i just see the behavior of peeps as the thing that needs fixing (shopping locally, diminished driving, sustainable living, etc) and think that their location doesnt preclude that happening wherever.
Location precludes those things happening in a lot of places without significant changes to zoning etc that have already been detailed here. Even if everyone in Suburb XYZ woke up tomorrow willing to walk 10 blocks for their groceries, they wouldn't be ABLE to, and they won't be able to for years to come unless something is changed on a city government level...?
― the soul of the avocado escapes as soon as you open it (Laurel), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:38 (thirteen years ago) link
and people are also reading things into my POV - I don't think suburbia is necessarily a bad place to live or grow up or raise a family! I don't think that people there are any more uncultured than your average person in brooklyn! I don't think that it's only white people!
I just think that it's a very economically and environmentally inefficient style of life, and it's unfortunate that we have policies in place (from fed to local level) that make it cheap and omnipresent. and as much as people talk about changing those policies, it's something that requires (what would appear to be) radical steps and real sacrifices from suburbanites.
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:44 (thirteen years ago) link
Hell, I lived in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey at one point, and even though it was only a 10-min walk from our house to the "center" of "town" (ie the post office, a church, and a wine store), NO ONE WALKED. Everyone in town got into their leased luxury cars and drove to the coffee shop for their newspaper and joe. And this is in a place that DOES have sidewalks and one or two streets of small interesting stores and eateries and where people have enormous financial advantages over most of the rest of the country.
― the soul of the avocado escapes as soon as you open it (Laurel), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:46 (thirteen years ago) link
Shit, I intended to delete that as being not-really-on-topic but I posted it by mistake. I'm listening to classical piano on one earphone and got distracted. :(
― the soul of the avocado escapes as soon as you open it (Laurel), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:47 (thirteen years ago) link
very easy for you to say as an urbanitexp
― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:47 (thirteen years ago) link
right but the change in behavior leads to the political changes necessary (which can occur faster than we might assume). and yeah theres shitty laws out there that make these sorts of changes difficult, but they are hardly the province of the suburbs alone (case in point, many cities have strict regulations about stuff like houses not being allowed to have a chicken in your yard - thats stupid.) suburban areas do have one advantage over cities that i think is getting ignored, which is the availability of plantable space. single family dwellings are a great step toward vegetable gardens and other green space options, and dense apartment living (which is the predominate case in most major cities) fails in that. all the community gardens in the world simply arent going to be enough.
― apparently not the band, but the lifestyle (jjjusten), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:48 (thirteen years ago) link
it doesn't matter if it's "easy for me to say", a good transportation system in your suburb does not affect my life as much as it affects yours.
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:50 (thirteen years ago) link
well i don't view a good transportation system as a sacrifice tho
― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:51 (thirteen years ago) link
well, convince your neighbors?
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:53 (thirteen years ago) link
Despite the best intentions of ILXors and the "Gardening 2010" thread, which fills me with envy, almost 100% of that plantable space in the suburbs is planted with grass that requires heavy doses of chemicals and more water than the flood plains of Egypt in order to look properly golf-course-like.
And, in North Jersey, at least, whatever isn't planted with grass is planed with impatiens. I hate impatiens.
― the soul of the avocado escapes as soon as you open it (Laurel), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:53 (thirteen years ago) link
my parents have converted about half of our backyard into a vegetable garden. it's pretty great. we still have a front lawn though which yeah, uses a lot of water :(
gardening is pretty hard work though
― ⚖ on my truck (dyao), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:54 (thirteen years ago) link
my neighbors prob don't either, seeing as I live 200 yds from a train station
― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:54 (thirteen years ago) link
sounds like you're set
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:55 (thirteen years ago) link
almost 100% of that plantable space in the suburbs is planted with grass that requires heavy doses of chemicals and more water than the flood plains of Egypt in order to look properly golf-course-like.
this is changing though! again i can only speak from personal experience, but i think trends towards gardening and non-invasive landscaping are significantly rising.
