My husband and I spent the last couple of weeks bicycling from Paris, France, to The Hague in the Netherlands. It was my second time to visit this part of the world by bicycle, my first being back in the 1970s.
It didn't surprise me, of course, that much has changed after 30 years, but what surprised me more is that some things haven't. As we left the bike path leading out of Paris and began passing countless acres of ripening grain, we spotted our first rural village.
Stone and cream-colored stucco walls and red tile roofs were not interrupted by even a trace of gaudy signage or advertising. Drawing closer we could see that the only adornments were pots of flowers hanging from windowsills and lining the courtyards. Nearly all the stores and houses were built along the sidewalks with none being set back behind parking lots or even yards. These villages exuded the ambiance of the sweet, rural communities portrayed by Peter Breugel paintings.
As we continued to bike across northern, rural France the effect was always the same. In fact, the countryside appeared the same as when I had toured France in the 1970s.
This time around, my husband and I stayed one night with a woman in a beautifully restored farm house. She said that most of the houses in the village had been restored but that the law prohibited tearing them down or changing their appearance on the outside. Thus the village retained its beauty and sense of identity as a community.
This made me wonder whether we have too much freedom in America. But then I thought of the way the Holly Park Council had insisted, several years ago, that New Holly must be built using craftsman, bungalow and other design motifs to help it maintain the historic flavor of our neighborhood.
If we don't have very strict development laws in Seattle, at least we have been blessed with wise and prudent neighbors.
Subtle differences from the 1970s began to emerge when we tried to shop for food in the villages. Back then people bought all their food from little shops on the narrow main street of a town. There was a butcher shop, a bakery, cheese store, and a vegetable market.
Each village had these stores, and people spent at least part of every day going in and out of the different stores to buy what they needed. This created a great sense of community. Everyone knew one another as they chatted face-to-face on a daily basis about each other, the weather or whatever.
Some of the towns and villages still seemed to have the same thing going on today. The ancient city of Laon was a case in point. On the main street of town near the 12th century cathedral was a side-walk café. My husband ordered us coffee while I went across the street to Alice's bakery and bought us some delicious strawberry and custard filled pastries to eat along with a loaf of bread for lunch while peddling our day's allotted kilometers.
Farther on down the street was a pharmacy, a wine shop, butcher shop and a little farther yet was a grocery store where we bought fruit and a big wedge of Camembert cheese to eat later with the bread. People were going in and out of these shops and talking with one another just like in the old days. Everyone was walking without being harassed by automobiles.
Towns like Laon still remain in northern France, and they maintain their sense of community by means of little specialty stores and street-life shopping. Unfortunately, however, we found on other days, as we began to get hungry for bread and cheese, that we had to pass through several villages without finding a store.
The streets of these storeless villages were basically deserted. There were no people walking around chatting and getting acquainted.
Soon we would come into a larger town, and there would be a big supermarket situated near the edge of town. Granted the store had no big signs or garish Safeway-like appearance. It was of discreet gray concrete or stone, and its parking lot was off to the side with a hedge around it so it wouldn't spoil the picturesque village scene too much.
This supermarket was a boon to us, of course. In we would go and guiltily stock up on Belgian dark chocolate and bananas or peaches from Spain. But I noticed that inside the store people weren't chatting with one another. They didn't seem to know one another like they did on the Laon shopping street. That was probably because many of these people had driven to this supermarket from far flung villages that no longer had stores of their own.
A week later while visiting the Green Party headquarters near the bustling old town square in Brussels, I tried practicing up on my French by reading some of their posters. Using attractive illustrations, these posters described the party's support for refurbishing and maintaining historical sites, improving transit systems, enhancing pedestrian and bicycle amenities.
"The United States is way behind Europe," I remarked to a gentleman standing nearby. "We have to catch up."
The man looked stunned.
"It's strange to hear you say that," he said. "We have always believed Europe needs to catch up with the United States."
I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by catching up with the United States, but I think it had a lot to do with the numbers of shopping malls and automobiles. Catching up with the United States would sound a death knoll for European community, for in America the automobile has been one of community's biggest enemies, second only to television.
Another Green Party member complained that there are 40 percent as many cars in Brussels as there are people. Indeed this was the first city where we had noticed serious traffic congestion on the narrow old streets. But I recalled that in Seattle we once had 100 percent as many cars as people. Fortunately, I'm told that percentage is decreasing.
Observing these changes in Europe made me glad that my home in America is Southeast Seattle. Back home in my neighborhood there are many signs that people are boning up on lessons of building community: learning to catch up with Europe.
We are building a light rail system that will bring people out of their cars and onto the sidewalks. We have neighborhood plans that call for town centers around the stations where people will be able to shop at neighborhood stores and eat at local restaurants.
In a way we can be thankful that Southeast Seattle was neglected for so long and bypassed by the shopping mall syndrome. For that reason there are fewer big, ugly parking lots that would have to be demolished to accomplish our community vision.
Admittedly, some of our neighbors still hop in their cars and drive to Bellevue or Renton for shopping. But there are already a number of community building commercial venues within pleasant walking distance from our homes. There are great restaurants in Columbia City. Almost every street corner in Othello has an Asian grocery from which to buy tasty items not available at the local Safeway. Genesee has a reasonably pedestrian friendly drug store, and we have a number of popular coffee shops and cafes along the edges of our sidewalks throughout the Rainier Valley.
A popular poster I know entitled, "How to Build Community" provides a long list of which I will quote just a few samples:
Turn off your TV.
Know your neighbors.
Greet people.
Set on your stoop.
Buy from local merchants.
Pick up litter.
Organize a block party.
In Southeast Seattle we are creating an environment to facilitate this type of community building. We are designing a piece of the world that will have much more in common with an old French village than a big, modern shopping mall. We are learning to build community as the Rainier Othello Safety Association (ROSA) would say, "one street at a time."
Have a thought or two for Mona Lee? Fire her off an e-mail to editor@sdistrictjournal.com.
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