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

egad! I must put "move" on the to-do list right away.

you are welcome

you forgot fat

My whole life is crumbling before my eyes.

Distant x-post I live in Oak Park, and as far as I'm concerned, if you can see the Chicago skyline, you have sidewalks, you have crime and the Chicago border is within 20-minute walking distance, it's barely a suburb. As for politics, they don't call it the People's Republic of Oak Park for nothing.

Is Grand Rapids really a suburb? The 'Urbs in America are so huge and sprawling it's hard to know where the suburbs even begin.

so when we all live in LA and NYC, what the hell do we do with all this stupid land were stuck with.

― apparently not the band, but the lifestyle (jjjusten), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 1:50 PM (5 hours ago)

sell it to canada?

― iatee, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 1:50 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

the most basic reason why not is that, to the extent we want to make use of resources spread across a great deal of land, we must disperse our population. agriculture, for instance, requires agricultural workers, and agricultural workers require housing, and due to the scale of agricultural operations, that housing must be spread sparsely across an enormous area. that type of dispersion requires transportation infrastructure (i.e. roads) and retail & human services, and those in turn require still more employees, housing and infrastructure. this results in small rural communities, which require larger inland cities, which require lots of housing, employment and infrastructure, and which, to some degree, also require suburbs.

it's true that we'd all be better off with less suburban sprawl (environmentally, at the very least), but hammering the argument that suburbs are evil is too simplistic to be really helpful. i'm more interested in practical, politically & economically appealing means by which we might reduce outer-ring sprawl, or at least curtail of its growth.

man, that could use an editor

we must disperse our population.

but north dakota is emptying out even as US population grows

well, the "we must disperse our population" paradigm arguably makes less sense in the era of big, mechanized agribusiness. and not all regions are gonna be equally attractive, especially depending on economic factors.

good post, contenderizer

there's no indication that yr joking here, iatee

of all my posts to quote. canada, incidently, fares pretty well by my standards - half their population lives in 3 urban areas.

i mean, there are good reasons that we didn't & don't put our residential areas, retail businesses, white collar & service industries, heavy manufacturing facilities, mining and resource harvesting operations, agriculture & husbandry, tourist magnets, greenspaces and recreation areas all within a few massive, coastal super-cities.

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.

distribution "is due to"
status quo has "required"

http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/images/communities/midwest_economy/iowa_trends.gif

hey look, it's iowa, where everyone works on a farm

I live in Oak Park, and as far as I'm concerned, if you can see the Chicago skyline, you have sidewalks, you have crime and the Chicago border is within 20-minute walking distance, it's barely a suburb.

Anything that allows you to justify your display name.

Is Grand Rapids really a suburb? The 'Urbs in America are so huge and sprawling it's hard to know where the suburbs even begin.

GR isn't a suburb of anything but it functions like the entire city is 100% suburb. There's a bus system but everyone HATES it and it takes hours to get anywhere, and the population is so thinly scattered across the barren landscape that there's enough space for people have paddocks and horses within city limits. With the exception of Easttown, Heritage Hill, and a couple of neighborhood enclaves with some amenities, nearly all commerce is done in strip-mall, actual mall, or big box-type shopping centers. I don't know, what else makes it qualify? I don't know the academic side of this stuff, all I'm saying is that GR felt about as small as my home town of 3000 inhabitants -- actually we had more character.

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.

The same is true of Australia -- more than half of its population lives in 5 urban areas -- but, again, much smaller population, and the hospitability of the land in between has something to do with it as well.

I mean, Texas has about as many people as all of Australia, and only 10 million fewer than Canada, and most Texans live in just a few cities, too. You're eliding a lot of factors just by saying "Half of Canada's people live in 3 urban areas."

pretty sure those 3 urban areas have a lot of populous suburbs too

Laurel, did you see my post about Grand Rapids upthread? Of course, it's possible that I just found the only cool things in GR.

xp yep, and having made the drive to Toronto a few times, they're no less full of strip malls and big box retail than any suburb in the US.

saying suburbs solely due to political reasons misses the simple fact that there's a lot of people who just don't want to live in an urban area! selfish as that may be.

suburbs EXIST solely...

what? that sentence is internally contradictory

"lots of people want something" = politics

that's a pretty naive equation! but anyway iatee is acting like the masses were hoodwinked by politicians.

no he isn't

tbh at this point i don't care what he is or isn't arguing. point is urban life is not at all appealing to a large chunk of the population, and calling them selfish and demanding they "pay for their externalities" and go live in Brooklyn or whatever is dickish plus not a very realistic solution to the problem(s).

Laurel, did you see my post about Grand Rapids upthread? Of course, it's possible that I just found the only cool things in GR.

