Kathy’s house bathes in light. The morning sun in my room is such a delight. The golden late afternoon sun visits Maria’s room, where at night the stars and moon shine through the window in the roof. We have an open fire and a big kitchen. A garden with a jacuzzi – something totally unimaginable for us and most of our friends back home in Europe. Here it is part of the lives of many people we come across. It’s amazing to be in the jacuzzi and see the morning sun or the stars at night.
The dark side: our house is in the middle of SUBURBIA. The film set of so many soap operas – we had no difficulties describing it to those friends back home who watch television. Now you’ll have to mow the lawn and put your pick-up truck or four wheel drive on the driveway, Wendy said. Yeah, i might first need to learn how to drive. And then Maria saw the black workers coming in these oh-so-white neighbourhood to mow the lawns. How uncomfortable such this division of labour feels. Fortunately Kathy finds it ridiculous to have a lawn, so our garden is wild. Let’s comfort ourselves by saying that we don’t really fit the cliché, which no doubt is the case for so many people stuck in suburbia. But suburbia continues to exist despite, and also through, all the misfits.
What is suburbia? What i see is a well-organised pattern of broad streets and small parcels of land containing a single house, a garage, a car, a lawn,… An overwhelming feeling of dominion: one individual kingdom besides the other rooted in the absolute rule of private property. The pedestrian walk further down our street just stops all of a sudden. Because somebody’s lawn stretches all the way to the street. Sure. And i’ve hardly ever been bothered by feelings of fear when walking the streets at night of a good number of European cities. But here i must admit that it can get pretty dangerous as soon as it gets dark: without decent public light you simply don’t see a thing (some houses might leave a light burning by the door or on the porch, others don’t). And forget the idea of quickly running down the street to get bread, or some more vegetables, or a bottle of wine. In these endless streets with little dominions there’s not even chance on a lost night shop. Actually, forget the idea of running anywhere, you basically need a car to organise life in a way that is not terribly time consuming.
People are really open and friendly here, that’s a fact. Very refreshing after the way in which people in Belgium can be really unfriendly, uninterested, xenophobic and closed. But being nice and leaving the light on in front of your house is not a replacement for a public sphere and the creation of common goods. The terribly old-fashioned European in me can’t help asking: where’s the polis, where’s the notion of a public sphere, the public good, a political body, a political community? Suburbia as the obscene celebration of their destruction…