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

lol @ the idea that most people have all these choices about where they live

Ok so I'm not imagining things with hindsight, I really have been feeling this way for a long time
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, May 20, 2020 5:53 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol not to be rude but i've thought of you as "the new york guy who wants to live in the burbs" for as long as i can remember

― crystal-brained yogahead (map), Thursday, May 28, 2020 2:05 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not at all. This pleases me.

FWIW, we are making my dream come true, at least sort of -- we signed a lease on a rental house that is basically in the downtown of a suburb but has a bit of a yard. Got tired of competing with all-cash buyers fleeing the pandemic and settled for that.

but are you keeping your NYC place

vs. criticizing ppl for moving into cities

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Friday, May 29, 2020 3:13 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

aka "these people do not honor the care and thought I have put into the choices I have made for myself by emulating me and making all the same choices I have made or would make if I were them, therefore they are reprehensible".

― A is for (Aimless), Friday, May 29, 2020 3:21 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is complicated and my thoughts on it are not settled. Cities represent opportunities that ppl feel they don't have where they are. Sometimes that's concretely real, esp as rural areas lose services and watch their economies collapse. Sometimes it's for cachet/excitement/habit ("everyone moves to New York for college/after college"), which is also a kind of opportunity but that person had other choices that would have still moved them forward.

When ppl who aren't from here move here (including myself!) it allows employers to outsource the development of the labor pool to communities and systems that they don't have to support. If employers had to hire from WITHIN the NYC-born population, they'd have to invest way more in the systems & infrastructure, schools, communities, wellness, to have an employable population to do the work that makes their profits. Instead, the desirability and appeal of the city to outsiders allows whole labor markets to skim off the best of what comes from elsewhere in some kind of resource extraction/lack of resource development scheme.

Now. Is it reasonable for people to stay where they're born, forever? Obviously not. People have always moved for opportunities, we're naturally migratory! (Which is also part of why national borders are bullshit but I digress.)

.................... Somewhere in the middle are a lot more thoughts about redlining, racism being baked into absolutely everything, white gentrifiers moving into Black communities and then hoarding all the quality of life power and criminalizing Black people, economic advantages ie kids whose parents pay for them to live however they want and look at the rest of the community like it's a fishbowl that they don't swim in while taking away residential space for someone FROM that community......I have a lot of thoughts.

In short it's not NECESSARILY the fault of white gentrifiers that their choices cause or abet the suffering of others but also it totally can be their fault, but thirdly we should NEVER allow structural systems off the hook OR CORPORATIONS OR GOVERNMENTS OR RACISM.

but are you keeping your NYC place

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Friday, May 29, 2020 7:48 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

No selling

You want it?

As far as people moving here, the entire city is built on the principle of people moving here for work, from all parts of the country, all parts of the world, and all socioeconomic strata. And that's pretty much true of any major city anywhere in the world, they are built on mobility, they are the opposite of stable. Urbanization came along with industrialization, the great force that uprooted feudal society and scattered people across their countries, continents and the globe.

I want to go on record as opposing redlining, gentrification, displacement of local people/culture, and BBQ Beckys.

At the same time, there's a long tradition of criticizing the white/wealthy/knowledge worker types for moving out of cities and into burbs (white flight etc.). There is also a long tradition of criticizing them for moving into cities and making them suck. And now we hear there is a hope that those who have moved in will move out. And once they have moved out, they will be criticized for living in suburbs, and being suburban. With all the suckiness that entails - how dare they drive cars, have lawns, etc.

Seems a little bit damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't. Like there is no acceptable way for these people to live.

they'll be okay

Yeah I have felt for a while like the left take on “gentrification” has been a little incoherent. The real issue is wealth inequality. Recent NYC left politics focusing more on rent and tenant rights seems like a big step in the right direction.

it's shitty when people who work in a city can't live in that city. I have no idea how that works out in NYC or other major US cities. In France social housing policy aims to move people into affordable housing near where they work, using in the formula for eligibility and for your place in the queue the distance of your commute. But that's true for people who work in suburbs too. You're not going to get an apartment in Paris if you work in Clichy, say.

People shouldn't drive cars or have lawns, that part is correct.

I feel the no lawns thing, but every time I see those russian palace houses in forest hills with the all-stone yards, I get a little sad. Def want to learn about other lawn alternatives.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWnWaTVUYAMi4Bh?format=jpg&name=large

The alternatives are literally every other native perennial and your choice of decorative/useful annuals!

lol

I guess I assumed there weren't as many *playable* alternatives, but I see they have stuff on there about alternative grasses, so I will def look into that for whenever we finally buy

Clover

I dream about having a front garden like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yHxULCQQV0

didn't mean to post w timestamp. scroll back to beginning

I’m fond of first-ring suburbs eg the one I grew up in, and I am not fond of exurban development suburbs full of wall-transfer aficionados who are only interested in living next door to other petit-bourgeois white people.

We have cedar mulch and native plants in front; clover in back. No mowing, no fertilizer, minimal water.

there are thyme varieties that feel amazing on bare feet

Yeah I have felt for a while like the left take on “gentrification” has been a little incoherent.

It isn't like there is a unified "left" to create coherent takes on things. That just seems to be an awkward way of phrasing it, maybe.

The real issue is wealth inequality

I generally get super wary and skeptical when someone (esp. a white dude) says "the real issue is ..." because it comes across as paternalistic and problematic in other ways as well.

also it's a bit weird you stating that "the real issue is wealth inequality" today -- when it's become obvious yet again, that even a black person of fairly high economic status is still at risk of police violence ... because of race.