― apparently not the band, but the lifestyle (jjjusten), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:57 (thirteen years ago) link
would be if my job were either in chicago or one of the downtowns along the metra rail. like i said, as much as i'm not down w/the "cars are evil!" mentality, structuring areas to be dependent on needing a car to do the basics of life (earn a living, buy food, get drunk communally) is the real problem as i see it.
― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:58 (thirteen years ago) link
xpost That's good to hear. I hate grass lawns on both an aesthetic and ecological level.
― Blog is a concept by which we measure our pain (Jon Lewis), Thursday, 10 June 2010 16:59 (thirteen years ago) link
as much as i'm not down w/the "cars are evil!" mentality, structuring areas to be dependent on needing a car to do the basics of life (earn a living, buy food, get drunk communally) is the real problem as i see it.
yeah but once you've fixed that problem, a car is basically superfluous
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:01 (thirteen years ago) link
When shopping for groceries for a family of 6, a car is never superfluous. It would be nice, though, if you didn't need it for EVERYTHING.
― the soul of the avocado escapes as soon as you open it (Laurel), Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:02 (thirteen years ago) link
zipcar etc.
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:03 (thirteen years ago) link
lots of things are superfluous, chairman!
― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:08 (thirteen years ago) link
i've always been curious about the amount of gas used by persons (whether for commuting or for recreational/leisure activities) vs amount used for commercial activities (transport of goods, work crews and equipment, etc.) anyone got any stats?
― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:15 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/fensec.asp
'Passenger cars use more than 40 percent of the oil consumed in America'
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:22 (thirteen years ago) link
Hmmm. That doesn't necessarily mean the other 60% is all used for commercial transportation, though. Inconclusive.
― fuck being hard, suburbs are complicated (The Reverend), Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:24 (thirteen years ago) link
right, but the 40% isn't inconclusive
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:27 (thirteen years ago) link
ok now give me the %'s in other countries!
― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:31 (thirteen years ago) link
Does "passenger cars" include taxicabs, airport shuttles, etc.? Or are they referring to privately-owned vehicles only?
― I guess for copraphiles this is gonna be awesome (Pancakes Hackman), Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:38 (thirteen years ago) link
could be higher than 40% - that particular stat depends on whether the rest of their economy is fueled by oil or not. per capita #s would be a better comparison, no? here's overall:
http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2008/1/7/wsj_oil_chart.jpg
looking for passenger car numbers
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:39 (thirteen years ago) link
― iatee, Thursday, June 10, 2010 10:27 AM Bookmark
Right, but that wasn't the question.
― fuck being hard, suburbs are complicated (The Reverend), Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:43 (thirteen years ago) link
it was half of the question, and so I answered half of the question, because that's all I found
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:44 (thirteen years ago) link
I don't get the right side of the most recent graph. Obviously it's showing change from 1996-2000 levels to 2001-2006 levels, but I don't understand the various baseline points, which don't seem to be correlated to anything.
― fuck being hard, suburbs are complicated (The Reverend), Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:49 (thirteen years ago) link
they're correlated to rate of change from -2 to 10. in 1996-2000 america's rate of change of consumption per capita was ~1%, in 2001-2006 it fell to 0%. that doesn't mean that the use itself fell, it meant that the rate at which our per capita use was growing fell.
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 17:54 (thirteen years ago) link
I get that, by why are the 1996-2000 baseline points all over the place, rather than being a 0 baseline or correlated to the amount of use you see on the left?
― fuck being hard, suburbs are complicated (The Reverend), Thursday, 10 June 2010 18:00 (thirteen years ago) link
by = but
1996-2000 and 2001-2006 were + in some places and - in some places, so they have to be all over the place. there isn't a zero baseline because they're using two different periods of change and putting them on the same graph.
