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

xp to esby Hahaha sure if the driver is held accountable for none of the effects of their actions, so basically in a constructed fantasy that Americans have been taught is their right as Americans but which actually kills people and the planet at every stage. Taught by auto manufacturers and fossil fuel industries, I'm pretty sure.

What about when all cars are powered by renewable energy

I don't care if people "desire" to live in a remote mountain stockade but I do care if all of the rest of society is footing the bill for them to do that. Economic and social pressures will go a long way, I think, to changing what's desirable.

in orbit I think you're right, but I think you're underselling the problem a bit. Why is driving seen as convenient by Americans for instance? the last usa shithole I lived in was "organized" so that I spent like 15+ minutes driving just about anywhere except Meijer, and there it was like 5 minutes plus then 5 minutes walking through the hellishly large parking lot. it wasn't convenient at all! yes, more so than biking or walking, but still, it was a giant waste of time.

& then, why do American people want such big spaces to live in? yes, policies could say "no residence can be more than x m^2" etc but still, peoples' desires have to change, and policy is only part of that.

― Joey Corona (Euler), Saturday, May 30, 2020 5:54 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

there is a very entrenched legal regime that reinforces this and all the people with any real power in these places, their money basically comes from it, specifically property rights and the real estate market. THAT definitely needs to be fucked with.

Building cities around cars instead of PEOPLE will still be wrong and harmful and destructive to healthy communities when cars don't use fossil fuel, although I guess at least air quality wouldn't be affected as much.

there is a very entrenched legal regime that reinforces this and all the people with any real power in these places, their money basically comes from it, specifically property rights and the real estate market. THAT definitely needs to be fucked with.

― crystal-brained yogahead (map), Saturday, May 30, 2020 4:58 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

Good luck with your plan to have every human live in a city

Only god can change people’s desires, but policy can change what they can get.

thanks map, that's otm

"You must live in an environment you hate living in, whereas I actually prefer living in a city so I'm sacrificing nothing. I'm getting exactly what I want, with the added benefit of being able to scold you for getting what you want"

i mean i think you're right euler that it's not actually convenient or desirable to live in suburbs just at a basic level of experience and it's why cities are more desirable right now from a consumer pov. but just looking at where the money is in suburban areas and how that ecosystem is ossified beyond belief, that's what needs to loosen up i think.

xp sorry to be talking past you io. i guess i'm incrementalist about people who are lower on the totem pole in these hierarchies and absolutist when it comes to the people with the money and the power lol.

yes granny dainger, it's just scolding, how dare I suggest that your rights be trampled upon to live as you wish

that seems right, map. until I left the usa I lived only in suburban environments, first as a child who had no choice, then as an adult who somehow lucked into getting a job at all, which were again in those places. and it was horrible! only ever had one car for the five of us, but lived in detached housing, and I took a giant risk in getting away from that. so I get how trapped people can be to keep living like that. but I'm talking about people who are choosing to live like that, "because the schools are better", "because we need the space", and (I know) "because I want a yard for the kids to play in". & all of those make the lives of others worse. & like if you live in some rural place & drive like I dunno 10 miles a week, then I guess it's less bad than it would be otherwise; but is it really sustainable for the planet for people to live like that? & why should tax structures etc set incentives for people to live that way?

In a single family development ( fun fact: the developer died in prison for scamming the original lot buyers)

there is so much of this shit in like inland california / nevada / az

xp to euler

yeah idk people just kind of get trapped in wormholes

xxp to map You're good! Keep going!

I'm not saying any of the problems identified here or the policies suggested to alleviate them are wrong, because they are bad problems and good policies. But as long as 8 billion or more humans inhabit the earth and they all strive to consume like westerners, we are pecking around the edges of the central problem.

map and orbit otm. it’s a pretty simple question of where the balance of power lies between planning boards and property developers. in the uk, american “grid-like” infinite expansion beyond city limits just isn’t on the cards. even getting an extra room stuck onto the back of your house can take months to get approved.

i think small villages are a nice alternative to suburbs. still walkable, but rural pleasures close at hand.

xp like cornel west was saying last night, people in the us have failed to offer material and spiritual nourishment to its people. aimless i think some issues in that area are that people are pressured to think in terms of marketability for all their states of being at all times, there are more and more addictions and compulsions available, also people really like worshipping powerful gods and always have. westerners don't just consume they do it as an act of faith, more options for other magics to believe in should be available and de-stigmatized with like education about cult control lol.

drivers should be summarily executed

i think one positive development lately is the move toward decriminalizing medicine like pot and psychedelics.

london is the only city i've ever lived in (v briefly) and i fucking hated it, the rest of my life has been spent in a village. p sure i couldn't stand to ever live in a city again tbh.

i do drive to work tho, when not furloughed, but on the other hand haven't taken a flight in 20+ years.

"Fewer car trips, more lsd trips. Make America high again!"

- map

Fuck. Just realized "Bake America great again" would have been more elegant.

i wish village smallness was as intrinsic to the us as it is the uk, it would make life so much more livable across most of the country. but then we stole all the land and invented it after cars and late capitalism and it's all radiohead album art. there's a weird reflexivity that comes along with trying to shift land use and experience 'back' to something before cars. like humans have always been on this path of least resistance we're essentially as dumb as a population of deer and so it feels weird to design ourselves out of this inexorable capitalist logic. which is why capitalism needs to be fucked with. it needs predator control from the inside. if it sounds like i'm high it's because i am.

one positive thing about single story buildings, is that they are easier to make ADA accessible -- thinking about the aging baby boomer generation, there will probably be a significant increase in the number of people who require ADA accommodations (i.e. have wheelchairs and walkers) in the next decade in this country.

