I’m curious to know how people who grew up in Columbia, Reston, or other planned communities with an articulated city mission thought about this as children. What effects, if any, did growing up in a contemporary planned city have on you? Did you think it was a good idea at the time? What do you think now?
I’m posting here rather than elsewhere because I’m interested in what it meant and means to people.
Wrong forum, dude/tte. Try IMHO.
jjimm, I’m asking here rather than IMHO because this is not just a question like “What was it like to grow up in Dublin?” These communities had, and to some extent still have, particular philosophical intentions. I’m interested to know what it meant to people to grow up in these places in particular, and hope to hear, for example, whether they think it’s a viable way to structure a community. To my mind, this is a values question, similar to questions posted in this forum about other aspects of intentional community life, e.g. religious experience, handgun ownership, or freedom of speech.
Well still IMHO (IMHO!), but it’s not my decision. Good luck!
Well, jjimm, it’s a great debate to me.
I live in the country and I’ve never wanted to live in one of those hardcore ‘planned’ communities. They always seem to locked in place without leaving a lot of freedom of movement.
And example: we were at dinner a week or so ago at some friends place. During dinner we noticed two people standing on the sidewalk looking at the house. They kept referring to a clipboard.
John went out there and they told him they were doing a ‘neighborhood inspection’ and that he’d have to roll his hose up properly or be fined.
Where I live we answer that sort of thing with buckshot.
Don’t get me wrong: live where you want to live. But the persistent need to control other people can come out in the worst ways in these sort of communities.
I admit that Reston has done it better than most. The planned city center is attractive and genuinely does serve as a community gathering spot. Unlike Columbia’s Mall which doesn’t really serve any ‘community’ purpose other than shopping.
Oh, I live in NoVa near the WV line. Thought you might need to know that. I know both communities fairly well.
Please enlighten this poor Canadian. What, exactly, is a “planned community”? Like in that delightful episode of the X-Files where Mulder and Scully pretend to be a married couple?
I grew up in Reston. I don’t ever remember liking it much, even as a child; I’m the sort of person who distrusts things that are too new and too tidy, and a town without cemeteries seems just plain wrong. Having moved away eight years ago, I’m now willing to admit there are some admirable things about the community, such as the fact that the planners made an effort to make it walkable (but the combination of suburban paranoia, laziness, and the Coming of the Strip Mall has left the paths largely deserted). I can’t say growing up in a planned community had a great deal of impact on my values one way or another; it’s nice if you like that sort of thing, but it’s not for me.
On the other hand, I do consider myself privileged to have spent twelve years in a public school system that really worked, but I would have had that experience growing up anywhere in Fairfax County.
Well, I didn’t grow up in Columbia but I did live there for a year. I’m a city girl so I hated every minute of it. It was so…fake.
I didn’t view it any differently than living in a suburban area, Shoshana.
I lived in Bowie, MD for two years, with my dad, who’s lived there for at least 10 years. (BTW, it’s pronounced like buoy, the floating thing, not like the singer.) It’s an older planned community than Columbia or Owings Mills, but it’s twice as creepy because all the houses look the same. By which, I mean that there are 4 or 5 different layouts of houses that were all laid down pre-fab in the early 60’s. The streets are organized in sections by letter (A “T” section, a “W” section, etc.). I think there was nothing in the community besides the houses and churches for years. No bars, and only a few restaurants.
A few years ago some developers decided they needed to expand the retail options. They built a mall on the edge of town, called it the Town Center and tried to make it look like Main Street, Anytown, USA.
The whole idea is the most fake thing I could ever imagine. Bowie people don’t even go there; they go to Annapolis and other up-scale areas to shop.
Re-reading the OP now, I realize the question was about people growing up in these communities. Well, I can say I still hated it even though I didn’t grow up there.
And I guess I can tackle the Canadian question. The “X-Files” ep called “Arcadia” was a fairly accurate representation of planned or gated communities (without the monsters, of course). That one took place out in California, but I’d think they’re essentially the same all over.
