Is the US a dystopia?

i used to scoff at that form of the American Dream, but all of these boring people living in their boring houses and never going outside appear to be doing way, way better than i am, and i'm sure they look at my life and think "dude just kill yourself"

My parents live in an older suburb of Philadelphia, so there are some amenities like a bus that comes once an hour, little shops and the like. Nearby, there are more strictly commercial corridors that line up with the old railroad lines. In many ways, it doesn’t resemble what this Slovakian person describes at all. I grew up in the city and these same suburbs, and so it was a bit of a shock when I became an adult and realized that a lot of people choose to live in suburban development hells way outside of cities, what are essentially exurbs.

I like the idea of a tavern in the garage, and vegetables in the backyard. Perhaps I should be in Slovakia.

tbf you can prob grow vegetables in lots of suburban backyards; that's maybe the least good point, though I think the post is right that many Americans focus far more on their primarily ornamental lawns. My parents had a vegetable garden in the town I grew up in that wasn't really close enough to Chicago to count as a suburb (my dad commuted from where we lived to Niles). But then we moved to a hellish HOA-governed development in a small Georgia city that was more like a metastasized suburb with no urb to be sub of. In that neighborhood the number of paper bag lanterns you had to put on xmas eve was mandated, and no way could you do whatever you wanted with your yard. Anyway, I think it's that contradiction between individualist myth and conformist reality that must be weird to outsiders. And yeah obvs dude wasn't looking at pictures of Evanston, but it's an accurate picture of plenty of other suburbs I've been to

I grew up in Columbia, MD, which was at least envisioned as a suburb where everything came together like that - sidewalks, walkability, busses, mixed-income and mixed-race neighborhoods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia,_Maryland

No taverns in the garage, as the HOA rules are super-strict. It's not perfect. Anyway, that's why I used to pipe up in defense of suburbs back when iatee would take them to task in the 'classy, icky, or dudes' thread. My experience was of a place that was at least intended to foster community, to an extent. And though we always made fun of it for being sterile and walled-off from real life, I don't think it's nearly as sterile and faceless as a lot of suburbs are.

There are shitty hellhole US suburbs. There are lovely US suburbs that are walkable, with shops and transit. There are US suburbs that fall somewhere in between. The USA spans an entire continent and throws in Alaska and Hawaii for good measure. Everyone's personal experience of the suburbs is completely true, but anecdotal evidence about a place this huge and diverse can only reflect a small slice of reality.

thanks for explaining that to us

yeah, "suburb" as a term is kind of completely meaningless. Evanston is very nice. it's completely the exact opposite of my family's suburb. i'm probably thinking of "dystopia" because it's in the thread title, but i really do think of their suburb as a kind hellish dystopia, very sunbaked and hot, heat on the asphalt, the only people outside are hired yard workers. people open their garages and close them and wear those funny reflective wraparound shades which are the equivalent of their tinted SUV windows. they hide inside the shades inside the car inside the garage inside the mcmansion inside the suburb. that's a suburb to me.

but if you live in a better suburb, one where people are supposed to talk to, you probably have no idea what a rural suburb is because no one does, because you absolutely never go there unless you're invited

maybe that's one indicator - there are suburbs where you're supposed to see people and it's encouraged, and there are suburbs where the entire reason you're there is to shelter yourself from other people

not to derail suburb talk, but feel the need to share this somewhere, the army goes adam curtis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA4e0NqyYMw

thanks for explaining that to us

I realize the more valuable contribution to the discussion would have been to explain to people the conclusions they have drawn from their experience of the suburbs are wrong, because it conflicts with my own experience of the suburbs, but I went with saying everyone was right instead. Sorry.

I have a friend who just moved to a suburb on a hill, he has a two car garage - the house is probably from the early 70s, and all you need is a morning shot of a paperboy on his bike to realize that you're about to be in Poltergeist 5: The Final Reckoning or something like that, it's some dystopian Spielberg shit

growing up as a weird art kid in a cookiecutter American suburb i was very tempted by the smug "look at these boring suburban drones in their endless sterile houses, how i pity them" mindset, until the day i realized that i myself was not an empty drone, therefore the other people around me must not all be like that either. i may not ever meet all of them, but it doesnt mean i should assume that behind every door is an soulless whitebread lame-o. ive gone on to live in big cities where i've met incredibly boring empty conformist nonpeople, and also lived in suburbs where my neighbors have been artists and musicians and very interesting people. obviously there are many brutal & valid critiques of the suburban concept as it currently exists in the USA, but on a human level doing the "people in suburbs are boring bc their houses & lawns all look the same" thing as an adult is a dud imo.

