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

cities have curfews and people can often be paranoid about what kids are up to. my "grass is greener" impression is that things are much more laissez-faire in rural areas. at least the woods is a place to go. we hung out in parking lots.

that was an xpost to laurel, and going in the woods to make up games with imaginary friends and pine branches sounds kind of awesome to me!

Yeah I'm obv from the country, not the suburbs. But it has a lot of the same drawbacks, except maybe that at least in small towns there's a "city center" of a sort, I guess bedroom towns/commuter areas don't even have that, really. But you can't really supply your long-term needs in a small town, you can't buy your clothes or shoes or a car there. Before the internet, it was the Land of Catalogs.

I think the problem with 'it's the third densest urban area' is that it stretches the metro boundary far enough that you get a result that means something different from what we're talking about. silicon valley is pretty much a burb throughout, a relatively dense burb, but, still, there's no real center.

if you look at the walkscore site, there are maps of big cities. enormous green blobs = urban area. that's not a scientific definition, but pretty much holds true for how we're using the term. the '11th biggest city in the country', jacksonville, is a tiny spec of green. silicon valley is a mess of color, but def doesn't have the kind of center that real urban areas have.

going in the woods to make up games with imaginary friends and pine branches sounds kind of awesome to me!

You make do with what you have, obv, and I'm not sorry because if things had been different, I'd be different. But it was p lonely even with siblings, and I felt helpless to ever go anywhere or learn anything that wasn't pre-approved and introduced to my little bubble by An Authority.

silicon valley is a mess of color, but def doesn't have the kind of center that real urban areas have.

yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Outside of NY, what cities are truly dense and urban in the US? I guess that's your point too? The vast majority of the US could be considered suburban. Those walkscore maps don't seem very relevant to me. Portland is slightly more walkable than Los Angeles, but way less dense. You look at the map of LA and the vast fields of red are not walkable because they are mountains. So does that count against the overall walkability score? San Francisco is highly walkable but is small and expensive, hence the vast suburban sprawl surrounding it.

one thing I find funny is, I mean, jj, j/v/c...even alfred, live in inner ring suburbs in relatively large metro areas - would you guys be opposed to more commerce in your neighborhood?

ha no i kind of am part of the commerce in my neighborhood! also i have a lot of commerce in my neighborhood and welcome more of it (note: i dont include cub foods or chain electronics or starbucks in there)

would you be opposed to multistory buildings built in your neighborhood if it also meant a significant improvement in your transit options?

well yes, but not because of more people being here - i am not a fan of tearing down cool old stuff (old wrt mn btw, so we're talking turn of the century to approx 1960 builds, mostly 40s era) because its fairly wasteful and i dig history - also modern multistory builds seem to be a lot less sustainable than i would like given all the new construction that keeps getting retooled into new construction

aero mentioned something about being a kid w/ a car and the freedom and independence that came with it. that has to be put in context - it brought you freedom in a built landscape so shitty that you had no feeling of independence til you were 16. that's freedom only in a 'getting out of jail' sense.

iatee, I think that's a thoughtful but wrong reading - I think you're misunderstanding what California highway freedom feels like - I don't think it really has to do with hating one's surroundings so much as with speed & the living-video-game feel of the freeway system when it's working - if you learned to drive in southern California before the population density out there got so thick that it's rush hour every day at noon, it's its own discreet deal. there's a passage in Play It As It Lays about this that captures it. it's an artificial & not-good-for-the-world thing but despite that it's bracing, liberating, all that good stuff. there's this combination of control & risk that you feel or used to feel on entering the southern California ecosystem of the freeways. lots to say about that - some of it has to do with there being no adulthood rituals & a need for them: getting your license and driving yourself where you want is a rite of passage, and one whose benefits are immediately palpable.

this is all a tangent but it's like, I grew up in probably the nicest town in LA county (and most walkable; I walked 3-4 miles a day every day growing up, even through smog alerts) so I don't think the car represented escape from the suburban environment - I think there's a more sort of cyber-primal aspect to it

you know what else feels great is unprotected sex with strangers while high on heroin

the more I think about it, I'm not really sure why "it stretches the metro boundary far enough that you get a result that means something different from what we're talking about" really matters. I'm looking at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas the results feel wrong but I'm not really understanding why. The definition of "urban areas" they use sounds reasonable. And yet the "dense" areas listed there seem to be of a largely suburban character.

also i am wondering if the fact that my life path has been basically been dense urban -> 70s suburb -> 60s suburb -> small town semi-rural -> small college town super-rural -> urban -> dense urban -> 40s/50s suburb is contributing to me being kinda O_O at the various assumptions flying around in this thread re: how other people live

also aero otm about the liberating dream of teenage driving on CA freeways

yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Outside of NY, what cities are truly dense and urban in the US? I guess that's your point too? The vast majority of the US could be considered suburban. Those walkscore maps don't seem very relevant to me. Portland is slightly more walkable than Los Angeles, but way less dense. You look at the map of LA and the vast fields of red are not walkable because they are mountains. So does that count against the overall walkability score? San Francisco is highly walkable but is small and expensive, hence the vast suburban sprawl surrounding it.

