Marisela N. Caylor          

June 14, 2013

“Holy Land:” An Examination of Lakewood as Suburban Utopia

While doing my Web Review assignment on Twin Oaks intentional community, I researched the community on its official website (www.twinoaks.org) and looked up the definition of intentional communities. I was not familiar with “communes” and had a misconception, like most people about the way an intentional community functions and operates within a country, state, or city. Upon further investigation through the Twin Oaks website, I found a link to The Fellowship of Intentional Communities (www.ic.org) of which Twin Oaks is a member. The website’s definition listed an intentional community as “an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing communities, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, intentional living, alternative communities, cooperative living, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision” (www.ic.org).  After reading this definition, my first thought was: “Wow, this sounds like a suburb!” I began to think this was similar to the community in which I lived in and that my neighbors and I shared a common vision like the definition stated. Again, I thought: “Yes, this is a suburb and a suburb can be a utopia too. I have been living in a utopia all along!” Or had I? My curiosities led me to a book I had read for my Literature of Los Angeles seminar entitled Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir by D.J. Waldie, which chronicles his life living in Lakewood, California and the history of one of the first planned communities in Southern California. Another reason why I became interested in this “suburb as utopia” idea is that my family and I will be moving to California in late July. We are moving to California like so many other people before us, to work in the oil industry that still has a prominent presence in the area. We are still chasing The American Dream; we are trying to find “our” utopia in a state that was known for being a paradise, a Garden of Eden. After reading Holy Land and researching intentional communities, I came to the conclusion that suburbs could be considered a type of intentional community, suburbs are a “perceived” utopia, and this exercise merits an examination through the lens of D.J. Waldie’s experience growing up in Lakewood.  My experiences living in suburbs my entire life could supplement an ideal about the suburban experience as a “slice of paradise” for every man, woman, and child, where you and your neighbors share a “common vision,” you are allowed privacy, individuality, and safety from the hazards of the city. My research will hope to answer the following questions: How does Waldie’s experience in Lakewood convey the ideal about California as a utopia and furthermore, a utopia within a utopia living in a planned/intentional community in Lakewood? Does the “suburbs as utopia” ideal still exist and what are the advantages/implications of living in a carefully planned/structured community?

In Holy Land (1996,) D.J. Waldie recounts in a hybrid of prose poetry and short vignettes, his experience living in the Lakewood community during its inception in the early 1950s. Waldie writes his own personal history while describing other neighbors’ experiences within the community and its politics. In a 2011 YouTube interview with D.J. Waldie, Reason TV correspondent, Matt Welch describes Lakewood as “the Levittown of the West Coast” and how Lakewood’s developers constructed 17,500 homes within 3 years. According to the U.S. History Scene website, Levittown was the first major post-war suburb built by Abraham Levitt and his two sons in the late 1940s in Nassau County, Long Island. Levitt’s suburb was the first of its kind on the East Coast and the largest housing subdivision in the nation at the time. Built for soldiers coming home after WWII, Levittown and Lakewood provided solace for soldiers and their ever-expanding families after the grueling war and provided an escape from the noisy metropolis. In Holy Land, Waldie explains his parents’ decision to purchase a home in Lakewood as a “place of pilgrimage” from the uncertain years through the Depression in New York City and WWII (Foreword v.). Waldie explains these years as “enough,” how his parents recognized the “idea of enough,” and how this would draw them to the Lakewood. The idea of “enough” is what motivated young families to move to the suburban sprawl in Southern California and to the ideal of reinvention. This ideal of reinvention is what is so interesting about the suburbs and intentional communities, like Twin Oaks. These ideal communities provide a space for limited individuality within the safety of a planned community. I believe Waldie was even saying that the suburbs provided some form of stability, sometimes the only form of stability within a crazy world. Unlike Twin Oaks, suburbs provide a sense of community with the option to close your doors at the end of the day and escape within your cookie cutter house. In the suburbs, you are given the choice to be a part of something or opposed to it, while maintaining a perceived sense of order and hopefully, some help from your neighbors. In The Suburbs (1995,) by J. John Palen, he describes the suburbs as “the perfect merger of the energy of the city and the charm and openness of the country” (68). In defense of Holy Land, Waldie’s interview on YouTube describes himself as a “partisan of suburban places,” the uniqueness of urban development in Southern California,” and the values that his experience living in a suburb stayed with him throughout his years. In fact, Lakewood’s community motto is “Times Change, Values Don’t” (www.lakewoodcity.org). I believe that there is some truth about the “value system” that exists within suburbs because we would like to think that the families living around us share the same values as we do. This is not always the case, but we all have something in common being the fact we live in the same area, neighborhood, or suburb. We moved here for a reason and whatever the reason is, we still have to coexist within this utopia we have created for each other. As D.J. Waldie describes in Holy Land, “the critics say that you and I live narrow lives. I agree. My life is narrow. From one perspective or another, all our lives are narrow. Only when lives are placed side by side do they seem larger” (94).

