Where people are relocating to 23 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Living incarnationally, Modern culture.1 comment so far
MSN hosts an interesting article from Business Week calculating the ten best places to relocate to in this sour economy. This doesn’t seem to easily fit any of The Aesthetic Elevator’s established categories, but the story caught my eye since my wife and I are in the throes of relocation (even though it’s not directly related to the economy).
No state is totally buffered from the downturn, but several have gotten a boost from the energy, military and agricultural sectors. The healthiest states include Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. In the Washington, D.C., area, federal government and defense jobs have given the economy a boost. And Iowa, which has seen its economy somewhat deteriorate, has also benefited from agricultural and alternative-energy jobs.
The top ten list is as follows:
1. Anchorage, Alaska
2. Provo-Orem, Utah
3. Kennewick-Richland-Pasco, Wash.
4. Yakima, Wash.
5. Omaha, Neb.,-Council Bluffs, Iowa
6. Richmond, Va.
7. Winston-Salem, N.C.
8. Colorado Springs, Colo.
9. Amarillo, Texas
10. Washington, D.C., Arlington-Alexandria, Va., plus areas in Maryland and West Virginia
The article on Business Week actually lists the top twenty if you’re interested. To a degree lists like this are usually pretty subjective, but still interesting.
Downtown Omaha, Nebraska. Image from Wikipedia.
Shoeboxes, spec homes creating ignorant Americans??? 11 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Aesthetics, Affluenza, Architecture, Entitlement, Living incarnationally, Modern culture.6 comments
The wife and I talked last night about real estate, newer homes versus older homes, realtors and so forth. And it got me wondering:
Has the glut of poorly designed spec homes thrown up in the U.S. from, roughly, 1960 on created a cultural deficit in that Americans look for the wrong things when choosing a place to live?
Since we’ve started looking for houses, actually since our friends began buying [mortgages for] houses five-plus years back, it’s been interesting to observe their choices and listen to their reasoning for said choices. There are some who, like my wife and I, crave the character (details), craftsmanship and environs found in many older homes in established parts of a city, but many people seem to be exclusively interested in newer homes.
From what I’ve been able to deduce, this usually stems from a desire for a maintenance free home (which, by the way, does not exist). Buyers want newer appliances and utilities and roofs. What they often fail to realize is that you’ll end up in the same boat as if you’d bought an older place that’s been cared for after just a few years. Appliances and utilities aren’t built as well as they used to be and, unless you plan on living in a house for only five years (give or take) you will probably end up needing to repair and/or replace the heating element in an oven, install a new water heater or buy a new air conditioner. I finally replaced the shiny stainless steel fan/light/heater in our bathroom last year which was likely original to our 1955 bungalow; the new one will probably die in less than ten years and is hideous in comparison to its predecessor.
Some men don’t want anything to do with painting the outside of a house as the sun and snow take their tole on soffits and siding . . . which reminds me that I need to post this picture,
a stunning example of why vinyl siding is not really better than wood. This was on the garage of one of the houses we looked at in Nebraska. It was shaded, as I recall, and on the East side of a house — not exposed to hot afternoon sun. I’ve also seen the stuff pop, warp, fade and crack and it’s just beyond me why it gets used so much. Painting every ten or fifteen years (assuming you use good paint, not the Walmart brand) is a lot easier than replacing siding every twenty-five years in my opinion. Further, slapping vinyl over existing finishes seems likely to encourage mold.
Does cultural wealth factor into this equation, where newer homes in the suburbs are representative of a certain affluence that some older neighborhoods don’t allow an owner to brag about? Perhaps young mothers are under the impression that the ‘burbs are safer for the kiddos. Maybe the entitlement some of us feel after growing up surrounded by such an affluent culture leads us to believe we deserve shiny new houses.
Regardless, I have to wonder if the suburban architecture perpetuated over the past five plus decades has resulted in a more ignorant culture. Is it possible that we don’t know what good design looks like anymore? We don’t realize what wasted space or good traffic flow is? And that we’re (somewhat intentionally) losing the ability to care for our own property under the guise of the “maintenance free?”
