One hundred and thirty-one years of editorial freedom

Several weekends ago, when the temperatures were below twenty and snow was still a little exciting, my housemates and I found ourselves inside the Micheal’s craft store on Washtenaw Avenue. We had come for small projects that would fill in our overestimations of free time: sewing needles, watercolors, new writing pens. 

We checked out and paid for our items, and upon exiting through the automatic doors, we looked up to see a transformed sky. During the thirty minutes spent inside the windowless store, the colors above us turned from an agreeable blue to determined shades of orange, rose and purple, and the clouds took turns reflecting these colors into vivacious paint strokes. We marveled at the way the bird spikes atop the corporate logos glistened in the low sun’s rays, and used our feet to move ourselves in small circles, in an attempt for our eyes to capture the enormity of it all.

We wondered: Why do sunrises and sunsets look so much better in parking lots?

This phenomenon is not completely new to me. In high school, one could open up Snapchat at 7:30 a.m. on any given weekday to see half a dozen or more stories featuring the same sun. It played its role as the red orb hovering below the traffic lights, the rays piercing above generic shrubs or the glow over single-story buildings, as seen through your mom’s minivan window. Among the harsh horizontality of the city’s outskirts was the possibility of beauty, the beige walls cast in a shimmer of gold.

The neighborhood I grew up in, Riverside Gardens, can be interpreted as an inspired garden suburb. These types of locales are characterized by their integration of nature into the residential street fabric, where tall sycamore trees line the streets in front of the one and two-story single family homes. Unlike their relative, the garden city, the garden suburb does not weave industry or workplace into its quilt of foliage. Instead, it poses itself as a place to sleep — nothing else. 

Growing up in a garden suburb, I was often frustrated by the lack of activities surrounding my home. The great distance to cultural centers like art museums and performance halls was defeating to a teenager who didn’t know how to drive. What is there to do in the quiet privacy of my aging residential neighborhood?

Enter the neighborhood Facebook page. A relatively common fixture of the suburban subdivision, these groups seek to break down the boundaries between the brick walls and front doors, and to replicate the serendipity encounters that are rare in neighborhoods like ours. Like in real life, there are characters and stereotypes that occupy the virtual posting wall, all existing within the morally ‘iffy’ space that is watching people interact for your own entertainment. 

In our own “Riverside Gardens Neighborhood 49505” group, there is the event planner who creates polls on which food truck to bring to her front lawn in hopes of a springtime social. Then there’s the young man who posts videos of himself running 13 miles while carrying a full size American flag. And, of course, the older woman who shares photos of her bruised knee in a graphic tale of the dangers of ice. What might be strange to share on one’s personal social platform is fair game here, and these oddities add colorful virtual chatter to streets that are almost silent when one steps outside the front door.

For my father, however, what is most interesting about the neighborhood page is something notably less human. A group of turkeys, numbering about half a dozen, wander through our backyard. My dad takes a few photos, conjures a caption of their number and location and, some taps later, uploads them to be viewed by all of our neighbors. Several other users might comment, and in a few days the process will repeat itself with a new neighbor. A conspiracy theory may emerge, hoping to describe the fluctuation in numbers that circulate under the photos. 

Scrolling through the virtual depths of Riverside Gardens, the turkeys seem to be a popular subject for socialization over the years. Photo shoots include the flightless birds atop of a decorative fountain, in a standoff with a car, occupying the drive-through of a Burger King, or chasing after a mail carrier. 

This is where the magic of the Suburban Facebook Group shines: the mundane is made spectacle with the addition of the unpredictable. In our case, it is the whims of twenty pound creatures as they navigate the built environment. Are the turkeys special because of the suburban boredom they cure, or are the events like these what draw people to the suburbs in the first place?

Back in Ann Arbor, my boredom is often cured by following digital rabbit holes on Google Maps. I ignore Canvas notifications and open a new tab on my web browser to decide where I want to travel or live. Sometimes it’s along the rugged coast of New Zealand, other times its unrealistic apartment hunting in New York City. Before spring break, in a frivolous form of preparation for my trip to the Southwestern United States, I dragged my little yellow street view guide from the bottom right corner, and let it go somewhere outside Phoenix, Arizona, in a suburb called Surprise. 

