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

And their children must stay protected from the elements. They must all get buses to school. Some crazy driver might mow them all down if they had to walk on the sidewalks of the neighborhood they chose for its quiet, privacy and safety. You never know and wouldn’t it be better to be safe than sorry? You’d kill yourself if something ever happened to them. Like rain. Yes, rain happens. That’s why we must have a bus to take the kids from one school to the adjacent school in the afternoons where there is more space in the annex. Oh, sure, there is a 500 ft walkway between the schools that is not anywhere near the street and skims the playgrounds between the two schools. But if it rains, they might get wet while they are walking, in a group, with their teachers. It isn’t safe and the threat of unpredictable atmospheric conditions is too risky. We need a bus. Nevermind that school budgets are finite and we might have to cut the late bus for kids in extracurricular activities who have irresponsible, uncaring mothers who work and can’t pick them up but send them home to a dark, unsafe house after school. Safety comes first.

this really is the only point where she approaches making sense

The PUMA PAC is registered as a non-affiliated political action committee (PAC) with the Federal Election Commission and organized as a 527 Organization with the IRS in June, 2008. PUMA's founders state that the group originated out of online comments of a group of Clinton supporters on a pro-Clinton blog, The Confluence, which was created by New Jersey biochemist and former John Edwards supporter Riverdaughter, who had been recently banned from a pro-Obama liberal blog.

the takeaway here is to never have children.

omg the transition to ranting about Weiner is the worst thing I've seen outside of an expository writing paper I wrote 20 years ago

What suburban kid rides the bus? I always picture a morning convoy of 50 Lexus SUVs parked outside Payne Stewart Elementary.

i sympathize with this person but she needs to spend WAY less time worrying about what other people do with their children

it seems like she is worrying about how other people's overprotectiveness is impacting her children

make soem fuckin biscuits bitch

talking shit about other parents is the easiest thing in the world to do once you become a parent yourself but it is fruitless and probably actively harmful 99% of the time. not only do you wind yourself up into an unattractively self-righteous frenzy you lay the foundations for massive karmic payback at some point down the line.

I guess it depends on the suburb you live in wrt kids. To be honest a lot of pedophiles get off on poor kids because they think they can get away with it.

People care about kids until the neighbor's kid or the kid at school gets harassed or molested. Then the victim's family has to relocate because of stigma and shame and gossip.

Pleasant Plains, it is true, there is also a stigma about riding the bus in some suburbs. And what's in your lunch.

My wife is, jokingly (I assume), hinting that I should not encourage our future child to be interested in soccer, lest she be forced to become a soccer mom.

Tracer, I am not disagreeing at all! In fact, I was lolling wholeheartedly at how unpleasantly her rants were painting her rather than the people she was complaining about until the Weiner whiplash; tbh my eyes have still not stopped rolling so I haven't been able to finish the artic.e/

this woman is a dipshit

http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/the-30-percent-solution-why-democratic-women-are-voting-for-mccainpalin/

ha djp i think i was accidentally working up a little rant of my own that sounded like i was trying to convince you of something. sorry.

"Soccer moms" is an amusing term if you're more urbanly located (also this is US bias). All I see are African, Hispanic and Pakistani kids playing it. And I see lots of dads at the matches.

i seriously just misread the last word of buzza's URL as "necrophilia"

I feel like this woman is projecting her siege mentality onto everyone around her.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Spaniards+urged+swap+cars+lifetime+tram+pass/5106460/story.html

It's a shame they didn't allow commenting on that story. Reading Calgarians' reactions to that article would've been amusing.

I know it's filled w/ Canada republicans but Calgary's transit system is still better than your average American city

still wonder why that paper picked up the story tho

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/08/09/alex-steffen-says-dense-cities-are-the-only-way-to-reduce-emissions/

fat chance of that happening

I know (:

wait that was meant to be a frowny

pollution deformed his face

it looks like his mouth melted off but he has unibrow

probably a stupid question, but isn't surface runoff due to concrete a pretty big pollution concern as well? wouldn't this problem increase with bigger, more dense cities?

