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

hmm not showing up

http://i.imgur.com/h62Dc.jpg

note that you're sorta right about LA! we pretty much invented it.

yeah, I guess I have a skewed view, because the places I've lived are mostly purple on that map

but on the bright side, that shows a way out, right? suburbs don't necessarily stay suburban forever, and they can somewhat densify over time.

yes tho there are limits and some exurban places are pretty much hopeless - some already are ghost towns, many more will be. still, while there are some positive things happening here and there, the overwhelming majority of new housing is still suburban and 'baby steps in the right direction' aren't gonna do it when you look at the magnitude of the problem.

but we live in a car-oriented world, have a car-oriented voting population and on top of that the urban populations we do have are underrepresented in congress. it's not a priority right now, but when people finally realize it is, they'll also realize how long it takes to fix these things. America is pretty adaptable but that yellow space on the map isn't just gonna disappear and serious transit systems take years of planning and development. and serious $. look at the paris 'grand paris' plans if you want to see a country that's willing to make serious investments in densifying its suburbs.

suburbs have a weird romance for me bc i have never lived in one so i only think of them in terms of movies abt bored teenagers really

yeah the suburbs in eg edward scissorhands always seemed a pretty sweet deal tbh

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2370/2272313457_a92c459821.jpg

yeah i agree w/plax, i grew up on a farm and then lived in the city since but yeah i sort of have this weird image that the burbs in 80s movies actually still exist, seemed like this magic safe zone of ramblers where kids could have adventures

this hit home for me when iatee put that enormous carpark google streetview up and it seemed really pretty to me

Yeah don't confuse this for policy advocacy, but that image stirs something primal in me. I like walking around the city, but walking around suburbs somehow always was the most magical experience to me. It feels otherworldly.

I guess you can find beauty in the scene, but it's hard to find character. there are hundreds of parking lots in California that are in no way distinguishable. same stores, same big box architecture, etc. if you were plopped in a random parking lot, you'd have a hard time figuring out what city you were in. and if you tried to walk outside of the limits of the development, well, there is no beauty in having to cross de facto highways in 15 seconds.

again I'm making this point outside of 'why people should live in dense areas' - I don't think 'because suburbs are increasingly bleak and bland' is a good argument - for one, as buzza mentioned, chain store coup has been happening in big cities too.

but I do think the built legacy of late 20th century America is a pretty embarrassing use of resources and the scope is a lot larger than many people believe. again that map was *one decade*.

Feel like plax is dude in american beauty videotaping the plastic bag

china - walking around a residential area is fine (assuming sidewalks exist) - but do you enjoy walking around the arterial roads? do you enjoy walking to the grocery store? that's the thing - walkable doesn't mean 'pleasant to walk in'.

I like walking around golden gate park but I wouldn't want to live in golden gate park.

I like walking through the suburbs, but yeah, not alongside an expressway. I didn't have a car when I lived in LA and know very well how hard it is to walk between neighborhoods there (Westwood to Hollywood and back was a disaster that involved walking on a lot of lawns in Bel-Air). I still kind of liked it though!
I mean, I know it's pretty atrocious planning and should be fixed. I'm just someone who spent the first 22 years of my life between San Jose and LA with no car, so walking through sprawl is a nostalgic thing for me. Not going to defend it otherwise.

yeah i sort of have this weird image that the burbs in 80s movies actually still exist, seemed like this magic safe zone of ramblers where kids could have adventures

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, September 8, 2011 7:39 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

I have no idea what a kid would even do in the city.

