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

right, but the 40% isn't inconclusive

― iatee, Thursday, June 10, 2010 10:27 AM Bookmark

Right, but that wasn't the question.

it was half of the question, and so I answered half of the question, because that's all I found

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 2007
United States 1.25 1.24 1.22
Canada 0.92 0.91 0.91
Luxembourg 1.04 0.95 0.90
Kuwait 0.83 0.85 0.86
United Arab Emirates 0.79 0.80 0.82
Bahrain 0.66 0.68 0.70
Australia 0.71 0.67 0.66
Qatar 0.81 0.79 0.63
Saudi Arabia 0.55 0.57 0.61
New Zealand 0.56 0.56 0.56
Brunei 0.53 0.54 0.56
Netherlands Antilles 0.54 0.54 0.55
Iceland 0.50 0.53 0.51
Oman 0.40 0.44 0.49
Switzerland 0.48 0.47 0.46
Ireland 0.41 0.44 0.42
Venezuela, R.B. de 0.40 0.42 0.42
Cyprus 0.36 0.38 0.41
Sweden 0.43 0.41 0.39
Greece 0.35 0.35 0.37
Finland 0.35 0.34 0.34
Japan 0.35 0.34 0.34
Denmark 0.34 0.33 0.33
Trinidad and Tobago 0.32 0.30 0.32
Israel 0.30 0.30 0.31

(http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.ROD.SGAS.PC)

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.

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

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

Haha, I just realized, Laurel probably has me killfiled.

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.

right but where people end up living is related to companies and governments and cities as a whole...

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.

yeah, I wasn't entirely sure—I didn't think you were suggesting that but wanted to discuss against it anyway.

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

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?

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.

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

I'm really having trouble believing that some of these are real.

really like the first one

I mean...aesthetically...

wtf mate

Or this! Totally wild.

http://nikolasschiller.com/posters/gershmanyquilt3D.jpg

http://nikolasschiller.com/posters/harborsidequilt2.jpg

this is the kind of shit that drives me up the wall. go go gadget building lobby.

xp: please tell me these last two are shops

http://www.nikolasschiller.com/blog/index.php/archives/category/renderings/fractal/

What's really freaky is that the real ones posted above are just as weird as the manipulated pictures.

Well, nearly.

the nevada one is is just ;_;

http://www.incatrail-peru.com/inka-trail/img_web/zoom/ica_nazca_lines_02.jpg

these are awesome

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/13/how-much-does-a-gallon-of-gas-cost.html

so if cars ran on solar power, you'd have no problem with suburbs y/n?

oil's not the only thing that gets overconsumed in sprawl + not having to pay for gas would promote sprawl. everything else held constant, yeah, it'd be fantastic if cars ran on solar power.

lots and lots of people don't want to live crowded amongst lots and lots of other people. you're either going to have sprawl or a shitload of people in your lovely city who hate their city lives. but i guess they should just sacrifice their selfish desires for the good of society. bleep blop end report.

nah man you're totally right, nobody should ever "sacrifice their selfish desires for the good of society"...can't imagine the misery...

Read or scanned most of this, I wanted to throw in a couple of thoughts.

Houston is as spread out and suburb based as a city can geographically be. I'm okay with growing up in the suburbs and living as an adult in the inner city. Our inner city might qualify as suburban in some north east or older Midwestern cities.

Lawns here are over-watered and over-fertilized, but done organically and correctly are an important defenses against urban heat-sink and run-off pollution.

The outer areas are having increasing traditionally inner city issues as reverse suburban flight patterns cycle.

We use more electricity as indicated in an above graph, partially because of selfishness, but mostly because of climate and low reliance on gas for heat.

Public transportation is not a universal choice, mostly used by the incredibly spread out poor and the urban middle class or suburban middle class park-and-riders.

Efforts towards sustainable living or efficient use of resources are slow to be adapted and met with resistance, but light rail, and lawn clipping recycling are ultimately dictated by the powers that be, not man on the street opinion.

We pay some of the highest water and electric rates in the country despite being the center of the energy manipulation industry and flooding from rain. But the living is easy.

lots and lots of people don't want to live crowded amongst lots and lots of other people. you're either going to have sprawl or a shitload of people in your lovely city who hate their city lives. but i guess they should just sacrifice their selfish desires for the good of society. bleep blop end report.

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger),

this is actually a point I want to touch on tangentially, earlier.

Wondering if a fair proportion of people who've moved to suburbia, what they actually wanted was to move to a small town or the countryside. The thing with sprawl, in this regard, is that in a way..moving away from the city is kind of bringing the city with them?

not sharing walls with neighbors has been reason #1 why my parents have moved, tbh.

even now they complain about our neighbors across the street who get rowdy when the phillies win. thinking maybe they would like to move to a cabin in the woods.

I had an interesting conversation about this stuff a while ago with my dad and his fiancee, who are kind of fascinated by the fact that their children have all chosen to live in the city and have little interest in living in suburbia. In their generation, the city, with its crowded housing and lower-class ethnic and immigrant populations, was a place to escape from, and owning a house in the suburbs was a sign of "making it" (or at least to a greater extent than it is now). Whereas for us, the city is an exciting urban adventure compared to the stultifying homogeneity of where we grew up.

Of course, the gentrification of many city neighborhoods has also made an urban lifestyle safer and more attractive for many would-be suburbanites. I'd also note that with our generation starting families later and later, even those people who like the suburbs for the schools might still live in the city for 10-15 years after college, rather than moving to suburbia right away.

Efforts towards sustainable living or efficient use of resources are slow to be adapted and met with resistance, but light rail, and lawn clipping recycling are ultimately dictated by the powers that be, not man on the street opinion.

Light rail depends on people willing to tax themselves to pay for it and this same man on the street votes (either indirectly but often directly) for or against this. Its eventual success and expansion depends on his willingness to use it. 'The powers that be' can make the process easier or harder, but at the end of the day the man on the street generally gets what he wants.

nah man you're totally right, nobody should ever "sacrifice their selfish desires for the good of society"...can't imagine the misery...

So you ARE a robot. What are you sacrificing?

Personally I'm sacrificing my abiding desire to stab people who piss me off on public transit. It's sad, but I have molded myself into the socially acceptable form of a "person who wants to live in society". I know, the misery is incalculable, I feel I have lost a part of myself but what can you do?

It's funny to me how people who like to get on a high horse about sacrificing for the good of society have no qualms about taking a cold, dispassionate view of the people who constitute a society. Throughout history, I think you'll find that this sort of coerced social engineering winds up doing more harm than good. I don't know if it's always been the case, but anti-suburban people seem to have a punitive bent to them. "Make them pay for their externalities! They need to sacrifice! They've been living free and easy far too long!". I can see where that emotion comes from, but it turns a blind eye to the fact that there was no conscious plot that surburbanites signed on to. Although you can point to political reasons, those are rooted in a primeval human desire to not hear your annoying neighbors celebrate a Phillies win.

there was no conscious plot that surburbanites signed on to.

yes there was

Except that suburbs are unsustainable, Granny. The whole American exceptionalist position throughout the second half of the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st (see Las Vegas, for example) has been based on assumptions which are highly suspect over the long run.

those are rooted in a primeval human desire to not hear your annoying neighbors celebrate a Phillies win.

I cannot believe this is "primeval" or inherent to humanity. A lot of people throughout history have lived in far closer-knit communities with scads less privacy than we moderns (particularly Americans?) consider normal. I've directly addressed the whole "impinged on by others" thing a few different times itt, so please stop glossing over it like it's natural to feel that no other human beings should be detectable from within the boundaries of your residence/property.