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

Maybe I was a little harsh when saying everything west of Clarendon VA is a shithole

can we start a board called I Love America and make this the permanent board description?

my uncle's been working on this thing for years:

http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=42,8,80&pid=GuJRA_EpFgUUG_zaNnG5Lr9ljw_xTCHR

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/11/05/is-the-digital-age-changing-our-desire-to-drive/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39970363/ns/business-autos/

Can't happen quickly enough...

i've been visiting my dad in the suburbs this weekend/week.
it's really depressing.

ha I was visiting my sister in the city. it was really depressing.

Where does your sister live?

Haha a friend from Germany spent last week w us and found NYC depressing but that's because his city has greener parks, better public transit, wider streets, cheaper apartments, and pretty much is a major city but better at everything than New York. Except for "being New York", of course.

did you remember to mention that we're not a city populated by the descendents of nazis?

lincoln square, j

What was depressing about it?

Unfair, Ian.

oh come on laurel, let me harbor a little jewish resentment.

well her having no steady job when needing a new place and being forced to get a studio apt didn't help (thankfully she's got a job now and will be out of there in a few months), but the city always depresses me! all these people crammed into their concrete boxes, so many things run down and grimy, too much noise and traffic...it's just, no thank you.

I'm mere blocks from Lincoln Square. Love it. Lots of great bars and restaurants and cafes, a couple of big parks, an old-school movie theater, a library, a record store, a music school/performance venue, etc.

I don't feel like I'm living in a concrete box, either. My fiancee and I live in a spacious one-bedroom apartment with lots of sunlight on a tree-lined street. We're right around the corner from the el. It's ideal.

I mean, I'm not sure what I would do with more space if I had it. Maybe buy a piano. But that's about it.

after years living in boston we moved to the suburbs. couldn't be happier with our house and yard.

Thanks for the honest answer, I was curious! Then again, I'm just an icky suburb-dweller so, given this thread, I should just curl up in a ball and go die.

Yeah it's a good area of the city, was more depressed by the areas I passed through.
btw didn't know you were engaged. Congrats, dude!

although i do miss the city now and again, but the idea of lugging a two yr old onto the T along with stroller and diaper bags, doesn't sound fun.

I think I'd love to live in an area like Lincoln Sq if there wasn't miles of city surrounding it. I find it suffocating to not have wide open spaces within a 20 minute drive, y'know? I guess a big town with an traditional center would be ideal for me.

Thx, A.

What constitutes a wide open space to you?

Hmm. A place that can support a deer population.

?? that takes hardly any land at all!

deer need EDGE

Haha a friend from Germany spent last week w us and found NYC depressing but that's because his city has greener parks, better public transit, wider streets, cheaper apartments, and pretty much is a major city but better at everything than New York.

yeah but in fairness people from Germany don't think any place they travel to is as nice as cold congested Deutschland

I think most of the country is both warmer and less crowded than NYC? I mean, I've never been there, I dunno. Maybe it'd be more aptly compared to Portland or something.

yeah exactly, goole! i don't need much "open space" to alleviate that suffocation feeling.

fwiw I would rather live anywhere in the world & have no arms + legs than live anywhere in Germany with both arms + both legs so I'm kinda biased on this q

U mad, dogg, I lived in Germany for three years as a child and have spent significant time there for work and I love it. Would live there in a New York minute. (<---- U see what I did there?)

Definitely not warmer there, though -- nearly all of Germany is farther north than New York. But the seasons are, to my recollection, fairly mild, at least in the central and southern portions of the country.

GD, I'm feeling ya on the wide open space at least as far as this: I can live in a city on a body of water -- at least you always get one direction where the view goes all the way to the horizon, if you can get up high enough. I'm not sure I could live in a landlocked city -- have never lived anywhere landlocked at all and I can sort of barely imagine it, but probably more space of any kind would stave off coastal withdrawal.

avg jan high in NYC: 32
Berlin: 37
fwiw Rome is at the same latitude as Chicago

Speaking on a general basis and not trying to sound personal toward Laurel, but nothing would make me more ready to mangle than having to hear a German walk around New York City, going "You call zis zee public transit? In my country, zee streets around den park are much much wider!"

lolololol he was extremely gracious and never said such a thing! But as it turns out, that partic guy is well-traveled and used to adapting. And NYC is kinda stressful, esp until you get familiar enough with your commute/frequent destinations to switch to mental auto-pilot.

land-locked cities seem stifling to me. i also think it's a little strange that los angeles is the only major city i can think of at the moment that is very close to a major body of water but has its downtown located 15 miles inland.

i think my ideal cities in terms of geography and vistas are seattle and vancouver.

i also think it's a little strange that los angeles is the only major city i can think of at the moment that is very close to a major body of water but has its downtown located 15 miles inland.

Not strange though when you look at Los Angeles' early history as a farming/pueblo outpost instead of a big shipping/trading center.

Landlocked versus ocean-view cities doesn't really make sense to me. Oceans are nice, but what if I'm running away from someone and there's an ocean! I'm stuck! I can't go any further in that direction without a boat!

though not nearly as major of cities, salt lake city and brisbane AU are located near-but-far from major bodies of water. i bet in all these cases there were very local reasons for where they located: the great salt lake is nasty. brisbane's on a river anyway and the land near the ocean is swampy (? iirc)

The Great Salt Lake is a sea rather than a lake, so its level can change fairly dramatically. Also there was nothing anywhere else on it you'd want to travel to.

Los Angeles probably grew from the Spanish mission chain, travel between which was done by horse and wagon. It's kind of midway between the San Gabriel and San Fernando missions, near where two "rivers" meet.

(lol at SoCal rivers)

despite the l.a. history i still think it's a little unusual that eventually the oceanfront didn't develop into a more urban center. l.a. is just unusual all around for various reasons i guess, so the rules don't apply as readily.

i bet in all these cases there were very local reasons for where they located: the great salt lake is nasty

Brigham Young & crew saw the salty water & gulls and thought they'd actually reached the Pacific Ocean. That's why SLC is where it is.

http://mormonarchuletafan.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/photo4262.jpg

meaning the ocean

despite the l.a. history i still think it's a little unusual that eventually the oceanfront didn't develop into a more urban center.

Demographically, Long Beach is actually a pretty big city - more populous than Miami, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis but usually forgotten in LA's shadow.

(lol at SoCal rivers)

Oh go ahead and laugh, but for at least a hundred years the LA River was pretty significant as a primary water source for the area. That is until people got tired of all the flooding.

los angeles is the only major city i can think of at the moment that is very close to a major body of water but has its downtown located 15 miles inland.

― omar little, Monday, 8 November 2010 21:55 (Yesterday)

london, rome

he specified "major city"

(jokes bruv)

i was thinking since those cities had rivers running through them into the nearby seas that those didn't really count.

there was a river in los angeles, once