When my parents retired around 20 years ago, they decided to move to Seville, my father’s hometown. Since they were accustomed to living in suburbia in Canada, they decided to resettle outside of Seville in an urbanización, a North American-style suburban community, where they found an untypically small house with small garden perfect for empty-nesters. Unlike North America, where most of the population lives in suburbia, in Spain an urbanización tends to be fairly exclusive, and many of them are gated. I now find myself temporarily living in my parents’ house in a gated neighborhood to take care of things after the recent passing of my father, and since I’m not accustomed to living in suburbia –much less the gated kind– my eyes are being opened like never before to the bizarre and disturbing aspects of this kind of environment. Allow me to explain.
Firstly, life in a gated urbanización is extremely, mind-numbingly dull. Perhaps I’ve become too used to living in central Barcelona, but there is absolutely nothing to do around here. Neighbors barely talk to one another, because they are never in the street; they are either inside their houses or else inside their cars. They drive absolutely everywhere, including to get a loaf of bread from the nearest baker situated only a 20-minute walk away in the center of a charming historical village. There is in fact no street-life whatsoever in this neighborhood. No shops, no cafés, no bars. Zilch.
Most of the cars driven by the residents of this urbanización are big, gas guzzling SUVs, including the kind that are ultra-square, black, and with darkly tinted windows; the ones that the bad guys drive in The Handmaid’s Tale. Very creepy: I don’t know if they are being driven by Russian gangsters, Spanish drug traffickers, or German bankers: the windows of the vehicles are tinted to hide their driver and any passengers. When I do my daily 20 minute walk into town, the only other pedestrians I come across are visible-minority women, most likely nannies, or the occasional dog walker. Makes me wonder how fat and overweight the residents here must be. Unless they regularly go to a gym –by car of course.
Many of the houses are huge, with expansive gardens sporting infinity pools, all watched over by at least one snarling guard dog, and surrounded by high walls and hedges. Yet very little life takes place in these amazing gardens, even in autumn, when outdoor temperatures are perfect. It seems as though the properties are always empty, despite all the SUVs parked in driveways. Aren’t gardens supposed to be the very advantage of living in suburbia as opposed to the big city? So why is everybody couped up indoors? I just don’t get it. Or maybe the gardens and pools are just for looking at from inside the houses? In any case, it’s a crying shame.
The only people who regularly seem to occupy the large gardens of these houses are the gardeners who take care of them. There’s always the horrible noise of at least one lawn mower, hedge trimmer, or air blower in operation. So much for the quiet life. I guess if you’re inside a house with the air conditioning on and all the windows closed those two-stroke engine noises become somewhat tolerable. Or maybe suburbanites get so used to hearing these noises that they don’t hear them anymore. I sure wish I could do that right now.
I don’t understand why people like my parents chose to live within the “safety and security” of a gated community populated by strangers that you can’t see and can’t talk to. This place could be full of crooks and criminals, for all I know. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that that may be exactly the case: curiously, there is never, ever a police car to be seen cruising around the streets of this “community.” Makes me wonder. If I were a crook, a neighborhood like this would be the perfect place to hide out.
And yet, the whole world, it seems, aspires to live in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife and a beautiful car in a beautiful but boring enclave like this one. It’s the American Dream. Yet I can hardly think of worse places to live, other than war zones. And it’s terrible for the future livability of our planet. I mean, I wonder what the carbon footprint of the average resident of this place must be.
But let me end on a positive note. There’s one house that I love. Actually, it’s a construction site, an older sprawling villa that someone has recently bought and cut a swath out of, very much à la Splitting by Gordon Matta Clark, in order to subdivide the property into two more regularly sized houses. Establishes a great precedent for what to do with McMansions everywhere.
Criticalista 