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There's a bit of contradiction in the article. The main objection is the author's feeling of uneasiness in open spaces. "liminal spaces" created by, for example, large parking lots. The author then complains that these wide open spaces are not "walkable". What? They are certainly walkable by their very design! What they are not, it seems is the real objection, are cozy spaces lined with tacqueiras and coffee shops.
I was living, now circa 8 years ago, in a big city, now I'm living in the french Alps and I have exactly ZERO intention to come back in a prisons named city. USA suburbs for my little US experience have a simple issue: they are residential ONLY. Here we have sparse homes AND commerce of various kind, in few km/miles from my home there are a handful of other homes, but also a small supermarket, a blacksmith shed, a br…
Millions of people all across the country built homes in suburbs because they wanted peace. They’re not horrifying. Even if you personally find them dull, they are a nice way to live for many others. Even if yours is badly built, many are not. Parking garages are not creepy, they’re just utilitarian. They overstate their case by pointing to one place that they don’t like and generalizing that to all suburbs.
The term "wanted peace" includes the millions of people who built homes in the suburbs due to anxiety over desegregation in the cities, and preferred the peace of living in an area with an almost all white population, of similar economic status, and where the laws inhibited change in the status quo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I notice is they build suburbs as a maze to discourage through traffic. And at the same time make walking and biking even worse.
Many neighborhoods assume cars for everything. Even local parks have giant parking lots. However some cities get it. Things like a parking lot by the park, but surrounded on 3 sides by dead end streets, that allow bikes and pedestrians directly into the park. Combine that with some paths in the park and the pedestrians and bikes have a lower distance than the cars. Combine that with green belts (again with dead end s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the French Alps, so a spread area, NOT designed to sell cars, and well we have walkable areas without physical ads (shop windows) in nature and the simplest difference between the USA suburbs is just the fact that here homes and commerce are mixed, so you have a supermarket nearby a blacksmith, few other shops and so on, while some works at home in presence, like a barber with the shop in the basement. Long st…
> just allowing mixing residences and commerce So urbanize de-urbanization? Your proposal is to kill suburbs.
It's simply a spread area, where there is no need for traffic lights, tall buildings, downtown and so on, where you can both work (not only from/at home) and live. It offer the advantages of the urban model and of the rural model together and essentially none of disadvantages of both.
USA have enough ground to spread their population, so... Instead of getting the worse of "extreme" model (dense city of high rise on one side, empty areas with just nothing for many miles) you can get the best of both models, what's wrong with that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the French Alps, so a spread area, NOT designed to sell cars, and well we have walkable areas without physical ads (shop windows) in nature and the simplest difference between the USA suburbs is just the fact that here homes and commerce are mixed, so you have a supermarket nearby a blacksmith, few other shops and so on, while some works at home in presence, like a barber with the shop in the basement. Long st…
The whole reason that people _like_ suburbs is that they are not mixed in with commercial uses. The houses are only near other houses, plus a few churches, parks, cemeteries, schools, etc. If you take that away, you take away what people like about them.
- noisy party in summer till early morning
- smelly fertilizer for his garden
- noisy DIY hobby in early morning and late evening
of course the supermarket receive a truck to resupply and many cars of buyers but hey, it's one km away in nature. Similarly the blacksmith shed it's not at a spit of some homes, it's around 1km away. The local elementary school is at few km from most homes. It's still a spread area but you do not need to run 40+40km just to buy a bottle of milk. There are also some polluting factories, but of course they are planted at a sufficient distance from any home.
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Like the Brownstones many people like, can't do that. Walkable cities like in major European cities (low-mid size buildings, stores and cafes on the low levels), illegal.
There is a midpoint between 500 sqm house in a suburb and a 30sqm apartment in a 5 million person city. But not in the US, you can't do that.
What most people actually prefer would be a 200sqm two story house, with stores and schools within walking or biking distance - with proper safe sidewalks, not those foot-wide weird concrete things Americans tend to build.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the French Alps, so a spread area, NOT designed to sell cars, and well we have walkable areas without physical ads (shop windows) in nature and the simplest difference between the USA suburbs is just the fact that here homes and commerce are mixed, so you have a supermarket nearby a blacksmith, few other shops and so on, while some works at home in presence, like a barber with the shop in the basement. Long st…
The whole reason that people _like_ suburbs is that they are not mixed in with commercial uses. The houses are only near other houses, plus a few churches, parks, cemeteries, schools, etc. If you take that away, you take away what people like about them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The term "wanted peace" includes the millions of people who built homes in the suburbs due to anxiety over desegregation in the cities, and preferred the peace of living in an area with an almost all white population, of similar economic status, and where the laws inhibited change in the status quo.
Are you implying that living in the suburbs is racist?
These racist reasons included ones the new suburbia dwellers would have described as "wanted peace", making that quoted phrase one which requires additional scrutiny.
It is a classical logical fallacy to go from the reality that millions of people moved to Levitown-like suburbs for the perceived peace of its racially restrictive covenants to infer that all people moved to the suburbs for that reason.
Where I live, walking in suburbs is not an issue, neither is biking, no matter where.
But a relative had a 4 month summer job stint in the midwest and they put him up in a wealthy suburban home. So, I brought my bicycle to explore the area for a 2 week visit.
Riding in that area was damn scary, and I have ridden my bicycle many places, including NYC, Philadelphia, Montreal and Boston. I would never do that again where he lived. There were no shoulders or sidewalks on any of the regular roads. The drives seemed intent on killing me on purpose, during the rides I was being beeped at and sideswiped non stop.
Visiting other areas in the midwest since, I would drive around and seems those areas are designed for cars and nothing else.
So I would think in Texas, this would be true even to a greater extent.
All I can say to the person, is good luck.