also LOL at a redditor asking "what do you actually do? are you always stuck inside"

the army goes adam curtis

i saw that and couldn't help but think that vid wasn't put together by active members of the psyops division of the army, but was the product of some high-priced talent earning 100x what the kids they're recruiting will get paid.

xpost Well, there might be some suburbs - thinking Phoenix or Las Vegas in August - where there's not much else you can do but hide inside

ime there's the 1950s-model suburb (like I grew up in in the '70s) that does tend to have sidewalks and - at least in the old days - kids on the street, and which can have a lively vibe, at least sporadically. Then there's today's-model suburb that is about exclusion, separation, and very concerned about "security." The fact that the middle class has been split up between people who can afford to buy a house and those who can't exacerbates the trend toward class separation.

In Intruder in the Dust, Faulkner uses the word "demiurban." It was the first time I saw that word and I think it is useful.

One could use demiurban for the dense / pedestrian-friendly / mass transit-served burb, and exurban for the spread-out / sprawly / car-dependent kind. But perhaps it doesn't matter and is a vanity exercise to begin with; probably none of it is defensible or sustainable. feel free to disregard it as (our old pal) narcissism of small differences

It may not be sustainable but I see no sign of it slowing down.. if anything, the exurbs are rapidly growing here in the Bay Area. If one wants a four bedroom/3 bath that looks like the Hotel California, it's probably going to be built in the furthest outer suburbs, i.e. Tracy, Modesto, Los Banos, even Fresno which is three hours away. And there's a whole bunch of people that do this commute every day, which is just soul-crushing to me, but it works for them

That, to me, is dystopia

Woah, wikipedia:

The first recorded usage of the term in English, was by John Wycliffe in 1380, when the form subarbis was used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In my condo unit in the middle of sunbaked Florida, and in the miles of subdivisions I walk through and past every morning, I do see kids shooting hoops and neighbors talking to each other and the occasional guy in a Moe's or Chipotle uniform smoking a joint in his car or on the stoop.

The problem is the car. Suburbs and exurbs depend on cars; they want you to drive them, everywhere.

So your answer to the thread question is YES

YES.

Having grown up in a variety of suburbs across the country and now living in the Chicago 'suburb' so oft referenced itt today, the latter is definitely the preferable option on every front. All the amenities, directly adjacent to the urb to which it is sub (like literally walking distance), no need for a car. I guess if you're way into having a big house and a big yard and shit like that it's maybe worth a three hour daily commute but that seems like a waking nightmare to me, idk.

Well, to be frank, many of the people making the specific 3-hour commute mentioned above didn’t choose it, but were forced into it by the retrograde NIMBYism of Bay Area development laws, foreign real estate speculation, and price gouging thanks to the influx of tech money into the area. I will be absolutely frank and say that the tech industry ruined the most beautiful metropolitan area of the US, and that there are many people who agree with me and won’t ever forgive the cultureless asshats who now stroll along Valencia Street.

Like I know several people who are teachers who commute to San Francisco from Tracy. Hell, my partner and I have joked about moving back and trying to find a place in Vacaville just to be close to the places and people that made us who we are.

That said, outside of that specific metro, I’d agree with you— it never made sense to me that someone woild want to live hours away from their job just to have a bigger house or more land, unless one was really into horses or farming or something, and that’s another exception to a general rule.

Calling Evanston a suburb is like calling Oakland a suburb. I don’t usually think of suburbs as places very well served by public transit, with actual downtowns.

I did used to work in SF with a guy who commuted daily from Sacramento. He was a Salvadorean Jehovahs Witness. We all went out to his place in Sacto for Thanksgiving one time, it was typical ranch-style sprawl there.

Given the Chicagoland angle this discussion has taken, I'll chime in. I live in Kenosha, WI, which is a city in its own right but also a suburb/bedroom community for both Chicago and Milwaukee. It has its own USian dystopic suburban hellscape sections, and the townships around it have even more of those due to lax or nonexistent zoning and planning regulations. Much of it is so depressing I can't believe anyone lives there. Central Kenosha is quite walkable, nice and affordable by comparison, although there is no full service grocery in the central area, that's about the only missing amenity.

Several members of this biker club, Guardians of the Children, just followed, blocked and surrounded me as I tried to approach the cemetery to meet a photographer. One member says they’re working with police: “They asked us to be here.”

