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

there's different degrees of choices, he's simplistic about it

yeah for example by living in the suburbs my commute is much shorter than it would be living in the city - this was a prime motivator for both my (now) wife and i when we bought the house

I guess it's okay to prefer the city over the suburbs if you've lived in both, but so many great experiences happen even in the most anodyne environments. Isn't this what most of us who listen to and write about music love about our favorite songs? If you let the burden of expectations crush you or submit to the imagined squalor of your environs, then the problem is you, not geography.

i think i mentioned that upthread somewhere idk i am just killing the last hour or so of work carry on without me xpost

When I drive through Jacksonville I always think of early Pere Ubu songs, and there's an unexpected beauty to all that steel and boringness.

I was going to say something but I remembered that we established way upthread that I don't really live in "the city" since most of the metro area here has the population density of a suburb. I think iatee probably has disdain for most "cities" in the country other than the hyperurban

I guess it's okay to prefer the city over the suburbs if you've lived in both, but so many great experiences happen even in the most anodyne environments. Isn't this what most of us who listen to and write about music love about our favorite songs? If you let the burden of expectations crush you or submit to the imagined squalor of your environs, then the problem is you, not geography.

my overarching argument has been 'it's fine for people to have a personal preference for life in the suburbs, we just shouldn't have government policy (from the local to fed level) designed to promote and subsidize suburban growth'.

that doesnt sound like what he's said at all imo but we can let him answer that i guess xp

I was going to say something but I remembered that we established way upthread that I don't really live in "the city" since most of the metro area here has the population density of a suburb. I think iatee probably has disdain for most "cities" in the country other than the hyperurban

Yeah, I feel like we can't define population density or the term suburb to a degree of accuracy that would allow this discussion to make any sense.

idk iatee i have never gotten the impression that you are arguing from the position that those personal preferences are fine - ie distilling them to anti-social avoidance of other humans

idk considering that overall he really does seem to think that anybody who doesn't live in a metropolis is legitimately either a bad person or a total dumbass, I think he does a pretty good job of only presenting the less misanthropic aspects of his argument here

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 6:37 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

for someone who harps about how people should acknowledge the privilege that enables their place and status in life, you seem pretty blind to the fact that living in a suburb or rural area w/ a car is a pretty big fucking privilege

also iirc you think of things like road upkeep and highway projects as suburb subsidies and its a little more complicated than that

road and highway projects don't come close to paying for themselves these days

i don't have a preference for suburb livin so much as a dislike of city livin. that's true for most people (my age) I know who live in the 'burbs.

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/07/new-report-roads-dont-pay-for-themselves/

and?

like can we skip the part where we list off all the other things that dont visibly pay for themselves please

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_State_Toll_Highway_Authority

^weird quasi-governmental, quasi-private entity

(and regardless 'paying for themselves' is misleading even if the gas tax were raised in this situation. $ from a gas tax should be used entirely to offset environmental damage, not to promote more.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hkWhq7Z-Y4

for someone who harps about how people should acknowledge the privilege that enables their place and status in life, you seem pretty blind to the fact that living in a suburb or rural area w/ a car is a pretty big fucking privilege

umm...if you say so, I guess? I don't in any way deny that it's a pretty intensely privileged condition - there's a difference between accepting an argument & feeling an irresistible compulsion to be a sanctimonious dick about it

I guess it's okay to prefer the city over the suburbs if you've lived in both, but so many great experiences happen even in the most anodyne environments. Isn't this what most of us who listen to and write about music love about our favorite songs? If you let the burden of expectations crush you or submit to the imagined squalor of your environs, then the problem is you, not geography.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 3:49 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

awesome post

I mean if I'm the guy noticing the sanctimony that oughta be a pretty big red flag given my notoriously high tolerance for sanctimony

lol aero as if you are never a sanctimonious dick to others w/r/t their privilege

you may be missing the point here dude

I think that was his point

xpost

would not really characterize iatee as sanctimonious in tone, and i know from sanctimonious

what a beautiful word

lol aero as if you are never a sanctimonious dick to others w/r/t their privilege

dayo you might study the xpost function dude

display name that keeps on giving

lol sorry - it's been a long day, my reading comprehension is shot

it's cool even though I get mad I am kinda (predictably liberal dude here) into getting called out for my privilege, feel it's healthy, so while I hate it when ppl are mad at me I appreciate u goin in

I have trouble keeping iatee's actual characteristics straight because he's so good at jumping into debates and picking a viewpoint that he may in no way resemble

I'd like to invite all of you to my condo in the burbs, where I'm about to open a bottle of wine. Enjoy my privilege!

it's funny that members of ilx's 'hard left' seem to think this isn't a pretty basic left/right issue both w/r/t the environment and the fact that the costs of owning a car / lack of alternatives are an enormous burden on the american poor. when gas prices go up again, people are gonna be skipping meals so they can get to their job. does that make you happy? well it doesn't make me happy either. really.

hey, it's not your subject, you like your house, whatever, that's not the issue. I don't think it's crazy that someone would prefer a big house and lawn over a small apt in a busy city, I think it's crazy that we live in a world where a small apt in a busy city costs more than a big house and a lawn.

it's not really ~that difficult~ to accept that the status quo is unsustainable and, at the very least not something we should be actively encouraging w/ government policy.

well, sure, but some of us have learned to enjoy the bomb.

And, on a serious note, picking our battles.

let's not hate on each other for the battles we picked

ilx is not about "picking our battles"

i took you for a member of ilx's 'hard left', iatee.

hugging everyone through the tears

I think it's crazy that we live in a world where a small apt in a busy city costs more than a big house and a lawn.

uh you realize that this is not at all true in most cities right

i took you for a member of ilx's 'hard left', iatee.

― kkvgz, Wednesday, September 7, 2011 7:18 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark

i think this is about the politics thread, where morbs, aero and Alfred (kind of?) are the hard left

there are like three real cities in america

like let me tell you what when you figure in mortgage/maintanance/insurance/property taxes i would have a lot more money living back in my old apartment

I think it's crazy that we live in a world where a small apt in a busy city costs more than a big house and a lawn.

idg your point here. doesn't the small apt in the big city cost so much because so many people with means have decided that they want to live there and that they value walkability, etc?

I mean, I guess I see what you're saying: that the overall social and environmental cost of the tract home mcmansion developments should be factored into their price to balance out their negative effects? But realistically I'm not sure how that could happen.

And, on a serious note, picking our battles.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 6:17 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this seems so fundamentally contradictory to your attitude in the politics thread o_O

hipsters did unaffordable nyc rents

dayo dude trolling is like drinking a fine wine you dont just dump the whole bottle out into your glass like that

re: picking our battles - i enjoy these debates because they arise from actual ideological rifts in this community that can seem pretty monolithic in thought sometimes. stuff like land use, gun rights, the death penalty, etc - it's not really possible to have an honest disagreement on most other issues of the day since most of us approach them from about the same place

this seems so fundamentally contradictory to your attitude in the politics thread o_O

Do I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself.