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

pretty sure i came up with the solution upthread

we all move to new hampshire

I can see the appeal of the suburbs now that I have kids. But I still live in a (small) city. Don't think I myself could do it. Then again if I would have to buy a house: I'd move to the suburbs in a split second. A tiny tiny house is about 200.000 euros (talking two bedrooms max).

new hampshire is not the solution to any problem

i don't think there is an optimal way of living! people should pay for what they're getting, is the point. because the real costs will be always be paid, somehow, in the end

That's true, and really the point of the thread, and I'm just deviating off base.

goole pretty much said it all in two sentences.

on the earlier city/suburb confusion upthread: http://www.grist.org/#/cities/2011-04-21-suburbs-and-cities-stop-the-name-calling-already

that's generally how I think about and use the terms

i don't think there is an optimal way of living! people should pay for what they're getting, is the point. because the real costs will be always be paid, somehow, in the end

does anybody actually disagree with this except strawmen? I'm as tax-and-spend as they come, tax people who consume resources & spend the money on any government project that helps people out

trying not to take bait elsewhere but feel like I gotta point out that the first six words of Oak Park's wiki are "Oak Park, Illinois is a suburb"

Wait, who's D-40, again? I thought it was aerosmith for a while, there, and this thread got really weird when he was arguing w himself.

deej

i love where i live. i don't know what you would call it. i loved living in a city too though. did NOT like living on an island. hey, after they build the new train station here i will be able to take the train down the street to NYC! woo hoo!

what's pretty ridiculous is that my sister and I both live in Chicago suburbs, both a short walk from the train station, we're about 15 mins apart by car...but in order to take the train from my place to hers it'd mean 1st going all the way to Union Station to transfer. Would be 2hr journey.

how is that 'ridiculous'?

how is it not

I think the general idea is that certain suburban/exurban ways of life use resources disproportionately to taxation, especially city resources that are provided by a city but not paid for by neighboring suburbs.

Granny, that is because no one wants to go from suburb to suburb to the extent that it's worth building a direct point-to-point system. I think what you're saying is that neither of your suburbs has anything worth visiting on its own, but residents of both want to visit the city, right? :)

Arguably there would be things called "buses"

America having such shitty transit infrastructure *is* ridiculous, considering our wealth. but yeah, don't blame trains for not being able to do stuff that they can only do when the infrastructure exists. if the highways weren't regularly paved i imagine the drive would take more than 2 hours.

America has amazing transit infrastructure, it just assumes that everyone outside of a major city owns a car or two and the willingness to pay for road repairs and snowplows.

Granny, that is because no one wants to go from suburb to suburb to the extent that it's worth building a direct point-to-point system.

haha no, that is really not true. just as many if not more (and do non-work related travel) from suburb to suburb than from suburb to city in the Chicago area at this point.

omg you guys are complete asshole morons c ya

here i've been blaming the TRAINS this whole time when it's really this thing called "infrastructure" that's to blame!

have you checked a bus schedule? i dunno.

does it seem like a good idea to build a train between two places with a 15 minute drive time? maybe it would be, if all other priorities were taken care of and it was part of a larger and longer traffic pattern. getting people around/between suburbs, which is a big need, ought to be done better in a lot of ways, the solution so far has basically been beltway freeways.

xp lol way to freak out touchypants

How the hell am I an asshole for mentioning that a bus is more economical for two suburban destinations 15 minutes apart? That really makes no sense.

I think we're all assholes for not being more sympathetic to his outrage?

uh isn't the problem with suburb to suburb transit that the burbs are so gd spread out that you basically need someone to pick you up in a car once you get there?

omg you guys are complete asshole morons c ya
--A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger)

http://blog.niot.net/blog-images/02_Sep/traffic-deaths-down-u-s-roads-reach-record-level-of-safety.jpg

and with those last words, he drove off, never to be seen or heard from again

trying not to take bait elsewhere but feel like I gotta point out that the first six words of Oak Park's wiki are "Oak Park, Illinois is a suburb"

Oh come aero, you should know better than citing wiki as your first point of reference. But seriously, yes, Oak Park is a suburb, but as someone pointed out itt, its kind of the difference between inner-ring and outer-ring suburbs.

