything that I'm saying here will be old hat to anyone expert in urban development. We know that narrow streets with neighbours within shouting distance of one another, and houses whose contents almost spill out onto sidewalks make for great communities. So given this, how is it that we've let these principles get so thoroughly swept aside in our shiny new outer suburbs with streets wide enough to park Sherman tanks on both sides and front lawns deep enough to serve as soccer pitches?
Could it just be that those great flat swaths of empty land look so darned good, especially as you go flying past them in a fast car? Is our aesthetic of space so completely out of whack that we have become so confused about the difference between what appeals in a quick glimpse and what makes for a good life that we just don't know where or how to live anymore?
Short answer: yes.
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