The American Landscape

It’s interesting the view that foreigners have of the United States. Many people from outside the U.S. think of New York when they think of America. They think of a city with huge skyscrapers, tons of people, money, capitalism, and the American dream. Many foreigners don’t truly understand America, and its landscape. Most of America is not like New York. The majority of the country is farms, fields, and suburbs. We too have many farmers, and miles and miles of countryside. When flying from London to New York, it takes around six hours on a plane. What these European may not understand is that it also takes almost six hours to fly across the United States. It takes longer to fly across America then it does to fly across the entire continent of Europe, where you are passing over many different countries. Since America covers such a great distance, you have many different types of terrains, people, and political views. Europe has mostly countrysides and cities. They don’t have as many suburbs. Their cities are all walkable places unlike American cities whereas our cities are commuter based in which the people who work in the city live in a near by suburb. The highways connect their house to their job. They drive into the city with their car and drive straight into the basement of the building they work. They never have to go outside, or walk on the sidewalk. American Sidewalk In America, our country was built on roads and the automobile not so much on the train or walking. In Europe they have the train trip where as in the United States we have the car trip. In America, you can drive for hours and still may be in the same state, you may see nothing but corn fields. The problem is the size of the United States. The streets are very spread out, the cities are very spread out: the country is too big. Ilf and Petrovs understood the European misconceptions. When they came to America from Ukraine for their America road trip they wanted to show the real United States. After a while, they found the same towns over and over again. They were not interested in the American town because they were all alike. The towns had the same names, the street had the same names, and all the town had a similar structure. Nothing made each town unique from each other. “…This undifferentiated mass of brick, asphalt, automobiles, and billboards is capable of stimulating only a feeling of annoyance and disappoint in the traveler.”(Ilf/Petrovs p.16) They also explain that the residential areas of these cities and towns are completely deserted. Everyone is either in their house or in their car. What’s the point of the sidewalk? I tend to have the same feeling as Ilf and Petrovs when it come the American landscape. I find most American towns and places very boring. All the suburbs are the same. If you look at a zoning map, the suburbs are not mixed use. The best places are cities or towns that have people living were they work. Where the sidewalks are active, and people aren’t dependent on the automobile. If only America was smaller, I would like to take the America road trip on foot. The American sidewalk trip.