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

yeah yeah suburban loneliness such a cliche but it really is a thing that america is content with, striving to be like daniel boone with a coonskin cap and settling for having the wild unexplored frontier of 5000 sq ft houses that nobody else but your family lives in

my senior year dorm room had a 20 foot vaulted ceiling with skylights over a 475 square foot living room; the guys who lived in it the year before hung a basketball hoop on a wall and used to play horse

so yeah, I advocate living like I did in college

cool, moving to your place asap and setting up a basketball hoop in your living room

(I still miss that room, even though the bedrooms were tiny)

good series of articles:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html

college dorm rooms are on the way out, all the newer buildings are apartment-style

thx for the articles iatee. they make for a great read and make me miss walking even more. i hate that i moved from basically one of the most walkable cities in the world to one where you can't do anything without a car.

where do you live now jibe? you used to live in paris, right?

yup. went from paris to kuala lumpur. where everyone uses a car and jokes that if you see someone walking, it has to be a tourist.

ah yeah that place is supposed to be a nightmare

well living here's not that bad, but without a car, which is my case, you're helpless. even with a car you can go everywhere but you'd still get to taste the joys of traffic jams all the time. i feel like this is totally the kind of city you'd love to hate iatee !

http://bettercities.net/article/wow-study-says-dc-streetcar-could-add-10-15-billion-value-14461

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/04/17/_.html

if the second largest city doesn't fit your premise, best not to mention it

LA is quite walkable it's just enormous

in any case author cited the 'top three cities on walkscore' not 'the three biggest cities in america'

Huh, never would have occurred to me that Paterson NJ was one of the most walkable cities, but when I think about the times I've been there, it kind of makes sense.

from the slate articles on walking

The truth is there are relatively few places in America that today would pass what architect Hal Box has dubbed the “Popsicle Rule”—“a child must be able to walk safely from home to buy a Popsicle within five minutes.”

when I visited china as a kid, I used to walk to the front entrance of the apt complex my relatives lived in and buy popsicles from the popsicle dude within 5 minutes, it was great, unlimited popsicles within 5 minutes

Oddly enough, a lot of northeast NJ is pretty walkable. I grew up in a small town 35 miles east of NYC and you could walk pretty much everywhere ... I'd walk down the street to the German deli to get kaubonbons, to school everyday, and downtown to get thrown up against a wall by an angry Puerto Rican kid. Being able to walk out the door and have adventures all day was such a big part of childhood I can't imagine what it's like to be a kid and trapped in your home because you need to drive everywhere.

That's what bikes are for.

http://blackamericanmoney.com/blackbloggers/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/d25d3a6b450pk011811.jpg

kids in the suburbs my parents live in don't ride bikes anymore, they ride razor scooters with gas engines

as a former kid, that neighborhood sounds awesome.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-avenue/102753/why-regions-fail-zoning-extractive-institution

That's very interesting

That article fails to make any clear distinction between and all zoning laws as a broad category, and a few, very particular types of zoning laws which tend to segregate neighborhoods by income. Removing all zoning laws would create chaos of a sort that no city could cope with or plan for. Hatred for zoning ordinances is just another stalking horse for extreme libertarianism, ime.

If I know iatee at all, I think what he's taking out of this are the evils of zoning laws that mandate such large lots and low population density.

Those are fine if you want the land to remain agricultural but for mere residency purposes, smaller lots would be better from both an environmental and a poverty point of view.

Also I have to guess he objects to zoning that keeps even light commercial uses out of residential areas? Or recreational use? Because people that want to live on several acres of land don't want a store or restaurant next to them, either, even though it would be walkable and maybe enriching and good for everyone.

well, houston has no zoning laws and manages to operate w/o complete chaos (still sprawlly because of minimum parking requirements and otherwise poor planning)

I linked this upthread, an interesting comparison with french zoning:
http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/09/friday-read-zoning-here-and-in-france.html

there's nothing more natural about american style euclidean zoning

there was a marco rubio quote I saw recently about how 'america is the only country in the world where you can start a business in your garage' - which is funny because really, america is one of the worst places to start a business in your garage. most forms of 'starting a business in your garage' are illegal.

I don't know about that in that there's a lot of things you can legally do to start a business at home, but very few of them are going to be in your garage/basement at this point in the game.

Pretty sure that are a host of countries where it would be easier to start a business in a garage than it is in the US.

literally the only country on earth that allows commerce of any kind

If they only had more garages in Africa, the locals would have a lot more businesses.

there's no 'at this point in the game', mh. you can't turn your garage into a restaurant or a small store even when there's nothing comparable in the neighborhood and they'd do well - even in nyc.

mmm, holding out Houston as a desirable model for the nation's cities is not a winning proposition, imo.

do you think that was what I was attempting to do?

lol

I think the "start a business in your garage" is a non-starter because that was when people MADE THINGS that they would then sell elsewhere. Nobody ever started a store or restaurant in their garage, silly.

The thing is that at this point most things that people can make and sell as a small or start-up business either have a limited market or are intangibles like software. You could definitely make shit that is sold on etsy or whatever in your garage.

rather the 'start a business in your garage' was a non-starter because when people 'made things' there was a concern about your neighbor building a factory next to the local school. but anything

there is still demand for commercial and retail space, there are still restaurants and stores and offices in your city. but you can't turn your garage into one, and you can in paris. even if you are just working alone as a start-up, there are constraints to what you can do:

http://www.sba.gov/content/zoning-laws-home-based-businesses

er ignore the 'but anything'

I do have to say though, of all camden's woes, the fact that it's more expensive to move out of it seems to be... not the top of the list.

That's what bikes are for.

― how did I get here? why am I in the whiskey aisle? this is all so (Laurel), Thursday, April 19, 2012 7:29 AM Bookmark

Except where I grew up it was several miles and 500 feet uphill to anywhere.

Hm yes, that is a problem. It was 3-5m for us to get anywhere, but it was v moderate terrain.

Overheard while walking through Union Square Park, said by man on phone: "Is he ad-DIC-ted to SPRAWL?!"

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/

http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/textonly/SERC/publications/download/sercdp0103.pdf

was this the thread where I was arguing against homeownership? probably.

4 u iatee

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-K9e4b6HldXE/T22tiWXHi2I/AAAAAAAACIA/d8yYJByf2n0/s1600/worlds-population-concentrated.png

I want them to add Manila to that

When I see stuff like that I always wonder how they're defining metropolitan areas. Is Paris really ten times (or more) the density of Houston?