Do you ever think of suburban people as courageous pioneers?
Chances are you don’t.
I certainly don’t equate suburbia with courageous living in untamed environs, yet that is something of how the suburbs began here in Oz. As a nation that lived either in the bush or the city, the ones who pushed out to the fringes and lived in the suburbs were often the ones who went without and did it tough as they ‘pioneered’ those new developments.
They were the ones prepared to be uncomfortable as they set up house in areas that didn’t have the same amenities and services as the city. (See ‘Suburban Pioneers’, in The Cream Brick Frontier: Histories of Australian Suburbia for more discussion on this idea.) They lived where roads were poor and infrastructure was non-existent, so in many ways they really did take some risks compared to the urban dwellers.
Of course that was ‘then’.
Nowadays I think we’d be hard pushed to see suburban living as pioneering. Even when we came to our own home here in Brighton it didn’t feel like we were doing it tough. Its true that public transport is poor (but then that’s Perth in general) and there are few public services, but the way in which new estates are managed tends to almost give a feeling of luxury rather than struggle.
Community development companies bend over backwards to provide events for residents and all sorts of activities to engage in. The savvy developers do their bit in creating suburbatopia by giving everyone front landscaping and by providing beautifully landscaped parks and surrounds. Of course this beautiful landscape does not last, but it does the job to convince people that this estate is heaven on earth.
I doubt too many people moving to new suburbs would see themselves as pioneers these days!
Perhaps a couple of questions that flow out of this are:
– where do the pioneers go now?
– what does it do to the pioneering spirit if there are no longer any ‘frontiers’ to settle? Do we simply become more and more comfortable and less and less adventurous?…son of rambow movie
I wonder about this question Hamo, because I have worked out that part of me is a pioneer. Partly why I have ended up in Afghanistan. But when I am back in Perth, I find little place for pioneers. But I do think the church needs to have its soil broken again. There may be some pioneering there. Christianity is so dead.
Pioneers open up an area or prepare a way – this is not limited to geographical areas – it is intellectual and spiritual as well. In answer to your questions Hamo:
1. We go wherever God sends us!
2. There will always be “frontiers” to settle until God says ’tis done – at which point our “spirits” will be home!
3. God forbid we become so comfortable that we become less adventurous!
“They were the ones prepared to be uncomfortable as they set up house in areas that didn’t have the same amenities and services as the city.”
Today’s closest equivalent would be those living in the country, while the “those days” equivalent of today’s suburbanites would be those urban dwellers.
I guess the pioneering bit comes when you figure out how to overcome the barriers that these suburban “communities” come with inherently. It’s probably in need of re-pioneering due to its completely secular individualistic structure.
Yeah I tend to think ‘once a pioneer’…
The challenge is to find new ‘soil’ whatever that looks like.
That would have been Ellenbrook 10 or so years ago. No shopping centre at all (not even IGA), just a Deli, no public transport, and one road in and out. But of course, very different now.