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

PP, the entire block is like that. This one is a little larger for the price than most, probably because it looks like an older couple is selling it. afaict from the assessor's website, they moved in after the gentleman came back from the Korean war and have lived there ever since.

Is there some sort of stigma attached to being south of the Interstate? Weird.

And that vent cover going 65º up the wall, is that a Midwest thing?

I have some personal ish with that house, like, "laminate flooring" and the fact that if the inside ever had the tiniest bit of architectural detail, it's gone now. But it does seem like a fantastic deal, if it weren't so hard to get a loan that you basically had to pay $150K in cash to buy anything right now?

Looks like it used to be a nice foursquare until That Deck came along. The siding + stucco = exterior combo is something else I don't understand. But again, in sheer value, that's crazy.

fwiw, most houses in this area that have carpeted floors have:

a) hardwood underneath that could be refinished
b) (occasionally) completely serviceable hardwood that just needs to be wiped down underneath carpet/pad

Laminate probably means "there was vinyl tile on top of hardwood and it was too much work to get it off and the Home Depot was having a sale on this nice oak-printed flooring" tbh, but that's okay, getting old adhesive off is just a lot of work.

No shit!

I might throw down laminate upstairs in my place where I am tearing out the current carpet, just because refinishing the back half up there would be a pain in the ass

We had an old house with hardwood floors that when it came to selling it, we laid carpet down on top of it. People still want carpet and it was a cheaper to do that than to try to refurnish the woods.

Nonetheless, we took pictures of the hardwood before the carpet went down and put them in a little book for the new owners. Least they know what's under there.

So for $150K you get something that is, hopefully, structurally sound, and you just inherit whatever maintenance issues come with a 1914 house with forced-air heating and so on, and you spend the next 10 years slowly rehabbing every room one at a time and then another 5 years refinishing the exterior, residing, losing the aftermarket treated-lumber decking, landscaping, etc. I understand the appeal but I feel like I'm too old for that shit to take 15 years, at this point.

America's commutes start earlier and last longer

I'd like to see the impact of telecommuting on that graph still

Yeah I'm either going to halfass some stuff but I really want to pay someone to install hardieplank siding and do something sweet with my yard.

Check out these awesome overdesigned garages: http://www.greengarageplans.com/

Wow, they do seem preeeeeety great!

I miss having a tiny bit of outdoor space, mostly for washing things or spreading them out in ways that I can't in the house. Scrubbing a shower curtain, drying out some blankets, or spray-painting ANYTHING is virtually impossible. But roof access would honestly do the job just as well.

morning commute times

Wow, they do seem preeeeeety great!

I miss having a tiny bit of outdoor space, mostly for washing things or spreading them out in ways that I can't in the house. Scrubbing a shower curtain, drying out some blankets, or spray-painting ANYTHING is virtually impossible. But roof access would honestly do the job just as well.

I lay out an old blanket and old shower curtain when I want to spray paint (studio apartment, no roof or yard).

I have a shower curtain liner now. It turns out I can throw it in the washer with bleach and run it on the warm cycle.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/can-highway-spending-ever-be-fair/2011/10/13/gIQAuF5xhL_blog.html

it turns out that all highways are essentially subsidized by the gov!

Well, yeah! Pretty much a key point of even any local freeway expansion/remodel news article

Apparently my hometown is 'running out of space', and apparently city officials think the solution is to keep allowing developers to build really awful suburbs. Hooray!

I would just like to say that I met iatee the other night and we did NOT recreate this entire thread in drunken conversation. We recreated the "higher ed, is it worth it" one instead.

Did you reference the thread where the conservative blogger dude showed up and iatee went on about being a lawyer with a beemer?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/can-we-stop-gas-prices-from-squeezing-the-middle-class/2011/10/21/gIQAV0im3L_blog.html

transportation in america to me feels like a dam that's about to burst

while he's right that much of the new public transit in america isn't aimed at lower-income people, that alone doesn't discount public transit as 'probably the answer to the problem' - things like giving buses and bikes their own lanes + finding ways to disincentivize driving can increase alt transit options on a small budget. but that requires people willing to give up certain conveniences.