the walkscores themselves might not be useful but the maps generally ring true - but also sorta have to be combined w/ the transit options. the vast fields of red in LA are important! might not be sprawl, but they do make walking from the valley to santa monica pretty much out of the question. large parts of LA are incredibly walkable, but if you have a job in the wrong part / have to go long distances / a certain trip, it becomes impossible. that's why you need a transit system - queens is (generally) walkable and the bronx is walkable but I can't really walk to the bronx. I mean I could, but,

you know what else feels great is unprotected sex with strangers while high on heroin

you're joking, but this is also true!

ever slam a quarter of crystal in a bathhouse with a shared needle? it's 1) insane and 2) bracing as fuck

also I learned how to drive in socal on not-crowded freeways fwiw

!!!

LA county or San Diego?

santa barbara

it counts, technically

ps I'm not rich I swear

"feels good" and "i want it" are not reasons for the government to make certain things easy for people to have or do

the vast fields of red in LA are important! might not be sprawl, but they do make walking from the valley to santa monica pretty much out of the question.

but notice they didn't do the same thing for all of the water that surrounds Manhattan and San Francisco

santa barbara

it counts, technically

― iatee, Thursday, September 8, 2011 5:10 AM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ps I'm not rich I swear

― iatee, Thursday, September 8, 2011 5:10 AM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark

I lol'd

iatee this is where you admit that you actually live in missoula btw just to blow our minds

max I'm just explaining feelings & motivations not setting policy

by now I would expect that all my friends from the political threads know that I am probably not the best guy to talk about what would make for good policy

but notice they didn't do the same thing for all of the water that surrounds Manhattan and San Francisco

well it has the same effect! if you live in astoria queens, you are extremely close to manhattan and if there were a magic pedestrian-only bridge, you could be there in 5 minutes. instead you can take an hour walk or take the subway.

"feels good" and "i want it" are not reasons for the government to make certain things easy for people to have or do

― max, Thursday, September 8, 2011 4:10 AM (50 seconds ago)

every time i read a statement this reductive my mind reads it in ron pauls voice nowadays fyi

well it has the same effect! if you live in astoria queens, you are extremely close to manhattan and if there were a magic pedestrian-only bridge, you could be there in 5 minutes. instead you can take an hour walk or take the subway.

but how does that factor into the overall score? you keep talking about those color maps. the LA one has all of this red representing the mountains, which is presumably factored into the score, while NY is all green, totally ignoring the water. I call bullshit on that site.

iatee's first time driving

http://www.capitalcomics.com/covers/2183.jpg

two seven letter names - first name three letters, last name four - both popular with self-sustaining internet communities - max is there something you want to tell the group

lol. santa barbara has the most beautiful gas stations

I'm technically from the unincorporated area between goleta and santa barbara

locals call it 'noleta' cause we refuse to be incorporated w/ goleta

I mean, that place seems really gross in a lot of ways, but I also wish that every city had a planning commission or whatever that was a iron fisted and design conscious as Santa Barbara.

also goleta sounds gross

we had areas like that near where i grew up. they have pretty much all been absorbed into "San Jose"

where was that?

downtown santa barbara is a 98 on walkscore fwiw

maybe so, but good luck finding a gas station if you're driving by on the 101

but if you do, they have beautiful spanish tile on the roof

wk - i grew up in G1lroy.

Coyote = gone

the road that used to just go to the dump now has tract homes and a golf course

goleta *is* gross, there's a small downtown area that was once its own little town, now the street's basically a non-place and the rest of goleta is big box stores. that's why the border-suburbs don't even want to be associated w/ it. that and the name, probably.

nice! I was in almaden. not too far away
xp

so would gilroy be an exurb? kind of a suburb but more rural?

goleta used to get covered in maximum rock & roll, can't remember which seminal early 90s HxCx band was from there

G1lroy was a small town when i grew up; it might as well be a suburb now.

gilroy's a small town that became a de-factor exurb

sup bros

Can't believe I'm going to pop in just for this useless information, but I think there are still a whole lot of unincorporated sections around San Jose! Like areas around and along Bascom and elsewhere.
And the US Census must have a weird way of determining "urban areas" cuz San Jose definitely isn't dense!
From Willow Glen, btw.

otoh, i probably would've been stoked as a teenager if there'd been a Guitar Center cross town.

Baby, don't ya go, don't ya go to Goleta
I've been there and I've seen them drinkin' now
Thinkin' all the time that they're going to school
Well, maybe some day they might learn something
But being fascist rich kids just ain't cool