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

how's the bus system in the twin cities

actually the interstate highway going right through the center of the city iirc

the bus system is probably as good as you could get a bus only system to be, which is to say shitty

what's the average wait time?

well if you go out when it is supposed to be there a few minutes

this is a really exciting conversation by the way

I know it's like waiting for a bus

there's never an average-average wait time cause there will be frequent lines and less frequent lines

oh re: walkability apparently of the 50 largest us cities minneapolis is #9

so dayo are you trying to establish that the bus system in the twin cities that i said was shitty is shitty or

like, if there was only one bus line and it came every 5 minutes, then you added one more bus line somewhere else but it came every 10 minutes, suddenly the average frequency is lower...but the system is better...

I'm just curious how shitty shitty has to be before you call it shitty

yeah, "icky" was just a reference to the thread title. but the rest of your post... I don't know. I really don't get where you're coming from. If price, schools, and commute time were not a factor in where people choose to live then... people in suburbs would be conservative!? You're trying to draw conclusions by eliminating the three major factors that people use when they decide where to live?

the political affiliation thing has never been a big argument was just something I mentioned as an offside. (it was in reference to a buzza post about people from cities who dislike cities - ime, people with a conservative bent.) I don't have a stat to back it up, I'm not sure you could come up with one, but most people I know who moved to the suburbs didn't move out of the city *because they disliked urban life*, they moved out because of price, schools, job somewhere else. thus the apparent national market preference for the suburb can't be read as a pure signal - the cards are stacked. whereas there's a pretty clear signal for demand for living in walkable urban areas - they're the most expensive places in the country.

i think tbh the real problem here is the climate - interestingly enough i kinda love philly, one of my best friends lives there but (and i know i am not a local) imo the bus system in philly was way way worse than the one here, plenty of examples of overcapacity routes in downtown not having any room for people waiting at stops etc. however the total lack of viable alternatives and the deathly kill you cold prob does more to promote car usage than the lack of availability of busses.

xpost to dayo re: the bus system

the post from buzza was about people from cities that chose to live in suburbs, you added the "dislike cities" part fyi.

There are urban neighborhoods that are less walkable than those in inner ring suburbs. Cf: food droughts. Does, uh, quality of life factor into this walkability thing? It's a silly concept when there are crack dealers and junkies in your corner.

there are great mass transit systems in places w/ shitty weather (montreal, moscow, stockholm)

but I agree that it would suck to have to use a half-assed public transit system in a sprawly place w/ shitty weather

i dont think you are actually reading my posts anymore

ya, i just wanted to see if there were atypical ilxors w/r/t urban to suburban movement, and why they might have made that choice

wasn't even a direct response to something you said! just wanted to mention that weather alone doesn't doom mass transit. xp

i think tbh the real problem here is the climate - interestingly enough i kinda love philly, one of my best friends lives there but (and i know i am not a local) imo the bus system in philly was way way worse than the one here, plenty of examples of overcapacity routes in downtown not having any room for people waiting at stops etc. however the total lack of viable alternatives and the deathly kill you cold prob does more to promote car usage than the lack of availability of busses.

xpost to dayo re: the bus system

― let me save you some time - yes, you are probably sanctimonious (jjjusten), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 9:30 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

right I was just wondering if the bus system is shitty, and it's clear that being outside during the winter can be pretty hazardous, what phenomenon arose so that the city government felt they didn't need to deal with this problem

nobody takes the bus -> so you don't have to fund the bus -> so nobody takes the bus

oh btw this might be of interest for the current moves here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Streetcar_System

this however is a pretty accurate summation of the history of streetcar decline http://www.bridgelandnews.org/8489

so yeah the boom in car usage was a contributing factor, but so was the general lack of industrial supply during the war - its the same reason that my house had a low grade concrete main sewer line that failed. i think some peeps are trying to say that suburbs created the car boom which is sorta cart before the horse in many ways.

hah I am trying to argue the opposite - that the car created the suburbs boom!

I also have a theory that if there is a high rate of car ownership in a given place, that place can never get that dense infrastructure wise. you need a place to park all those cars. but I'm not sure if stats back me up on this

nobody takes the bus -> so you don't have to fund the bus -> so nobody takes the bus

So otm.

Btw, every mid to small sized city that bad a streetcar system dismantled it post-automobile. Would be way surprised by exceptions.

streetcar suburbs predate the car, and even today, without the streetcars are noticeably more pleasant places than post-streetcar suburbs.

I also have a theory that if there is a high rate of car ownership in a given place, that place can never get that dense infrastructure wise. you need a place to park all those cars. but I'm not sure if stats back me up on this

well, you can't be Manhattan, but LA is pretty dense, dense enough that it could already turn into a transit-oriented city without making major changes in its housing stock.

one thing I find funny is, I mean, jj, j/v/c...even alfred, live in inner ring suburbs in relatively large metro areas - would you guys be opposed to more commerce in your neighborhood? would you be opposed to multistory buildings built in your neighborhood if it also meant a significant improvement in your transit options? if your answer is 'yes' then we don't really disagree about the bigger issues.