Notably, Suprise is not astonishing at all. Its body is attached to the host city by the asphalt grid of roads and it wears a decorative eight lane beltway atop its shoulder like a necklace. From above, you can see how each square mile is carved into the hypnotizing curves and cul-de-sacs of a subdivision, but without the cover of trees, the desert and its heat are a visual constant, even through a computer screen.

And so I found out: if you live in Surprise, and decide to go to the Trader Joe’s supermarket on West Grand Avenue, you can take the back entrance out of the parking lot and see yourself at the entrance to one of Metro Phoenix’s Christopher Todd Communities. Guarded by a trio of regal palm trees and an iron gate, the entrance advertises “private luxury rentals,” hoping to woo more potential customers.

I started my exploration of this housing cluster from above, with the rectangle roof lines jigsawed close together in a suburban puzzle. It reminded me of the University of Michigan’s own Northwood living clusters: Each one — or two — bedroom home has its own walls, its own roof and its own astroturf backyard. It’s a dorm single but without the dorm. 

The limited street view provides a glimpse of the quiet life, the empty alleys where parked cars outnumber people. However, my curiosity in this strange place of paradoxes led me further. The best way to experience this neighborhood is through the virtual tour linked on the community’s website, a nearly nine minute affair that exhausts every feature of your new dream home. I follow the link to YouTube, and click the play button. 

We enter on a blue SUV, pulling in just beyond the guard of palm trees. In it is a young woman, our faithful tour guide. Her hair is casually curled, the top of her head crowned with a gray millennial fedora; royalty free corporate pop emanates from the background. We walk from the parking lot over to a non-descript front door. Upon entering the one-bedroom dwelling named “Seaside,” she is in awe over the “wood-inspired floors,” the quietness and the privacy. The home is “stunning” because she tells you so. 

We move on to the two-bedroom “Sunset,” whose white vinyl fence blocks out most of its namesake from the backyard. Our tour guide highlights include the cabinet space, the thoughtful doggy door and “so much closet space!!!” We can tell she’ll call it home because there is a pillow that says the word “home” stitched in cursive loops. As she grazes her hand over a granite countertop, the coral pink cardigan over her shoulders resembles a cape because she is your superhero: rescuing you from the villains of shared walls and the burden of other people. 

The reviews of Christopher Todd Communities on Mountain View are largely positive, save for a few notable exceptions. While Burton Carriker speaks on how “The community is quiet and clean (and) the office staff are friendly and fun!” Cailey Chapman mourns the loss of their Henri app, saying “being from out of state, having this kind of communication with neighbors was really essential for us. If you request maintenance or pest control now they never come.” Eric Gravens at the Greenway location laments: “Just not really liking this place. Maybe it’s because it’s right on the corner like a gas station!”  

And this type of neighborhood is growing in popularity. Christopher Todd is a leader in a growing segment of housing summarized as “build-to-rent housing” and “single-story rental communities (SRC),” with developments branching out from Arizona to states like Texas, Florida and North Carolina.

Nearby attractions featured on Christopher Todd’s website are just as generic as the community’s name: an Applebee’s and a Kohl’s are just a short car ride away. Like the consumerist brands that surround them, there is a sense of inevitability in the apartment community’s copy/paste presence, despite the effects their sprawl has on the environment and carbon emissions.

The houses all look the same. You’re surrounded by fences and walls to keep others out. The palm trees over your parking lot are no match for the beating summer sun. Why then do we as social creatures seek out such isolating and inhumane spaces? What is the appeal of the horizontal sardine subdivision?

As we drive home, my housemates take pictures of the fading sun out the car window. They are the type of photos you don’t see on street view: the ones that capture the sun’s low rays piercing above generic shrubs, or the glow over single-story buildings. It’s hard not to be nostalgic in this type of moment, one’s visual memories cast in a shimmering gold. 

I wonder how Christopher Todd’s residents are doing. The bold verticality of big sky must look great from the front patio of  “Seaside,” and wouldn’t it be funny to see a flock of turkeys commuting across the parking lot? I would take a photo to post later, and my millennial fedora friend would type out a comment. I would go to bed easy, the sun gone to dusk, relishing in just how beautiful my life is.

Statement Columnist Oscar Nollette-Patulski can be reached at noletteo@umich.edu.

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