Not if they used permeable paving wisely! Well, that wouldn't completely eliminate the problem, but there are ways to help minimize it.

I've wondered how permeable pavement is affected by freezing and thawing. Jon, any knowledge? It seems like a porous material would crack more easily.

lol architects. my friend who is supposed to help me with my new garage/driveway project was musing about using permeable. not really price-practical at that level

they used it in the parking lot of a winery he designed but I think they fucked up and didn't let it cure long enough, or it got too wet

big dense cities seem hot and awful

you're dense hot and awful

I've wondered how permeable pavement is affected by freezing and thawing. Jon, any knowledge? It seems like a porous material would crack more easily.

Unfortunately there haven't been a lot of permeable concrete installations in northern climates that have really tested that, but it definitely is a huge drawback at this point and part of why it hasn't largely caught on in the north. Certainly an option in warmer climates though.

exactly how long is it going to be until we get to live in one of these things:

http://www.geocities.jp/gotyamankai/pic/launch_arco.png

2050 iirc? u need microwave and fission power first

lol the wikipedia article for arcology gives the las vegas strip as an example

I think we might have to wait longer than 2050

in the meanwhile I'm gonna start a farm on the roof of the Monte Carlo

a money farm

http://lawreview.law.pitt.edu/issues/68/68.4/Hall.pdf

good overview on how zoning basically fucked this country, comparison to more enlightened french zoning system starts on pg 936

also I haven't read this yet but ryan avent is pretty top notch both on economic and urban issues, this will be more than worth $2:

http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005KGATLO

hmmm my gf wants us to move to what I consider suburbs bur which for her is just a quieter and more residential area of the city (indeed it would take me 15m by metro to get to the city center). When/where does suburbia start in your view?

best buy sighting
a stretch of a half mile in which there is a chilis, red robin, and olive garden
dress shirts are two sizes too big

homes with garages, convenient freeway access, lack of sidewalks (depending on age of suburb), lawns

there's never a strict cut-off, there's a spectrum from dense walkable urbanism to suburban sprawl. and even that sorta depends on the country, and you live in belgium, right? if you can get downtown on the metro in 15m, you're somewhere that's considerably more urban than 95% of america - even if it seems feels like the suburbs to someone used to euro-style urban areas.

there's a difference between using suburb in this sense (100% car-oriented low density area) and using it to mean 'primarily residential area outside of the city center'. in european metropolitan areas these suburbs are almost always designed much better (denser, don't have lawns as big as their houses, narrow roads, actual transit options) than their equivalent here. you can live in a european 'suburb' and still have a less suburban lifestyle than living in an american urban area.

there's a spectrum from dense walkable urbanism to suburban sprawl.

Not even a spectrum -- to a large extent the dimensions along which people measure "suburbanness" vary independently; e.g. I have a garage and a lawn as does every residence near me. I can be on the freeway by car in 5 mins. but downtown by bike in 10. 3 minutes walking and I can be at the local diner, one of two coffeehouses, the public library, or Trader Joe's.

yeah I mean I agree, that was mostly just in response to someone asking if they were moving to 'the suburbs'

I think the walkscore (http://www.walkscore.com) of various places generally has a pretty good correlation w/ how 'urban'/'suburban' it feels, and I'd imagine you have a pretty high one, lawn and garage aside

Sometimes lately I have this recurring thought that I'm a bit shamed of -- "Fuck this place, we should just move to the suburbs." Part of it is definitely having a baby on a way, which seems so predictable in a way that I never thought would happen to me. But I also just get sick of the crush, the ugliness, the encroached feeling. I think the suburb I have in my mind's eye isn't really like a real suburb though.

I'm afraid you're going to have to move to wherever, exactly, it is that jjusten lives.

Also, assume that you'll need to buy or lease two cars immediately.