Older homes, by contrast, often excel in design and craftsmanship over new ones. Lumber used to build them was straighter and drier, and sometimes above and beyond what was required for the job. The 830 square foot house I was drawn to on our recent house-hunting trip employed 2 x 10s for floor joists. No wonder the place was so marvelously square after 75 years! Less space is wasted in homes of that age, generally, and built-in storage was more abundant. Sure, closets might be smaller, but are walk-in closets really all that great? Luxurious, yes, but they also encourage clutter in our consumerist culture.
Seasoned homes are normally, subjective as this may seem, more pleasing to the eye. It doesn’t take an inordinate number of complexities to make a house or community pleasing to the eye. Apparently a book titled A Pattern Language talks about how a house can be successful yet appear to be a fairly simple design (from the outside). I’ve been told many times by different people I need to read this book. It is on my Amazon wish list!
None of this is meant to imply that we should cease new home construction. Obviously, as populations increase and older homes that were not cared for (or weren’t built so well, or that highways or big-box stores are paving over etc etc) are torn down new dwellings will need to replace them. Why, though, should new homes perpetuate a bland, cheap, and unenduring suburban aesthetic? They shouldn’t, and they don’t have to. A friend of mine here in Siloam Springs hopes to found a residential construction company that will bring back the details and craftsmanship of the early 20th century. He started with his own home which includes such details as a breakfast nook and drawers built into the risers of the staircase.
Will my friend find enough of us who appreciate the details in a craftsman home to float his business? Americans seem to be dangerously content with lousy dwelling design. We’ve become afflicted as a culture with the Texas Syndrome, where as long as something is big or impressive it’s credible (Yes, I know that link isn’t precisely backing up my assertion, but it’s related and a good article.). We’d rather have a poorly designed 2,500 square foot house than a thought-through 1,200 square foot bungalow that functions just as well as it’s bigger brother. Shoeboxes with holes cut out for doors and windows litter new subdivisions and we eat them up. McMansions (and their smaller cousins in more modest subdivisions) flaunt ludicrously steep and wasteful rooflines, which wouldn’t be all that wasteful if the attic was actually used as living space. But it’s generally not.
My concern is that suburban design of the past fifty years has infiltrated our psyche, and that our aesthetic expectations have subsequently been wounded without our being aware of it. Some of this sentiment, thankfully, might be changing as Downtown, U.S.A., is revivified and younger generations move back into the heart of cities. But from where I sit, we have a long ways to go in many parts of the country, and a lot of people in the younger generations still aspire to a questionable suburban aesthetic.
Thoughts?
(As always, there are exceptions to the generalizations I’ve made in this post. Keep that in mind when commenting.)
Busyness hindering community in America 22 May 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Living incarnationally, Modern culture.add a comment
Quoted from my friend Tony’s blog, Rockstanding:
I read a book on stress a few years back, and the author made a side comment that I thought was so insightful. He said that the highest value of materialistic western culture is not possessing. It’s actually acquiring.
If you’re a go-getter you never stop. And so the guy who is lavishly successful doesn’t quit, because there are greater levels of success. “My house could be bigger, I could drive better cars, I could have more power, I could have more money.”
So our materialism, consumerism, affluenza is a result of our workaholism? New thought to me, definitely worth pondering. Personally I tend towards the go-getter end of the spectrum, which is talked about in the above quote. I am not — thankfully — of the mind that “My house could be bigger, I could drive better cars, I could have more power, I could have more money.” My goals and dreams in life, the way I measure success in life is not relative to status or material possessions. Regardless, the idea that busyness hinders community resonates with me.
On public transit and urban community 17 April 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Living incarnationally, Mass transit.1 comment so far
Rebecca Tirrell Talbot wrote an article titled Of Public Transit and Human Nature for today’s issue of The Curator Magazine. Fascinated as I am by transit (and in some ways the city of Chicago) I read the whole article, not too long and not too short for an internet publication.
Talbot makes some interesting observations concerning the trains in Chicago and their riders, how different lines possess different personalities, how riders in general react (or don’t react) to certain behaviors. I’ll let you read the article (linked to in the first paragraph) for the details after saying one thing: People in the city really wear iPod earbuds like they’re implants. I noticed this on the trains in New York back in February. It’s something we — and by we I mean American culture — made fun of a few years back. Here in our tiny midwestern town you don’t see it very often, hardly at all actually.
Photo from Wikipedia by Daniel Schwen.
On picking a place and putting down roots 9 April 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Living incarnationally, Modern culture, New Urbanism, Personal reflection.5 comments
These might be things I’ve already said, or at least alluded to, on the blog before, but since we’re in the throes of the selling-moving-buying game I thought I’d share some recent observations.
No good place to find rentals online
On our break yesterday afternoon — playing bocce ball on the office lawn — my boss quizzed me on the direction my wife and I are going. He was under the impression the search for a house was driving our plans, and wondered why we weren’t looking at rentals given some of the details surrounding our circumstance.
Without getting into the boring details, I’ll just say that renting for any length of time doesn’t seem feasible to us. Part of this may be the difficulty in finding quality rentals, with garages for my studio, using the internet. Finding houses to buy online is easy. Websites touting decent results for rental properties, nil.
Dealing with realtors is tricky business
So far my wife and I have dealt with three different realtors while looking at real estate in the same city. Last night she astutely noted that there’s no training to be had in realtor etiquette. How right she is. I like going to the listing agent to get more and more accurate information more quickly. She likes the idea of a neutral party showing us a house, as an advocate for us the buyer. We have good reason for the communication we’ve had with each of these women, and each has given some of their time. Inevitably, at this point, two of the three — and possibly all three — will not get paid for their time.
From where we sit, that’s just part of their business. Compare it to a trade where, for instance, a carpenter bids on a project but doesn’t get it. He took the time to survey the situation and submit a proposal, but in the end won’t get paid for that effort. That’s just part of the business. Real estate seems to be more competitive in nature than carpentry though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we make one of the three aforementioned realtors a tad mad.
Listing the qualities of a place you desire to live
“Why buy if you don’t plan on being in a place for more than two years?” the boss wondered over bocce yesterday. As I mentioned, a garage — or some kind of studio space such as a basement or outbuilding — is one of a few things on our list of what we want in a place we live. Unless there’s a decent co-op in a city, apartments and condos just won’t cut it. And by decent, I mean a place with inexpensive enough dues, a soda kiln and space for carving on wood. Painters, it seems to me, have it easy in comparison to us three-dimensional types as far as what qualifies as useful studio space.
A few other things on our list include living on the plains (we both like the wide open spaces), a decent church in town, somewhere further north than Arkansas and a nearby selection of gluten free groceries to accommodate my wife’s diet. We’d really like to be in a place with a liberal arts college and — as consumerist as this may sound — nearness to a Kohl’s and Old Navy is on the list. This latter point is practical for us, after living in a town of 14,000 for six years without a decent clothier. Walmart doesn’t count, and we just don’t want to drive 40 minutes one way to gander at the sales every other month.
On putting down roots in a particular place
I met Rebecca Horton in the bookstore at the IAM Encounter conference back in February. She was pointing out The Architecture of Happiness to some people, and I couldn’t help but chime in to affirm the book. Our all too brief conversation took off on that note, since it’s a somewhat obscure title that not very many people have read, in general.
We exchanged business cards and since then I’ve followed her blog, Passionately Alive, and found today’s entry quite captivating. She talks about her life in Washington D.C., after growing up in a small town, and concluded the post by asking some good questions:
What impact does place/community have upon the way we choose to live our lives? What impact does our location have upon the things that we value/esteem? These are questions that I’ve been pondering significantly over the last several months . . .
