When we first moved to our new home, we knocked on a few doors in the street to introduce ourselves to people; we had the privilege of some good friendships in our last house, and wanted to 'get off on the right foot' here.
As we got around our neighbours, we learned that the people who had lived in our house before us were (what would been called 30 years ago) recluses. In other words, they would typically come home from work, disappear into the house, and not be seen again.
Today, we call that lifestyle 'normal'. So let's spend just a few minutes looking at how the physical features of a house itself might encourage this sort of 'normality'.
The dominant feature of the property is the house itself (preferably 2 imposing storeys), introduced to us by that slab of concrete / stencilled tiles out the front which spreads all the way down to the road. There used to be a space in there known as 'your footpath', but for the sake of simplicity we now call all of it 'my driveway'.
Some sort of very formal garden may exist out the front, or there might just be a concrete wall (you know, for ease of maintenance).
Phil Hewett of Newcastle Council believes that the people who choose to live behind these massive slabs of concrete infrastructure should be compelled to paint large-scale baboon buttocks on their properties. Yes, it's gross. But his point is: this is what you're saying to your neighbourhood.
So that's the front yard.
Out the back we have a fence. If we are to use the word 'backyard' at all, we evoke images of a walled-in space never used by children because it creates [justified] feelings of claustrophobia. This area is usually tiled or concreted, and always seem to be dark and damp in a trendy neo-Dickensian style.
In between the driveway and the fence we have the house. In a bygone era we spoke of a block of land (probably a quarter-acre, perhaps even a half-acre?) with a house on it. The house was only part of the living experience; people were actually known to spend serious amounts of time outside (and no, taking out the garbage is not considered 'serious time').
The inside of the house is like a universe. While the average number of Australians living in a house has fallen from 3.1 in 1976 to 2.5 in 2004, the average size of Australian houses has gone up. In the 1980's the average living area per person was 50sqm; it's now around 80sqm.
The loungeroom is dominated by a television so big you need the peripheral vision of a duck to take it all in. But that's not the only thing getting bigger: the massive twelve-seater leather lounge (bought on credit) moulds to our ever-increasing girth. The four-door fridge contains all we could ever want, and the high speed wireless internet which is available in every room allows us to shop online and have everything delivered to the front door.
No wonder public groups like The Heart Foundation are in the ear of major developers and councils, trying to get new housing estates redesigned so that this unsustainable, sedentary lifestyle (and the lack of neighbourly engagement it promotes) does not continue into the future.
I cannot believe so many of us actually call this sort of existence 'living'; I can believe even less that we speak of 'living in a neighbourhood'. It frightens me that we actually have the gall to speak of others as being unapproachable and unfriendly when the very way many of us choose to live betrays itself as unapproachable and unfriendly.
Maybe it's time to escape the barricades and take some fresh cookies over to next door. Or to mailbox the street and dare to have a BBQ out in your front yard on top of the big driveway. Just because we live in houses like these does not mean we need to succumb to the conditioning that they seem to promote.
Let's get past the walls and build some bridges. Perhaps a long weekend like this one is the perfect time to do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment