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

also, breasts.

bubble and bust that extended over several continents

Watch China for example...

"bust that extended over several continents" great description of those breasts.

bout to buy a house in the burbs in the next 6 mos. take that "the atlantic"

Old houses have the stigma of ickyness

??

mold and lead for one, if not simply "lived in by disgusting savages".

I live in a 2,000 square foot house that may be upgraded to 3,000 to accomodate family plus guests. This house is more than big enough for three people RIGHT NOW. It is more than eighty years old.

I just can't imagine living in a 4,000 square foot space with only a family of four and maybe some pets. I think that kind of thing is for management types, people who entertain a lot or who have a lot of guests. But a lot of people in the US think that is the "goal", a mark of success.

I was mocking people who always live in brand new places. My house was built in 1915. Sheesh.

The last house I lived in was built in 1941. I can't fathom ever living in a house older than 10 years again (depending).

We had the little round fuses for the circuit breaker. Once got up in a light fixture and the cords inside looked like they were made from twine. Couldn't ever find vent covers that were the right size. State Farm even turned us down to insure the house!

Those were just a few tiny things. I can't stress enough how nice it is to finally live in a house with three-pronged outlets.

Also, the guy who was here first designed the house in the late 90s, so every room has a phone jack next to the cable outlet for dial-up.

I think you can find examples of houses older than 10 years that have three-pronged outlets and light-fixtures that aren't twine based...

Well also you can rewire old houses. I mean you really have to, in fact.

Yeah, but those houses that are 20+ years old look like Elliot's house from ET.

All of them.

I think the biggest advantage of old houses is that they are (more often) located in old neighborhoods

People have rubbed their butts on those walls.

Yeah, our house was built in 1946, and before we moved in, I had the fuse box replaced with breakers, the electrical service upgraded, and all the two-prong sockets replaced with three-prong GFI sockets. I didn't do a complete rewire, but I may in the near future.

Do not want to live in any more turn of the century homes, no matter how rehabbed they are.

pplains, did you buy the place and it had fuses for the circuit breaker? My home inspector was like "welp, they have two circuits flipped here, the higher amp one should be over here and vice versa" and then the sale was contingent on this and a handful of other changes!

As for the "twine" stuff, probably just old romex that was fiber-based and not rubber. No big deal, really. As long as you don't have knob and tube wiring still in place, I wouldn't worry.

Old houses are awesome because the building materials are generally much higher quality, if they've been well-maintained. There are exceptions, definitely, but I'd place more stock in the longevity of a well-built older house than a new one. Wiring isn't that big of a deal when you can have an electrician who's skilled at fishing wires put in grounded outlets pretty easily.

Then again, people move every ten years to a newer house anyway, right?

yup, a trend that can pretty easily continue for all of history w/ no repercussions

We just need to keep having more poor people. The middle class (hah hah hah) gets new houses, poor people get the old ones.

Have we discussed townhome clusters and what's going to happen to them as their first/second-gen occupants move out?

many xposts

My house was built in the early 80s, and as much as I love it, it definitely needs considerable help. It was built in the cheapest way possible and the previous owners did very little to maintain or upgrade it. So I can kind of relate to the ickiness factor.

Just slappin' salami all up on the kitchen counters and everything.

The funny part is that some houses get "old" a lot faster than others.

moodles, your old house suffers from being a new house

our old house is old and we have some electrical issues, but we're working on it. i like old. not so big on new. though i'm sure there are plenty of new well-made houses. i just feel old in new houses.

I feel like a lot of new homes have bizarre historical affectations and skimp on infrastructural concerns

The only thing I don't like about my old house -- which is brick, with plaster walls rather than drywall -- is the lack of insulation. Getting the whole house properly insulated will be $$$, so we generally rely on window film, door stripping and so forth during the winter. It does at least have replacement windows.

My old house I think, despite its age, was one of those cheapo houses built in a nice neighborhood when no one was looking due to the war. It was kinda neat in a way to walk around the neighborhood and see the other houses built from the exact same plans, like if I ever want to burgarlize them, I'd know right where everything was in the dark.