Like, I'm picturing Kids, the Wire, and the Royal Tenenbaums.

that's the thing - walkable doesn't mean 'pleasant to walk in'.

it should though! because if people have the choice between a drive & a walk and one isn't more pleasant than the other, they're always gonna choose the faster one

I agree, actually

that's why we need to make improvements beyond just density - even most relatively dense places in the country are unpleasant to walk around because they've been refurbished for the automobile age. drastic changes towards making a place more pleasant to walk are almost always going to also make it less pleasant to drive - which is is good, when we're trying to get people to switch modes of getting around, but which is why it's not an easy sell, even in manhattan. removing traffic lanes, widening sidewalks, readapting parking lots and spaces, lower speed limits - these things do come at the cost of making driving less convenient.

remember how hard ppl freaked out when jsk pedestrianized part of times square

and I'm expecting someone to say 'surely there's a compromise' but keep in mind that we're starting from a world designed top to bottom for drivers. free parking, subsidized highways and roads, gas taxes that are lol compared to the rest of the world. *anything* is going to seem like a burden on drivers, cause on a policy level we're starting from the position of 'we do basically everything we can to make driving cheap and easy in this country' xp

I think people in my neighborhood have mostly reclaimed the street. I was driving home a few weeks ago and a woman was brushing her dog right in the middle a few feet from the neighbor kid skateboarding.

I think she was doing that so all the dog fur would be in the street and not in her yard which makes me a little annoyed, but.. hey, I guess it's not just for cars

Oh yeah, so what kids do in cities: kick a soccer ball in the street

Are you sure that soccer ball wasn't actually a broken chunk of eroding sidewalk?

remember how hard ppl freaked out when jsk pedestrianized part of times square
--max

yeah this - which has of course been a huge success - is a pretty good example. this is one of the most pedestrianized areas in the western world, and making even modest strides in the right direction is incredibly hard. it's absurd, but ultimately due to our political system. still it's pretty amazing how much stuff she's been able to accomplish.

I think it was a vagrant's decapitated head

speaking of jsk iatee did you see this profile of her from a couple days ago

http://www.observer.com/2011/09/road-warrior-janette-sadik-khan-is-the-best-mechanic-the-city-streets-have-had-in-a-generation%E2%80%94so-why-do-motorists-dislike-her-so-much/?show=all

wayyy better than that hit job the times did in the spring

Oh yeah, so what kids do in cities: kick a soccer ball in the street

― mh, Thursday, September 8, 2011 11:22 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

there are parks

you can walk to them

and there are alleys! one of our afterschool activities was throwing a football in the alley close to our bus stop, and then having a lookout who would spot the bus, and then gunning it to the stop when the bus was spotted. fun!

I was specifically speaking about my street and sometimes kids don't walk to the park!

no I didn't, gonna read it now xp to max

some pleasant driving advocates in the comments too

"Quoting a Transportation Alternatives spokesperson on what's good for drivers is the journalistic equivalent of quoting a Nazi on what's good for Jews."

fair comparison

good article. lol at the AAA dude and Marty.

key:
"This does not mean people are getting to their destinations more slowly, as many might think. Studies have shown that reducing speeds from 40 MPH in urban settings to only 20 MPH has little impact on travel times; it simply means less time waiting at stop lights. New York may be at the end of hurry-up-and-wait driving. For pedestrians, though, the difference is huge. At 40 MPH, 70 percent of accidents are fatal. At 30 MPH—the legal speed limit in New York—only 20 percent of accidents are fatal."

zooming down city streets with traffic lights is just dumb but it's pretty much a given that most ppl don't actually know how to drive

is there a thread where we complain about how everybody else except you is a terrible driver

every driving thread ever

oh that's a good spin on an old dn

yeah its the new improved version

"Quoting a Transportation Alternatives spokesperson on what's good for drivers is the journalistic equivalent of quoting a Nazi on what's good for Jews."

lool

although i do h8 anyone that drives in an urban area

Oh, me too. Especially the ones who honks at you in a crosswalk when you're crossing at your leisure and they're trying to squeeze in a right turn on red. I straight up middle-finger those assholes.

do you only use your middle finger, and which one so I know which hand not to shake

right turns on red shouldn't be legal in urban areas to begin with

oh man now you lost me

I disagree with that, but I think that they are a special circumstance. I get a minor thrill every time I do one.

Red light cameras are a menace.