“A community, unlike a public, has to do first of all with belonging; it is a group of people who belong to one another and to their place.” (Wendell Berry, Sex Economy Freedom and Community, 147-148)
Undeniably, where we grew up and where we live presently shapes how we think and act. Kathleen Norris speaks to this in her book Dakota: A spiritual geography, comparing her life in New York to life on the northern plains in a community of 1,300 people.
The house that’s too good to be true in a place that’s, well, ugh
So yesterday we received a flurry of information about a house we thought had potential, based on the online listing. Turns out it could be just about perfect for us and our present needs; the only catch is that it’s in a flood zone and we’d have to pay for flood insurance, the bank owning the house and all, us paying the mortgage.
We have good reason for moving to Enid, Oklahoma, where this house is situated, in the short term. Neither of us want to live there for the long-term though. Per our above list there’s no liberal arts college — although there is a two-year college where I kind of hope to be able to teach a class or two in their art department — and it’s too far south. In a recent email conversation with a friend about our present pickle he said this:
It is hard to picture you feeling settled in Enid, but I think to some extent that is due to the question of what the proper habitat of an artist is: creativity in collaboration? (the usual answer) or creativity as a a gift of beauty and perspective in a place where both are lacking? If the former, Enid sounds like the desert. If the latter, an un-tapped mine.
Well put, and things my wife and I have not left unconsidered. He did well to use the word “gift,” and also touches on my growing interest in how to get the arts to thrive in smaller communities, those “untapped mines.”
Part of the larger pickle is, though, that we don’t know exactly where we’d like to settle. I know that I would like to put down some roots, become a part of a place for ten years give or take and see what God does with me there. I want to be part of a community, which takes time.
Putting down roots seems to be a lost art in the United States. I’m not suggesting that the flexibility afforded by modern transport which Americans so often take advantage of is a bad thing in and of itself, but we seem to have forgotten the value of time and place.
Getting over an American dream 28 March 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Personal reflection, Siloam Springs.7 comments
My wife and I are, in essence, being forced again to think about moving. We’d like to believe we have a variety of options, that we can go anywhere we want to put down new roots on a whim. That’s part of our American culture, isn’t it, the freedom to be transient?
We considered cities and small prairie towns. We talked specifically about moving to a community known for the arts, and thought about moving north to be in a colder climate more conducive to my wife’s knitting and crocheting.
So when the best we can come up with after wrangling with ideas for six months or more is moving back to the nondescript midwestern town in which I graduated from high school, the whole scenario feels regressive. The American dream entails either moving to the city or to an estate in the suburbs (not that I’ve necessarily ever aspired to these). Plains communities of 50,000 people just don’t qualify.
Why this would bother me to begin with I don’t know. I’ve never really been a fan of the progressive ideal — which seems more like an excuse to embrace any and every new philosophy that comes along than an ideal. But last night, in a half-asleep and slightly irrational 5 a.m. moment, it did bother me. It kept me awake for more than an hour. I tossed and turned and tried to get it out of my head altogether. I just wanted to go back to sleep, knowing the paranoia would dissipate at an hour proper for humans to think about serious matters.
And it did.
We’ve rehashed the thought of moving again and again. Real estate in Grand Island, Nebraska, the Plains city in question, is very inexpensive, particularly the building we have in mind which would serve as our apartment and my studio — a large studio — with 1,000+ square feet of retail besides. It is further north, which is good for my wife’s craft and for my allergies. It’s on the prairie which is great for storm chasing. Point being, it’s not just the easy way out, moving back to where the family lives.
Further, I’ve become more interested in the past year at how the arts can really thrive in smaller communities. In some ways, ways that aren’t as immediately accessible to me here in Siloam Springs, moving back to Nebraska will allow me to play a more integral role in that city’s artistic nexus.
I suppose I’ll just have to live with being a regressive person. Drat, and blast. Of course, in the scheme of things, isn’t part of the progressive ideal being counter-cultural? And if I’m bucking the American dream and know it, isn’t that counter cultural and thus progressive?
Such wonderful logic.
