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

i mean i would much rather live in a city but don't really blame individuals for their decision to move out if they have kids to worry about, it's not their fault, more like everyone's fault

breaking down these overarching, structural problems inherent in most suburbs to saying people who live there have a selfish lifestyle is totally fucking foolish imo.

strikes me as a way to pat yourself on the back for being some sort of humanitarian while not having to do anything more than live in a place you desire to live in

bingo

strikes me as a signal that a lot of people on this thread are working out a lot of baggage from their childhood

breaking down these overarching, structural problems inherent in most suburbs to saying people who live there have a selfish lifestyle is totally fucking foolish imo.

Well, in terms of use of resources, suburban living isn't very far-sighted. But it's so normal to us that it doesn't occur to a hell of a lot of people that it isn't the most wholesome, desirable, responsible thing to do for their families. Whether or not it's good for "families" as a whole isn't a question we're supposed to ask.

I don't think "selfish" is a very useful word in this sense...but it's not inaccurate in overall stats.

The treatment of "the suburbs" as some sort of quantifiable homogeonized thing is what is really confusing me tbh.

Re "selfish" -- I mean it implies a purposeful withholding of resources from others, which is a) impossible and b) making a lot of people defensive I think.

agree w/you, laurel. i don't think pointing the finger at individuals is either valid or productive.

strikes me as a signal that a lot of people on this thread are working out a lot of baggage from their childhood

^^I have composed and deleted three or four posts about rural judgmentalness and urban snobbery because they all pretty much boiled down to that.

if the argument is that all suburb folk should move to the city so as not to live a selfish lifestyle, then uh hope some of you city folk don't mind having all your jobs and dwellings and hangout spots effectively taken over by that massive influx of milquetoast stroller-pushers

We would need a different kind of cities for that, is the thing, but it's not impossible. And it's v desirable for urban space to develop in that direction.

But the thing is, the suburbs weren't meant for PEOPLE, they were meant for COMPANIES and REALTORS and for employers to keep their workforce nearby even if that meant custom-molding a certain look of community, and for auto manufacturers to sell you cars, first one then then two or three per family, and for oh shit you know how this goes already. And now our whole country is built around different degrees of isolation like this, and it's a lot of peoples' dream and it's probably going to kill us or be killed b/c of energy needs.

I've lived rural, suburban, and city...can I be superboring and say I love all three?

For me personally, I think it's more about how connected you are to the rest of the city. It's not good if you move out to the suburbs and become terrified of downtown and act like it's a foreign country (I know plenty of people who are this way)...but downtowners can behave exactly the same way and sort of shrivel up at the thought of venturing out of the inner city for anything...and honestly I don't really care for that behaviour either.

Suburbs give you good living spaces, quite often more square footage for your buck, and you get some cool undiscovered treasures of eating places, weird forgotten asian groceries, specialty stores that time forgot...if we had have been able to sell our little downtown bungalow before the housing market collapsed, I'd be happily kicking it in the suburbs with a comfortable square footage, a good sized backyard and not be living under police/medevac helicopter flight path :) But downtown I have pretty trees and a cute house. It's all good.

sorry for long post.

It's not the fault of anyone here or our parents or our friends, but...now what?

i really do blame realtors & i still hate them, as individuals

Everyone hates them. But unless we can burn them as fuel for our internal combustion engines, we're gonna have to think of something else.

We would need a different kind of cities for that, is the thing, but it's not impossible.

That, plus we could have different kinds of suburbs. Such as the ones described in the last chapter or so of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250

"suburbs require cars" is not really a baseless generalization

I have lived in the suburbs without a car, I currently live in the suburbs with a car, but could easily do it without again if I needed to. Between my bike, buses and rail it wouldn't be easy, as such, but it would be achievable. I'm close enough to "the city" (Cleveland, in my case) that I can commute by bike.

Also, my particular suburb is about 52% white, 47% black; and of the white population, a huge percentage of that is Orthodox Jewish, itself a minority. So, you know, don't be feeding me this "no minorities" bullshit.

And I don't have a porch.

