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

jon, jaymc and i grew up 25 miles out of the city and even back then (15-20 yrs ago) there's was a large percentage of non-Caucasians. it just depends on what suburb, just as it depends on what part of the city.

Oh yeah, totally understand this. Didn't mean to imply that I lived in some magical place and time or anything, I was just trying to throw my personal experience into the thread. It seemed a decent way of challenging the notion of what "suburbs" are, basically they can be tightly-packed, walkable areas that aren't dominated by sprawling lawns and twisty drives.

Pancakes, don't you live in clevo hts.? There are more sidewalks there than fish in the sea.

xpost to goole: minnesota public radio can tell me how my ass taste wrt light rail, fuckaz

― the dj screwtape letters (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 12:21 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

ha, or the U. ohh our poor sensitive instruments of science!! build us a $200m TUBE STOP!! the whole story is fuckin hilarious imo

iatee: Metro in Portland has quite a bit of power and they do a damned good job of managing regional planning.

I know! portland is fantastic when it comes to this stuff.

Metro: also responsible for the much-beloved MAX

Alright, I gotcha.

East Portland is kind cool, btw, and my friend who lives there and works on the West side of town, rides her bike most of the time.

Pancakes, don't you live in clevo hts.? There are more sidewalks there than fish in the sea.

― Brice Pilaf (brownie), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 1:25 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yep, but re: sidewalks I meant between here and downtown. And def. the southern 'burbs could use more. Bike lanes, well, there's Euclid Ave. and, uh . . .

East Portland is kind cool, btw, and my friend who lives there and works on the West side of town, rides her bike most of the time.

― If the US had a dictator we'd call him coach (Michael White), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 Suggest Ban Permalink
10:29 AM Bookmark

That depends on your definition of "East". I live on the Eastside, as do the majority of Portlanders, but usually when people here say "East Portland", they mean east of the 205, which is not very nice at all.

And kind of out of biking range of downtown, unless you are like hardcore bicycle dude.

Relevant to this conversation: Cities Without Suburbs.

I haven't read it in quite a while, but did so when there was a local attempt to create a county-wide tax and administration structure that failed. I think the gist of the argument, that metro areas need some sort of metro-wide (or county-wide if the metro is confined) structure is key to gluing things together. This has become less of an issue lately due to urban revitalization, but really for decades the pattern was that people would work in the city where much of the major property is business-owned and given tax breaks, but would live in the suburbs where all their tax money goes to schools and suburban development. So you get in a loop where property values decline in the city proper, the city has less tax revenue to work on roads and public parks, and eventually the suburbs get enough of a tax revenue surplus that they're able to give large incentives to corporations to build suburban corporate campuses.

To put a face on the entire "live in city, commute to suburbs" thing that's getting discussed (although my home is probably "suburban" by these standards), here's a rough map of my route to work. I live a little ways too far to comfortably bike in the AM, and it definitely wouldn't be practical in the winter. So, feel free to criticize my lifestyle if you like!

Obviously I don't live and work at intersections, but the general areas are right.

And yeah, I spend about 10 minutes on beaver every morning. hehe.

posts quoted out of context

ha

re: Portland

There's allegedly some plans to create a pedestrian bridge connecting the east & west side over the river. Also, I think they're attempting to create a hub of sorts around the base of the tram where all of the modes of transit (streetcar, tram, buses, etc.) would be more interconnected.

To put a face on the entire "live in city, commute to suburbs" thing that's getting discussed (although my home is probably "suburban" by these standards), here's a rough map of my route to work. I live a little ways too far to comfortably bike in the AM, and it definitely wouldn't be practical in the winter. So, feel free to criticize my lifestyle if you like!

yeah I mean you are in the situation you are in and you have a job and a life and not a ton of room to budge. most people are in that situation.

I'm really only criticizing:

(mainly!) - a. the basic political/economic incentive structure itself - which subsidizes suburban life (in ways that we take for granted) and drains money from urban areas.

b. the alfred-types "my parents worked damn hard for their money and deserve a sprawly house and an SUV" - people who believe that this lifestyle is something they deserveeee instead of something that is a luxury and should be priced as one.

Working damn hard = you deserve some luxuries and the suburbs afaik ARE priced as one.

xxp I don't think you get it. It's not the whole Eastside that's neglected, just the far eastern parts past the 205. ("Eastside" = anything east of the river; "East Portland" = past the 205, 5 miles east of the river.) The parts between the river and the 205 (the majority of Portland, really) are fine.

Anyway, the pedestrian bridge thing was just an idea floated around a couple years back that went nowhere. And I'm not sure what you're talking about with this "hub". All the transit is pretty interconnected to begin with. What they are planning on doing is building a transit-only bridge between the Rock Island and Marquam bridges that would carry the next MAX line to Milwaukee, the Eastside streetcar they are currently laying tracks for, and buses. But that won't be for some years.

something they deserveeee instead of something that is a luxury

these are not mutually exclusive

xx-post

No, they're not. A lot of people move to suburbs because they're cheaper overall, at least in many city areas. Land is cheaper, taxes are generally cheaper since they're not paying for as much infrastructure, and you're more likely to have big box discount stores. You don't get $2 slices of pizza or anything, though.

This doesn't count for "prestige" suburbs but those really are the McMansion/Cadillac Escalade/wine stores in strip malls places that we're using as our straw man here.

Working damn hard = you deserve some luxuries and the suburbs afaik ARE priced as one.

― kkvgz, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 12:48 PM Bookmark

In Seattle, it's waaaay cheaper to live in the non-ritzier suburbs than in the city itself. I couldn't afford to live in Seattle, which is why I moved to a cheaper city.