Photo of the 1980 Grand Island, Nebraska, tornado outbreak. From Wikipedia.
The Gilmore Girls and community 9 January 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Community planning, Live car free, Living incarnationally, New Urbanism.4 comments
For Christmas, I gave my wife the first four seasons of Gilmore Girls.
We’ve already seen all of the episodes on DVD, but the wife has talked for a couple years about buying the series for background candy while she’s knitting or crocheting. And, as emasculating as it may be to admit this, I’m O.K. with owning the show too. Really, it’s darn good television.
Over the past week we’ve watched quite a few of the episodes already, as part of a regimen to recuperate from our trip (I’m still not completely over that evil mega-cold). Seeing the shows again reminds me of the incredible sense of community portrayed in Stars Hollow.
Stars Hollow, the small fictional town of 10,000 people 30 minutes outside of Hartford, Connecticut, was loosely based on the community of Washington, Connecticut. The Hollow is a tight little ville centered around a square with a gazebo. Most — if not all — of the businesses in the show are on the town square, and pedestrianism seems to be a way of life for the program’s characters. Lorelai and Rory, the two main characters, are rarely seen driving around town. They walk to Doose’s Market. They walk to the Luke’s diner. They walk to the bookstore to watch old films in the evening.
What an enviable lifestyle in so many ways.
It’s difficult for me to imagine a modern town of 10,000 (roughly the population of Siloam Springs when I moved here almost six years ago) actually functioning like this. Particularly, it’s hard to believe that there would be such a variety of useful businesses on the town square. Wouldn’t there be a Walmart along a highway that runs through town? (There is a Walmart in Stars Hollow per a third season show.) How could Doose’s Market, a tiny little corner grocer, compete with that? (There are ways, I know, for small businesses to survive in the midst of grossly large chains. I’m speaking in stereotypes here, as well as from my own experience.)
However, Stars Hollow apparently depicts a fairly typical small New England community, at least according to a Hartford Courant writer in 2002 (quote from Wikipedia):
Unlike the Hartford depicted on Judging Amy, the Stars Hollow of The Gilmore Girls rings true. The town’s antiques shops, small businesses, schools, government and infrastructure look the part. But where Sherman-Palladino has truly excelled, despite her Clueless origins, is in her drawing of colorful Connecticut characters. The populace of Stars Hollow, from the town busybody to the town troubadour, is familiar to any Nutmegger who ever attended a town meeting.
117,000 employees and 17,000 residents 11 December 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Community planning, Live car free, Living incarnationally, Mass transit, Modern culture, New Urbanism, Sustainable living.1 comment so far
From an All Things Considered story on Tyson’s Corner, just outside of Washington D.C.:
“About 17,000 live here and about 117,000 — give or take — come to work here every day,” Lecos says. “So that incredible imbalance is why you have the absolute commuter nightmare of trying to get 117,000 people in, in one period of time in the morning, and out again at 5 o’clock.”
Commuter nightmare I’d say. The interview also calls Tyson’s Corner, which offers a whopping 167,000 parking spaces, a traffic engineer’s worst nightmare. The All Things Considered story focuses on a potential remodel for the community, trying to raise it’s population to 100,000 and cut down on the number of commuters. The key to that, it appears, is building up instead of out. This is a piece of advice my grandfather has suggested for years, long before the term New Urbanism was coined.
Sounds like a plan. Illustration from the Tyson’s Tomorrow website.
The value of the slower life 10 December 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Business of art, Intentional observation, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Siloam Springs.3 comments
I’m presently reading Kathleen Norris’ Dakota: A spiritual geography. In the book, Norris relays her rural experiences on the western plains of South Dakota. She moved back to the state of her birth after growing up in Hawaii and living in New York City. Her city friends thought she was crazy for moving to an isolated community of 1,600 people, giving up the network of artists surrounding her in The Big Apple.