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 18:04 (thirteen years ago) link
okay, here's "Transport sector gasoline fuel consumption per capita (liters)
Gasoline is light hydrocarbon oil use in internal combustion engine such as motor vehicles, excluding aircraft. Source: International Road Federation, World Road Statistics and electronic files, except where noted, and International Energy Agency.
Country name 2005 2006 2007United States 1.25 1.24 1.22Canada 0.92 0.91 0.91Luxembourg 1.04 0.95 0.90Kuwait 0.83 0.85 0.86United Arab Emirates 0.79 0.80 0.82Bahrain 0.66 0.68 0.70Australia 0.71 0.67 0.66Qatar 0.81 0.79 0.63Saudi Arabia 0.55 0.57 0.61New Zealand 0.56 0.56 0.56Brunei 0.53 0.54 0.56Netherlands Antilles 0.54 0.54 0.55Iceland 0.50 0.53 0.51Oman 0.40 0.44 0.49Switzerland 0.48 0.47 0.46Ireland 0.41 0.44 0.42Venezuela, R.B. de 0.40 0.42 0.42Cyprus 0.36 0.38 0.41Sweden 0.43 0.41 0.39Greece 0.35 0.35 0.37Finland 0.35 0.34 0.34Japan 0.35 0.34 0.34Denmark 0.34 0.33 0.33Trinidad and Tobago 0.32 0.30 0.32Israel 0.30 0.30 0.31
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 18:25 (thirteen years ago) link
(http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.ROD.SGAS.PC)
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 18:26 (thirteen years ago) link
we're basically unique in being a rich industrialized country that's also physically huge in area. our gasoline use is probably always going to top the charts, but it doesn't have to be that bad.
― goole, Thursday, 10 June 2010 18:44 (thirteen years ago) link
of all my posts to quote. canada, incidently, fares pretty well by my standards - half their population lives in 3 urban areas.-----Would that still be the case if their population was 300 million instead of 33 million? Could it be the case? Does climate have anything to do with it? Those three urban areas are about as far south as it's possible to be in Canada.
I think it's more around 1/3 of the population.Not sure about climate. Except for Vancouver, pretty much all major cities in Canada are susceptible to the sort of unpleasant cold that you'd think would drive people away. But Alberta and I think to a lesser extent Saskatchewan have both recently had big explosions in population and development, and they both have dreadful climates.
Sorry for the many xposts.
― salsa shark, Thursday, 10 June 2010 20:10 (thirteen years ago) link
distance to american border is also a factor and it doesn't hurt that 'geographic closeness to closest trading partner' is positively correlated w/ warmer climate
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 20:27 (thirteen years ago) link
Haha, I just realized, Laurel probably has me killfiled.
― jaymc, Thursday, 10 June 2010 20:46 (thirteen years ago) link
Certainly a lot of people who are able to do so will drive into the US to buy cars, TVs, other consumer goods etc (because they're cheaper and/or released earlier), but I don't think it's a dealbreaker for the average person to not be within driving distance of the border. The proximity is probably more beneficial to companies and governments and cities as a whole (for example, Toronto being able to ship its garbage to Michigan). Not sure it's a huge draw for individual people such as the suburb-dwellers who are the topic of this thread, though.
― salsa shark, Thursday, 10 June 2010 21:38 (thirteen years ago) link
right but where people end up living is related to companies and governments and cities as a whole...
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 21:42 (thirteen years ago) link
like I think you think that I was suggesting that people are like "hmmm I could live 70 miles from the US or 20 miles from the US - I'mna go w/ 20 - gotta get my walmart/nfl/etc. fix" - I'm sure nobody operates like this. rather, they're choosing between places are 70 miles and 20 miles from the US because those regions are developed for reasons that *are* related to the US.
― iatee, Thursday, 10 June 2010 21:51 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah, I wasn't entirely sure—I didn't think you were suggesting that but wanted to discuss against it anyway.
