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

restaurants within a 20 minute drive of me: olive garden, chili's, bonefish grill, outback steakhouse, red lobster. pat's pizza. a lot of chinese takeout. (should ask stevie d or los blue jeans they are probably a lot more familiar with the area than me).

grocery stores within a 20 minute drive of me: overpriced convenience stores. shoprite, acme, aldi pathmark...some place called food land?

― ⚖ on my truck (dyao), Tuesday, June 8, 2010 8:09 PM Bookmark

The vast majority of the restaurants near my parents' house are family-owned. That might be due to their location between the rather extensive pre-WWII urban core of my hometown and (actually much closer to) the small-town downtown of the next town over, and relative distance of any commercial strip. Even on the nearest commercial strip though, except for the fast food places, most of the restaurants are family-owned.

Grocery store situation in pretty much the same, though, with a couple exceptions. There's a food co-op on the outskirts of the downtown area that I never knew existed until right before I moved away, and they built a Trader Joe's waaaaay on the other side of town, down by the mall.

Actually, most of yr Olive Gardens and Applebees and such in my town are down by the mall, rather than along the main commercial strip.

I had no idea yesterday that I had posted itt before yesterday, touching on some of the exact same points.

I think what people are largely glossing over here is that, at least in a lot of places, the suburbs aren't economically homogenous. There are upscale suburbs and downscale suburbs.

― The Reverend, Monday, July 14, 2008 1:36 PM Bookmark

And jj's point that people who live in suburbs don't neccesarily work in the main city is on point. My parents' house is a 5-minute drive from my dad's work and an 8-minute drive from my mom's. My dad's pickup, which he bought new 12 years ago has about 70,000 miles on it (tbh this has a lot to do with the fact that most anytime they go somewhere together, they take my mom's more fuel-efficient vehicle).

And iatee, your thing about public transportation being a defining factor is way off. Seattle, whose bus system isn't that great (which owes to weird geography more than anything), opened their first (modern) mass transit system in...I think it was August? Was it not a city before then? That's certainly news to me if it wasn't.

mh's post is really good. I'd really say there are huge distinctions between pre-WWII towns that became conurbanized into the metropolitan area (like my hometown, which had a third of its current population as of WWII), immediate post-WWII suburbs, which seem to be built much in the same way proper cities are, just with lower densities, and the windy, bendy crap that has dominated the past 30-40 years. However, I think the inner/outer suburb dichotomy is a bit of a red herring, because while the second and third categories I listed do strongly correlate to inner and outer suburbs, respectively, the first category can be anywhere. My own hometown is on the outside of the metropolitan area, but much more urban in character than anywhere between itself and the major city.

Actually, most of yr Olive Gardens and Applebees and such in my town are down by the mall, rather than along the main commercial strip.

― fuck being hard, suburbs are complicated (The Reverend), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 6:41 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah this is true of my area too - all of those chain restaurants are by the deptford mall. I'm not really sure how many family-owned restaurants are along the main commercial strip near my house - I think you can find a locally owned hoagie shop, but I've only ever stopped at fast food joints on that strip tbh.

You bad, bad person, you.

sorry, I have no interest in getting sushi at Crazy Wok Chinese Restaurant ;)

I dunno, my whole family finds eating out to be a deeply repellent option so we mostly just cook and eat at home, and order out for the occasional pizza.

sorry, I have no interest in getting sushi at Crazy Wok Chinese Restaurant ;)

Ha. I never had problems finding fairly good restaurants back home (which isn't to say there aren't others I would have been loathe to step foot in). I still haven't found a bahn mi here anywhere close to the (apparently much-praised) Vietnamese sandwich shop by my school.

Oh, grocery-wise I forgot: quite a few small Mexican grocers, too.

It's always kinda funny to read about people talking about suburbs as places of middle-class/bourgeoise seclusion. In Helsinki (and other big Finnish cities) the situation is almost the opposite: rich and upper middle-class people mostly live in either the city centre (where the apartments are the most expensive) or they have their own houses in the smaller towns that neighbour Helsinki. There are a few upper-class suburbs, but mostly the suburbs here are the sort of places with big concrete apartment buildings, where the working-class people, lower middle-class people, immigrants and ethnic minorities, and poor people live. I grew up in a suburb in North Helsinki where most of the people (including my family) are working-class, and the ethnic diversity there is much bigger than in Helsinki centre. There has been a gentrification/white flight process going on in here for the last couple of decades, but mostly that means that white, middle-class people are moving out of certain suburbs, and only poor people (including immigrants) are left there, because they can only afford to live in the cheap city-owned apartments which are mostly located in the suburbs.