Planned communities essentially grew out of the Baby Boom of the 50’s & 60’s, as people got tired of the dirt & crowds of the cities and wanted to live in the country but keep their city jobs. So essentially an entirely separate city would be built outside of town purely as a place for these people to live. I’m sure it worked well for many years, but as people migrated out of the cities, the suburbs have become urban areas of their own with their own traffic congestion problems. (See Virginia, Northern) In a few years the DC area will probably be a 24-hour traffic jam.
I lived in Reston from ages 13 through 21 (1982-1990). I don’t think I thought about the “planned community” aspect too much. Although all the woods and paths were very nice (especially for bored teenagers looking for someplace out of the way to smoke pot). I did complain about it a lot, and moved out as soon as I could, but most of that was just ordinary teenage angst, and I probably would have complained about anywhere I lived.
I guess it’s a nice enough place. But I definitely wouldn’t buy a house there. Way too many rules about what you can and can’t and must do with your own property. (And way too expensive besides.)
[aside]
Fretful Porpentine, I wonder if we knew each other? I was South Lakes class of '87.
Well, I’m class of '94, so I’m probably a few years too young to have known you, and if that’s your real name in your e-mail address, it doesn’t ring any bells. Sorry.
I also spent a few years in Reston, VA. I hated every minute of it.
My parents had just divorced. My mom didn’t have a lot of money, so she signed a two-year lease on a townhouse in Reston, in what seemed to me to be the bad part. Ours one of two white families for about half a mile. I got my ass kicked every day by this kid named Lynn. Even thought he wasn’t as big as me, I had to let him beat me down because his brother, Big Bobby (6’6", at least 350 lbs.), stood behind him with at least 10 of his boys and his hand on a revolver.
Maybe I just ended up in a bad part or the neighborhood. I truly hope so.
I was a teenager in Reston in the 70s. At the time, I thought the place was too prefabricated and artificial, but I go back now and am amazed at how pretty the place is. There were only two buildings that predated 1963, Bowman Mansion and the distillery, and at least one of them has been razed in recent years. Nearly all the free-standing houses in Hunter’s Woods were Rylands, and they had a real slapped-together quality to them.
(I used to date a girl from what I presume to be Lord Ashtar’s neighborhood, which was called Fox Mill at the time but was changed to Stonegate. It was a scary place, an island of poor/working class amid rich and super-rich neighborhoods.)
The X-FILES reference was apt. At my recent 20-Year Herndon High School reunion, I found out that five or six families on my block were CIA. I only knew about two (They had “Bush for President” bumper stickers as early as 1979!).
I kinda miss the place, although I only go back once or twice a year. It’s, like, 12 miles away.
My SO’s sister has relatives that live in Celebration, FL (the Disney planned community). She visited last December and says the place is Stepford Wives creepy. They had regularly scheduled “snowfalls”–hey, it’s Florida; you’re not gonna have a naturally white Christmas-- where machines would blow soap flakes around the town square.
I live in Herndon, right next to Reston, and I recently got a letter from the Homeowner’s Association about house repairs and trimming trees. Now, Herndon is no planned community. It was founded in 1858 and used to be a little ol’ country town long before Washington DC suburban sprawl engulfed it. It still has a character of its own that is nothing like Reston.
Once we were thinking of moving and looked at a house in Reston, near the Terraset elementary school. It was a revolutionary new concept in architecture in its day, supposed to be more environmentally friendly because it was sunk into the earth. But over the years the over-reliance on concrete doesn’t look very good; concrete turns grody-looking and develops rust stains from the metal used with it. I still like Reston for all its trees; in Herndon the developers are ravenous about cutting down the few remaining trees in what is ironically nicknamed “Tree City, USA.” :rolleyes:
A “planned community” does seem like a trite idea nowadays, but R4ston looks relatively good compared to the place on the other side of Herndon. It’s called Sterling and is nothing but sprawl on steroids. It cannot be called a community because it is nothing but a gigantic growth on the landscape; it does not feel like anyplace, no center, no character. I stayed in Herndon because it actually has a sense of place; you feel like you’re somewhere.