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

a bikeshare program this big definitely forces cars to pay more attention - they don't really have a choice. but people are going to die, and it's gonna be in the news and be a 'thing'. (people already die, it just doens't make the news)

the death-defying bikers should get tickets (but so should like, half of the cars in manhattan at any given point)

biking in NYC seems to be the mt. everest of bike skills

like I'll talk to bikers and express concerns about how safe it is that they don't wear a helmet and they'll just say "I spent two years in new york" *bikes away while doing a handstand on the handlebars*

still, gonna use this a lot for fun park-type rides. the nice thing is they're not half-assing this...600 stations means they'll be super easy to find. it's crazy that this'll be here in a year.

I'm not sure how safe it is to bike around SF - lots of ppl do it - but I have two friends who have ended up breaking extremeties from getting tripped up by their tires getting stuck in train tracks.

safer than manhattan, I would imagine

trying to remember if minneapolis got ranked #1 biking city again this year or if those portland jerks took the trophy back

you can probably catch them if you put yr bikes in the back of yr pickup trucks

i have two friends that bike in SF all the time, they seem to love it, though you have to go the most roundabout ways to avoid the hills

haha yeah 'the wiggle'

I pulled a calf/leg muscle today getting up from my seat on the bus. I'm going to have to get a car now.

YOURE GOING TO GET SO FAT

actually max middle class people who switch from cars to public transit are the ones who get fat*

*source: census data 2010 (wk's make-believe world)

i hear if you move to the united states of newhampshire you turn from fat schlub into adonis

JOIN ME IN THE GLORIOUS UNITED STATES OF NEW HAMPSHIRE WHERE FAT IS UNKNOWN AND THE AIR IS ALWAYS CLEAR

why did we pick new hampshire and not vermont, again? isn't new hampshire filled w/ migrating libertarians?

new hampshire was on the infographic

oh yeah

glad i'm not moving to the wrong place! want that bod

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/The-Beginning-End-Suburban-atlantic-1156625650.html?x=0

article works better if you turn on "Subdivisions" while you read it

haha I'm gonna steal that rhode island factoid

is there more to that article? because i am only getting the first page

article works better if you turn on "Subdivisions" while you read it

LOL

Nope, that's it.

oh ok

oh my god, that display name

You guys are made for each other

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~3/WdpdI_jy7fg/

prob gonna be some good stuff here

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/09/15/the-incredible-shrinking-megastore-retailers-think-outside-the-big-box/

Lewiston is in Idaho.

I've always figured that in fifty years, Wal-Mart will consist of a dozen rusting stores in a few backwater towns in the Midwest.

I basically want everyone to live in amsterdam or paris.

what are the suburbs of amsterdam and paris like?

will respond in a bit

it's nice being in most bikeable city with the most reliable+comprehensive public transport in germany, except when you are cycling home kind of drunk and you go over a tramline and this intersection at too oblique and angle and fall off (lol me last night)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3035/2625870220_2997df9771_z.jpg?zz=1

xp

the term 'banlieue' in french is the closest equivalent to 'suburb', but the connotation of the term is different and often but not always implies 'area outside of city proper with large housing projects with large numbers of poor immigrants'. so just as 'suburb' without any modifiers has a *general* connotation of middle class white people, 'banlieue' has a *general* connotation of poor immigrants in corbusian projects. but the parisian suburbs are more complex than that, especially because the urban region has been growing around an arbitrary border for a long time.

here's a density map, the white ring in the center is paris:
http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Paris-Region-Grand-Huit-Density.jpg

it's hard to tell the difference between those reds and the spectrum is huge, but dark red = denser than manhattan, light red = ~brooklyn to twice as dense as brooklyn, orange = ~san francisco/boston. that's the first ring suburbs - for the most part, lots of villages of varying sizes that grew into de facto parts of the city over the 20th century. 'the suburbs' is a combination of historic town centers, large housing projects, large not-housing project apartments, the greater paris central business district (skyscrapers), castles, rural-type regions, american style-suburbs.

here's a picture of single family detached houses in greater paris. this is not what *all* single family detached houses look like, but it's how a lot of the orange and yellow regions can be as dense as they are:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zHb8uFv5m0I/TdAQ22N20LI/AAAAAAAAAHk/aM-48cXEv84/s320/paris_sub.jpg

here are some pictures of suburbs in other countries and a longer explaination:
http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/05/setbacks-suburbs-and-american-front.html

here's why we can't legally build neighborhoods like that:
http://lawreview.law.pitt.edu/issues/68/68.4/Hall.pdf

paris invested a ton of money on its commuter rail system in the late 20th century which is why it's better than anything in america and why so many people in the suburbs take the train to work. and even today they continue to invest more money on new trains at a scale that's unthinkable here.