There are some good things to be said about suburbs as a type of utopia. Unfortunately, there are negatives that spurred from a need for the familiar, which eventually turned into segregation between the races in the early suburbs. As I read Holy Land and other sources about the early suburbs in America, I found many instances of “unenforceable racial restrictions” and “understood” techniques to steer away minorities from living within these communities, including Lakewood. Waldie describes how real estate agents “steered black families away” from Lakewood, Mayfair, and even newer subdivisions in the area. This “unspoken policy” was prevalent within Levittown as well, and Waldie points out: “In 1953, Levittown on Long Island had a population of nearly 70,000. It was the largest community in the nation with no Negroes at all” (162). I read about such cases in each source about the early suburbs. Now, I know what you are thinking… “ I bet it does not say anything about this in Lakewood’s community webpage” or “ I bet there isn’t anything printed in their own book or essays submitted for Lakewood’s 50^th anniversary” (www.lakewood.org). You would be correct. I read through several handwritten or typed essays giving accolades to the community and the wonderful life it has provided for its citizens but there was not one of these that read anything about “unenforceable race restrictions.” However, I have come to realize now these “unwritten” or “understood” policies were in existence then and at times, could possibly be in existence now. In Holy Land, Waldie describes: “In the 1930s and 1940s, the Montana Land Company made it very clear in its promotional material that the lots were protected by ‘restrictions of an all-inclusive nature.’ Written into deed covenants these restrictions prevented the sale of lots to Negroes, Mexicans, and Jews” (73). After reading these cases of race restrictions, I was not surprised, but I was weary of the concept of the suburbs as utopia. I thought twice about my own experiences within the suburbs but my family lived in a predominantly mixed-race neighborhood so I was exposed to not just my own race but several different cultures from an early age. This always seemed normal to have a diverse group of neighbors. Then I begin to wonder the values my parents instilled in me to not focus on race but to look at the type of people they are. Do they have good values? The answer was yes. Now, I live in a very diverse neighborhood consisting of Vietnamese-Americans, African-Americans, Indian-Americans, transplants from Indiana, and native Houstonians. When Hurricane Ike hit, they checked on our home after we sought refuge in South Texas. When my husband bought a full truckload of dirt which filled our entire driveway, they came by after we offered “Free Dirt” when it was too much. One night the police were called, my neighbors did not ask questions, they asked if we were okay and then proceeded to offer help, anytime. These values do exist within suburbia but should not be limited to certain minorities like they were in their early inception. Exclusion does not mean utopia for me. Much like Twin Oaks’ mission statement which embodies equality and nonviolence, a suburb can be this way but its residents would have to embody shared values that are “non-enforceable.” Twin Oaks’s statement reads: “Our goals have been to sustain and expand a community which values cooperation; which is not sexist or racist; which treats people in a caring and fair manner; and which provides for the basic needs of our members” (www.twinoaks.org).

 While looking at Lakewood as utopia, I thought of instances where California was seen as utopia in the imaginations of many. Thousands of people flocked to the state in search of wealth, opportunity, land, and a place to rejuvenate among the miles upon miles of beaches and beautiful mountain ranges. This idea of California as utopia is not dead, even today. When I tell people we are moving to California, I get an array of reactions but almost always get a laundry list of natural landmarks and national parks to visit. I get a “wow” reaction when I tell people of our move, like California is still a vibrant, rejuvenating place to live. But I am weary, I have to admit. When I see the commercials for www.visitcalifornia.com, I reminded my husband that the tagline was “Visit California,” not live in California. But even though it is an intimidating move, I am confident I will find commonality among the other families in the suburbs. Maybe I can find a little solace, maybe a utopia within a utopia, much like D.J. Waldie did in Lakewood. So to answer my previous questions: How does Waldie’s experience in Lakewood convey the ideal about California as a utopia and furthermore, a utopia within a utopia living in a planned/intentional community in Lakewood? Does the “suburbs as utopia” ideal still exist and what are the advantages/implications of living in a carefully planned/structured community? Through my research, the answer would be how Waldie explains this in his YouTube interview: “I am not nostalgias, and I am not nostalgic for the past, indeed, a realist.” This explains how I would sum up the nostalgic view of the suburbs. No, the ideal is not gone for many of us. But truth be told, I tend to romanticize the idea of the suburbs as utopia. I know that they are not utopian but deep down I wish they were. I can simply fiddle around in my garden and hope that this ideal will exists even in today’s weary times. I have to be realistic in my view of the suburban utopia and research different ways this ideal can still exist. I have learned that in the search for utopia, problems and issues arise which involve forced class and racial segregation. Recent trends in living spaces include a move towards exurbs, a move toward the urban centers of the city, and a move completely out of the city, back to nature. These places come with their own set of issues and constraints but would be an interesting step to take toward my research in the ideal of suburbia. Several questions arise based on my research that involves further investigation including: Objective 3f. Are utopias limited to Western Civilization, rationalism, and social engineering, or may they exemplify multiculturalism? Do the value systems exist further out of the city or while living within the city? Does living in a suburb mean you have better values, morals, or way of life than those living within these other confines?

Works Cited

Palen, John J. The Suburbs. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995. Print.

Waldie, D.J. Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996. Print.

http://www.ic.org 14 June 2013

http://www.lakewoodcity.org/about_lakewood/community/lakewood_history  13 June 2013

http://www.twinoakscommunity.org/more-about-twin-oaks.html 14 June 2013

http://www.visitcalifornia.com 13 June 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3qE1Sh9E8g 14 June 2013

http://www.ushistoryscene.com/uncategorized/levittown 13 June 2013.