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

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

Yeah, freedom to go into the woods, and...make up games with my imaginary friends and some pine branches? I'm not sure what kind of freedom this is supposed to be!

hah, i would often go to the big urban park in my neighborhood to escape dreary home life, and it had "woods!"

fwiw a lot of the extreme positions people are attributing to iatee are positions that he has never taken on this thread but that i have taken explicitly, maybe there is some confusion

i mean if you don't grow up in a salinger novel all nyc has to offer is not really going to be "available" to you as a kid in any real sense, esp. if your parents aren't participants in that part of nyc cultural life

cities have curfews and people can often be paranoid about what kids are up to. my "grass is greener" impression is that things are much more laissez-faire in rural areas. at least the woods is a place to go. we hung out in parking lots.

that was an xpost to laurel, and going in the woods to make up games with imaginary friends and pine branches sounds kind of awesome to me!

Yeah I'm obv from the country, not the suburbs. But it has a lot of the same drawbacks, except maybe that at least in small towns there's a "city center" of a sort, I guess bedroom towns/commuter areas don't even have that, really. But you can't really supply your long-term needs in a small town, you can't buy your clothes or shoes or a car there. Before the internet, it was the Land of Catalogs.

I think the problem with 'it's the third densest urban area' is that it stretches the metro boundary far enough that you get a result that means something different from what we're talking about. silicon valley is pretty much a burb throughout, a relatively dense burb, but, still, there's no real center.

if you look at the walkscore site, there are maps of big cities. enormous green blobs = urban area. that's not a scientific definition, but pretty much holds true for how we're using the term. the '11th biggest city in the country', jacksonville, is a tiny spec of green. silicon valley is a mess of color, but def doesn't have the kind of center that real urban areas have.

going in the woods to make up games with imaginary friends and pine branches sounds kind of awesome to me!

You make do with what you have, obv, and I'm not sorry because if things had been different, I'd be different. But it was p lonely even with siblings, and I felt helpless to ever go anywhere or learn anything that wasn't pre-approved and introduced to my little bubble by An Authority.

silicon valley is a mess of color, but def doesn't have the kind of center that real urban areas have.

yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Outside of NY, what cities are truly dense and urban in the US? I guess that's your point too? The vast majority of the US could be considered suburban. Those walkscore maps don't seem very relevant to me. Portland is slightly more walkable than Los Angeles, but way less dense. You look at the map of LA and the vast fields of red are not walkable because they are mountains. So does that count against the overall walkability score? San Francisco is highly walkable but is small and expensive, hence the vast suburban sprawl surrounding it.

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?

ha no i kind of am part of the commerce in my neighborhood! also i have a lot of commerce in my neighborhood and welcome more of it (note: i dont include cub foods or chain electronics or starbucks in there)

would you be opposed to multistory buildings built in your neighborhood if it also meant a significant improvement in your transit options?

well yes, but not because of more people being here - i am not a fan of tearing down cool old stuff (old wrt mn btw, so we're talking turn of the century to approx 1960 builds, mostly 40s era) because its fairly wasteful and i dig history - also modern multistory builds seem to be a lot less sustainable than i would like given all the new construction that keeps getting retooled into new construction

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.

iatee, I think that's a thoughtful but wrong reading - I think you're misunderstanding what California highway freedom feels like - I don't think it really has to do with hating one's surroundings so much as with speed & the living-video-game feel of the freeway system when it's working - if you learned to drive in southern California before the population density out there got so thick that it's rush hour every day at noon, it's its own discreet deal. there's a passage in Play It As It Lays about this that captures it. it's an artificial & not-good-for-the-world thing but despite that it's bracing, liberating, all that good stuff. there's this combination of control & risk that you feel or used to feel on entering the southern California ecosystem of the freeways. lots to say about that - some of it has to do with there being no adulthood rituals & a need for them: getting your license and driving yourself where you want is a rite of passage, and one whose benefits are immediately palpable.

this is all a tangent but it's like, I grew up in probably the nicest town in LA county (and most walkable; I walked 3-4 miles a day every day growing up, even through smog alerts) so I don't think the car represented escape from the suburban environment - I think there's a more sort of cyber-primal aspect to it

you know what else feels great is unprotected sex with strangers while high on heroin

the more I think about it, I'm not really sure why "it stretches the metro boundary far enough that you get a result that means something different from what we're talking about" really matters. I'm looking at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas the results feel wrong but I'm not really understanding why. The definition of "urban areas" they use sounds reasonable. And yet the "dense" areas listed there seem to be of a largely suburban character.

also i am wondering if the fact that my life path has been basically been dense urban -> 70s suburb -> 60s suburb -> small town semi-rural -> small college town super-rural -> urban -> dense urban -> 40s/50s suburb is contributing to me being kinda O_O at the various assumptions flying around in this thread re: how other people live

also aero otm about the liberating dream of teenage driving on CA freeways

yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Outside of NY, what cities are truly dense and urban in the US? I guess that's your point too? The vast majority of the US could be considered suburban. Those walkscore maps don't seem very relevant to me. Portland is slightly more walkable than Los Angeles, but way less dense. You look at the map of LA and the vast fields of red are not walkable because they are mountains. So does that count against the overall walkability score? San Francisco is highly walkable but is small and expensive, hence the vast suburban sprawl surrounding it.

the walkscores themselves might not be useful but the maps generally ring true - but also sorta have to be combined w/ the transit options. the vast fields of red in LA are important! might not be sprawl, but they do make walking from the valley to santa monica pretty much out of the question. large parts of LA are incredibly walkable, but if you have a job in the wrong part / have to go long distances / a certain trip, it becomes impossible. that's why you need a transit system - queens is (generally) walkable and the bronx is walkable but I can't really walk to the bronx. I mean I could, but,

you know what else feels great is unprotected sex with strangers while high on heroin

you're joking, but this is also true!

ever slam a quarter of crystal in a bathhouse with a shared needle? it's 1) insane and 2) bracing as fuck

also I learned how to drive in socal on not-crowded freeways fwiw

!!!

LA county or San Diego?

santa barbara

it counts, technically

ps I'm not rich I swear

"feels good" and "i want it" are not reasons for the government to make certain things easy for people to have or do

the vast fields of red in LA are important! might not be sprawl, but they do make walking from the valley to santa monica pretty much out of the question.

but notice they didn't do the same thing for all of the water that surrounds Manhattan and San Francisco

santa barbara

it counts, technically

― iatee, Thursday, September 8, 2011 5:10 AM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ps I'm not rich I swear

― iatee, Thursday, September 8, 2011 5:10 AM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark

I lol'd

iatee this is where you admit that you actually live in missoula btw just to blow our minds

max I'm just explaining feelings & motivations not setting policy

by now I would expect that all my friends from the political threads know that I am probably not the best guy to talk about what would make for good policy

but notice they didn't do the same thing for all of the water that surrounds Manhattan and San Francisco

well it has the same effect! if you live in astoria queens, you are extremely close to manhattan and if there were a magic pedestrian-only bridge, you could be there in 5 minutes. instead you can take an hour walk or take the subway.