I think you'll see a lot more carpooling and telecommuting in suburban areas in the next few years.

x-post

if you live close enough to a city that you can bike yeah you're kind of not dealing with the major structural problems that outer suburbs have.

i don't see why it's so hard to separate disliking the suburbs from disliking people who live in the suburbs

Just curious: Granny Dainger, do you still live in the suburbs? I seem to remember a thread a few years ago in which you said you preferred the suburbs to the city because of the proximity to nature (in the form of parks). Could be misremembering.

I think when you're in your 20's, living in a city is pretty much a slam-dunk. It's exciting and fun and the environment is complementary and some sort of social life comes relatively easy.

But by the time you hit 40 and probably before, maybe much earlier, and this is whether you have kids or not, it becomes a question of whether the city is where you want to grow old or whether you're ready for some peace and quiet and some seclusion with the ones you love. And at this point, it's a matter of personal preference. Some stay, some move out. I can't figure if one option is better than the other.

And I don't know the ages of everyone posting here, but living in the city even at 35 is quite a bit different experience than living in it at 25. I mean, I don't know if there's anything better than being young, single and living in the city. Everything in comparison is kind of dud from that perspective. Which isn't to say that getting older doesn't have it's charms, it does. But perspectives definitely change.

So, say, if you don't want to go out drinking every night anymore, and if you're in a committed relationship, and in a general sense your need for fun and a social life has waned, well the city isn't that charming for you anymore really. Especially when your friends are still in a mode of hanging out at loud bars filled with obnoxious kids and maybe you're the oldest people there, I dunno, you start thinking that you might indeed like to have a lawn to tell these obnoxious little bastards who think they'll never get old to stay the hell off of. But in a lot of ways, I think in fleeing the city for the suburbs, you're not just fleeing the city itself and its negatives, but your fleeing a lot of friendships you don't really have that much use for anymore.

Pretty much nothing in your post is accurate in my personal experience.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm sure it happens a lot. I think I'm just reacting negatively to your universalization of that particular pattern. I probably should have stuck with writing and then deleting my comments without posting them.

i don't want that all to happen to me!

if i had a family, then i would strongly consider moving back from the city to a suburb. and i would do so strictly for education -- i just wouldn't want my kids stuck in some of the urban schools in my neck of the woods, which have remained pretty bad even as my city has gentrified considerably over the past decade.

and yeah, young 'uns reveling too much at odd hours (and days -- we have a particularly raucous Saint Patrick's Day tradition that brings seemingly every drunken douchebag and their slut girlfriends to town to puke and piss all over the place) is getting too much for my old ass. and to think, that I used to be one of those drunk out-of-down drunk douchebags up to a decade or so ago ...

Have lived in suburbs and cities (only NYC, to be fair.) In my experience: people in suburbs read novels, play in bands, ride bikes, go into the city to see museums. People in cities watch TV, see bands play, work out in a gym, and live close to museums but never enter them.

OK this is a stupid generalization which I'm sure doesn't apply to many of you, but it's what I've seen, and it should be taken as seriously as "suburbs are where tacky white people live in McMansions."

people be doing lots of different kinds of stuff IMO

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm sure it happens a lot. I think I'm just reacting negatively to your universalization of that particular pattern. I probably should have stuck with writing and then deleting my comments without posting them.

My intention wasn't to universalize the experience. Maybe i didn't succeed in getting that across. I don't know. I don't like rereading my own posts. I certainly know older urbanites and they aren't rich and they're happy. But thats not everyone. I just think a lot of young people associate living in the city with being young and living in the city and thats all that they can understand of city living, and they can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to live there or they think they have this unique constitutional makeup such that they are particularly suited to city living. I'm just saying, everyone feels that way at 24. It may or may not last.

I still live in the city, myself. But I'm thinking of moving out, getting away, starting a family etc, whatever. I guess I don't think it's a decision to be classic or dudded really, and I'm trying to articulate the rationale behind it thats maybe not as sinister as "I'm sick of dealing with minorities," but also not as innocuous and simple as "the schools aren't good enough for my children." Basically, I'm tired and old, I guess.

my family moved out to south jersey suburbs about... 5 years ago, I think. iatee is otm about the transportation problems in a suburb, at least in my suburb. we live about 3 miles from the boulevard where all the big box stores are located. our suburb is served by, I think, one bus route exactly, which goes into philly. if I didn't have access to a car I would probably stay at home all the time.

