fuzzykitten99
VIP Member
Personally, I would rather live where I do. I know my neighbors. I trust them. There is crime, but it is mostly from teenagers looking for a good time TP-ing people's houses. Or the criminals are intercepted from other areas.
If I lived in Minneapolis, most of my stuff would be missing from my garage and home. Why? Because I don't know how many times Tim or I have forgotten to close the garage door over night in the 2 years there, and the side door does not lock or even shut right. Our home's side door is unlocked 90% of the time. No real reason for it. I will never leave the 'burbs, let alone the house we are in. I don't ever plan on leaving a neighborhood where the kids can go play at the playground-by themselves- for hours in the summer and no one bothers them. The kids are out in full force, now that the weather has warmed a bit, playing various sports in the roads, and no one hassles them.
My grandparents lived at this house for 25 years. They almost never locked doors (cars, house, garage) unless they were leaving town for more than 2 days, and even then, the neighbors and my mom and I had the keys for feeding the cats.
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/315824.html
If I lived in Minneapolis, most of my stuff would be missing from my garage and home. Why? Because I don't know how many times Tim or I have forgotten to close the garage door over night in the 2 years there, and the side door does not lock or even shut right. Our home's side door is unlocked 90% of the time. No real reason for it. I will never leave the 'burbs, let alone the house we are in. I don't ever plan on leaving a neighborhood where the kids can go play at the playground-by themselves- for hours in the summer and no one bothers them. The kids are out in full force, now that the weather has warmed a bit, playing various sports in the roads, and no one hassles them.
My grandparents lived at this house for 25 years. They almost never locked doors (cars, house, garage) unless they were leaving town for more than 2 days, and even then, the neighbors and my mom and I had the keys for feeding the cats.
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/315824.html
University of Minnesota senior Jason Stevensen, who grew up in Monticello, is the only student in his "Suburban World" class willing to admit he likes the suburbs.
"I understand why a lot of people don't," he said. "But I just like a place like Rogers -- there's still kind of that peaceful tranquility there, even though it's growing like crazy."
The paint was barely dry on the first tract homes of the 1950s when colleges starting giving suburbs the cold shoulder in classes. But now more than half the nation has embraced suburban living. Suburban voters are playing a pivotal role in elections. And many suburbs are home to cutting-edge development.
Academia, at last, is taking notice.
"Millions and millions of people live in the suburbs," said Tim Mennel, an instructor at the U. "They can't all hate it. The idea that people want their own space is not going away."
He is among a growing number of academics designing new courses that focus on suburban life.
Mennel said he created his "Suburban World" course in part to challenge stereotypical views of suburbs.
Across the country, a few dozen campuses, including Yale, Harvard and Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., are offering courses similar to the U's suburban classes. Some campuses, from New York University to the University of California, Riverside, have just launched suburban programs.
At Carleton, a course that's called "Suburbanization in America" looks at how suburbs quietly revolutionized American life and how they are continuing to influence politics and the economy, race relations, architecture -- even the nation's definition of community.
At Yale, a course that's called "Suburbs, and the Problem of Sprawl" examines the forces that have shaped suburban development in the last century and requires students to write a 20-page term paper on the suburbs.
Even the British, whose intelligentsia have long scoffed at suburban living, are acknowledging that suburbs aren't going away. In 2004, the Centre for Suburban Studies opened at London's Kingston University.
John Archer, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, said suburbs have become too influential for universities to ignore.
"Academicians see themselves as keepers of the values of the culture," he said. "For generations, they've been interested in urban studies and have pretended suburbia doesn't exist. It's not a big field of study yet, but it's growing. That's who we are."
Field trips to the suburbs
Nearly all the students in the U's "Suburban World" class showed disparaging attitudes toward the suburbs when the course began, Mennel said.
"I was a little surprised at how negative they were, especially considering how many of them were from the suburbs," he said. "The venom surprised me."
Required reading for the course includes critical titles such as "The Bulldozer in the Countryside,"Residence: Inequality in Mass Suburbia," and "When City and Country Collide." Students also are assigned field work, and they have to go to Lakeville, Bloomington, Brooklyn Park or Lake Elmo to research issues such as historical development, race, class and politics.
Erica Lister, a 20-year-old sophomore from Hibbing, Minn., said she wasn't really familiar with suburban life before she took the class. Her impression was that suburbs were places "filled with big houses and rich kids."
But her research on the historical development of Brooklyn Park changed her mind. "Brooklyn Park isn't like that," Lister said. "It's more complicated than I thought."
The suburbs' growing place in modern life also means that the academic examination of them is cropping up in unexpected disciplines -- for example, wildlife and agriculture studies.
Rob Blair, an associate professor in fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at the U, is researching how sprawl affects the native bird population.
"I'm trying to figure out why if you throw a french fry on the ground it isn't an ovenbird or hermit thrush that picks its up, it's a house sparrow," he said. "We're creating environments that allow invasive species to thrive and shut out our native species."
Disdain still exists
After exploring Brooklyn Park and doing the required reading, Lister said the city still is her first choice of where to live in the future. Young adults have been showing that strong preference for decades.
But now, she is keeping an open mind. "I could imagine conforming and moving to the suburbs," she said.
Many of the 14 students in her class sound aghast at the idea of actually living in the area they're studying.
"I like density and the country being the country," said Monica Monjeau, 28, a senior from St. Paul. "I don't like driving 45 minutes to visit somebody; I don't like box retail. I like the individuality and uniqueness of the city."
That kind of attitude befuddles Stevensen, 25, the senior from Monticello.
"It feels like a lot of people think the suburbs are evil," he said. "This course may broaden people's horizons and challenge their stereotypes, but I don't think it's going to change the stigma of the suburbs. People don't grow up saying they want to live in the suburbs, at least not in this class. They want to live in an apartment and have the 'Friends' style of life."