Prosper, America

For the holidays this year, I return to Prosper, Texas for a family gathering at my sister’s house where she lives with her fiancée and two dog children. Their home is a very nice, two-story ‘starter’ home, which I find an ironic designation since just about any fully formed family could fit in the expansive 5-bedroom space. The neighborhood is racially diverse, attracting primarily young people between the ages of 25 and 45 who want an affordable home in a good school district while avoiding the urban crowding closer to Dallas. The streets are otherwise homogeneous, where each house has a neat yard with a privacy fence, a two-car garage, and a Ring doorbell cam. The neighbors don’t really know one another, but that’s not the point: each resident has achieved the “white picket fence” ideal for their family. A pretty ordinary example of suburban America, at least at first glance.

As soon as you venture outside the neighborhood (by car, presumably, as that’s the only real option for getting around), the explosive growth of Prosper immediately comes into focus. Highway 380, whose four lanes were probably empty as a rural bypass a decade ago, is constantly snarled with traffic as a massive widening project is underway. Miles of identical strip malls have popped up along the highway seemingly overnight, so the selection of chain stores and restaurants expands with every visit. Across the road is the beautiful planned community of Savannah, where new homes mimic the old southern townhome style with large porches, colorful shutters, and tall oak and magnolia trees. Amenities (for homeowners only) include a lake with a serene walking path, a giant clubhouse with a gym and a ballroom, a water park, sports courts and even its own elementary school. All of this is somehow outdone by another development, Windsong Ranch, which has, among almost everything else Savannah has, a 5-acre swimming lagoon with a resort-style beach. I don’t know what’s more remarkable: the size and grandeur of these neighborhoods, or the speed at which they’re built!

My dad and I like to take our mountain bikes out when we visit – behind Lauren’s neighborhood, a guy opened his private property in the floodplain with a small system of seasonally maintained trails. Our favorite place to ride is just past Windsong Ranch, where the concrete boulevard ends at a steep earthen embankment beyond which lies a hidden network of narrow dirt roads. These vestiges of the former farm country weave silently between hay fields and blocks of brick houses, blocked off by ‘road closed’ signs and tall privacy walls. We passed two signs indicating the future locations of Prosper middle and high schools, currently in a large field with no houses in sight. A bulldozed swath cuts through some other fields where the Dallas North Tollway will one day serve thousands of paying long-distance commuters traveling up to 50 miles into downtown Dallas. The patchwork of concrete and brick developments gradually subsides into beautiful ranching country as we ride further north, a stark contrast to the manicured suburban sprawl of the DFW metroplex.

While Lauren and Quinn have carved out a lifestyle that they love here, with two dogs and lots of space and a regular rotation of carry-out restaurants, there’s something that feels artificial and distant to me about the pop-up neighborhoods in Prosper. There are many positives, certainly, not least that success and affluence are practically universal here as the rising tide lifts all boats. People in Prosper are building their own communities, with HOAs and youth sports and dog parks and a plethora of other activities available to neighborhood members. But there is very little broader sense of community, which I find essential to make any place I live into home. I would be hesitant to raise any future children with the structured separation of these idealized suburbs, especially since other DFW-area school districts have made national news for harboring old-fashioned racism. While it’s exciting as a visitor to see what Prosper evolves into over the coming years, I am hoping to find roots in more established communities with a move to the outskirts of Boston next month!

The FIFA World Cup: Two Sides of the Same Pitch

In big news everywhere besides the United States, the FIFA World Cup wrapped up in spectacular fashion yesterday when Argentina defeated France on penalty kicks after 120 minutes of gripping play. GOAT candidate Lionel Messi scored a goal on the way to his first championship win, and French star Kylian Mbappé pulled off a historic hat trick that kept the match close down to the wire. It was a fitting finale for the World Cup, which had exciting moments throughout. Watching many of these matches from Latin America, alongside Costa Ricans and tourists from Europe and South America, I felt the energy that gave me a newfound appreciation for the tournament that I had only felt for the Olympics previously. Of course, there are well-publicized problems surrounding the event; most importantly, the conditions faced by the migrant workers who built the stadiums in Qatar were a human rights atrocity, as they were contractually forced to toil in extreme heat with the unknown human cost of hundreds or thousands of lives. It’s painful to think that FIFA could’ve directly avoided these casualties but instead chose to profit immensely from the bribes of unsavory authoritarian regimes. And it’s not great that some viewers have been turned off of their own country’s teams because their colors/flags/imagery have been coopted by authoritarian political movements, exposing some tensions on the world stage.

But, in watching several matches over the last few weeks, I saw a lot more camaraderie than rivalry within the field of play. I recall watching my American team playing against Iran: even though threats were made against the families of some Iranian players if they lost, all I saw on the field were players from both sides helping each other up after exaggerated falls and cordially congratulating one another after the final whistle. Fans from countries around the world intermingled with one another, both in Qatar and watching from TV sets around the world. Some unlikely partnerships emerge where one might expect animosity; for example, all of Central and South America were pulling for Argentina in the final 3 games due to a shared cultural understanding, with no one cheering louder than the Chileans we befriended during our trip. I appreciate that the World Cup is an opportunity to learn about different cultures and recognize sporting excellence…if there’s an answer for world peace, it’s in uniting through a common game, a game that naturally inspires dialogue, exchange, and eventually friendship.