"suburbs are where tacky white people live in McMansions."

It's not that I think people in suburbs live in giant luxury homes. It's that even a normal suburban house is really energy-inefficient compared to more population-dense city structures. Of course there are tradeoffs in privacy, space available, and all that stuff we've touched on already.

Plus the transpo issue which is partly historically explained by auto companies' actions and a greater faith in the freedom of the individual to take to the open road and that whole mythology, and partly a result of the sheer spread of land in this country in between the spaces that we occupy for various purposes like work, live, recreate, shop...lyfe, basically.

So, you know, don't be feeding me this "no minorities" bullshit.

wtf have you not read a single post I wrote?

this was mentioned upthread but I do think there's an important distinction between a diverse suburb and an integrated suburb

"suburbs are where tacky white people live in McMansions."

It's not that I think people in suburbs live in giant luxury homes. It's that even a normal suburban house is really energy-inefficient compared to more population-dense city structures. Of course there are tradeoffs in privacy, space available, and all that stuff we've touched on already.

Idk, I see the energy bills for my house in the suburbs w/energy efficient windows and a modern boiler, and they're a ton less than the drafty radiator loaded apartments I used to live in. Also I feel like lots of people are assuming that everyone who lives in a suburb commutes to the city for work which is not true. So I don't get this urban energy conservation angle that seems to be taken as gospel truth by some peeps on this thread.

the whole "cities are great for 20 year olds, but what about the SCHOOLS" thing - I mean, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy + there are specific historic and political reasons behind this stuff?

urban areas are not inherently bad places to raise a family. urban areas are not inherently dangerous or more expensive, and the schools are not bad for reasons inherent to high density. all of these things are the way they are for reasons that have very little to do w/ population density.

jj you can see here suburban green can have its advantages as far as the house goes, but *generally* transit patterns will erase those gains
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/48/107880025_1a2b75d75a.jpg

urban areas are not inherently bad places to raise a family. urban areas are not inherently dangerous or more expensive, and the schools are not bad for reasons inherent to high density. all of these things are the way they are for reasons that have very little to do w/ population density.

i agree with this analysis -- at least where i live, it has a LOT to do w/ how the schools are financed (through local property taxes) not to mention entrenched bureaucracies. but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of urban school districts AREN'T as good as their suburban counterparts.

yes it's obviously a self-fulfilling prophecy and we know, doesn't make it selfish to move out

Again part of the problem here is that I think peeps are ignoring the vast differences between inner ring and outer ring suburbs (and maybe that's because they're from regions without that distinction? Idk) Inner ring generally has relatively equivalent public transportation, the opportunity to have control of your energy efficiency/consumption, potentially a shorter commute (k and I intentionally found a house that is between our jobs, so we are both driving less), not to mention stuff like planting a veggie garden in our back yard, buying locally from indie shops/bars/etc.

anything w/ relatively equivalent public transportation = not a suburb

so what are the specific distinctions between inner ring and outer ring suburbs, jjj, besides what you just mentioned? are living arrangements more dense/compacted? distance from city? both of the suburbs I've lived in have been 15-20 minute commutes to the city, but they were also 15-20 minutes from major shopping centers as well.

I mean I have 3 bars, a butcher, tons of local restaurants, a bike shop, antique stores, a grocery store, liquor stores, a bakery, and two coffee shops all within walking distance of my front door. And every single one is locally owned. So the fact that peeps assume that nationally the minute you cross the city limits it's all starbucks and applebees is pretty galling.

That was a bunch of xposts btw

uhm that sounds like a city to me. definitely not the case where I live. xp

city limits have really nothing to do with it! I would consider parts of jersey part of 'urban nyc' and lots of things in the nyc city limits 'suburbs'.

where do you like jjjusten?

live*