Subdivided: Isolation & Community in America by Dean Terry contrasts our societal move toward individual isolation and our natural longing for community. As mentioned below, I encourage you to watch Tuesday.

Terry explains that he moved to the suburbs three years ago. One day he realized that he didn't know any of his neighbors.

An excellent review by Chris Vognar was recently published in the Dallas Morning News. His review gives much more detail of the program than I do here and I recommend reading it by following the link.

A pleasure for me, the documentary introduced writers, planners, architects, and developers—visionaries—that I know of or that I have met. Two people that receive quite a bit of airtime that have been mentors are Andres Duany, world-renowned architect and town planner from Miami, and Bill Gietema, widely recognized new urbanist from Dallas. I quote both often. I hope I hear others doing so after this program.

I spent three days with Duany in Seaside, the town he designed almost 25 years ago and the same town featured in the movie The Truman Story with actor Jim Carey. It is also where I met Bill Gietema. Both are New Urbanist, a movement that I would partly characterize as an effort to recover mankind's principles of planning and architecture that had evolved over millennia but we suddenly tossed out the window in the 60's. A New Urbanist would point to the cities of Europe and other population centers for examples of multi-use environments that efficiently mix housing, business, and transportation.

Duany has been involved with many North Texas projects you would immediately recognize, such as Legacy Town Center. He led the design for Craig Ranch in McKinney. He designed the neighborhoods of Hometown in North Richland Hills and Capella Park in southwest Dallas for Gietema. As you experience the emotion of his architecture, you start to understand why he describes in the program most suburban development as "…unsatisfying visually." He continues, "Did the designer really like doing it? I look at it—I'm bored."

Gietema is a developer unlike any I've met. He is constantly on a mission to develop neighborhoods that do embody a sense of community. Each time I've spoken to him, he's already looking for better, more thoughtful ways to design his next project. He is constantly learning and evolving as a developer and a thinker. Even though he is pretty harsh on the general community of developers in the program, he has room to talk. He has a master's in real estate development from MIT.

Gietema:

 

Developers have made creating a neighborhood into a manufacturing process. It is not about neighborhood—it's about subdivision. There's no love—there's no affection—for what's being done anywhere in the process.

 

Homebuilders are looking for as few regulations as possible—they want to manufacture. They want to have a limited number of homes that they can build efficiently—and cost effectively—and they aren't interested in offering consumers a lot of choice—because that complicates their construction process.

 

You want to do nails—you want to be a manicurist—you have to go to school and you have to take a test and you have to pass it and you have to be inspected by the health department. There is nothing like that to be a developer. There are no exams. There's no standards of performance.

 

It functions for the bureaucracy because it's just rubber stamping a set of plans that followed all the rules. It functioned perfectly for the developer. It functioned perfectly for the homebuilder. It functioned for the zoning process.

 

Many others bring perspective on community to the program. We hear from some that have studied our planning process and noticed the lack of community. We also see people in an older neighborhood helping each other and keeping a weekly social gathering going for over twelve years.

We have to wonder how Terry sees suburbia after talking to all these people. He reflects on his adventure and acknowledges that he had looked for a subdivision instead of a community, a property instead of a place, and a house instead of a home.

His experience can be lessons for all of us. We don't need to abandon the suburbs but if we recognize what is missing, we can start the process that will bring change and the elements of community we want.

Image link is through Mr. Terry's website.