Can someone please distinguish village from suburb, in a non-arbitrary way? Plenty of villages sound a bit like "suburbs, but the good-not-bad kind."

London, for example, has swallowed innumerable villages into its metropolitan area; have these become suburbs now? Or are they still villages?

If we are only defining "suburb" as "you know, the BAD kind," that seems rife with subjectivity, loopholes, and self-serving postures.

Ppl itt still using "suburb" to mean always and only Levittown (or whatever) are not helping clarify the matter.

i think there are a lot of variations and gradations of how land is divided up and sold, also along a historical timeline, so i think it's complicated, hard to categorize, highly specific to the area. that being said i think the forces at play are easier to generalize about and make moral arguments for/against.

also there's a lot of class insecurity on display when people start talking about suburbia

Well, yeah.

one positive thing about single story buildings, is that they are easier to make ADA accessible -- thinking about the aging baby boomer generation, there will probably be a significant increase in the number of people who require ADA accommodations (i.e. have wheelchairs and walkers) in the next decade in this country.

― sarahell, Saturday, May 30, 2020 7:02 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i've noticed that the trailer park i live in caters to people who are dealing with chronic pain and older people with mobility issues. and smokers lol.

like another thing that the idealistic proposals in this thread seem not to take into account is that it is more environmentally friendly to work with/adapt existing structures than to tear them down and build new buildings. I don't want to get into the issue of expense, because undoubtedly silby or someone like them will argue that the government should front the bill for all of this and money is no object, which is like, sure that would be nice, I would also like free ice cream and great sex every day of my life.

honey money can't buy you great sex

actually it probably can lol

i'm just saying the world isn't perfect and isn't gonna be

like the increase in remote work being allowed could help with the environmental downside to suburbs, and as that is one of the biggest problems suburban development has, maybe suburbs aren't that awful?

yeah but i think there are more cracks in the facade of money actually relating to "honest labor" than ever before, except maybe the silver movement in the 1890s or something, and that more people are starting to realize that 'free money' can actually be engineered somewhat or at least tweaked so it supports a different vision than the hellscape we have now.

xp i really hope remote work becomes a much more regular practice that would be a huge boon to air quality which is such an important issue.

re: air quality -- omg yes. it has been really nice these past couple months such that last night when the wind changed and the smell of the cops' grenades and gas wafted my way, I could actually smell it.

as major american cities increasingly become divided into areas blighted by poverty and areas that serve as consumer playgrounds for the rich, there is a version of suburban living that is far better at meeting people's daily needs at a reasonable expense.

ok yeah i had typed out then deleted something in that vein because i knew it sounded like i was rationalizing future poor choices, and i am, but there are serious material issues wrt urban living in the u.s. so no it's not "doing something bad" to live in the suburbs. the badness was done for us a long time ago. my city is the same as hundreds of others: white flight depleted the residential property tax base & we have a bloated police department and other unnecessary expenses bleeding money from the city. in order to attract businesses that wouldn't otherwise want to have offices here, the city negotiates tax-increment financing schemes so these corporations end up paying no property taxes. and the tax abatements for luxury condos. the result is that in order to live in the city i have to pay thousands more in property taxes than i would for even a more expensive house in the suburbs, and my taxes go toward fradulent cop overtime and settlements for when cops kill people. if i want an actual service performed by the city, it won't happen. someone dumped a pile of tires next to my house and 311 keeps closing my requests for them to be picked up. people from the suburbs come and dump mattresses and old boats here because they know no one will give a shit. i'm feeling extra bad about my life in the city right now, and i'm not that poor. most people don't think it's worth it to spend their short lives being shit on so they, individually, can save the environment.

As the saying goes, you can't buy what isn't on the shelf.

I am sure I would love a society of supremely livable, egalitarian, high-density cities, with wilderness in between. Sleek high-speed trains glide between these gleaming cities, past sustainable farms whose fields are tended by solar-powered robots. Private automobiles are relegated to history museums.

But the intermediate steps between our world and that one are, to put it mildly, unrealistic.

So in orbit's harm-reduction measures seem like a decent start. And way more feasible than BAN CARS NOW or whatever.

wow harbl otm

I mean banning/limiting cars is the goal, I'm just saying...baby steps.

my city is the same as hundreds of others: white flight depleted the residential property tax base & we have a bloated police department and other unnecessary expenses bleeding money from the city.

Yeah definitely all of this. I didn't make time to get into it but I've been thinking about it all day: the creation of suburbs is all about racism and white flight and growing new white-only spaces and then patrolling them jealously and violently.

This is about the US again, right?

Euler asked a question about North Americans specifically; the ensuing responses are US-focused, but I think everyone here would welcome other perspectives.

Oh right, nm.

England is something else that I can't get my head around. I'm obsessed with "Escape to the Country" and how the most rural places that the movers and presenters can imagine are still completely settled and farmed and full of villages. Even national parks have villages INSIDE THEM. And all these little villages have their own post office and a pub and a store and they're only like 10 miles apart from each other. Is the whole country basically a model train set?!

England is so cute.

The British isles have been settled by people building houses (and villages) for 4000 years and more. There is almost no countryside that is truly wild (as in untouched by human alteration) anywhere in the islands.