Short post: https://t.co/OfZCAZbUZx pic.twitter.com/5d6wsLKQ0k

— Julian Gill (@JulianGi11) June 2, 2022

cops and biker gangs merging, bodes well imo

cops and the proud boys were allies for a long time, i'm sure they are now, although the form that takes varies by city.

rolling stones used to use biker gangs as security, worked out well for the 60s

oh yeah, nothing is ever entirely new, I just use this thread to sadlollingly note news that resembles familiar fictional dystopias

Is it even worth pointing out the irony of the Uvalde police belonging to/subcontracting with a biker gang called Guardians of the Children. Bowie's line about being insulted by these fascists has popped into my head too many times over the past 7 years

cops and have been the proud boys were allies for a long time

there's a bit of a revolving door, a little bit of oathkeepin

Can’t remember where I read it, I think it was a leftist response to Resistance Lib luxuriating in Handmaid’s Tale imagery, but somebody pointed out a key thing about the concept of dystopia is that no dystopia is dystopic for _everybody_, and a helpful bit was to figure out who actually made out well in that scenario

Listening to this parter and the host talks about how it’s entirely possible that we can have an apocalypse but will still have marketing and social media and the Oscars afterward, b/c not all people are affected by the apocalypse the same way. This last point I think is avoided by most literature and discourse about dystopic societies

https://www.againsttheinternet.com/post/50-varieties-of-scientific-revolution-pt-1

https://www.againsttheinternet.com/post/52-varieties-of-scientific-revolution-pt-2

"guardians of the children" gimme a fucking break

everyone thinks they're working in the children's best interest, even as kids are gunned down in their classroom while the police are picking their noses out in the hall

no you don't understand "children" is my name for the pigs

This is the most dystopian thing I've read in at least a few days.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/06/bus-denver-pendemic-violence/

Similar story from a few months ago out of Seattle.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/drugs-on-buses-have-become-an-everyday-hazard-seattle-area-transit-workers-say/

Ugh

That WaPo article cites the LA sheriff’s dept as an expert source on transportation issues ffs.

I’ve ridden busses in Denver recently and I know there are issues but it was better than the normal I’ve seen in SF in years past. In all of these cities — Denver, LA, SF — there is a crisis of unhoused folks which tbh seemed to explode right around the time marijuana was legalized. I’m all for legalization but it seems like there are some underlying issues that have been amplified by selected states legalizing in the midst of a national housing shortage and a recession, without pumping sufficient funds in social support networks.

some underlying issues

like what? I honestly can't even guess what you think the correlation is here

Ah yes, blaming marijuana legalization for capitalism's culture of scarcity and cruelty.

Quite literally one of the stupidest takes I've read on here in a while.

Can’t remember where I read it, I think it was a leftist response to Resistance Lib luxuriating in Handmaid’s Tale imagery, but somebody pointed out a key thing about the concept of dystopia is that no dystopia is dystopic for _everybody_, and a helpful bit was to figure out who actually made out well in that scenario

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish)

this is kind of a challenge i have talking about my life with some people, there's this tendency for, look i don't want to call them out like this but liberals, to look at the last six years and talk about how they wish things were how they were back in the 1990s, and... i don't really remember the 1990s fondly?

it's a weird cognitive dissonance that i carry around in my head, knowing that the world i live in _is_ a hellish dystopia but at the same time life has literally never been better for me. (which complicates things because, uh, i don't generally get the sense that this dystopia was created for _my_ personal benefit.)

https://static.twentytwowords.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2014-05-09-at-9.47.38-AM.jpg

want a 2000-era This American Life rerun interviewing the Maine outlier who eats 16.4 pounds of margarine every year.

Your friends nostalgic to return to the 90s is probably just their unexamined nostalgia for when they personally felt their happiest. For many other people on this planet we all share, the 90s sucked. It was yet another decade of war and climate inaction!!!

Nostalgia is inherently myopic if not outright delusional.

some underlying issues

like what? I honestly can't even guess what you think the correlation is here

Like the housing crisis which imo has been significantly amplified by the role of AirBnb in this case. You DON’T think marijuana legalization created any excess housing demand from trustafarians in the Denver area? You don’t think some of those incoming trustafarians may have pushed some marginalized working class people there onto the streets?

As to the user who noted my superlative stupidity, did you rtfa? It makes some pretty specific connections between cannabis use and this crisis they’re describing, and again I will note it uses the fucking LA sheriffs department as an expert source here, of all the completely shitty hills for you to die on.