I can be dense sometimes.

I was out in the far 'burbs yesterday in a place called "Kingstowne" for my nephew's birthday party. My sister and her husband bought a townhouse way out there when about the only thing around was a Wal-Mart and a shopping center anchored by a Giant Food and a Marshalls (or Ross...I can't remember). Of course, even then there were mysterious "intersections" with stoplights but only one road leading in and out -- a sure omen of imminent expansion if ever there was one. Now, 6 years later, they complain that it's too crowded.

Near to their townhouse development is a McMansion development bearing some pretentious name like Prestwick, like it's some estate in the Lake District. Any minute now Algernon's going to be showing up to bunbury. So despite the name, the houses in this development are basically large squares, wrapped up in vinyl siding in various shades of beige, looking more like stacked up double-wides than anything else. And they appear to be about two feet apart from one another. English manors they are not.

Now I'm not one to complain about housing density. I think density of a certain kind is a very good thing. DC lacks the residential density that contributes to a more vibrant neighborhood life, with the notable exception of course of liquor stores. They don't seem to need too dense a neighborhood to survive. Adams Morgan, for instance, may be densely populated, yet it still can't sustain a bakery or apparently more than one ice cream joint. I just want to pick up a baguette for dinner some afternoons for christsake.

The sort of density exhibited by all of these suburban developments, however, is the wrong kind of density. It's not community friendly. The suburban configuration, featuring long stretches of busy roads unbroken by pedestrian crossings and vast parking lot wastelands, more or less forces you to drive everywhere, even when you have restaurants and shops distance-wise as close, say, as from Washington House to Busboys and Poets.

In DC, you walk from neighborhood to neighborhood with few obstructions. I can walk easily from Georgetown to Adams Morgan and come across many places to stop for a drink, or to pick up a paper, or to sit on a bench. In these new developments in the 'burbs, my wandering would be constantly interrupted by brick or concrete walls marking the boundaries of developments, by wide roads with nary a crosswalk in sight, and nearly no where to stop along the way. Foot traffic is not encouraged, which explains why so many developments simply do away with the idea of sidewalks altogether.

Vastly improved ("improved" here meaning developed, as in Marx's ideas of improvements in means of production) transportation infrastructure has allowed for this sort of development: clogged as the freeways may be, they still offer vast amounts of individuals the opportunity to drive their cars solo into the city from distant places. Oil dependency means very little when it's still a relatively inexpensive commodity -- in other words, it's more like being addicted to caffeine rather than cocaine -- and we've maximized our commutes based on the theory that larger or newer or cheaper homes counterbalance the time and resources we spend driving back and forth between them and work (and life -- after all, the hot club list does not include the Annandale TGI Friday's, and you're not likely to catch Arcade Fire or Southern Culture on the Skids playing at the Springfield VFW anytime soon).

Then again I like to walk.