I remember a Caldecott children’s author visiting my elementary school, with her young daughter. The girl was enamored by our soccer/baseball/football field. Or more accurately, she was fascinated by all the grass. I can’t imagine what life was like in the big city she came from.

That was my growing up in the burbs. I moved away. My kid is growing up where trees are the tallest thing on the skyline. It’s not for everyone, but yeah, you at least need a big yard. That’s where all the adventures take place.

Now that he’s a father, Eric reports he’s been thinkg more of the suburbs:
… All I can think of now is yards, decks, driveways, and H playing in the grass. Scre

There are places in the city where you can have both. The Stony Brook and Forest Hills areas of JP have yards and trees and driveways, but you’re right near the T and can walk to shops and restaurants.

I’m not intimately familiar with the burbs around here, but from the ones I’ve worked in and visited friends in, it seems like they’re either disgustingly snobby and elitist or they’re full of people who live 10 minutes from the city and don’t go into the city more than once a year. The latter group even includes people who work in the financial district and make a mad dash for their commuter rail and safety of the burbs at 5:00, never shop in the city or hang out there after work, etc.

Like Eric in the South End, Back Bay’s Carpundit finds himself longing for a home with a yard:

oh yeah, and we have a deck.

I suppose Boston might be more racially integrated than Minneapolis, but here in MN, the suburbs are still so very, very lilly white. For that reason alone, I plan to limit my son’s exposure to the burbs, lest he get a distorted reality of the world (like his old man did in the ’80’s). Kids that are sheltered from other cultures are less likely to appreciate them. When I grew up in the burbs (pre-UPN), the only faces of color I saw on most days were from news reports detailling the latest crime in the ‘inner city’.

Fortunately, housing in MN is still fairly cheap, so we can afford to live in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Minneapolis, complete with an 80 x 120 lot, more space and bedrooms than we need, and a great public primary school within walking distance.

I confess I don’t know what Boston is like, as I have never been there (I did spend a night in the Framingham jail though..), but I wouldn’t dream of moving back to the burbs.

Dan in MN

Speaking of bands, anyone remember The Suburban Lawns from the early 80’s?