People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

Granny otm.

my sister lives in the suburbs and i live in an urban neighborhood in minneapolis..her's is very new development big homes, cul de sacs, etc

but honestly....they seem to be way more engaged in their neighborhood than we are...it's just very safe and everyone has elementary aged kids and everyone's kids hangs out at everyone else's house and they have little pool gatherings in the summertime....

i lived in the same house for 9 years and BARELY knew my neighbors

that totally fucking false! minneapolis has lots of bike lanes and its a big reason why there's great numbers of bikers here.

Oh yeah, I forgot you fuckers got voted #1 biking city ahead of use when we have way more bicyclists than you. Grrrr! Anger!

― fuck being hard, suburbs are complicated (The Reverend), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 4:55 PM (14 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

We started this gangsta shit? And this the motherfuckin' thanks we get?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Tallbike.jpg/450px-Tallbike.jpg

http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/a27/d7f/a27d7ff7-6227-44b7-ab09-1923fafa3f82

there is no 'correct definition of suburb' ffs

totally don't know what you mean by "is"????????? cause for me "is" means "bathwater".

i mean i guess technically i moved to a suburb of boston last week but it's the damn city afaic

i mean, one radical solution i'd propose is erasing all urban-suburban legal boundaries and have each metro area as one constituency under one administration. bingo, problem solved.

or elect iatee to a zoning commission in North Korea.

people who live near where they work create fewer externalities...what is complicated about this idea?

What if they work in a POLLUTION FACTORY, smarty-pants?

BTW I live in a city where it's below freezing mostly from December to April and I would KILL for more bike lanes and sidewalks.

Granny OTM, I mean, here's a view of my neighborhood in the suburbs.

i mean, one radical solution i'd propose is erasing all urban-suburban legal boundaries and have each metro area as one constituency under one administration. bingo, problem solved.

― goole, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 12:59 PM (1 minute ago)

i am for this, also abolish states thx

I mean, by implication, if it's below freezing for half the year, that still makes bike lanes and sidewalks usable for the other half of the year. And even then, they're still useful for walking to bus routes, etc. Plus, I saw plenty of hardcore cyclists biking to work all winter long in Cleveland. I haven't worked up to that, but I hope to.

Many American cities are single-family dwelling sprawls. I've lived in lots of 'suburbs' but ones like Mill Valley or Sausalito are distinctly different from even the western part of the city of San Francisco.

erasing all urban-suburban legal boundaries and have each metro area as one constituency under one administration.

Megalopolis, here we come!

they seem to be way more engaged in their neighborhood than we are...it's just very safe and everyone has elementary aged kids and everyone's kids hangs out at everyone else's house and they have little pool gatherings in the summertime....

Do you think it would be accurate to say that some of the ease of their suburban community comes from the fact that many/most of the residents are very similar to the others with their priorities and where they are in life? This strikes me as the comforts of similarity, that we feel better w people most like us. It might make it easier to know and/or feel good about knowing your neighbors, but it's not a very...robust community.

It's like a mono-culture.

uh oh

All the "best" suburbs of Chicago owe their existence to being on train lines. Most of the worst owe it to being near interstate exits. That being said, an attitude of "cars are evil and so are car owners" is so reductive and unproductive I don't even know where to start.

jesus

Having been born in the San Fernando Valley and having had grandparents and then my mom live in Sacto, I can tell you that, for me, suburbia is hell.

I see what you are getting at Laurel, but some of these communities can be surprisingly diverse! I mean, our block alone is home to two gay couples and a really wide range of backgrounds. But, also, a notably liberal and lolcollege town.

That being said, an attitude of "cars are evil and so are car owners" is so reductive and unproductive I don't even know where to start.

find somewhere to start!

eh that "community involvement" thing is just about having kids in school imo

I'm just saying, suburbs can be diverse and don't always have to be 100% white, middle-class.

is this a thread about the new Arcade Fire record?

a new idea for this thread

xpost

Some of those people at the pool gatherings also attend meetings with their local commissioner every other Tuesday. I know this from my parents' experience. That's the only kind of "robust" community that makes sense.

i mean, one radical solution i'd propose is erasing all urban-suburban legal boundaries and have each metro area as one constituency under one administration. bingo, problem solved.

― goole, Wednesday, 9 June 2010 09:59 (6 minutes ago)

Megalopolis, here we come!

Is this a bad idea? If a city and its suburbs are related

no i think it would be great, it would be like finland

To continue making this personal, to one side of us is a working class African-American family and on the other is a young family from Iran. Across the street is a really charming gay couple in their 50s. Next door to them is a Japanese-American family. Then another gay couple in their 30s. Just sayin', I don't really feel like I live in the boring, vanilla suburbs a lot of people in this thread seem to assume.

In a lot of places, you can't even get adjacent, closely-related suburbs to share emergency services like police, fire and 911 dispatch to save money. Good luck with the "erasing political boundaries plan."

