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

I mean you can't BUY them in LB without them first going to a central warehouse/processing location, and then back out to distributors etc. So hypothetically living IN Long Beach would be the MOST wasteful of all scenarios, because the product is 100% doubling its travels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wzz2DynBKI

I'm counting on methane digsters to soften my carnivorous footprint by recouping some of the stored energy from day-to-day manure disposal and from the fat and waste parts of the animal after slaughter.

http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/quick-note-on-food-transportation/

interesting, but the conclusion seems to be that you should consider the environmental impact of what you eat over where it came from. which I think again ties into my main point that "it's complicated."

obviously dense development is more environmentally friendly than sprawl and we should all reduce our reliance on cars as much as possible. but to leap from that to "people who live in suburbs are icky" or "conservative" ignores a lot of the nuances.

that graph still blowing my mind. feel like they should string up extension cords to the ships or something.

I mean, as much as you want to isolate one factor, it's pretty hard. for one, you'd have to come up w/ a basket of goods that they'd be buying. also are we talking about just the environmental effects within america, or worldwide?

otoh looking at things from a macro-level is a lot more clearcut - a population in a dense city is going to require less energy than an otherwise comparable population in a suburb. that doesn't mean that everyone in manhattan has a better carbon footprint than everyone on long island - there are incredibly wealth people in manhattan, they take a lot of planes, they consume a lot, etc. etc. but when it comes to comparable measures - 'how much energy do they consume getting to work?' - it's not even a question.

what are the nuances involved in people moving to the suburbs

I mean you can't BUY them in LB without them first going to a central warehouse/processing location, and then back out to distributors etc. So hypothetically living IN Long Beach would be the MOST wasteful of all scenarios, because the product is 100% doubling its travels.

you're shattering my illusion of some kind of waterfront farmer's market where you can browse the melamine dog food and lead-painted toys fresh off the boat while listening to a busking Mike Watt singing sea shanties.

obviously dense development is more environmentally friendly than sprawl and we should all reduce our reliance on cars as much as possible. but to leap from that to "people who live in suburbs are icky" or "conservative" ignores a lot of the nuances.

never said icky, and 'conservative', well, read my original quote. I said that people who, given an everything-else-equal choice (price, schools, commute) would prefer to live in a suburban area than an urban area are likely to overall lean conservative. that's all I said.

but people generally don't get to make that decision because of the way we fund schools and only have a few walkable cities in the entire country

the twin cities seem like a pretty cool place from google maps

seems comparable to philadelphia. what are apartment prices like for places located in downtown st paul or minnesota?

transit not at all comparable to philly

ppl should just buy less stuff

just to give my perspective, the house I grew up in in philadelphia was very cheap! but it was also kind of located in a food desert - we only have bodegas around in a 5 block radius, the nearest supermarkets were located in strip malls that, walking, you would have to cross 4 lane roads to get to. in comparison some people who went to my school lived in center city. their houses cost a million in 1980s dollars - don't know what that would be now. and obviously, where they lived was MUCH MUCH more walkable than where I lived, despite also living in the city.

I mean, as much as you want to isolate one factor

I don't really want to isolate one factor. I think "cities good, suburbs bad" is isolating one factor.

otoh looking at things from a macro-level is a lot more clearcut - a population in a dense city is going to require less energy than an otherwise comparable population in a suburb.

sure, agreed.

that doesn't mean that everyone in manhattan has a better carbon footprint than everyone on long island - there are incredibly wealth people in manhattan, they take a lot of planes, they consume a lot, etc. etc.

right, so it doesn't make any sense to make generalizations about the people who live in cities or suburbs, does it?

but when it comes to comparable measures - 'how much energy do they consume getting to work?' - it's not even a question.

well, it is if the person living in the suburbs works at home, or like justen, the suburb is closer to work, or if the person living in the city lives in a walkable neighborhood but drives anyway.

no sorry that should be $100k in 1980s dollar - I think they were worth a million in the 90s, no idea how much they're worth now.

