Jersey Tawk – By Ward Peck
A trip through exurbia
With my office in Biddeford, my home in Portland and my “beat” in Cape Elizabeth, I find myself fully enmeshed in the “car culture.” Living in Portland, I got away with not having a car for my first three years in Maine. I lived about a mile away from my job and I knew, with minute precision, exactly the last possible moment I needed to leave my house to make it there on time. Sure, a trip to the supermarket took an investment of time and a walk across the Casco Bay Bridge, but you’re a lot more discriminating about what you buy when you know you’re going to have to carry your groceries for the next half-hour.
But once I landed this job, I knew a car was not an option I could decline. So now I have a car and repair bills and $30-plus for a tank of gas a couple times a week and insurance and inspections and parking tickets and tickets for not getting my car inspected and oil changes. It gets a little obscene. Especially the repair bills.
And so now I zip up and down Route 1 two or four times a day. I’ve become intimately familiar with the stretches I can give it a little gas and those spots where the speed limit is as fast as I’ll go. I know where traffic chokes and which lanes tend to back up first. I also know there’s no quick way to Cape Elizabeth.
A few days ago I was reading Lucas’ story on “New Urbanism,” and we talked back and forth about what it means and what it means to Southern Maine.
I was struck by the quotation at the end of the story attributed to John DelVecchio about a survey that found four in 10 homebuyers would prefer a home “within walking distance of something.” I noted that means six in 10 have no such preference. Lucas explained that while not overwhelming, the statistic demonstrates that a market for compact development exists.
It still struck me as odd that most people are perfectly happy not being able to walk to anything from their home.
Later that day I jumped in my car for an appointment in Cape. I recently found a new route that shaves a couple miles off the drive. Rather than take Rt. 207 all the way to Route 77, now I take Fogg Road to Pleasant Hill then up to Route 77.
I’m sure at one time, probably not too long ago, Fogg Road made for a pleasant drive. Now all it offers are views of scores and scores of homes that seem to have been plopped into place with little planning and complete disregard for place. Forget six in 10, on Fogg Road 10 in 10 people prefer to live within walking distance of nothing and yet have no problem living on top of one another. In one development, huge houses occupy large lots, yet there is nothing to differentiate where one backyard ends and another begins (not to mention the fact that I was looking into these “backyards” from my car on the main road). There are no sidewalks but there is what appears to be an open stormwater sewer to transport run-off to a collection basin, which was filled with water the color, and apparent consistency of pea soup. Taken together, the neighborhood has all the character of a trailer park on steroids.
It seems to me to be a middling existence– neither the charm of rural life nor the convenience of true suburbia. As I drove down the road, I couldn’t help but wonder– where the inhabitants go to fetch a quart of milk, a pack of gum or a bottle of wine? Where is the pizza shop where the tweens gather to flirt and tease? Where are the parks where young mothers and fathers go to gossip? I could understand forgoing such things if in return there was a sense of isolation or being in nature. But on Fogg Road, the choice is neither.
I’m sure there are many decent, hardworking people who live in the development I just maligned; I just can’t fathom the decision that led them to call a place so devoid of character, culture and substance home.
It seems to me Scarborough has enough Fogg Roads. What it needs are more of the true suburbia, where there is more of a reason to step outside than simply that’s where their car is parked.
With my office in Biddeford, my home in Portland and my “beat” in Cape Elizabeth, I find myself fully enmeshed in the “car culture.” Living in Portland, I got away with not having a car for my first three years in Maine. I lived about a mile away from my job and I knew, with minute precision, exactly the last possible moment I needed to leave my house to make it there on time. Sure, a trip to the supermarket took an investment of time and a walk across the Casco Bay Bridge, but you’re a lot more discriminating about what you buy when you know you’re going to have to carry your groceries for the next half-hour.
But once I landed this job, I knew a car was not an option I could decline. So now I have a car and repair bills and $30-plus for a tank of gas a couple times a week and insurance and inspections and parking tickets and tickets for not getting my car inspected and oil changes. It gets a little obscene. Especially the repair bills.
And so now I zip up and down Route 1 two or four times a day. I’ve become intimately familiar with the stretches I can give it a little gas and those spots where the speed limit is as fast as I’ll go. I know where traffic chokes and which lanes tend to back up first. I also know there’s no quick way to Cape Elizabeth.
A few days ago I was reading Lucas’ story on “New Urbanism,” and we talked back and forth about what it means and what it means to Southern Maine.
I was struck by the quotation at the end of the story attributed to John DelVecchio about a survey that found four in 10 homebuyers would prefer a home “within walking distance of something.” I noted that means six in 10 have no such preference. Lucas explained that while not overwhelming, the statistic demonstrates that a market for compact development exists.
It still struck me as odd that most people are perfectly happy not being able to walk to anything from their home.
Later that day I jumped in my car for an appointment in Cape. I recently found a new route that shaves a couple miles off the drive. Rather than take Rt. 207 all the way to Route 77, now I take Fogg Road to Pleasant Hill then up to Route 77.
I’m sure at one time, probably not too long ago, Fogg Road made for a pleasant drive. Now all it offers are views of scores and scores of homes that seem to have been plopped into place with little planning and complete disregard for place. Forget six in 10, on Fogg Road 10 in 10 people prefer to live within walking distance of nothing and yet have no problem living on top of one another. In one development, huge houses occupy large lots, yet there is nothing to differentiate where one backyard ends and another begins (not to mention the fact that I was looking into these “backyards” from my car on the main road). There are no sidewalks but there is what appears to be an open stormwater sewer to transport run-off to a collection basin, which was filled with water the color, and apparent consistency of pea soup. Taken together, the neighborhood has all the character of a trailer park on steroids.
It seems to me to be a middling existence– neither the charm of rural life nor the convenience of true suburbia. As I drove down the road, I couldn’t help but wonder– where the inhabitants go to fetch a quart of milk, a pack of gum or a bottle of wine? Where is the pizza shop where the tweens gather to flirt and tease? Where are the parks where young mothers and fathers go to gossip? I could understand forgoing such things if in return there was a sense of isolation or being in nature. But on Fogg Road, the choice is neither.
I’m sure there are many decent, hardworking people who live in the development I just maligned; I just can’t fathom the decision that led them to call a place so devoid of character, culture and substance home.
It seems to me Scarborough has enough Fogg Roads. What it needs are more of the true suburbia, where there is more of a reason to step outside than simply that’s where their car is parked.
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