I have a meeting, it's in the suburbs, mid-morning, and having checked the transit schedules discover there are not buses to this neighborhood. Not at this hour. There's an express that saves people from it, but only during peak hours. That's OK, it's not so so far away, and I set out on foot.
And for the second time in as many weeks I rediscover the complete lack of pedestrian access in Calgary. Things are fine until Sarcee Trail, but crossing it I find myself walking long distances across lumpy ice covered berms and roadsides. There are no sidewalks here. You are not meant to walk. If you really needed to be here, you would have driven...
The message is implicit, but obvious. Calgary is a city built for cars, not people.
Jumping fences and cutting through backyards I find myself in the suburbs, and there's still a long way to go. At least when you get into the neighborhood there are sidewalks, I note, but getting into these neighborhoods is next to impossible.
And the neighborhoods, here I stand corrected. For they are not neighborhoods, nor likely ever will be. They are the stockyards of consumerism. Rows of uniform 1 and 2 story bungalows, entirely homogenous, 2 car garages, sidewalk on one side of the street only. Walking is not encouraged. No variation as far as the eye can see apart from the curve of the street. A vision of upper-class communist Russia, as concieved by developers - the cheap replication of souless, manufactured lives. Who, I wonder, would consent to live in these? What sort of Faustian bargain did they strike? Were they so worried their neighbors might "ruin" the neighborhood with thoughts of architecture or ornament they signed this bargain? What justification could there be? And not even a Faustian bargain, Faust sold his soul to the devil, a bad bargain but he was paid, here people paid, and handsomely, to live in these monotonous salmon-colored bungalows. They waived all rights to individuality, to creativity, to pride in ownership. It is a wasteland. A purgatory of the soul.
I know the justifications. It's not the developers dream, for it was this ugly in the blueprints, in the flyers and drafts sold to the public. No amount of rendered trees and shrubbery could conceal the insipid vinyl siding, the cheap and mundane rubber-stamped homes.
Evenly spaced, each bungalow 3 feet from it's neighbors, enough room to stand a rake, or shelter your lawnmower. Lawns sheared to the required inch and a half demanded by their association. Watering in the evenings only. Flowers should not detract from the overall "look" of the street or there will be complaints. Identical blinds shade identical lives. People here live in fear, fear of their neighbors, fear that someone would threaten the value of their neighborhood, their property, their investment, by doing something different. That someone might ruin the "Aesthetic" of the neighborhood by painting their house green. Or purple. Maybe even putting up a birdhouse. They want the guarantee of having neighbors just like them, just as wealthy, regular and uninspired. They believe they are living the dream.
They are idiots. This is the dream of conservatives, communists and fools. Nothing could ruin the "Aesthetic" of this neighborhood. Not a front yard full of newspapers, beer cans or dog shit. It's ugly through to the bone.
From neighborhood to neighborhood I walk, occasionally jumping fences, fences meant to keep pedestrians, people like me, out. If you must visit the community and developers association would prefer you drove. Ideally a Lexus or a Saturn, choose from any of these 5 colors, access points are off of Strathcona Blvd, because that's the kind of people we are.
And I want to stay out, I have no desire to intrude, but there's an appointment I have to get to.
There is a sense of Deja-vu as I pick my way through them, not just the dull repetition of colors, shapes and yards, but the remembrance of panic filled dreams, nightmares of being lost in these neighborhoods and unable to find my way out, forever searching for an exit from cul-de-sacs looping into cul-de-sacs....
Each neighborhood is a slight variation on the previous, here the developers have allowed a 3 part color harmony, naples yellow, slate siding or faux brick. But you still must have a 2 car garage. And this neighborhood gives you 2 stories of the dream, should you want it, in shades of steel grey or blue. Mosques and minarets conceal cell phone towers. You will need them when you realize what has happened and go to call for help...
They are spreading. Faster than I can pick my way through them. Like cancer you see them on the outskirts of the city, Billboards advertising the spiritual cul-de-sacs of fearful and failed imaginations. "The Exclusive lifestyle choice for the lifeless and uninspired..." Words like "Prestige", "Executive" and "Community" are debased and corrupted, twisted by the admen and developers to herd, corral and shear the stupid.
I cover my children's eyes when we drive out of the city, there is something about these suburbs, these cookie-cutter dreams of success that is both frightening and shameful. And I don't tell them, but maybe they know. They terrify me.