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America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

theatlantic.com

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Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#231

Post by jakobegger »

tathougies wrote: post #80
madhadron wrote: post #14

I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions w…

So my moms parents had three children and my dads five. So not huge families but large. They grew up in a city in a third world country and frankly their childhood was a lot more dangerous than your imagined paranoia. Also your ideas of children are way off. We have a seven month old and we read to her, take her to the library, go to space talks, etc. Actually we do a lot more intellectual stuff now. My wife has take…

> Parents who put their kids in front of the TV are lazy.

Maybe when your kid is a bit older you'll understand the appeal of turning on the TV just to have an hour to clean up, do a bit of laundry, and prepare dinner...

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#232

Post by lifeisstillgood »

madhadron wrote: post #14

I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions w…

Barcelona's super blocks seem the model for this

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#233

Post by closeparen »

madhadron wrote: post #14

I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions w…

I don't know how to capture the hostility of suburbia any more perfectly than a walk down the El Camino in Sunnyvale. Try this on street view for a few blocks. Imagine yourself on the sidewalk. This is the world that the "urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places to be" consensus has given us. Maybe the cities this was built in response to really were some kind of unimaginable horror. But I'm pretty sure the cure is worse than the disease. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3655957,-122.0294912,3a,75y,...

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#234

Post by [deleted] »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #87
madhadron wrote: post #14

I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions w…

I currently live in SF and could not imagine having kids here. I’m sure some people do, and have a great time. But it’s not a life that I would want, nor would I want for my kids. This narrative captures pretty accurately why I would not want to raise kids in this city. Now, some other city? Maybe. Probably in Europe. US cities though are just hard places to be. Hard people. Aggressive homelessness. Dirty. Unfriendly…

[deleted]

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#235

Post by asdff »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #106
iron0013 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your description doesn't really sound like any actual city that I know of, although it sounds a little like how someone who's never been to New York City might describe it. Do you have a particular city in mind? Because "car-centric and pedestrian hostile" sounds more like most suburbs than most urban areas.

I've lived in several cities including Boston and DC (and the urban cities that surround them both). It sounds like every wealthy city I've ever lived in or been to and sounds nothing like the 2nd tier cities that I've been to and now live in. When a city is wealthy it gets like the top level comment described. I don't know what it is but it's related to money. You can see this by comparing the wealther boroughs of N…

I don't agree with the dystopian view in the OP, but I will say that I notice far fewer people outside in wealthier areas where I live than in poorer areas. I attribute it to most low income jobs not really being bound to the 9-5, so people might be out and about at all hours, especially now that school is out for the summer. It makes these areas feel warmer and closer knit vs. some of the sterile luxury apartments I've seen.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#236

Post by [deleted] »

0xBABAD00C wrote: post #102
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I currently live in SF and could not imagine having kids here. I’m sure some people do, and have a great time. But it’s not a life that I would want, nor would I want for my kids. This narrative captures pretty accurately why I would not want to raise kids in this city. Now, some other city? Maybe. Probably in Europe. US cities though are just hard places to be. Hard people. Aggressive homelessness. Dirty. Unfriendly…

That's more just SF though

[deleted]

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#237

Post by kccqzy »

closeparen wrote: post #233
madhadron wrote: post #14

I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions w…

I don't know how to capture the hostility of suburbia any more perfectly than a walk down the El Camino in Sunnyvale. Try this on street view for a few blocks. Imagine yourself on the sidewalk. This is the world that the "urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places to be" consensus has given us. Maybe the cities this was built in response to really were some kind of unimaginable horror. But I'm pretty sure the…

Try a walk down University Ave in Palo Alto. That is the kind of place we mean.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#238

Post by stouset »

burfog wrote: post #229
stouset wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a suburb and was bored shitless. I had one friend that lived within walking distance, and everyone else was too far away to get to without a car, which meant that I didn't get to see my friends unless it was convenient for one of my two parents (who both held full-time jobs). Cycling anywhere outside of the local neighborhood was out of the question, since the roads connecting neighborhoods were full of…

I lived in that kind of place. I also had my one nearby friend. We would ride our bicycles more than 5 miles along US-44. It has 2 lanes each side for a total of 4 lanes, 2-foot shoulders, and traffic that often got to a decent highway speed. There could be snow on the shoulder. One of the older bridges was narrow, with only about a half-foot shoulder. We went anyway. We had similar woods. We went out there and built…

Nowadays I am a cyclist and I feel comfortable riding alongside traffic for any distance. Even if it had occurred to me that riding five miles to a friend was possible (cycling is currently enjoying a surge of popularity, but at the time it was somewhat unfathomable even to adults that you might ride a bike for such distances), I'm not sure that would have been a practical or reasonable thing for an eight year old to do. By the time I was fourteen or fifteen I felt comfortable riding my bike farther distances, but at that point I was nearly able to drive a car alone anyway.

The "woods" I mentioned were small enough that there was no point away from easy eyesight from some neighbor's living room windows. Sure, we played in them. But there was no actual sense of isolation. There were no train tracks anywhere nearby. There were some tiny lakes, but they were clearly on other people's property.

It's great that you seemed to live in somewhere more rural than me and that was an area you were able to thrive in. Still, if you look at populations of people as a whole I suspect you'll find orders of magnitude more bored and unhealthy kids (who start getting into real trouble) in suburbs than you find in cities where there are actually plenty of opportunities and things to do.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#240

Post by [deleted] »

Izkata wrote: post #122
kccqzy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> replace them with low rise cohousing communities I agree with almost everything you say but this. Why low rise? With high rises, we can use less space for housing and we would have more space for parks, libraries, and greenery.

Probably one of two things, one of which I believe is a mistaken correlation: * High-rises block more of the sky, making it not seems as worthwhile to go outside. * Mental detachment from the local area. The second one is what I've only in the past year or so realized myself. I used to live on the 3rd floor of a 3-floor building, and my apartment had a front and back entrance. The front entrance went to inside stairs…

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