The book talks often about the struggles of life on the Great American Desert, for artists and for everyone else under that big sky. For instance, she wasn’t able to get grants as a writer living in Lemmon, South Dakota, like she had been able to in the city. But the isolation brings advantages over city life too. From the book:
Like all those who choose life in the slow lane — sailors, monks, farmers — I partake of a contemplative reality. Living close to such an expanse of land I find I have little incentive to move fast, little need of instant information. I have learned to trust the processes that take time, to value change that is not sudden or ill-considered but grows out of the ground of experience.
Living life more slowly gives us the opportunity for intentional observation. This is key for artists, who take in, digest and interpret the world around them. It can be done in the city, but Norris is correct when she says that it’s easier to do in more rural environs.
Would it be ideal for artists to live in a small town outside of a city — preferably a small town with a liberal arts university? This would gain them access to both the networks in a larger metropolitan area and the slower pace of country life that lends itself to more careful observation (and patience in creation, perhaps). Siloam Springs fits this scenario, being about 40 minutes from The Strip, a collection of cities along I-540 250,000 people call home. Seward, Nebraska, is another possibility — and is situated on the wide open prairie. Seward is a nice little community of 6,000 about 30 minutes outside of Lincoln, Nebraska, and is home to Concordia University. What about Grove City, Pennsylvania, 50 miles north of Pittsburgh? Its residents number around 8,000 and it also houses a private Christian college.
I have a hard time, personally, believing that I’d fair well in a small town without the cultural anchor of a liberal arts college, even if it’s only half an hour from a cultural mecca such as New York City. Norris points out more than once in Dakota that the only people in Lemmon to have concerted intellectual discussion with are the clergy and teachers. She also points to a quote from a Dakota professor lamenting the lack of arts in their states. Without art, the professor points out, the states will lose their culture.
Neighborly intent 28 October 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Living incarnationally, Modern culture, New Urbanism, Northwest Arkansas.3 comments
My wife was expecting a package from her sister a couple of weeks ago. When it didn’t come and didn’t come — even though UPS claimed it had been delivered — we learned that her sister had the wrong house number for us in her address book.
The package, thus, had been delivered to our neighbors. They had kept it, unopened, not knowing who it was actually intended for. When I knocked on their door after my wife figured out what happened to the box, they were expecting me.
I’ve written before about wanting to know my neighbors, to live incarnationally where I’m planted. I know some of them. I know Joe, Caleb and Jay (who happens to pastor my church). Kevin used to live across the street but is renting his house now, and the house across from his is also a rental. A Salvadorian family lives in the house that our box was delivered to. I’ve had one short conversation with the brother of the owner, who seems to be much more fluent in English than the owner herself.
She didn’t know enough to realize that the name on the package lived right next door.
I’ve had intentions every year of taking Christmas cookies or May Day baskets to my neighbors, but for one reason or another it never gets done. For the last two years I’ve hoped to have a summer grill-fest for the neighborhood. I’ve mentioned it to Jay and Caleb for the past two years, and they’ve been game but it’s never come together. We even have a new neighbor that Jay’s befriended with an incredible patio and one of these uber-ultra-mega stainless steel grill setups (that house has been undergoing a two year long renovation).
I don’t necessarily expect to be friends with all of my neighbors. Joe and I actually worked together remodeling houses before my wife and I moved into our bungalow. I’ve tried to keep the relationship up, but we just don’t have much in common at all. We still wave at each other as we leave for work or come home for lunch; we still chat over the fence a few times a year. Caleb actually knows my wife from college, but we’ve never had he and his wife over for dinner.
In this age of the automobile, Americans seem to pick their friends solely based on mutual interests. I can understand the desire for this as much as anyone. I’ve gone years without someone I could really talk to about the things I’m passionate about, and it’s not very fun. But I don’t think we should limit ourselves to those kinds of relationships just because we can, thanks to cars and the internet.
I’m feeling a bit hypocritical for having written here in the past about proactive neighborliness when I haven’t followed up my intent with action. There might be some legitimate reasons — five of the nearest houses have seen new occupants in the last two years, for instance — but they don’t quell my desire to see communities act more like communities on a geographic level.
