Why Suburbia Sucks

The following quote perfect illustrates the goals:

"The idea, of course, is that the peaceful slumber of the suburbanite should not be interrupted by the noise generated by the transaction of commerce or any other public-sphere human activities"

Most Americans want to have an estate where they aim to live independently and completely unaffected by their neighbors. They don't want to hear them, see them, or ever have to directly interact with them unless desired.

This can be often rationalized as safer because if other people are physically less likely to interact in any fashion they are less likely to cause harm. It can also be rationalized as better financial sense as these "ticky-tacky" boxes are designed to be bland and therefore have mass appeal. HOAs especially help this as they prevent your neighbor's choices from impacting your resale value.

As long as Americans continue to value trying to live a life as separate and as unaffected as possible you will have something very much like Suburbia

Most who rail against suburbs (like me), do so because we have a different set of values and beliefs about community. For those who like suburbs it's about trying to build a personal community that you opt in to be part of.

This idea that community or your social network is something each gets to determine for themselves is seen in a lot of political debates. This fuels charter schools, school vouchers, zoning laws, etc. It's interesting because it cuts across political boundaries.

Really? As an immigrant, I always though the worst features of life in the US are the 10x higher murder rate, millions of desperate people with no health care, etc. and the crushing debt placed onto young people looking to educate themselves.

I would change those things long before changing urban planning.

Quite often I think what this guy writes.

Between the two coasts, there is a homogeneity of architecture that is quite amazing for a European to watch. In Europe, it's quite noticeable where you are, and everywhere has enough character that you can remember it. In the US, stuff looks like SimCity.

I often ask, how did you guys (my cousins/friends) ever grow up here? When I was a kid, there were football courts within walking distance. There were larger grass fields in town that you could easily cycle to. If you met another kid, you could take the bus, train or bike to hang out, and when you hung out, you could move from place to place. Like ride out to a theme park north of Copenhagen and then to the beach nearby, then to town centre for some fast food and cinema. You could do that. When you're hanging around at home and get hungry, you can go to a convenience store. Without driving.

When I look at a place like Boulder or Kenosha, I wonder how on Earth the kids get around. Distances seem to be vast, and I didn't see a train line (they must have them though?). I saw some buses, but not many. They looked like they would take a while to get you anywhere, because I was driving and it took ages. Also, at least in Colorado, there's vast areas that seem to have nothing but prairie dogs. At least you have the mountains there.

I recall American classmates talking about hanging out at the mall. This was always a curious thing for me, but when you go there it makes sense. Malls are the only places that have a variety of offerings, within walking distance of the next thing. You have to walk through a ridiculously sized car park, which I guess means land is cheap. A multi-storey parking house would make more sense otherwise. These huge car parks also mean that your drive to anywhere is dominated by car parks, because even commercial zones that aren't huge malls are kinda like malls anyway, just with a few shops next to each other.

And about those shops... the proliferation of chains contributed enormously to the SimCity feel of the country. You can go anywhere and find the same brand of everything. I haven't travelled much in the interior, but I got the impression that pretty much everywhere that wasn't coastal was built in the same way. Same low-rise, big car park in front, wide streets, no life.

Another issue with malls is they're a big landlord. Their incentives are not towards having a bunch of independent little shops, each with their own little complaints. It's much easier for them to say "hey {Starbucks/Sonoma-Williams/J Crew/etc}, how about you rent a space in 12 of our malls?". And then a really quite large area will get served with the same stuff.

By contrast, places like NYC, Chicago, DC, and SF seemed somewhat more familiar. Thought SF was a bit weird though, as it needs to look more like NYC. A peninsula is not that different from an island, especially when there's hills. Instead you get low-rise quite centrally. Much has been written here on the political economy of this.