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

it's not clear that "the market" is going to price suburbia in a way that's doable for those people.

Isn't that largely true already? I know people who work in my building who live over an hour away, some even further than that.

lol dude I absolutely got your point, just saying that as someone who, if dropped back a century in time would probably be regarded as like the easily-whippable general of the unicorn army, it's not one that speaks to me outside of strict academic context

easily-whippable general of the unicorn army

Hate to derail but where else am I ever going to come across this phrase?

THISCLOSE to yoinking for display name btw.

personally I am waiting for the first self-aware machine, as that is likely going to be the event that stops racism

euler - we would need to at the same time make urban life cheaper. anyone who can afford a relatively suburban life today *should* be able to afford a relatively urban life. they might have to downsize some things, yes. but the 'costs' of urban life are inherently lower than the 'costs' of suburban life and - limited urban housing stock and transit is where the problem comes in. but when you're the richest society on the planet, a lot of problems can be solved if you're willing to spend your resources on em. mass transit is insanely cheap when you consider the vast amounts of money we spend on cars. likewise, densifying inner ring suburbs is cheap in comparison to creating infrastructure for cities in the middle of the desert. it's not a money problem and it never has been.

extra '-' in there

and I mean obv on an individual level it's always a money problem. but on a social level this is a problem that we could solve w/ resources we already have.

I mentioned health care reform earlier, and I think that's a decent parallel.

and euler, you live in paris at the moment iirc? cause a plan like 'grand paris' is basically what I'm advocating, at least when it comes to growth and transit.

have you been to paris recently iatee

it kinda used to be a v. cool model of how a city can work nice and now it's kind of a fucking overcrowded nightmare

the paris suburbs are not very nice to be in either

i'm less in favor of a "grand plan" for a given city, as i am in favor of scrapping all the incentives and rules that have led to people living & working really far apart from each other

yes, I lived there. it's a place doing amazing things when it comes to urban planning. xp

personally I am waiting for the first self-aware machine, as that is likely going to be the event that stops racism

it will not actually happen until the self-aware machine tearfully watches a video montage of all of mankind's atrocities, and blames his creator for bringing him into a world of hatred and suffering

and superfluous commas

yeah, I live in Paris (for a little while longer & hopefully again soon enough), in a suburb no less! It's nice! & it's doable for people of limited means---but there are a lot of subsidies for housing & transportation by both employers & the government.

goole I agree w/ you w/ the incentive stuff, but public transit requires 'grand plans' and that's mostly what this particular one deals with.

ha in my limited reading exp i've learned it's basically useless to compare french policy to anything else

xp

but I, and everyone else I know here, spends like half of their income on housing still---I gather people don't save much, at least not young-ish people & people with families. But you don't really need to b/c of French social security and universities being basically free. So it's hard to generalize lessons about France to the USA.

xp yeah

but france has a higher savings rate than america? and I don't know off hand, but I'd be surprised if we do much if any better on '% of income spent on housing'

(again, pretty ig'nant here but) isn't a huge chunk of french energy provided by nuclear power run by the state? i mean, that throws a lot of comparison out of whack.

I mean, there are a million things that make france france. I was mostly using paris as an example because it's a city that's realized that it has urban/transit problems (esp when it comes to inner-ring suburbs) and is making attempts to solve them that put any american city's to shame. obv france has its own political process and greater paris as an urban region doesn't compare super well to any american city, and like I said this is a transit and density project not one that (directly) attacks the incentive structure.

As a transit model Paris is fucking amazing; but also it's a much more "localist" city than I'm familiar with in the USA: like people don't tend to go far from where they live to shop, even if they've heard that there are "better" shops elsewhere; it just doesn't seem to make sense to people that you'd spend all day traveling around to shop, when you can shop near where you live. And by near I mean: within a ten minute walk, tops. (transit to work is a different story.)

right, goole---I'm just wondering why the pricing isn't just going to be passed onto renters/leasers/buyers, and why the result won't just be that lower-income people & families will be forced to move even further away from cities. You have to live somewhere, & it's not clear that "the market" is going to price suburbia in a way that's doable for those people.

― Euler, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 1:21 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i may have mentioned this upthread, but the first step is removing barriers that limit the supply of urban housing (which artificially inflate urban housing costs)

there was that graphic circulating a while ago that pointed out the entire population of the US could move into an area about the size of new hampshire at a density level like what we have in brooklyn which imo is v pleasant

http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/neighbourhood.gif

um yeah, most ppl do not want to live in that population density

I wouldn't mind but, you know, some people like having yards

i just don't wanna pay that kind of rent

amirite

people have yards in brooklyn fwiw

also: yards are resource hogs

haha, not having a yard is one of the best things about living in a city! well, at least if there are ample parks.

In the early 80s you could have America's entire population living in standard-sized houses (4 per house) and it would only take up a little more than Texas.

also: just because some people like things doesnt mean we should make it easy for them to have those things

^

but my parents worked hard for their yard

It's a little unspecific to just say "Brooklyn, New York" given the wide variety of housing options there. I'm sure they don't mean, like, Far Rockaway, but it would be nice to know exactly what part of Bk represents 35,000 people per sq m.

give me wild untamed suburban forest anyday

far rockaway is in queens!

they probably used an average

so will we be naming this the "Max and Iatee's Forced Relocation Camp" or something a little snappier, like "Stankytown"

brooklyn hampshire

Details, schmeetails. Okay, I just picked the end of the A train. But anyway, it would be easier to visualize if I knew what part that could be represented by.

brohampshire

I think harbl's right and it's a borough-wide average. looking for a density map of brooklyn right now though, out of curiousity....

Fuck You If You Disagree City

we built this fuck you if you disagree city on rock and roll

That's what I mean, if they're really taking the average of the whole land mass, there are some pretty unpopulated parts of the borough.

so will we be naming this the "Max and Iatee's Forced Relocation Camp" or something a little snappier, like "Stankytown"

lol

xpost now bison is bringing it

It's a little unspecific to just say "Brooklyn, New York" given the wide variety of housing options there. I'm sure they don't mean, like, Far Rockaway, but it would be nice to know exactly what part of Bk represents 35,000 people per sq m.

― the soul of the avocado escapes as soon as you open it (Laurel), Tuesday, June 15, 2010 4:47 PM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i assume its an avg. i dont know what it would "represent" in terms of a single, say, block's worth of density--but youd figure that the united states of new hampshire would have a range of options from downtown to... i dunno whatevers more spread out. mill basin?

i think 35k per sq mi is too dense for my tastes, i'm not coming