― salsa shark, Thursday, 10 June 2010 22:03 (thirteen years ago) link
the american economy is ~80% service sector. so yeah, good point, we can't bring coal mines to san francisco and I don't think we need to. but it's totally disingenuous to act like in 2010 the american suburban and rural population is a bunch of miners and farmers, that the rural/suburban population distribution are due to the 'needs' of the american economy rather than, well essentially a lot of political decisions. the set-up is inherently *uneconomic* - as the status quo has requires massive gov't subsidies.― iatee, Thursday, June 10, 2010 5:10 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark
― iatee, Thursday, June 10, 2010 5:10 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark
i accept most of that, but you're mischaracterizing my argument, which largely concerned the origins of farming communities and manufacturing towns in the inland u.s. infrastructure (rail, roads, waterways) are initially built to support long distance travel and the transit of goods - not subsidized to facilitate suburban living. this basic network of roads and communities, however, provides a web in which the population simply will accumulate around certain nodes. those nodes grow into cities, and those cities sprout inner-ring suburbs. my point was never that "most people in iowa work in agriculture", it was that the relatively few who do wind up creating and even necessitating a vast network of low-density communities.
in the 50s, with explosive population growth, relative wealth and a willingness to spend money on massively expanding the federal highway system, you get a shift to "planned communities" like levittown (which are really what a lot of people mean when they say "suburbs"). you also get a tendency to subsidize such communities, both directly and indirectly. as a result, you get 60 years of explosive growth in such communities, often in the outer ring around existing suburbs, and a resulting ghosting of many towns and small cities. the largest town near my mom in maine now has a town center composed of a massive parking lot, serving a scattering of dying, old-fashioned urban businesses, all surrounded by a sprawling ring of insta-suburbs and new big-box retailers. this is what now constitutes the actual, viable community. the so-called town center is a memory, existing only because it is thought to exist. lots of american towns and small cities work the same way, though the pendulum seems to have been swinging back the other way for the last 20 years or so.
agree that this is a problem. suburban living is environmentally irresponsible. it takes much more energy to heat a small home than a large apartment, and most suburban lifestyles DO require a great deal of driving. roads and lawns and sewage systems are environmentally catastrophic, and the more widely dispersed they are, the more widely they can disperse their toxic effects. agree with all that. but politically speaking, how do we reverse this? we're not a top-down, autocratic state where decisions of the type that might be required can be easily made and enforced. you have to convince people that they want to deprive themselves of the subsidies in question. how do you do that?
― the other is a black gay gentleman from Los Angeles (contenderizer), Thursday, 10 June 2010 22:59 (thirteen years ago) link
plus, i'm not convinced that we can maintain a mostly service-based economy over the next 100 years, or that we should even try. suspect that 21st century america will be much more blue-collar than the late 20th, and that's much harder to centralize.
― the other is a black gay gentleman from Los Angeles (contenderizer), Thursday, 10 June 2010 23:00 (thirteen years ago) link
we're not a top-down, autocratic state where decisions of the type that might be required can be easily made and enforced. you have to convince people that they want to deprive themselves of the subsidies in question. how do you do that?
agree that the problem comes down to these two sentences. unfortunately I don't think there *is* an easy answer and if there were, somebody much smarter than me would have come up w/ it by now. the american public isn't prone to these kinda sacrifices. this is a country where health care reform - (one which didn't even require sacrifice! in fact quite the contrary!) - barely survived the onslaught of rumors that there would be *some* sacrifices.
so, my answer is 'pray that gas gets so expensive* that people start looking into alt transit options purely out of self-interest'?
*err maybe not in 2010 or 2011
― iatee, Friday, 11 June 2010 02:37 (thirteen years ago) link
I'm really having trouble believing that some of these are real.
― postmodern infidel(ity) (mh), Monday, 14 June 2010 18:31 (thirteen years ago) link
really like the first one
― iatee, Monday, 14 June 2010 18:56 (thirteen years ago) link
I mean...aesthetically...
― iatee, Monday, 14 June 2010 18:57 (thirteen years ago) link