I lead my eighth graders in a discussion about assumptions society has about people in urban, rural, and suburban settings. Part of me thought it would be a redux of this thread but it turned out most of them don't even know what the suburbs are. And bcz this is lol Arizona they finally defined the suburbs as "where all the old people move to."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/us/suburban-poverty-surge-challenges-communities.html

hey NYT stop reading ILX

As a result, suburban municipalities — once concerned with policing, putting out fires and repairing roads — are confronting a new set of issues, namely how to help poor residents without the array of social programs that cities have, and how to get those residents to services without public transportation. Many suburbs are facing these challenges with the tightest budgets in years.

maybe people who need centralized services / can't afford to throw away their paycheck on ever-increasing transportation costs shouldn't be forced into ~the american dream~

things haven't gotten nearly as bad as they're gonna get

Tildes around The American Dream is symbolic of immigrants' threat to our way of life.

We linked that article about suburbs being a ponzi scheme, right?

I have a little mini-rant about a particular suburb in my area that I've been forming but I'm not ready to blurt it all out yet

why are you forming suburbs?

*bites nails* xp

http://thenewinquiry.com/post/11992813690/the-geography-of-failed-revolt

turns out mitt romney hated suburbs too http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/97226/romney-massachusetts-chauvinism-liberal

Romney and [his transportation guru Douglas] Foy wasted little time in putting smart-growth policies to work. The state, they declared, would take a “fix-it-first” approach to highway spending—repairing existing roads instead of building new ones. They also pledged to cut the number of SUVs in the state fleet. In addition, the state put out a new highway-design manual intended to make towns more pedestrian-friendly, with narrower streets designed for slower driving speeds.

“It was all really woolly, totally green, new-urbanist stuff—and it was state policy,” says Anthony Flint, who covered land-use issues for The Boston Globe and went on to join Foy’s office in 2005. The biggest move came in 2004, when Romney signed legislation, dubbed Chapter 40R, providing funds to towns and cities that agreed to allow more high-density, multi-family housing. “It was fundamentally anti-sprawl. It was saying that the days of having a developer buy a Christmas tree farm and throw up a bunch of single-family homes on half-acre lots were over,” Flint recalls. “It was a real awakening.”

why is he running as a republican again

it sorta makes sense, he prob looks at this the same way bloomberg does, consultant-style urbanism 'what is the most efficient way of using the resources I have' not cause they love trees or anything just cause it's super financially rational to *not build new freeways*

also kind of an "easy" way to appease the largely democratic electorate in MA so they might re-elect him

He didn't even run for reelection, though. He had his eyes on bigger things.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=smart-way-to-play-god-with-limited-land&print=true

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/activists-fight-green-projects-seeing-un-plot.html

man remind me again why i believe in democracy *imposes UN martial law on tea party, build subway track around a wal mart that does abortions in one car and labial piercings in another, runs on beet juice and the burning ashes of the constititution*

attn iatee

http://i40.tinypic.com/fk47z8.jpg

That NYT photo can be summed up with "lol old whites!". Luckily, they'll die off soon.

both otm

i'm sure other stupid ppl will fill their shoes

Yes, it's not like the world is going to run out of stupid people, but they'll be afraid of slightly different things, allowing the rest of the world to make an end-run around their particular hang-ups. And so on, and so on. I think this is how "progress" happens?

I literally cannot deal with that NYT article

haha there was a nyt article about how hard it is to find parking these days in manhattan cause they tragically keep replacing parking lots with ~actual buildings~ and it is hard to express how hard I was trying to will a comments section into existence

In fairness to everyone Agenda 21 is a pretty evil name

haha tru

http://grist.org/list/america-has-40-million-big-houses-that-no-one-wants/

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2012/02/have-americans-given-mcmansions/1184/

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46216000/gif/_46216562_houses_466_4.gif