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

Also this is totally not indicative of everywhere, or even New Jersey. But our specific part of SJ tends to be like this.

I've learned a lot from the revive of this thread. I've never lived in the suburbs (I started rural, then small towns (<2,000), bigger college towns, small cities (<1mil) and now Chicago) and a lot of the perceptions I have of the suburbs are based on my experiences living in small cities with dead centers and the kind of sidewalkless, strip mall sprawl that gets attributed to suburbs. Like, I lived in a gated apartment community in NC for about a year that represented the very worst (IMO) of this kind of mindless, isolating expansion and I always referred to it as "the suburbs" but it was well within the city limits. Plus also driving the length of Delaware and seeing all of the really sad looking sidewalkless, cookie cutter, miles from commerce housing developments there. But none of those things are actually suburbs, either, because LOL it's Delaware and Wilmington isn't big enough for suburbs. And then I lived in Atlanta for a bit and that city is so hostile to pedestrians that I assumed 1) suburbs are less urban than the cities they surround, therefore 2) the Atlanta 'burbs were wastelands in which people drove the length of their driveways and back to pick up their mail and never met their neighbors.

All of this and I've been to Evanston*, even, which I just assumed as some suburb anomaly.

*And of course, all those John Hughes movies I watched as a kid I assumed were set in small towns like those where I lived because those were the only residential areas with single family homes and sidewalks that I had seen and I could never figure out how come their high schools were so huge or how they could have a party attended by like half the population of the entire county where I lived when my entire high school served three towns and lots of country in between and had fewer than 300 students.

I do sometimes think of Evanston and Oak Park -- old suburbs served by the CTA -- as honorary Chicago neighborhoods.

Point being, I'm not going to move to the suburbs any time soon because Jeff and I were geographically abused by our rural/small town upbringings (his waaaaaaaaay more isolated and rural and boring than mine) so we're still (and maybe always will be) reveling in living in an honest to god urban environment (I still sometimes wander around like Mary Tyler Moore all awed and agape at tall buildings and we've lived here almost six years) but I can stop being quietly smug and judgmental about people who chose to live in the suburbs, which is good because that's both obnoxious and exhausting.

My high school had 2000+

I have to be the only person outside of Wyoming who hears "Evanston" and first thinks Evanstan, Wyo.

Much bigger than any of the HSs in Seattle itself, actually.

Here is a question: is Greenwich, CT considered a suburb of NYC?

I'm confused by your question just because I can't imagine what the controversy is -- Greenwich IS a suburb of NYC, and I can't think what definition of suburb might exclude it.

yes xp

There's no controversy. I'm asking for my own information.

I suspect we'll be debating the merits of Ugly Condos soon.

I grew up in Greenwich and it is very definitely a suburb of NYC. Though as this thread shows, being a suburb can mean a lot of diff't things...

How common is the idea of "Ugly Condos"? I once used the phrase to some of the old suburban ladies at work, and they looked at me like they had no idea what I was talking about.

have no idea what "Ugly Condos" means, enlighten

and I'm from the suburbs

I've never heard the term before, and if it means something v specific like "McMansion" does, then Google is not helping me figure it out.

Ugly Condos = new, bland, cookie cutter condos going up in old urban neighborhoods. Kind of the McMansions of cities.

a phrase used by several posters to define the sparkling new high-rises studding the bay and coastlines of major cities.

Also, these "ugly condos" are often marketed as "luxury condos"

I grew up in Greenwich

I forgot that! One of my besties from college is from there. You don't know a guy named St3ph3n P@ul0, do you?

As for the original question, it's predictably unimaginative and reductive.

My hometown is being slowly overtaken by these:

http://www.vegasluxurycondosales.com/images/Urban01.jpg

No, I don't think so. I was a reclusive lad though, and Greenwich is actually a pretty big place.

I actually tend to hide the fact that I'm from Greenwich, because, you know.

xp to jenny

Those look like they are made of corrugated tin.

xp

Ugly Condos: Epidemic across Brooklyn in the past 5 years or something...many mid-construction and now languishing unfinished or unoccupied b/c of the housing market.

The thing is that infill housing is a really smart thing to bring to an already residential space, within reason. Aesthetically, however, blergh.

xxp I do not hate those slope-roofed houses.

AJ - I visited my friend once and I remember thinking Greenwich was a regular town (because I had no previous experience w/ suburbs), but then she busted out her yearbook and I realized she went to a giant high school. I guess I'm formulating my own definition of suburbs as a town that is both easy driving distance to a city or served by some sort of commuter rail and also home to a giant high school.

Yeah, high school had about 2000 kids.

A lot of Greenwich looks just like a normal town but that normal looking house will cost you $900,000.

the fact that people believe that a car and a large house are their god given rights as an american citizen. suburbs should be EXPENSIVE - they should be a luxury because in an environmental and social sense, they are.

What "facts" are you citing here? As a kid of the suburbs, whose family became comfortably middle-class after years of hard work, I'm pretty sure my parents felt they earned the right to spend their money as they pleased.

As a point of comparison, I just returned from a trip to NYC, where the Dominican teens in Inwood (the "ethnics" and "diversity" one is supposed to enjoy in a big city as opposed to the suburbs, right?) all sported the same iPods and boat shoes that I saw on their Greenpoint and Bushwick confreres last night. Talk about conformity.

It is corrugated tin (galvanized steel, actually), and that is the face of "ugly condos" in rejuvenated downtowns through the south and southwest. Its pretty much the cheapest building material available (much as unpainted concrete was in the 60s), and I suspect will face similar issues with resale value once the "hipness" factor wanes.