'the city itself' is expensive because there is a paucity of nice urban neighborhoods in the country and many people actually do want to live in them! that problem is not solved by building new suburbs.

b. the alfred-types "my parents worked damn hard for their money and deserve a sprawly house and an SUV" - people who believe that this lifestyle is something they deserveeee instead of something that is a luxury and should be priced as one.

What you deserve is a fistful of stfu.

Apparently you got through college creating dumb binaries and seeing things that aren't there.

iatee, what exactly are you interested in doing about that other than chiding people?

get politically active on this issue? which is something I do, esp on the local level?

lol, ILX = the local level

I know, I know, never mind me.

wtf are you doing here then -- you've got letters to write, envelopes to lick, and suburban moms to send to pogroms.

I personally think iatee is speaking the truth as proven by science and as taught in schools of urban planning and land-use theory and w/e. But his language deffo isn't pitched for community outreach, and there are a lot of people choosing to be correspondingly butthurt instead of distinguishing between theory and practice.

jeez, a guy shows up saying the suburbs were built at great expense by state power...

Hard numbers time again: my friends live in a house in a suburban development in what I earlier called the "family" suburb, whereas I live in an older part of the city that's eligible for some neighborhood improvement funds (houses generally need work).

Assessed property values:
Family suburb:
$34600 for 0.246 acres
~ $140,650 per acre

Older city:
$23800 for 0.143 aces
~ $166,433 per acre

So, to go back to random discussion: Is light rail the trolley system of the future?

this thread = butthurt city

might i interest you in a nice 3 bed 2 bath out in butthurt forrest? the schools are some of the best in the state.

And cracks aside, I agree with Laurel and iatee generally (I've read my Veblen), but I don't have patience for unproven assumptions. People are reactionary, racist, and vain wherever they grow up; subdivisions don't make them so, no matter what Neil Peart might think.

I don't really understand light rail. We have some of it here in parts of NJ that outlie the NY transpo systems, but being put next to the MTA or the PATH makes the light rail look slow and dinky. I'm not familiar with the residential areas that it serves right now, but they've planning to expand it substantially since before they started building the first sections, so maybe someday it will go somewhere useful.

light rail is about the only solution for cities that never got around to making their public transportation infrastructure work (or dumped their streetcars lol us)

light rail can be okay when done successfully, but it's also a great way to waste lots of $.

tbh, we probably had the genius light rail idea after someone looked at mpls, much like our "skywalks" have a surprising similarity to their "skyways."

xxp I don't think you get it. It's not the whole Eastside that's neglected, just the far eastern parts past the 205. ("Eastside" = anything east of the river; "East Portland" = past the 205, 5 miles east of the river.) The parts between the river and the 205 (the majority of Portland, really) are fine.

Anyway, the pedestrian bridge thing was just an idea floated around a couple years back that went nowhere. And I'm not sure what you're talking about with this "hub". All the transit is pretty interconnected to begin with. What they are planning on doing is building a transit-only bridge between the Rock Island and Marquam bridges that would carry the next MAX line to Milwaukee, the Eastside streetcar they are currently laying tracks for, and buses. But that won't be for some years.

Damn, do you work for the city or something? You know a hell of a lot more of about this than I do apparently. Anyway, I just got the info second hand for an annual report I designed for the tram people, but come to think of it that was about 2 years ago now. Last I heard they were going to expand the OHSU campus around the south waterfront and make it more accessible to the rest of the city, but maybe that's no longer true.

Also, there are no buses that connect directly to the tram and that is a problem for a lot of people who commute up the hill.

billion x-posts

(I sound like I hate light rail - I don't, but it's only worth it if the money can't be more efficiently spent on buses)

All I know is that light rail is EVIL EVIL EVIL bcuz the guy who owns Midway Books says so.

Oh, the skytram! I thought you meant the streetcar (which British people call a "tram". Now I have to completely go back and reread your posts cause I completely misread you.

The skyPRAM. You know, for babies.

http://rgr-static1.tangentlabs.co.uk/images/bau/97819333/9781933368559/0/0/plain/bomb-the-suburbs-graffiti-race-freight-hopping-and-the-search-for-hip-hops-moral-center.jpg

i think the big thing about this thread is that the truth is that people choose to live where they do for inherently selfish reasons, this should not be a shock for anyone. some peeps flee to the suburbs for racist or city fear or whatever motiviations, some do it for safety or school reasons (still selfish), i did it because it gave me what i wanted and was actually and ecologically better choice (and btw eco-concerns are also selfish). when i lived in the city, i did it for totally selfish reasons too (proximity to shit going on, etc.)

the thing thats getting to people about iatee's argument i think is that it seems to be built on the idea that city-dwellers are making an altruistic/moral/selfless choice, which is disingenuous.

xxpost hahaha Jon otm!

I live in NE, and never go to SW, so I just tend to forget the Skytram exists.

There's so much stigma against buses in a lot of places. Is light rail an attempt to rehabilitate people's perceptions of PT as clean and modern without fixing the real problem(s)?

And I guess you don't want to just add buses if your streets are already overloaded, poorly planned, and not working in whatever sense...although in that case shouldn't you be spending the money on fixing your roads instead?

we have one light rail line and i like it way better than bus. i just wish we had like 6 more of them.

People are reactionary, racist, and vain wherever they grow up; subdivisions don't make them so, no matter what Neil Peart might think.

I dunno if you reread what I've actually posted here, I've said basically nothing about race or culture w/r/t the suburbs. not that those things don't play a(n important!) role in the history of the suburbs, but I really have only been talking about the economic/political incentive structures + the environmental impacts - those are the things that matter to me on a personal level. I am a product of a suburb, so I don't think that suburbs make you evil.

The light rail here is a godsend, fyi.