I was in Grand Rapids last fall to visit some of my wife's friends and we actually ended up having a great time.

saying suburbs solely due to political reasons misses the simple fact that there's a lot of people who just don't want to live in an urban area! selfish as that may be.

I've said this again and again - I don't think suburban living should be illegal, I just don't think it should be massively underpriced / should accurately reflect its 'costs'.

sure, many people desire to live in suburbia, but it's not unreasonable to think that fewer would desire to live in suburbia if it were more expensive and more people would desire to live in cities if they were cheaper. I don't think anyone is 'hoodwinked by politicians', I think people are responding - often quite logically! - to incentives, and the incentive structure needs to be overhauled.

in 2010 - even in a world where the suburban good lyfe is artificially cheap - lots and lots of americans want to live a manhattan-type-urban lifestyle and cannot because demand for this lifestyle >>>>>>>> the supply - this is reflected in the prices (not just in ny! basically any nice, walkable urban neighborhood is expensive because *people want to live there*)

and the government has been doing a horrible job responding to this desire - which pretty clearly exists in 2010. the stimulus would have been a fantastic opportunity, but nah, we're basically building more roads w/ a few transit projects here and there.

lots and lots of americans want to live a manhattan-type-urban lifestyle

See I don't think this is true. I think if you were to truly poll a wide swath of Americans, the majority would lean towards wanting to live in some idyllic rural location by a lake. I don't at all think it would lean towards people wanting a Manhattan existence.

I think different people want to live in different places, and that's why we have different places, for the different people.

right, I didn't say 'all americans', I said the demand massively outstrips the supply.

I see what you are getting at, but I don't think "most Americans" want that.

Where's your proof that "lots and lots of Americans" want a Manhattan-type-urban lifestyle?

no, jon – iatee said "lots and lots" not "most." You're not reading him correctly. We never read what he writes.

lots and lots of americans want to live a manhattan-type-urban lifestyle and cannot because demand for this lifestyle >>>>>>>> the supply - this is reflected in the prices

this is like the def of basic economics tho? also lots of peeps want to have lakeshore property, and thats $$$$ for the same reasons you cited - should we be doing something to fix that inequity on a govt level?

xposts

the result of what you seem to desire would be an overcrowded city ringed by extremely affluent suburbs that are too expensive for a lot of people who would want to live in them. doesn't sound like a very good solution to anything.
your "lots and lots of americans" reads to me as "people around my age i still talk to from my hometown".

Where's your proof that "lots and lots of Americans" want a Manhattan-type-urban lifestyle?

already in my post, go read it again

this is like the def of basic economics tho? also lots of peeps want to have lakeshore property, and thats $$$$ for the same reasons you cited - should we be doing something to fix that inequity on a govt level?

yes...we shouldn't be spending massive amounts of government money on freeways to that lakeshore property.

lots and lots don't want it. lots and lots dress up as huckleberry hound on the weekend.

Is iatee's point here that many want manhattan urban living but can't afford it, while many want suburban living and can afford it, due to its subsidized nature?

yes

i don't know, lakeshore freeways sound like a pretty good idea to me

"lots and lots of americans want to live a manhattan-type-urban lifestyle and cannot because demand for this lifestyle >>>>>>>> the supply - this is reflected in the prices"

This is proof? You have census data, questionnaires, surveys, or interviews to back this up?

iatee, your posts have implied that thanks to massive psychological warfare the vast swath of Americans who live in affluent to semi-affluent suburbs haven't been able to see the glories of city life. The first half of that sentence may be correct, but you still don't account for Americans who will pay any price not to raise their children in the city.

and I am using manhattan as a reference point for urbanity, not because manhattan is a particularly special place. there's no reason why there can't be a dense city w/ good transit in iowa.

but you still don't account for Americans who will pay any price not to raise their children in the city.

no, I do account for it by saying "they should pay that price"

or who live in suburbs precisely because they want a clear division between work and play.

what this all seems to keep coming back to, iatee, is that you simply value urban living more than non-urban living. which is fine! but covering it up with a bunch of hype about how its unfair that everyone cant live in the city on the cheap because politics and subsidies and transportation and stimulus package and whatever fits at the moment is where yer argument is kind of coming unglued.

xposts

yes...we shouldn't be spending massive amounts of government money on freeways to that lakeshore property.

― iatee, Thursday, June 10, 2010 3:24 PM (48 seconds ago)

see this is what im talking about. Why? How is that different than subsidizing urban living?

so you want people in the suburbs to be poorer across the board, got it.

yeah I don't think that 'politics and subsidies and transportation and stimulus package' is 'a bunch of hype'