But I'm so glad we sold that house. Rewiring an entire house would have been a bitch, and like Laurel says, it's only really a matter of time before someone has to.

We're lucky because our new house was built in an old neighborhood, a wagon ride away from the park and everything. It's built sturdy though I do wish sometimes they had a used a better material than cardboard paper to make the roof with.

Have we discussed townhome clusters and what's going to happen to them as their first/second-gen occupants move out?

I think we have, but it's still ripe for discussion. With the way the housing market exploded so fast, we're seeing my town a lot of new crime in the new zip codes. Where cities have traditionally supposedly rotted from the inside out, we're starting to see dead limbs form on the outer edges. Neighborhoods like this one are seeing more crime than the old ones.

Hmm, some planner seemed to have the idea that setting your front door into a dark, tunnel-like alcove would be a good idea

idea idea

I think it depends a lot on a case by case basis, but we're already at a point where suburban poverty has become the norm not the exception: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/23/us/poverty-in-the-suburbs.html

surprised this wasn't brought up on here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/how-many-people-can-manhattan-hold.html
in which it is noted that the density of Manhattan was considerably higher in the past (when it was dominated more by mid-rise tenements, rowhouses, apartments, etc.) than it is now (when many neighborhoods of rowhouses, tenements, apartments have been razed in favor of housing projects, condos, commercial development, offices etc.), and then this fact seems to be ignored for talk of making it easier to raze old neighborhoods to build newer and taller buildings that will solve NYC's housing supply problem. Also ignoring surrounding boroughs and nearby cities that are not very dense at all, and have a lot of room for development.
Seems to me there's a lot of potential for increasing density in and around NYC without losing a lot of the old (and high quality) housing stock that is also sort of a draw for many people?

yeah if were looking to increase density there are better places to start than manhattan

and then this fact seems to be ignored for talk of making it easier to raze old neighborhoods

well this was like, 13 person immigrant families living in lower east side apartments. everything else being equal (if they're not corbusian tower-in-park vs row houses) a neighborhood w/ tall buildings can fit more people. one benefit to building in manhattan as opposed to the boroughs is that there's more flexibility w/ the transit options and more importantly there's less nimbyism. but yeah, not talking about the boroughs is indefensible. there's acres of buildable space 5 minutes from manhattan in basically every direction.

not looking for a return to the glorious slum days, although there's probably a good balance between crowded tenements and neighborhoods in which previously multi-family units have been merged into up-market single family dwellings, but what can you do I guess. rich people will do what they do.
my proposed solution is: build into the streets. I hate the wide NYC avenues.

very jealous of european narrow streets. makes me happy working in the financial district.

oh yeah totally agree w/ you on that

http://www.sothebyshomes.com/neighborhood/24.jpg

what a waste of space

if you were someone else I'd think you were being sarcastic

on first look I was thinking "oh, how nice, it's not a dark occluded area like narrow streets between buildings are"

on second look, I realized that it looks more open but the green space is between rows of traffic and is completely inaccessible! if you wanted to water those trees or perform maintenance then you're going to have to close down some lanes of traffic, anyway

What if all the traffic lanes in one direction were converted to protected bike lanes for both directions?

Would be awesome, but to quote the great ilx thread "so not gonna happen".

dedicated electric line bus route in one lane iirc

that's one of the better looking avenues anyway. most are pretty much miserable one-way rivers of speeding cabs. was it this thread where someone was complaining about the existence of streets like Van Ness in SF? NYC basically has a Van Ness every block.

atlantic avenue and eastern parkway are the banes of my existence

What if all the traffic lanes in one direction were converted to protected bike lanes for both directions?

http://mobilizingtheregion.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/summer_streets.jpg

was it this thread where someone was complaining about the existence of streets like Van Ness in SF? NYC basically has a Van Ness every block.

lol I think that was me

Terribly inefficient to block off two lanes with barricades, tbh. (xpost)

those barricades are there because sometimes they let through traffic pass

The only perfect city was Kowloon, wasn't it?

I will call out 4th Avenue as a nom. for most miserable (north) Brooklyn street
in Manhattan, Houston takes some kind of award. especially at the eastern end it's just vast swaths of pavement, gas stations, and towers-among-parks deadness