Right. To try to clarify a little, maybe "the real issue" is the wrong way to put it, I'm just skeptical about takes that primarily concern individual choices of where to move.

I mean the Christian Cooper thing happened in Central Park, it doesn't really have anything to do with gentrification or suburbanization

gentrification doesn't happen because of individual choices though

business improvement associations, property developers, city planning departments etc. make gentrification happen. albeit they are often guided by the first wave of gentrification, which is usually artists and hipsters

I mostly suspect that's an illusion, i.e. that artists are guiding the choices of planners rather than the other way around.

well I mean I live in a gentrification hotspot, the first artists to move in to this neighborhood moved here in like the 1970s, when it was a primarily working-class, primarily non-white area. condos have only been going up in the last 5 years or so, and the houses in the neighborhood were still cheap in the early 00s. i

And I totally agree with the top-down theory of gentrification, which is part of why I don't like takes about individual choices about where to move, which is sort of what this all started with. But also, at some point, whether you put the poor people in x and the rich people in y or vice versa doesn't change the underlying problem of poverty and inequality.

xp, there's no question that artists make the first move, but these things tend to happen along predictable lines that are also determined by infrastructure, transit, and development decisions. There's a reason things moved from LES to Williamsburg to Bushwick to Ridgewood and not, say, sheepshead bay.

I mostly suspect that's an illusion, i.e. that artists are guiding the choices of planners rather than the other way around.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, May 29, 2020 10:22 AM (two minutes ago)

not all cities are the same. What I'm interested to see / learn about are how city governments take activist measures to preserve culture, diversity, etc. and what works and/or has unintended consequences. San Francisco is a good case study here ... the issue of live/work housing in San Francisco and how it began with artists and ended up basically being banned. But I think this is more the exception to the rule.

Oakland is another interesting case -- government is way less prescriptive than San Francisco -- and it also illustrates another messy issue in the gentrification debate, which is that U.S. cities change.

sure income inequality is the major issue, but gentrification has specific problems, just looking at specifically where I live - the new residents bring more police, they call the police more on low-income, mentally ill, POC, drug using people, who are already victimized by the police; the new residents bring businesses that cater to them (2 third wave coffee shops like a block from where I live), it soon becomes too expensive for the businesses that served the original community to remain open (the corner store on the block went out of business, the owner is now a custodian in my building); the huge condo building makes the previously industrial block on a busy thoroughfare less suitable for sex workers, so they work on more secluded (and therefore dangerous) blocks; the clientele of the brewery that opened up (owned by a consortium of restaurateurs who live on the opposite side of town but fronted by neighborhood guys of the gentrification wave of the 00s - including a buddy of mine who owns like 0.5% of the business) has a sign on the door on the way out imploring their clientele to treat the neighbors with respect, because obviously the yuppies they attract are a bit put-off by the riff raff they encounter around the brewery and give them shit

jim otm!

domed arcologies are the way forward

multiple xp
I've converted my front yard to native Cal/low water plants, and it's great. They've actually gotten larger than I planned for, so to walk in some areas I have to step on them.

xp - yes that's all true. I just don't understand what the position to take is, other than just "don't do that stuff." Is it that well-off mostly white people should stay in the suburbs? Should they just live in other neighborhoods? Like those people will continue to exist and need to live somewhere, so what is the position to take on that, if any?

well-off mostly white people should densify already-well-off white neighborhoods instead of gentrifying affordable ones.

the single-family-homeowner Nextdoor Nazis fight tooth and nail to avoid having new, denser housing built in their neighborhoods and they must be defeated

I don't think there's ONE answer for everyone. I also think it's good if all of us white ppl of varying degrees of financial comfort experience some DIScomfort & uneasiness around gentrification and our place in it. If there was one right answer ppl would want to close the book and stop thinking about it, and we shouldn't.

It's not always the case that it's the residents, a pretty sizable group in my town has been pushing to densify our city by allowing garage apartments and secondary dwellings on properties, but the City itself has been fighting against those tooth and nail. It's kind of infuriating to see.

silby is right, the current issue is that neighborhoods keep getting more expensive so people look to more affordable neighborhoods instead. The real solution is keeping prices in check in neighborhoods that are becoming more exclusive by building more and providing a wider range of price points. This is indeed fought relentlessly on a local level, and will only happen for real if it is enforced at the state or federal level.

I think there is an actual hard policy question of whether its preferable to use policy to create integrated neighborhoods with a wide range of incomes and socioeconomics or whether it's preferable to preserve "stable" minority/working class/poor neighborhoods. And put that way it might obviously seem like the former is the answer, but a lot of anti-gentrification activism de facto favors the latter.

Like, putting aside the big capitalism question of socioeconomic inequality for a moment and assuming it continues to exist, is it better for people to live in class-stratified neighborhoods or class-integrated neighborhoods? And as much as class-integrated sounds better, it creates some problems for poor and working class people who live in them, some of which are exemplified by the gentrification problems laid out by jim - changes in policing and "quality of life" expectations, different kinds and costs of services and businesses (partly good bc maybe greater access, partly bad because increased cost), anxiety and stress created by class differences, etc.

class-integrated neighborhoods should be created in majority-wealthy erstwhile single-family-zoned sections of the city by building low-rise social housing and affordable row house, garden condominium, and low-rise condominium units with first-time, income-restricted homeownership in mind. Meanwhile majority-PoC neighborhoods of all densities, especially those created due to previous racist redlining practices and by public housing developments, should be targeted with programs to prevent displacement of longtime residents and businesses. Is how I break it down to an extent.

If you don't have single-family neighborhoods in your city, lucky you

I mean NYC has them but they are mostly on the outer ring of the city.