none of this is magic, it's just people with better priorities and a sense for long-term planning.

had a thought and it may be mentioned upthread, but do you think that countries (and particularly cities) with long, rich histories are more inclined to support larger investment in long term projects like infrastucture? I feel like some of the worst planned suburban communities are happening in cities that are relatively young and perhaps don't have a sense of permanence that Paris or new York have (nor a paucity of available space the way Japan does I guess). it's like you would care a lot more about the next 50 years of your city knowing that this place has been around forever and you aree in some way connected to and responsible for its livelihood. not so maybe for the millions of ppl living in Phoenix or Houston or whatever postwar boom towns where sprawl is the worst (IOW there's nothing to ruin because there wasn't anything special that came before you, might as well take advantage of that space to build a certain kind of dream community lol it is actually a nitemare amirite).

suburban development in america is probably connected w/ america's post-wwII king of the mountain I can do anything fuck it I want it all giant mountain of coke on my desk my dick is 15 inches long feeling

nah there was a lot of "open land" and lots of people want to get away from city "problems" and have more space, don't know why people need to attribute unseemly motivations just because their manifestations had unseemly results.

there still is a lot of open land. America is too big for its own good.

granny, I think a lot of existing suburban growth to be a product of economic incentives (land is cheap, urban housing stock is too expensive, Im not moving out here bc of sublimated racism, etc).

but i would def read that Pitt law review article iatee posted. it's longish but it's p compelling. basically the legal precedence set in the early 20th century of single use zoning and minimum lot sizes and so on may appear innocuous on its face but were absolutely intended to be discriminatory (and were quite successful in doing so). the logic of america's suburbs is not entirely price-motivated. basically we have this vestigial urban planning model that continues to exacerbate the problems we've discussed at length in this thread and it was indeed willfully malicious in its creation.

I think what iatee has been arguing for (he's certainly said as much) and what I will cosign is not that suburbs/lawns/cars/big houses/3.5 baths/golf courses are inherently bad and evil and the people who consume these willingly and joyfully are bad and evil (as a lifelong suburb denizen I would not be able to sleep at night if I thought this). it's just that a century of government policy has encouraged a growth pattern that have made these things relatively more affordable and desirable and shaped the culture in such a way that we have generations of Americans who have known nothing else besides low density suburban developments and cannot imagine living in any other environment and are certainly not civiically motivated to make any changes to that system. so we are basically old men yelling at cloud cities because this status quo is alternately unsustainable and yet highly sought after by many if not most americans in spite of its thoroughly shitty nature.

booming post

I think it's so weird and sad that the majority of americans tend towards isolating lifestyles

(know I'm going to find a ton of sympathy for that viewpoint on ILX)

m bison shoots and scores imo

Anyhow I am pretty new to this thead and have not read anywhere near all of it, but I am curious about evidence the suburbs are unsustainable? I'm not a doubter or anything, I just don't really know anything about these things.

fundamentals:
*the inextricably linked suburban home and automobile
-- sprawl necessitates the use of autos as a means of transportation, requires new roadways, sewage and utilities built out to those new communities
-- because the negative externalities of gasoline are not built into the price, it is artificially cheap, undervaluing the true cost of ever expanding development
-- at some point, the market for gasoline will be tighter and the economic logic for families moving out to suburbs begins to erode. the cost of gasaoline powereed auto transportation becomes cost prohibitive, ostensibly stranding some communities from the places that make a neighborhood livable.

*excessive setbacks for suburban homes (distance of home from roadway) and big ass lawns
-- gasoline powered mowers to maintain lawns (see above)
-- use of water-fucker-uppers like pesticides and herbicides
-- use of potable water to make green grass grow in dry infertile climates puts a strain on municipal water systems where one need not exist

there are definitely more reasons, but I'm running out of clever ways to curse

and also typing on iPads means tons of embarrassing typos

but the basic idea is that suburban development assumes an unlimited supply of gas, water, and land to grow out into despite evidence to the contrary that those things can definitely run out at some point.

Yeah I get the theory, but is there evidence that this has happened sincer the birth of the burbs? Again, not a doubter, just don't know if there is evidence of suburb-to-urban flight based on any of the above?