Circular Cruises/Unreal Estate
From Eccentric Flower
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Unreal Estate 25 July 1997 I've been looking up population densities on the web. I can't find Somerville, the town just across the river from Boston where I live, because it's under 100,000 people, but I can find Boston. Its density is listed as "12.0." I don't know if that's a percentage or what. Baton Rouge's is "3.0." Somerville is reputed to have some of the most densely packed real estate around, with green space at an all-time low. There are very few single-family dwellings in Somerville. East Baton Rouge parish, which is also basically the city limits, has 400,000 people. Somerville has 68,000 people. (If I could only get land area statistics ....) - - - The point of all this number crunching is that real estate is the biggest culture shock I ever faced here. Writing about grocery stores this Sunday reminded me that in the South grocery stores are spacious things, where three shopping carts can pass each other and there's enough space at the cash registers to form a line without extending into the aisles. My half of the rent on a three-bedroom apartment here is the same as the note I was paying on an entire three-bedroom house in B.R. (and this apartment is considered a really good deal!) No one has yards here. On the other hand, no one has lawn mowers either. I actually saw a non-motorized lawn mower for the first time this summer. I had thought they only existed in cartoons. But it makes sense when your "yard" is a strip of grass. - - - I realize that this isn't "Northern shock" so much as it is "urban shock" and I understand that. But New Orleans is a very big place, and yet - excepting the French Quarter - everyone has yards. That's why it takes up so much land area. Same big-city population, but everyone lives further apart. It makes a difference in the way people think. City dwellers need a smaller amount of "personal space" around them. On the other hand, because the little space they do claim is so precious, they're likely to get more touchy when you violate it. City dwellers build fences in a different way. - - - Certainly I'd prefer it if the real estate were cheaper here - it would make buying a house easier - and certainly I'd like more breathing room every now and again, but when I consider it closely I don't think I'd trade back. After all, I lived in quasi-rural Baton Rouge and I had to drive into New Orleans any time I wanted to do anything interesting. You have to drive everywhere in Baton Rouge. There simply is no pedestrian accessibility. The distances are too big. In a city of only 400,000 people, it still takes a half hour to drive across town. With no traffic. I drive my car only to get groceries here. So I suppose I can't complain. I just wish I could walk in the grocery store without tripping over everybody else. Copyright © July 1997. All rights reserved. |