I maybe do disagree on the bigger issues w/ gd and aero. I signed a contract w/ aero a while ago that we had to disagree on every subject in the world, so that's okay.

there's an idea that I think the world should be manhattan or gtfo which is funny cause most of the time I don't even particularly like manhattan - my 'thing' is that it's incredibly absurd that 95% of the country isn't given a viable option to not own a car. fixing that demands a certain amount of residential density, it doesn't demand 40 story buldings. the typical example is paris - there's a single skyscraper within the city-limits, but it's nearly as dense as manhattan. but even 'suburban' detached single-family homes can be arranged in a way that isn't hostile to mass transit - this exists in japan and europe.

a place that's planned in that manner is going to create certain new burdens on people who do own a car. parking is going to be more difficult and it's going to cost more. gas is going to cost more. traffic will have to slow down. I don't get the sense that very many people here would oppose these things *given that they'd be gaining alternate options to a car*.

Growing up I would have killed to lve in a suburb. Instead I lived in a field.

Ditto, I dreamed of sidewalks.

Actually you'd have to live "in town" to have sidewalks so that's not rly a suburb but I think we've discussed before how enormous swathes of the US function as suburbs even though they aren't really.

aero mentioned something about being a kid w/ a car and the freedom and independence that came with it. that has to be put in context - it brought you freedom in a built landscape so shitty that you had no feeling of independence til you were 16. that's freedom only in a 'getting out of jail' sense.

I think the love affair w/ cars is def on the wane w/ my generation which is why pretty much everyone here in their early to mid 20s seems like they're on the same page. this is more than just a 'kids graduate college and want to live the boho urban life' stage. cars and gas are really expensive today. they're a burden - as I mentioned before, a burden that hits the poor esp hard because most people aren't in a place where they have a viable alternative.

whereas urban areas are generally more appealing than they were a few decades ago. crime down, public and private investment up, etc. otoh our suburbs and small towns have had a particularly ugly few decades, where the local character is replaced w/ chain stores. now I'm making a cultural argument instead of an econ/policy one and I try to avoid that here, but as a generational thing I think it exists on some level.

aero mentioned something about being a kid w/ a car and the freedom and independence that came with it. that has to be put in context - it brought you freedom in a built landscape so shitty that you had no feeling of independence til you were 16. that's freedom only in a 'getting out of jail' sense.

this is kind of a a broad brush, iatee: there are plenty of varieties of suburbs, and they're not all 'built,' especially on the fringe of older cities where public parks and unclaimed spaces are a big piece of the landscape.

replaced w/ chain stores

lol last 15 years in nyc

lol I had '(this can be said for cities too)' but deleted it

it brought you freedom in a built landscape so shitty that you had no feeling of independence til you were 16

also as someone who grew up in nyc LOTS of new york neighborhoods are incredibly insular and stifling

Yeah but the other neighborhood that isn't insular isn't 30 miles away.

there are plenty of varieties of suburbs, and they're not all 'built,'

well consider my statement to be in reference to every place where it'd be true. I'm not talking about hoboken.

xp I mean at least you can GET to other places.

true but when you are young 2 miles is as far as 30

If you mean "it might as well be 30 miles when you're not involved in the kind of life/community you want", then I hear you, but otherwise not otm. Two miles is two miles -- walkable, bikeable, busable. Easily.

also as someone who grew up in nyc LOTS of new york neighborhoods are incredibly insular and stifling

haha yeah this has def been my experience w/ nyc natives who I know, but at least you have the option. also what decade did you grow up in? I was talking w/ this old woman once who talked about how nice it was to take the subway alone from brooklyn to flushing meadows as a 10 year old w/ her friends.

whereas 70s/80s any sensible parent prob not gonna let that happen. today? maybe.

i grew up in nyc in the 70s. i'm talking about parochial/religious schools, very tightknit ethnic communities w/o a lot of cross-ethnic exposure. mere urbanity doesn't really mean you are hooked into a larger world. the average suburban kid i met in college was way more worldly than me. just offering this as an example why broad generalizations are ~flawed~

I can understand that, but it just means your family & community chose not to exercise the option to participate in the "larger world." It was still THERE.

I wasn't talking about worldliness though, I don't think people here are more worldly - it was just a response to aero's independence thing. you can be culturally sheltered in a burb or in manhattan. but if you're a 14 y/o who wants to get out of the house...

If I wanted to get out of the house, I could go to...the woods.

i mean my upbringing was way closer to studs lonigan/call it sleep than the royal tenenbaums if that helps.

After reading more about the city I grew up in I'm starting to understand why I have weird, conflicted views about this whole discussion. San Jose seems to be a popular case study for people who are anti-"smart growth." It's the 10th largest city in the U.S. but is almost entirely suburban in feel. And yet growing up we had a bus stop right in front of our house (since removed) which I only used once. And a light rail system which I used several times but which I guess is considered somewhat of a failure. It's the third densest "urban area" in the US after LA and SF!? Whatever that means. I guess I don't really know how to identify what density or suburbia mean outside of Manhattan.

If I wanted to get out of the house, I could go to...the woods.

yeah, rural kids always seemed to have a lot more freedom to me