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

the 1st one looks like a wealthy area on the outskirts of an urban area. like there are definitely parts of Berkeley and Oakland that might as well be suburban. it would take people living in those houses longer to get to the 7-11 or grocery store than some suburbanites

Also, clay roof stuff is awesome but limited to the southern climates as it's a locally-sourced solar-reflective-and-dissipating material. Which means it is probably awesome in that area, but not everyone is living in SoCal so the aesthetics are kind of a regional affectation.

by your logic shouldn't we just have one store per city? the ag in the region is mostly oranges and wine. most of the produce comes from...california. it has a 98 on walkscore, and they're increasing the low-income housing downtown. atm many people *can* walk to work, they just don't cause they're rich and lazy.

like there are definitely parts of Berkeley and Oakland that might as well be suburban.

i love berkeley but dude, it is, literally, a suburb.

population density? you haven't been talking about "what works for a certain community, in a certain clime, in a certain region." You've been talking about what is economical, overall. I understand if you mean to say that all people should move to temperate climates, but that is unreasonable for about eighty other reasons other than housing! And it's a major upset in the American populace, let alone the world populace.

berkeley's a suburb but it's also
a. a college town
b. regionally a business district

it's pretty dense (in all senses)

population density? you haven't been talking about "what works for a certain community, in a certain clime, in a certain region." You've been talking about what is economical, overall. I understand if you mean to say that all people should move to temperate climates, but that is unreasonable for about eighty other reasons other than housing! And it's a major upset in the American populace, let alone the world populace.

people walk to work / take local transit in small towns throughout the world.

I'm not arguing that all (or any) cities should look like santa barbara, I'm saying a fairly dense (currently densifying, actually) well-planned medium-sized city isn't some crazy 'only in europe' idea. ps santa barbara is far from perfect for a million reasons and you couldn't pay me to live there - but european tourists pay large amounts of money to fly across the world to visit santa barbara. they do not pay large amounts of money to fly across the world to visit the big box stores in goleta.

tourists fly across the world to play golf; we should build more golf courses

we should not be encouraging anyone to fly around the world

planes should be banned

okay otm

if you want to go to europe, theres a rowboat over there *points vaguely toward dock*

max ur turning into ned *disrobes*

what I'm trying to say is tourists should want to take the future cross-atlantic high-speed rail

but you have to admit, a great deal of practical area would have to exist that people wouldn't necessarily want to visit if they didn't have to! you're conflating aesthetic appeal with environmental/economic viability. areas can definitely mix the two, but it is a stretch.

would you like to visit "the bridges of madison county"

only if there is light rail going over the bridges

someone link to the part of this thread where jon starts having a tantrum

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

but you have to admit, a great deal of practical area would have to exist that people wouldn't necessarily want to visit if they didn't have to! you're conflating aesthetic appeal with environmental/economic viability. areas can definitely mix the two, but it is a stretch.

well I'm on a totally different page right now! not talking about economics or incentives or whatever. I think our nation's current built landscape - 90% concrete, almost no sense of 'place', nothing built to exist 100 years from now - is basically a tragedy, and it was possible to build medium density suburbs w/ a sense of permanence and character without breaking the bank, but we took the cheap fast big route.

But we didn't tho

Not to be glib but my house was built in 1948 and isn't going anywhere, many if my neighbors have houses from the 1920s - they turn 100 in the next ten years! Not all suburbs are what you think they are

plz go find the last post I wrote when I said 'streetcar suburbs are generally nice'

ppl itt not really getting the whole idea of "generalizations", they tend to have these things called "exceptions"

if you try to build for a 1000 years, you just end up with some ozymandius tragedy bullshit. might as well just make it disposable.

the part of this thread where jon starts having a tantrum

wow

Not to be glib but my house was built in 1948 and isn't going anywhere, many if my neighbors have houses from the 1920s - they turn 100 in the next ten years! Not all suburbs are what you think they are

my quote: 'streetcar suburbs predate the car, and even today, without the streetcars, are noticeably more pleasant places than post-streetcar suburbs.'

again I have this extremely narrowminded view on suburbs, I mean definitely, as long as you aren't reading any of my posts. suburbs can be a lot of things depending on when they were built and where both within america and within the world, the word can mean different things in different contexts. I live in queens. historically queens was entirely a suburb of manhattan. today, to a large extent it still is, but it is 'complicated' because I live in a part of queens that's denser than san francisco. but there are incredibly 'suburban' parts too. there are detached houses and lawns not particularly far from me. and big box stores. it's not simple, at all. that's why I'm actually really fascinated by the borough.

I've said this like 100 times but again - generally when I talk about suburbs, I'm using the word in the sense of 'low density, car-oriented developed area' not 'area that is outside the downtown area of a city'. the first definition might not ring true for every 'suburb' in the country but it's got a pretty clear meaning.

sleeptime

agreed on streetcar etc etc

I think the parts where iatee isn't short-sheeting himself, we are giving him short shrift.

hey, I went to that SB board game store a few months ago!

ppl itt not really getting the whole idea of "generalizations", they tend to have these things called "exceptions"

except that, I don't know the statistics, but it feels like those strawman mcmansion gated community + box store developments are actually the exception in a way, and that large swaths of suburbia are 50 years old or older. At least in California.

gah now I have to turn on my computer and post one more time

Btw the area I live in didn't have streetcars

Just to be clear - mainly because I am on the other side of a big old river.

then your area is generally not nice obv.

a streetcar named derpsire

except that, I don't know the statistics, but it feels like those strawman mcmansion gated community + box store developments are actually the exception in a way, and that large swaths of suburbia are 50 years old or older. At least in California.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_payZfX5rZ08/SZT8yMcoJJI/AAAAAAAAADA/gOrL2s-FVus/s1600-h/nat-geo-sprawl-map-2001.jpg

so that was just a decade - the 00s were worse.

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