By Sofia Samatar
“The Friendly City” is a weekly column about walking in Harrisonburg that will run during 2024. Each week, your friendly correspondent, writer and teacher Sofia Samatar, will reflect on a walk in our city.
In the relentless heat, one thinks about the future. It’s hard not to wonder where it’s all going, what next summer will be like and the summer after that, walking down Washington Street in the hot, glazed afternoon toward the housing developments on the edge of town. On the hill, there’s a prospect of shimmering shades that look tantalizingly cool: deep green trees, pale blue water tower, cobalt mountains. Then you come down into the noise and swelter of things, the railroad tracks speckled with tough cornflowers, the autobody shops with their densely packed ranks of cars, the chatter of birds and radios, the gravel and chain-link fences. You can’t see the mountains anymore.
Where the city thins out, the cars at the last mechanics’ shops are parked in herds, as once cattle must have gathered in these fields. Outside a plain church with a blue door, an angel statue kneels with clasped hands. The sign on the lawn reads Jesus Paid It All – You Keep the Change.
At the end of a long, lonely sidewalk, a development rises into view, townhomes painted the pale yellow of fresh butter. Identical red wooden balconies throw grids of shadow across the back doors. In front, the units show a modest level of individuality, restricted to the same shape but employing different colors and materials: charcoal brick with sage-green shutters, creamy siding with maroon shutters, biscuit-colored brick with dark blue shutters. Across the street, a different development extends with a more uniform look, all brick walls, white balconies, and green trim. In the distance, the indigo line of the mountains has resurfaced, a regular background against which the developments place their repetitive forms, the gray structures containing the mailboxes for each section, the rows of satellite dishes, the grills on the tiny matching patios.
There’s a neatness and newness to these complexes that feels a bit soulless to a passing stranger; the Friendly City’s customary cheerful disorder is missing here, and the eye slides over the bricks and shutters longing for signs of personality, grasping gratefully at a pink bicycle or a deflated blue kiddie pool. The place feels underdone, like dough that hasn’t risen enough yet. It needs more time with the lively leaven of human presence to bulge it and swell it up a little, gently nudging its edges out of shape. With the years, the flat colors of these cookie-cutter houses will fade and fragment, you imagine, until the development feels homey, crusty, and satisfying, as if baked to a deep golden-brown. Then the appearance of the place will harmonize with its general ambience, which is the atmosphere of a village, a sleepy hamlet where people know each other at least by sight and a visitor is a curiosity. Strolling through the development, you can feel a flash of interest in the glances from the cluster of teens on a balcony and the woman washing her car. There’s no reason to come to the development unless you live here or know someone here. The inhabitants eye you quizzically, but not at all coldly—rather, their gazes hesitate on the verge of welcome, as if you’re about to become a neighbor or a friend.
You Keep the Change. Are these developments the future of the city? There are changes here that seem worth keeping. These townhomes represent what the architect Daniel Parolek has described as the “missing middle”: buildings with multiple units that offer better walkability than vast apartment blocks and more efficient energy consumption than single-family homes. Popular until the 1940s, this type of clustered housing gave way to the detached, single-family style that characterizes much of the Friendly City, but it’s returned to discussions of urban planning as a way to address housing needs, foster climate resilience, and keep cities alive.
As the Friendly City develops, these housing estates that feel somewhat distant now may become more integrated into the town. Exiting the development, heading downhill, you pass the tienda—an encouraging sign, as a true missing-middle design should include businesses people can walk to, like this convenient grocery store. Farther on, there’s a food truck by the side of the road, its little outdoor tables decorated with flowers. Maybe it will grow and be joined by other restaurants. You imagine the featureless lawns of the developments transformed into community gardens, providing fresh corn and tomatoes to the tables of the future.
Circling toward home, you pass the Salvation Army, the family service center, and the emergency shelter. A crow paces in a parking lot, squawking frantically. You seem to be the only human being outside today. It’s too hot. For most people, the distance you’ve walked this afternoon is too far, especially in this weather, but even on a beautiful day it takes too long, they have to get to work, to the post office, the health department, the daycare center, they’ve got small kids, too much to carry, they drive their cars. In your imagined future city, people live closer to the places they need to go. Holding their children’s hands, they cross the street. Bigger kids cycle safely on a network of paths, stopping to grab a few raspberries dangling over the pavement. You can almost see them.
