Suburbs

Just down the slope from my year-old gated community, a developer has broken ground for another housing tract. Heavy equipment rumbles across dirt roads. Construction crews pound nails into two-by-fours. County and city workers keep a watchful eye on the site.

Researchers are finding that parts of Southern California are in a unique position to transform the region's endless sprawl into walkable communities with vibrant downtown centers. In fact, it may be inevitable. You can thank the "boomburbs." Many of these outlying cities--so labeled in a recent Fannie Mae Foundation study--were quiet commuter outposts not long ago, but have grown to become home to more than 100,000 residents each.

When Vice President Al Gore was darting back and forth across Northwest 20th Street here one sunny afternoon last month--shaking hands outside the Little Karina clothing store, stopping in for Cuban coffee at the El Girasol cafeteria--the well-tailored man at his elbow, step-for-step, was Miami-Dade's energetic young mayor, Alex Penelas. It's the same story with Mayor Richard M. Daley when Gore visits Chicago. And in Philadelphia with Ed Rendell. And in Detroit with Dennis Archer.

It's hard to say for sure who had the knife that night in Aliso Viejo, but someone did, and someone used it. When it was over: A 16-year-old boy was near death. A group of middle-class teenagers who had never been arrested were being prosecuted as gang members. Their mothers, most of whom are rearing their sons alone, were jolted into an unfamiliar world of jail visits, criminal lawyers and the very real possibility that their sons could go to prison.

Hollywood has always looked at small-town America through rose-colored glasses. From Carvel (Andy Hardy's hometown) to Mayberry (Andy Griffith's domain), the heartland has been extolled as an ideal, the repository of virtue, and a sharp contrast to the gritty, sin-soaked and cynical big city. But not anymore. Lately, apple-pie America has been taking it on the chin--or, in the new hit comedy "American Pie," on another part of the anatomy.

Myth: The suburbs are full of contented, family-loving, police-admiring, gadget-collecting backyard barbecuers. Reality: The suburbs are full of contented, family-loving, police-admiring, gadget-collecting backyard barbecuers. With a twist. When it comes to the suburbs of Southern California, a new Los Angeles Times poll has found that myth is, to a large degree, reality.

A Times poll finds that most suburban residents give their public schools high marks for quality. They say their children are safe on campus. But some say drugs, alcohol and racial tension are problems at school. * Source: Los Angeles Times Poll

San Fernando Valley residents, although generally pleased with their communities, are troubled by the quality of their schools and the safety of their streets, and less content overall than those living in the Southland's other suburban areas, according to a new Los Angeles Times Poll. The Valley, where the suburban dream first flourished at the end of a Van Nuys streetcar line, has evolved into a rich mix of race and culture--an emerging port of entry for immigrants seeking a better life.

The automobile, long considered the ticket to freedom in suburbia, is instead turning suburban life into a territory of destruction more dangerous than urban communities, according to a study released today. The study of the long-reaching impact of cars, trucks and suburban sprawl on the quality of life in the Pacific Northwest found that the prevalence of automobiles and auto accidents has led to more deaths and injuries in suburbs than have guns and drugs in urban settings.

The Long Island of fishing villages, potato farms and celebrity homes has had it up to here with the Long Island of tract housing, mall culture and Joey Buttafuoco. The eastern end of Long Island, which includes the exclusive Hamptons, is pressing to secede from its more suburbanized, low-rent neighbors to the west. Proponents cite environmental concerns; cynics call it snobbery.