Do you think it would be accurate to say that some of the ease of their suburban community comes from the fact that many/most of the residents are very similar to the others with their priorities and where they are in life? This strikes me as the comforts of similarity, that we feel better w people most like us. It might make it easier to know and/or feel good about knowing your neighbors, but it's not a very...robust community.

― the soul of the avocado escapes as soon as you open it (Laurel), Wedne

I think this is something that was much more true in the past but has become much less the case over time

i don't think anyone seriously thinks that could happen in the u.s. xpost

erasing all urban-suburban legal boundaries and have each metro area as one constituency under one administration.

That's kind of silly and would lead to a lot of governmental neglect. I mean even as it is, East Portland gets something like 2% of Portland's tax dollars even though it contains about 20% of the residents. What's smarter is having a metropolitan government in addition to having more localized governments, which is the case here.

in the example i cited, yes laurel is right, the neighborhood is almost exclusively white, middle to upper middle class

but either way i can't really be snooty when i guess for whatever reasons i didn't take the time to really engage w/my neighbors

(though a lot of it i think was because our house faced out on a busy street in the middle of the block and all the other houses faced away towards the side streets so we never really "ran into" ppl leaving the house and whatnot

jon, jaymc and i grew up 25 miles out of the city and even back then (15-20 yrs ago) there's was a large percentage of non-Caucasians. it just depends on what suburb, just as it depends on what part of the city.

Is this a bad idea? If a city and its suburbs are related

it might solve the problem 'what's a suburb? what's not?" - and there can be some advantages when it comes to infrastructure and taxes - but on the other hand, many of the sprawliest cities in america are places that have done this and it doesn't appear to have done them much good.

What's smarter is having a metropolitan government in addition to having more localized governments, which is the case here.

yes, def - but a metropolitan government w/ actual power

"one administration" doesn't mean one executive, btw. i'm not proposing more centralization, just less artificial legal division, so enough with the north korea joeks already. the suburbs ARE the city -- same economy, same population, so the political decisions about resolving issues regarding the whole ought to go through the same avenue.

xp to Rev well that sounds like a problem of the residents of east portland being really poor, is that it? that's not a problem that form of gov't will address.

xp2 but on the other hand, many of the sprawliest cities in america are places that have done this and it doesn't appear to have done them much good.

really, which cities?

doesn't minneapolis area have the met council?

it might solve the problem 'what's a suburb? what's not?" - and there can be some advantages when it comes to infrastructure and taxes - but on the other hand, many of the sprawliest cities in america are places that have done this and it doesn't appear to have done them much good.

I was (possibly mistakenly!) under impression that certain cities in the south did this (Charlotte? but then thats pretty sprawly?) - need to know more about this

...I think European cities work more this way - was wondering if people thought it was a good or bad idea, and why (or why not?)

doesn't minneapolis area have the met council?

― the dj screwtape letters (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 12:18 PM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark

i always kind of figured the met council was BS but with all the crazy lawsuits over the new train, no, it isn't.

but i haven't a clue how it works or what its power is tbh

I know that Raleigh and Durham contain many of their own suburbs...and they are still sprawl monsters. But I think it does help with schools and property taxes and such.

really, which cities?

I believe houston, jaxonville are usually the examples?

xpost to goole: minnesota public radio can tell me how my ass taste wrt light rail, fuckaz

columbus, ohio has annexed many suburbs and it's very sprawly but the sprawl was not caused by the annexation since it already existed

on the other hand, NYC = a very, very successful example of this

iatee: Metro in Portland has quite a bit of power and they do a damned good job of managing regional planning.

xp to Rev well that sounds like a problem of the residents of east portland being really poor, is that it? that's not a problem that form of gov't will address.

Sure it can. Commisioner districts would help for one. My hometown of Everett has a big problem that 4 of the 5 councilmembers are from the old part of town, north of 41st Street, which contains about a fifth of the residents. Not coincidentally, North Everett gets all the revitalization efforts, and South Everett, where most people live, doesn't get shit. Not that anyone will ever succeed in getting them to create council districts, as it would likely mean 3 of them losing their jobs.

jon, jaymc and i grew up 25 miles out of the city and even back then (15-20 yrs ago) there's was a large percentage of non-Caucasians. it just depends on what suburb, just as it depends on what part of the city.

Oh yeah, totally understand this. Didn't mean to imply that I lived in some magical place and time or anything, I was just trying to throw my personal experience into the thread. It seemed a decent way of challenging the notion of what "suburbs" are, basically they can be tightly-packed, walkable areas that aren't dominated by sprawling lawns and twisty drives.

Pancakes, don't you live in clevo hts.? There are more sidewalks there than fish in the sea.

xpost to goole: minnesota public radio can tell me how my ass taste wrt light rail, fuckaz

― the dj screwtape letters (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 12:21 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

ha, or the U. ohh our poor sensitive instruments of science!! build us a $200m TUBE STOP!! the whole story is fuckin hilarious imo

iatee: Metro in Portland has quite a bit of power and they do a damned good job of managing regional planning.

I know! portland is fantastic when it comes to this stuff.

Metro: also responsible for the much-beloved MAX