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

well if i'm going to have to live in a city, it is going to have to have beautiful scenery and weed-delivery services

but if you want me to respond to whatever you're imagining, you'd have to give some measure and context. sustainable depends on overall consumption - dude living in the middle of the forest can live an emissions free lifestyle in a not-particularly-dense world. and it's not that people in hyper-dense manhattan live anywhere close to sustainable lifestyles atm (lol, rich people), but they'd have to give up less on the path to sustainability. so yes, people at any level of density can, in theory, pay off their externalities on the world. and if you're willing and able to pay 13/g for gas, well, that's a good start.

13/g gas would effect more than suburb dwellers, don't know if that's something you really wanna be shooting for

it's not a matter of 'shooting for' but rather determining what the cost actually is, how it is paid, and who pays for it

the thing is, though, that 13/g gas is not something we can choose to want or not, it's pretty much inevitable if not within the next 10 years then certainly within the next 20. unless we start magically finding vast new sources of oil or maybe God can create a bunch of dinosaurs and kill them and convert their carcasses into hydrocarbons within the next 5 years

stop being so callous

sorry I should have thought more about the fate of the dinosaurs

wait can god create the dinosaurs but let me kill them?

would be kinda epic

and that doesn't even start to consider the question of should we americans consume resources at a pace that far outpaces the rest of the developed world (except for tiny oil rich places in the middle east which use oil to flush their toilets with)

my whole life could be like the faerie queene

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE

like the only countries that consistently use as much power as or more than the US are middle eastern oil kingdoms and scandinavian countries (I guess cause it's cold all the damn time and they don't want to freeze to death)

damn scandos

and canada

aussies too but they are forgiven because it is really fun to ride jeeps in the outback, in fact it's compulsory

this is why we need to make more transit-oriented megacities in coastal california

also you can ignore those other countries because combined I'm not sure their populations would approach even 1/6 of america's

oh damn 35 million people live in canada... who knew... okay maybe 1/4

and like iatee said it's not a question about what we want to do it's a question about what we can afford to do. like I want to live in an airship, it would be really rad - but I can't afford it. but if all of a sudden the gov passed a national law that said "dayo and only dayo can construct and build an airship and we will subsidize 99% of the cost" then fuck yeah, I'm gonna take out a loan and build an airship.

btw do any of ya'll want to come and hang out on my airship, I've got xbox 360

don't make this about our military-industrial complex

speaking of industrial policy, another take on things:

http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/special-interests-and-the-general-interest/

like I want to live in an airship, it would be really rad - but I can't afford it.

cute lil analogy bro but right now there are not millions of people and businesses based in airships. there are, however, in suburbs.

people right now are driving 15mpg SUVs. i don't think in just 20 yrs it's gonna go from that to motor vehicles as a whole being unaffordable. anyway i don't know why y'all are still obsessed with gasolina. 4th time:

so have all car-based suburbs either convert to public trans-based ones or die; get rid of those zoning laws too, and?

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it's not a matter of 'shooting for' but rather determining what the cost actually is, how it is paid, and who pays for it

right. i just got the impression that iatee thinks 13/g gas would be a good thing.

a. an environmentally sustainable world would be 'a good thing'
b. 13/g gas would be 'a very bad thing' for the american economy

i dont get what were supposed to do with that sentence you keep quoting

it would be a good thing insofar as the true cost of oil would be laid bare and we would be forced to plan around it, would be a kickstart to plans of upgrading america's public transportation system. the question is now, do you amputate the foot, or do you wait until gangrene sets in and lose the leg. (to give you another cute lil analogy, bro, since you seem to love them)

oh max just keep making snappy terse rejoiners, it's brilliant

rejoinders too

he's not joking we have no idea what kind of response you're expecting

you keep banging on about car-dependent suburbs when i've already said i think they're very problematic

hard to tell when the brilliant wit that is max is 'joking'

please don't rejoin us tho max

no, but really, what do you want as a response to that sentence [only kind of a joke]

like that sentence, the bit before the semicolon is basically "what is going to happen over the next century regardless of what posters on the internet say, barring the invention and mass production of the solar-powered riding mower" and the bit after is "a good way to ease the transition" [there is a joke in this post but the thrust of it is fairly serious]

ok i'm saying i am in favor of those 2 things, and wondering what other major acts would need to occur in order to have sustainable suburbs.

cause there being nothing but rural, small town, and urban (the density cutoff being San Fran) isn't realistic imo. yes yes what we can afford will dictate blah blah but i think we can plan/arrange things so town-center, public-trans based suburbs can work in the long-term. i get that y'all are not invested in thinking about that because you prefer an urban lifestyle and basically fuck all who don't.

um basically SAY 'fuck all who don't'

i know that joeks have been made and there are a bunch of urbanites on one side and you on the other, but you seem to be taking it awfully personally.

ppl are questioning the ongoing economic feasibility of current suburban development. i don't think anyone is suggesting that suburban dwellers are assholes or that they should go fuck themselves

once youve moved off of cars onto public transportation youve solved 80% of what is "bad" about "suburbs." you wouldnt really even be living in "a suburb" as were defining it, and as has been discussed 40m times above

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

i grew up in an old-school suburb with a lawn and a ballfield over the fence from my back yard. i enjoyed being able to play catch or wiffle hockey in the yard and even had a flower garden for a couple years (my mom had a much larger vegetable garden).

this was a relatively close-in and dense suburb that was built along a river and near several coal mines. it was not a development with identical enormous houses named 'parson's croft' or 'briar ridge', though if i'd grown up in one it probably would have been fine too.

there are levels and levels, some of which are more feasible than others.

yeah GD i dont really know what to tell u except that you are like insanely sensitive and im sorry that you are being forced to read this thread?

b. inordinate desire for privacy / anti-social behavior = correlated w/ political conservatism, and how many republicans we got around here? was trying to think of an ilxor example of someone from a city who hated cities, and...roger adultry came to mind - prob not coincidentally one of the only loud conservatives we've had. I think he was from staten island tho, so...lol...

yeah max i dont really know what to tell u except that you are like an enormous smug dick and im sorry that you are being forced to read this thread?

im not tho!! i am choosing to read this thread

...

i don't care abuot this stupid argument but quit abusing max you look like a jerk

heh this is my fault too, i should just let it go but

oh poor max

http://www.meh.ro/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/meh.ro5380-455x551.jpg