Learning From South Phoenix

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MODERN HOMES  VS.  Aged Homes

For our modern neighborhood we viewed the gated community  “Sonoma at Dobbins Creek.” When driving through this freshly painted “modern” neighborhood I was drawn to the third house to my left. I noticed that the house was embellished with a crisp slate blue front door.  I was reminded of this mention by Jamie Rose in the Arizona Republic article from April 8th, 2001 titled “Cloning and the beige cul-de-sac”  as she stated “Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if I painted my front door blue?” All I could think was WOW this modern neighborhood really wasn’t what I thought at all. It actually has a homeowners association that gives people a chance to express their individuality. Just as I began thinking maybe I was wrong about all subdivision homes, my face literally dropped. Another crisp slate blue door! Oh, but wait, this house plan was different. I began to realize at that moment that I was just driving through another cloned tract home subdivision. Jamie Rose continues on in the article to explain why it is that builders choose such bland colors like beige and its shades to represent uniformity. She says that “it blurs the edges and masks any quirk beneath the stucco blanket.”  Why did I even get my hopes up. By the time I left the subdivision, I had counted over one third of the homes with having HOA approved crisp slate blue doors. Just one of the many  disappointments I witnessed as I drove out the gates of this cloned community. 

As James, my team member and I drove into the crumbly painted “aged” neighborhood, I thought to myself, this really isn’t much different than where I live. The main difference is that where I live, people accept the old and decaying because it’s been classified as a “historic district” where homes are being improved one by one. And with that hope in mind, people accept crumbling homes for the time being until they are improved. Another characteristic that I found interesting was the way that people decorate their front yards. In the modern neighborhood each front yard looked just like the next, same trees, same rock, same concrete driveway and walkway up to their front door. In the aged neighborhood, each home was fronted with either a grass yard or a rock yard, or even a dirt yard with big boulders. We even saw a house with two large dead trees topped with pallets. (see picture below) It was the strangest thing I have ever seen.

In 1996, an article was written by Kevin Blake and Daniel Arreola titled: “Residential Subdivision Identity in Metropolitan Phoenix” from the Landscape Journal publication. They stated that subdivisions in Phoenix are often criticized for a lack of identity. However, with the research they found, this just isn’t the case. The wrap up their study with the conclusion that “the ethnic and newer subdivisions lack identity, especially when observed from afar, but personal signatures represent the chance for the residents of each subdivision to create a landscape to match their own vision of what is a model American community.” I think that sums it up nicely because truthfully, at the end of the day it comes down to the fact that each person chooses the environment that surrounds them.   

Overall, I experienced such differences in both neighborhoods, as well as some similarities. It was much more fun to drive around in the “ages neighborhood in comparison to the “modern neighborhood. Many more thoughts ran through my mind as to what kinds of people lived in these “aged” homes as opposed to those that lived in the “modern” homes.

 

 

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survey see James Czarnik's webpage as well.

Contact: Jill Houda (jilebel@cox.net)