My dad told me he thought my “Bolingbrook vista” photo was, well, pretty ugly. I tried to explain that I didn’t mean to suggest that it was an attractive vista – just a vista.
But he’s right. It’s ugly.
Suburban ugly isn’t as cool as urban ugly. Urban ugly at least has some street cred! Some gritty nostalgia. Some industrial chic. But suburban ugliness is just… boring.
And maybe a little lonely? Or banal.
If I were to categorize suburban “ugly,” I suppose it has to do either with the dull symmetry of commercially fabricated spaces (whether residential or commercial, above) or the lonely emptiness of areas that are undeveloped but still too blank to have much of a natural or wild loveliness to them.
On the other hand, sometimes the symmetry and emptiness can add up to something quite beautiful:
I like the line of symmetrical McMansions houses along the horizon…
Maybe suburbia, subdivisions, and strip malls will have earned their own kind of beauty after another 50 years or so, when they become antique-y and retro, sort of like 1950s-1970s architecture and design today?
On the other hand, brown fields in March will probably always be ugly, whether they’re in Bolingbrook, Bavaria, or Bolivia.
Reviewing the pix–which are nicely done, BTW!–it strikes me that all are in a way metaphors for the rude, disruptive, and relentless intrusion of the suburbs into more placid, pastoral settings. That’s where I see the ugly. Once these features become settled parts of the landscape and get burnished around the edges they acquire a different kind of feeling and become sources of comfort rather than disquiet.