Sociologically, it's pretty interesting how the process of "suburbanization" goes almost into opposite directions in different countries. I think Paris and many German cities have the same sort of situation as Helsinki, where the suburbs are the place where ethnic minorities and other poor people live.

when americans talk about 'the suburbs' we definitely aren't talking about people living in 10 story government-owned apartment buildings.

and paris (can't speak for germany) does have that same situation, but it also has some very american-style suburbs.

Depends on the city

Though I would have thought most have out-lying areas that are middle class, out-lying areas that are poorer and out-lying areas that are mixed

While the popular image of modern suburbia is one of endless subdivision, are there more attempts now at walkable suburbs, of attempting to build suburbs that ape functionality of small towns. I'm not really so clear on changes in recent suburbia in regard to this

Re: Tuomas - think thats a reasonably apparent distinction between city/suburb relationship in Europe vs US. Think this is mainly due to when the citys core was built, and road construction and public transport, how much was in place before mass car ownership

xxp: Exactly. (Also some outlying areas that are $$$$$.)

how much was in place before mass car ownership

― cherry blossom, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 5:07 AM Bookmark

Huge factor.

i think when people say inner-ring suburbs that's what it means, "streetcar suburbs" built before most people had cars. those are mostly within the city limits now in a lot of cities, though.

Also whether a city is surrounded by towns (or terrain) that act as a constraint on unfocused sprawl, eg...pittsburgh?

Kind of interested here about post-car-boom cities without public transport as opposed to ones that grew either before or with public transport, and questions about introducing public transport into those cities now, when the geography of the city isn't necessarily suited (isn't Charlotte's held up as a success story? need to read up on this)

There was a streetcar between my hometown and Seattle until 1939. The right of way now contains a bicycle/pedestrian trail. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5341

(sorry bit of a tangent here - just kinda related to this idea of a particular city being equated to a giant suburb - when, effectively, newer cities might well be this! without differences in density btwn core and suburb being much less)

I'm thinking here also of tech cities I guess...campus cities could they be called?

Read something interesting here about Stanford rise to prominence and tech companies building sites that ape campuses

The thing is that introducing good public transportation to outlying cities tends to reshape them in ways that do allow them to take advantage of such a thing. A lot of the areas near MAX stops in Beaverton/Hillsboro, OR have developed into dense nodes and Beaverton now actually has greater population density than Portland itself (although some geographical quarks play into this, to be sure).

Read some postive stuff about MAX...my (possibly totally inaccurate!) impression of Portland is of a city that began to look at this stuff in the 70s as a way of revitalizing certain parts of the metro area, and were quite forward thinking about this

(i rode the MAX once to the airport but was half asleep and don't remember it bah)

Read some postive stuff about MAX...my (possibly totally inaccurate!) impression of Portland is of a city that began to look at this stuff in the 70s as a way of revitalizing certain parts of the metro area, and were quite forward thinking about this

― cherry blossom, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 5:41 AM Bookmark

Yes, and they established urban growth boundaries at that time, except some stuck on stupid ruling says that they now have to expand them every so often, which partially negates the purpose of having them.

And oh yeah, the MAX is great. I live a few blocks from one of the stations and ride it pretty much every day.

how much was in place before mass car ownership

― cherry blossom, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 5:07 AM Bookmark

Huge factor.

I'm not quite sure how this is a deciding factor, care to elaborate?

In Helsinki the situation is a bit different, most of the poorer surburbs were built in the late 60s or later, and we have a pretty good and extensive public transport system that reaches all the suburbs, so mass car ownership is a not a big factor. I'd say the biggest reason for the fact that suburbs are where poor/working class people and immigrants live is that most govenrment/city-owned apartments are in the suburbs, and since those apartments are significantly cheaper than privately owned ones, they're often the only thing poor people can afford. Plus the explicitly stated function of publically owned housing companies is to provide cheap apartments for people with low income.

Also, up until the late 1950s Finland was a rather rural country, the biggest wave of urbanization took place only in the 1960s and early 1970s. A lot of the Helsinki suburbs were built specifically for the people who moved in here to work during that era, which might also explain why the city provided them with good public transport.

here almost all public housing is built in cities in part because suburban governments refused to allow it (there was definitely demand for it outside of cities, so it wasn't just that), similarly a lot of places have/had restrictions on where multi-family housing can be built. now more poor people are moving to suburbs and using vouchers to pay their rent so maybe it is becoming more like finland, more low-income people in suburbs.

