Like many other old guys, nowadays I find my mind more
frequently drifting down nostalgic paths to those
good old days when things were simpler and life for most of us was more
fulfilling. It leads me to wonder if we, as an urban civilization, are evolving
or devolving.
Maple Ridge -- photo from years gone by |
Not that many decades ago, life out here in the suburbs
meant that families with three kids probably lived in an affordable 1,200
square-foot, three-bedroom home with an unfinished basement on a large lot. I
think it's an important distinction that we called it home, not just a place
where we lived. Some families called the
same house their home for several generations without any need to build a
bigger house.
As property values increased insanely, and more families
were forced through economics and other circumstances to live in townhouses or
apartments, fewer and fewer people thought of them as homes. It became just a
place where they all lived but it wasn't really a home.
Nowadays, that same family with three kids would be
looking for a 3,000 square-foot, four or five-bedroom house with a finished
basement and a bonus room above the three-car garage on a postage stamp-sized
lot. Somewhere along the way, we slipped
from being able to live our lives contentedly in those modest, smaller homes
over to the dark side and the insane demands of today's lifestyle.
As our communities grew and the age of subdivisions and
small lots emerged, it seems that more and more people from the city were attracted
to home ownership, even if it required two incomes and commuting to keep up
with the mortgage.
While both parents worked when it was their choice, the
negative aspects of our expanding lifestyles didn't seem so drastic but that
eventually changed and family life has suffered ever since.
Years ago it was commonplace to have a couple of fruit
trees and a small vegetable garden on your own property. Some families even had
a few chickens. We were able to some extent to be partly self sufficient but
those days are long gone. Small lots,
huge houses and the requirement for two incomes has left the vast majority of
people with no time, energy or space for even the tiniest vegetable garden or
fruit trees and God forbid anyone who wants to raise a few of their own
chickens.
In our old neighbourhood, we knew everybody, their dogs,
their kids and what they did for a living. People chatted over their fences. We
even communicated without cell phones and computers and we didn't hold block
parties to get acquainted because we already knew each other.
Nowadays there seems to be such a lack of neighbourliness
even in our local
stores. Years ago, when we did our weekly grocery shopping ,
we went to neighbourhood stores where we knew the owners. Almost nobody owned a
freezer but many of us rented frozen food lockers from the local butcher.
We knew our local store owners, many of whom even carried
some of their customers on credit. It was no surprise when they became our
friends and town leaders.
Many people view mega malls and sprawling subdivisions as
progress. That might be true but, at what cost?
In the past decade or so, in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows,
we have witnessed the loss of small community halls, neighbourhood schools,
small local stores and many other qualities which made our communities far more
livable than what they have since become.
We have lost so many of those neighbourhood values and
have devolved into a place we live ... but it isn't home as we once knew it.
Sandy Macdougall (aka the
Sidewinder) lives in Maple Ridge and is a contributor to "Thoughts on BC
Politics and More"
Rural culture is being eroded. Protecting our ecosystems through the world view that the earth is mans garden, not to be turned into a sprawling wasteland, has eluded many; as we stack ourselves on top of one another, corralled into urban cages, to go insane.
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