The People That I Meet Each Day *

What do you like about your neighborhood? – submitted via formspring

So, I’m just going to put the link out there and assume no one’s going to want to track me down and stalk me.

From Mueller Austin:

“In a nutshell, New Urbanism is an approach to land planning that reduces traffic and eliminates sprawl. A New Urbanist neighborhood resembles an old European village or pre-war U.S. small town with homes and businesses clustered together. Instead of driving on highways, residents of New Urbanist neighborhoods can walk to shops, businesses, theaters, schools, parks and other important services. Buildings and recreational areas are arranged to foster a sense of community closeness. New Urbanist designers also place importance on earth-friendly architecture, energy conservation, historic preservation and accessibility.”

In addition to this badass gestalt vision, we have… an active online forum (we found our missing cat through someone on the forum!), a babysitting co-op that operates on “Baio Bucks” (yes, Charles really is in charge), a really nice community park and pool a block away, plus another HUGE, modern playground within walking distance, something like 12 miles of hike and bike trails with all native prairie grasses, bike lanes on all neighborhood streets, green buildings (if I were ever to lose my job, I’d probably work at the one place in Austin where everyone with my background works… an organization that just happens to be housed in a building in my neighborhood, within walking distance, which is silver LEED certified and provides shower facilities to employees to encourage them to ride their bikes to work), a state of the art children’s hospital to which I could walk if I wanted (Griffon’s already been there twice), community events (kid-friendly movies in the park on a weekly basis for part of the spring/summer), … I could go on and on. There are always kids out. There are always people jogging with strollers and walking dogs. My commute to work is eight minutes, with about five stoplights and zero highways. WE HAVE SCULPTURES, PEOPLE! A GIANT SPIDER! A POLLEN! (In fact, our family photos were taken by a neighborhood photographer IN our neighborhood… You can see the pollen grain sculpture in the background here.)

And this is not even to say that I love my house, which, I LOVE MY HOUSE. It’s too small, technically, but I LOVE MY HOUSE.

I forget day to day that this place is so cool. I mean, you just do what you do, and your daily life becomes what it becomes, and it’s necessarily monotonous. You forget that you have all these wonderful THINGS available to you because you’re too busy getting cup after cup of milk and water, picking up disposable piece of crap toy after disposable piece of crap toy, cleaning up human after feline after canine vomit and feces, walking with bare feet in cat litter that’s been tracked all over your wood floor. Over and over and over and over and over.

But truly, it’s a fantastic place to be. If I have to smell rotting waste anywhere in the world, I’m glad I’m doing it here.

* Quick! 50 points to the first commenter who can tell me what this line is from.