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

I admit I only read like one-third of A Pattern Language before I gave it to my little brother for Christmas while he was in arch school. So I don't know shit about shit, obviously.

as it pertains to externalities, if you've got newly developed residential communities that explodes to such an extent that the freeway that feeds it can no longer manage the flow of traffic, the denizens of that suburb do not internalize the full cost of constructing expansion of that freeway.

xpost to add to goole's pts

Re redding-up the suburbs: Sidewalks and bike lanes are USELESS in parts of the country where the temperature is below freezing for half of the year, there could be several feet of snow on the ground, and everything you might want to buy or do is 5-50 miles from home. I gotta figure this is most of the northern US, from east to west?

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

i've been biking to work about 3 times a week and bike lanes make that possible.

This whole discussion reminds me of a running (friendly) argument we've been having with friends. A couple years ago my wife and I turned into (apparently, according to this thread) worthless, boring fucks when we had the chance to buy a house in the suburbs. Now, this is where our argument comes in. Our house is literally four blocks from the Chicago city line and we live in a suburb that is pretty much at times an extension of the city - shared public transportation, all of that. So friends of ours started calling us "fucking suburbanites" all the time, but we found that kind of hilarious since they live in the city - but only a total of twelve blocks south of us, in a neighborhood that really isn't much different from ours (same tightly packed houses, garages on alleys, etc.). Its just kind of funny to see how hard and fast people draw these lines.

Do you...use govt money, tax concessions, whatever, to promote developing these businesses?

Start w/zoning. Suburbs were very often founded w/restrictions on commercial lots and minimum size to insure single family middle-class homes.

Hey, back off, all of you alligators. You only have to read through yesterday's discussion itt to see plenty of evidence of people not wanting the outside world to intrude on their residential idyll and the American dream of perfect privacy, perfect quiet, perfect kingship of your own domain. And also plenty of people commenting that the dislikeable things about cities are their noise and congestion -- and at the same time, there's general agreement that one way to fix up and possibly save suburbia is to increase population density AND the number of places for people to gather for activities and/or services...which is going to lead to exactly what made people with a certain mindset MOVE to the suburbs in the first place.

I might not have pretty graphs or studies to quote to back it up, but I hardly manufactured it out of whole straw.

your friends sound kinda dickish tbh

xpost

much of political nyc and la are absolutely 'suburban' - so yeah, city borders lines are generally meaningless from this POV

xp

sorry for using the correct definition of "suburb" and not your personal, negative-connatation-already-included definition

yeah the govt home owner subsidies are some bullshit

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!

ahead of us*

sorry for using the correct definition of "suburb" and not your personal, negative-connatation-already-included definition

there is no 'correct definition of suburb' ffs

your friends sound kinda dickish tbh

Nah, I know them well enough to know they don't mean harm by it, but they are totally the types that will never move out of the city and don't understand how anybody could do so. They aren't being dicks, but there is a lot of truth when the say it.

yeah the govt home owner subsidies are some bullshit

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 9:54 AM Bookmark

No disagreement.

Laurel, I'd like to think there's a happy medium between super hi density urban living and bloated inefficient unsustainable suburban sprawl. ie you can shift current suburbs TOWARDS the hi density urban model and obtain much of its benefits while still retaining much of the attractions of suburban living.

well "suburb" as a legally distinct entity separated from "the city" is a different thing from low-density single-owner freeway-dependent developments. but when you way "suburb" everybody is talking about the latter.

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.

jvc but i don't understand--if you live blocks apart and the neighborhoods are similar the fact that they're within chicago city limits is that valuable to them?

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