15 years ago, the quickest way for me to get from my apartment in Minneapolis to my friends' house in St. Paul was to transfer at the Mall of America in Bloomington.

Or drive a car.

I mean, if I had more time to fuck around with screenshots from google earth or wherever, I'd be able to point the very distinct and obvious difference between, say, downtown Evanston and Crystal Lake, both of which are very much suburbs of Chicago, but are wildly different in terms of density and walkability. I'd say Crystal Lake is far close to this thread's running "image" of a suburb.

Looking at the Metra map (assuming that's the train Granny is referencing), it could be enhance by maybe one train doing a loop between the outgoing lines coming from downtown, but again, it's still a matter of determining what demand is serviced and whether it's economical.

More than anything, the reason such a thing probably doesn't exist is because the suburbs would have to drive it, and cooperation between suburbs is even worse than city-to-suburb interaction as far as I know.

Can we all hate on places like Naperville, at least? The first time I stopped there I assumed that most people worked somewhere in the outlying area. It's just crazy to me that people commute, many of them by car, for that distance every day.

Yes, Naperville is fucking awful by all measures and standards. We can also throw Schaumburg in that category as well.

guys fwiw the IL Urban Planning Commission or whatever its called has recommended rail spur lines to connect the suburbs in its 2020 plan

I hope that goes through, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Yeah, somehow I don't see it ever actually happening, but it would be great if it did.

good news, we've got 20 more years to make it happen: it's the 2040 plan

We'll all have personal teleporters by that point!

Well weren't we all supposed to be "telecommuting" for our jobs by now?

To Dainger's point about travel between major transit lines, this is normal, I think? I'm in this situation all the time in Brooklyn, where the farther out you go along the subways, the farther any other subway line is from you, with no hope of transferring anywhere. A place could be just 1-2 miles east or west of you, and there'll be no transit to it without going many miles out of your way and taking at least an hour.

This is the price of doing business, imo? And exactly what buses and bikes are for.

I do part of the time! We also have a few "coworking" places in town. I'd imagine you could work from one of those in a pinch if you need real office space.

Sorry, that was an x-post about "telecommuting."

I'm curious to know more about who is telecommuting now? It seemed to be a big push about ten years ago, but now I feel like, at least in my industry (architecture), its becoming less and less common, unfortunately.

hmm. it seems like architecture is the type of thing where the technology isn't quite in place to make telecommuting a good option.

i work in i.t. and it is fairly common in my company.

On a related note about suburbs versus truly rural:

I have a coworker who, for reasons that make sense to him but not to me, lives in the middle of nowhere and commutes 70 miles (one way) to the office three days a week. He telecommutes the other two days (more in the winter as his road does not get plowed), but the communications infrastructure is such that the workplace eventually sprung for a cellular modem for him since the phone lines suck, the local point-to-point wireless internet provider sucks, and those were the most viable.

Yeah, IT and definitely programming are telecommuting-heavy. People were kind of hesitant to begin with, but we work with project teams in India and out of state so it's really not that much different if someone who is local calls into a meeting and works from home.

i telecommute. but real commuting to my job would be like a 20-30 minute combination of walking and subways

in the future we will all be bloggers

God it would save me THREE HOURS A DAY to not commute and to not have to get ready for work -- clothing, make-up, hair.

i think there's been kind of a backlash against telecommuting in corporate america, lots of 'f2f' and 'collaboration' are in vogue right now. at the same time as things are being outsourced, lol.

plus when people 'work from home' they fuck around and watch oprah. instead of surfing ilx.

This coworking thing could work pretty well, especially in spread-out areas, if it's not a silly trend.