I also have issues with a double-wide garage door being a home's face to the world. Well designed highrises with integral greenspace would be a big step up from these.

xp By "regular town" I meant "town like those in which I had lived" as opposed to "not astoundingly wealthy." I knew Greenwich was richie rich b/c my friend was blue collar (her dad was a cop) and she told me all about it.

when did I bring up ipods or inwood teens being cool?

I do believe that people have the 'right to spend their money as they please' - I just believe that actual cost of the suburbs does not reflect the real cost of the suburbs.

Sanpaku, what is that....thing?

Somehow my post upthread was the first in the history of ILX to use the exact phrase "ugly condos".

i am trying to find pictures of a couple of my go to ugly condos in mpls, that are built to look like fake cartoony old blocks, complete with foreshortened fake terrace balconies. fuckers

I do believe that people have the 'right to spend their money as they please' - I just believe that actual cost of the suburbs does not reflect the real cost of the suburbs.

So what?

oh yes there we go:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v729/JT-MI/uptown6.jpg

I paid $3 for coffee at La Guarida this morning. It did not taste like three dollars.

xpost

The thing is that infill housing is a really smart thing to bring to an already residential space, within reason. Aesthetically, however, blergh.

is otm

Those mpls condos kind of actually look nice.

I do believe that people have the 'right to spend their money as they please' - I just believe that actual cost of the suburbs does not reflect the real cost of the suburbs.

So what?

wtf so what? I believe we need to structure our world so that people pay for their externalities. that would make living in the suburbs more much expensive and cities relatively cheaper. right now we live in a world where we subsidize and thus prioritize suburban life. this isn't a system that can last forever or one that can spread to 7 billion people.

Corrugated tin not a problem for me but then I'm p. interested in making houses out of old shipping containers so I don't find the idea of metal walls aesthetically horrifying. Same goes for garage- or freight-sized doors opening to the outside (although do these designers not believe in BUGS??), tho admittedly only if one can adapt for keeping heat in the house, toddlers in the house, bugs out of the house, and so on.

xp yeah, the mpls condos look like a decent version of still-modern-but-blended-into-surroundings...? There are some REALLY GREAT little builds in parts of BK where people made new things look exactly like their 1850 neighbors but that's not everyone's mission in life and that's okay.

xp

well that goes back in a way to the subsidies that encouraged post ww2 suburbia in the first place

i sort of prefer the corrugated metal condos to the blended-in fakeness but i like "ugly" buildings in general

iatee, i asked you this upthread yesterday, but please define what you mean by externalities

xpostss yeah see the prob with the mpls condos is theyre in an area that looks NOTHING like that. also trust me they are also way way uglier in person.

ok, so lots of these infill condos here in madison but i have to say they're pretty handsome. but underfull and the people who live there are kind of screwed, as i understand it.

wtf so what? I believe we need to structure our world so that people pay for their externalities. that would make living in the suburbs more much expensive and cities relatively cheaper. right now we live in a world where we subsidize and thus prioritize suburban life

Apparently you live in a world that "prioritizes" urban life. Cities are loud, dirty, and frantic (especially if you've ever visited a city that isn't in the US or Europe).

Although I don't believe people get better, I really thought we'd progressed to the point where indefensible dichotomies like cities = grate suburbs = boring, pre-fab no longer existed.

I will say, looking at the tin houses again, I HATE when the garage itself is the front face or front identity of any house, and now that I look at those, I see that they all have parking front and center on the ground floors -- sorry, Sanpaku. Didn't see that at first.

I don't hate the idea of a garage-style door being the main entrance of a building as long as it doesn't ACTUALLY lead to the garage. I don't want my car's storage area to define my living space because I don't want to live on a scale that's customized for cars alone (and not for people).

xp Cities are loud, dirty, and frantic (especially if you've ever visited a city that isn't in the US or Europe).

Either someone didn't read the thread, or we may as well call Granny Dainger back to thread to cite this occasion of anti-urban snobbery. Also, I called this one yesterday.

I don't espouse this view! I'm throwing back his dichotomies.

re:fakery,

not in a suburb but I laughed a little at the railings on these infill recreated townhouses in Bristol, England, protecting passers by from falling into non-existent basement yards

http://tinyurl.com/34cakvk

What do you think should be done, iatee? " structure our world so that people pay for their externalities" is some vague, abstract shit. I don't disagree with you, but imo you're looking at this from the wrong perspective.

While the popular image of modern suburbia is one of endless subdivision, are there more attempts now at walkable suburbs, of attempting to build suburbs that ape functionality of small towns. I'm not really so clear on changes in recent suburbia in regard to this

At least 2 examples of these are described in that book I reference above, Geography of Nowhere. (Been about 10 yrs since I read it). One of them is in *gasp* FLORIDA. This gets back to iatee, cause it seems like you're arguing that people should be coerced into leaving the suburbs for the city, mainly via being priced out. Which uh would make suburbs even more gentrified and upper-middle class than they already are. It's not feasible or even desirable for huge swaths of land to be abandoned. They should be restructured to be more efficient and more human-scaled. Neither of which necessarily means they should morph into a heavily urbanized landscape.

I really thought we'd progressed to the point where indefensible dichotomies like cities = grate suburbs = boring, pre-fab no longer existed.

well I for one am cheered by the hopeful perspective you'd had until this thread brought an unwelcome dose of reality to your table!