Try to get hold of Edge City by Joel Garreau - written in the late '80s about suburban expansion and its tropes.

Certain transportation arteries in the Twin Cities are very well served by public transport, but it still suffers from the delusion that the only people using it are commuting to work on a 9-5 schedule. Light rail has opened up some really nice residential parts of Minneapolis to new people, or has paved the way for people discovering them.

i shouldn't say "almost all" because it's hard to define what is city and what is suburb but the exclusion of low income housing in the beginning is part of how suburbs became what they are

yeah, I think a huge part of the difference b/w Europe & the USA on this comes down to zoning laws re. multi-family housing & residential density.

I'm not quite sure how this is a deciding factor, care to elaborate?

Compare the parts of my hometown north of 41st street to those south of it. http://maps.google.com/maps?client=opera&rls=en&q=everett&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Everett,+WA&gl=us&ei=II8PTMrNFcPinAfY6LSVDQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CB0Q8gEwAA

american suburb = some kinda fucked-up hybrid monstrosity born of postwar economic boom + lotsa undeveloped land + bizarre idealized image of the british country estate

european suburb = ???

In Helsinki the situation is a bit different, most of the poorer surburbs were built in the late 60s or later, and we have a pretty good and extensive public transport system that reaches all the suburbs, so mass car ownership is a not a big factor.

This is kind of what I meant...in Europe an inner core that was strongly in place pre-mass car ownership, later housing (partic public housing) tending more towards the outskirts. Some US cities seem more donut-shaped, hollowed out inner cores, with suburbs that wanted to extricate themselves from the city core (resulting depopulation in many cases), but those with an established core pre-mass car ownership have been more successfully in keeping the core functioning well (and leaving structures in place ripe for gentrification 80s onwards)

also, what harbl said - issues here about the power held at local/city level...abilities to annexe etc (read somewhere this is less the case in the south?)

the delusion that the only people using it are commuting to work on a 9-5 schedule

This is one of the things that always made me AAIFJSOHP;KML;DSFJLX.

european suburb = ???

Exactly

I mean, Europe's kind of a diverse palce

here almost all public housing is built in cities in part because suburban governments refused to allow it (there was definitely demand for it outside of cities, so it wasn't just that),

So I guess the nature of suburbanization is partially due to how much power the central city government has? In here they've always had a very strong say in housing policies, there's even a policy which says that when new houses and new suburbs are built, there should always be publically and privately owned apartments in the same area, to avoid gentrification. Obviously gentrification has still happened, but I think it's less pronounced in here than in the US or even in many other European countries.

Some US cities seem more donut-shaped, hollowed out inner cores, with suburbs that wanted to extricate themselves from the city core (resulting depopulation in many cases), but those with an established core pre-mass car ownership have been more successfully in keeping the core functioning well (and leaving structures in place ripe for gentrification 80s onwards)

Yeah, the downtown area of my hometown was pretty empty until about 10 years ago, but they've done a fairly good job of revitalizing it (somewhat stymied by current economic foibles) and now the ugly condos are on the rise.

(x-post with Cherry Blossom)

i moved 2 a p. nice suburb a few wks ago. things ive noticed from going out jogging:

most everyone's lawn is really nice
lots of pickup trucks

i think when people say inner-ring suburbs that's what it means, "streetcar suburbs" built before most people had cars.

This is the very definition of my town! It was settled as early as the 1820s, but didn't really grow too much until John D. Rockefeller started buying and developing land here in the 1870s (and had a summer home here), and then a streetcar line opened up in 1899.

Heh, my hometown was launched by Rockefeller, too.

Or at least the launch was financed by him, to be more accurate.

Also the type of housing built in various city cores can be really different! And sometimes not really suited to modern usages. Philadelphia or Baltimores rowhouses vs the rickety scooby doo houses they seem to have in Cleveland or Pittsburgh (Detroits were more like suburban single family houses - city and suburb built pretty similarly?)

Those scooby doo houses pretty expensive to heat and too big but not necessarily easy to convert to multi-occupancy

Looking at the over-the-rhine area in Cincinnati is pretty interesting...would seem structurally perfect for gentrification but not sure whats actually happened there

Its impossible to talk about American sunbelt suburbs without reference to race. They were initially created by white flight following integrated schooling, the Civil Rights Act, etc. In my own hometown, what started as a 5 mile belt as become a 40 mile belt as social problems of poverty migrated outward. The city now has a dartboard like structure with a well-gentrified core, inner ethnically diverse suburbs, and outer caucasian + professional class asian suburbs...