Last apartment I lived in was a 2 bedroom and was $850 plus utilities

transit not at all comparable to philly

― iatee, Wednesday, September 7, 2011 9:02 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol imo philly is pretty deficient - one subway line, one el, a bunch of commuter rail lines to outlying affluent suburbs. septa is okay.

what was its walkscore xp to jjjusten

I know it is...still not comparable to philly...

Transit here sucks but mostly because of lol weather making busses suck, but we are trying to expand the light rail and making some headway - not going to lie though it's very lacking. But it's gotten way way better since 10 years ago

so what do you do if you don't have a car in the winter

and what sort of policies do you think led to public transit sucking in the twin cities

You ride the bus? I lived here with no car for 15 years, it is def possible.

possible yes, but is it ideal

Selling our streetcars in the 1940s and never building any subway system. The infrastructure was dismantled a long long time ago

never said icky, and 'conservative', well, read my original quote. I said that people who, given an everything-else-equal choice (price, schools, commute) would prefer to live in a suburban area than an urban area are likely to overall lean conservative. that's all I said.

yeah, "icky" was just a reference to the thread title. but the rest of your post... I don't know. I really don't get where you're coming from. If price, schools, and commute time were not a factor in where people choose to live then... people in suburbs would be conservative!? You're trying to draw conclusions by eliminating the three major factors that people use when they decide where to live?

the twin cities seem like a pretty cool place

yeah

in the winter you wake up, go turn on your car, take a shower, eat breakfast, then drive to work

so why were streetcars dismantled in the 1940s? what took their place

I mean, not the streetcars themselves. the infrastructure.

buses

generally happened throughout the country. pretty much every mid-to-large city had an extensive streetcar system.

how's the bus system in the twin cities

actually the interstate highway going right through the center of the city iirc

the bus system is probably as good as you could get a bus only system to be, which is to say shitty

what's the average wait time?

well if you go out when it is supposed to be there a few minutes

this is a really exciting conversation by the way

I know it's like waiting for a bus

there's never an average-average wait time cause there will be frequent lines and less frequent lines

oh re: walkability apparently of the 50 largest us cities minneapolis is #9

so dayo are you trying to establish that the bus system in the twin cities that i said was shitty is shitty or

like, if there was only one bus line and it came every 5 minutes, then you added one more bus line somewhere else but it came every 10 minutes, suddenly the average frequency is lower...but the system is better...

I'm just curious how shitty shitty has to be before you call it shitty

yeah, "icky" was just a reference to the thread title. but the rest of your post... I don't know. I really don't get where you're coming from. If price, schools, and commute time were not a factor in where people choose to live then... people in suburbs would be conservative!? You're trying to draw conclusions by eliminating the three major factors that people use when they decide where to live?

the political affiliation thing has never been a big argument was just something I mentioned as an offside. (it was in reference to a buzza post about people from cities who dislike cities - ime, people with a conservative bent.) I don't have a stat to back it up, I'm not sure you could come up with one, but most people I know who moved to the suburbs didn't move out of the city *because they disliked urban life*, they moved out because of price, schools, job somewhere else. thus the apparent national market preference for the suburb can't be read as a pure signal - the cards are stacked. whereas there's a pretty clear signal for demand for living in walkable urban areas - they're the most expensive places in the country.

i think tbh the real problem here is the climate - interestingly enough i kinda love philly, one of my best friends lives there but (and i know i am not a local) imo the bus system in philly was way way worse than the one here, plenty of examples of overcapacity routes in downtown not having any room for people waiting at stops etc. however the total lack of viable alternatives and the deathly kill you cold prob does more to promote car usage than the lack of availability of busses.

xpost to dayo re: the bus system

the post from buzza was about people from cities that chose to live in suburbs, you added the "dislike cities" part fyi.

There are urban neighborhoods that are less walkable than those in inner ring suburbs. Cf: food droughts. Does, uh, quality of life factor into this walkability thing? It's a silly concept when there are crack dealers and junkies in your corner.

there are great mass transit systems in places w/ shitty weather (montreal, moscow, stockholm)