The buyer of one house discovers that the previous owner had excavated a large air-raid shelter underneath his garage.Ībove all, residents feel the presence of God. During the second world war the nearby aircraft factory was disguised to look like a suburb: had the enemy bombers come, Lakewood could have been accidentally wiped out. The community relies on deep aquifers, but the rocks could also transmit terrible seismic shocks to the surface. Yet, as in many locked-down homes, the impression of quiet and order is surface deep. “The grid limited our choices, exactly as urban planners said it would. Those who live there do not find this stifling. The ambulance that carries Mr Waldie and his dead father to the hospital turns left out of his road, then left onto a boulevard, then right.

Most streets adhere to a grid, running north-south and east-west, which is linked to a grid that extends across southern California and indeed much of America. The form of the suburb encourages conformity and repetition. “The critics of suburbs say that you and I live narrow lives,” he writes. Few people walk the streets each house is an island, visited occasionally by friends and family, who come and go in cars. His childhood, with its packed swimming pools and freewheeling Monopoly games, was sociable. It is a reminder that many people are happy to lead constrained lives, even if they are free to move.Įarlier defences of America’s suburbs, such as Herbert Gans’s “The Levittowners”, argued that they were more diverse and sociable than their critics alleged. He became a city official, and in 1996 published “Holy Land”, a short, delightful book about the place. Among the early settlers were the parents of D.J. Although the developers were Jewish, Jews were initially barred from living there, as were blacks. It was built during and after the second world war and was at first occupied mostly by white manual workers.

The suburb is Lakewood, south of Los Angeles.

Holy land by dj waldie