Finding Our Soul

I'm not really sure to begin. This isn't a linear thing. So I'll just jump in.

I was thinking today about our collective "soul" - in terms of the collective pieces of regions. The soul of the MSA perhaps. We talk about the soul of the city as the center, or the most happening area. The soul of New York could be Times Square (debatable). And so on.

But I'm not sure this is true. Rather, we can't look at what the city wants us to see. That is its public face. The good side. The one you see on the first date. To really understand a city, try to have a conversation with it when it first wakes up and hasn't brushed its teeth yet. Stand in close.

I'm going to run down this path. Try to keep up.

The nature of the city can be found in its suburbs and exurbs. Far from what some New Urbanists want you to believe, there is a lot to learn out in the places they don't go. There is a veneer of sameness to suburbs around the country (and the world), but they are dynamically different because of how its core treats them. (Architect speak may say how the core activates the shell). Suburbs are like the end of the cue. It is the place where you have to be because there were all those other people in front of you. Some cues are orderly and quiet, moving along a nice pace. Others, like waiting in the ticket line for a 14 hour flight, are chaos.

Take Boston for example. The suburbs of Boston are interesting because they never really saw themselves in that manner. Brockton, Lowell and Salem were manufacturing centers. Lexington was a place people lived. Most of the suburbs around Boston are really towns -- real towns -- in their own right that have been engulfed by the city (or in this case, the MSA).

Washington DC though is different. While there were some important centers, they are pretty much gone today. Now, a sea of subdivisions, office parks and shopping centers surround the core.

More on this later. I need to let it simmer a bit.