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American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

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Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#41

Post by tivert »

budrickfox wrote: post #6
mannyv wrote: post #3

[flagged]

At the same time, is it too much to ask for a sidewalk? That’s the thing that bothers me the most. Many suburbs seem built to be actively hostile to walkers, rather than just inconveniently sprawling.

> At the same time, is it too much to ask for a sidewalk? That’s the thing that bothers me the most. Many suburbs seem built to be actively hostile to walkers, rather than just inconveniently sprawling.

No it is not, suburbs with sidewalks are better suburbs. They should all have them (on both sides) and it should be a code requirement.

But suburbs with a deficit of sidewalks are not "Horror Movie[s]," like these obnoxious urbanists, who are apparently creeped out by the existence of parking, want to propagandize them as.

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#42

Post by eesmith »

db48x wrote: post #38
eesmith wrote: post #19

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.

No, they literally wanted peace after coming home from a horrifying world war. Or from a horrifying non—world war.

That's hardly a fair characterization of the many reasons people - mostly white - moved to the suburbs over a period of decades.

https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefor... for example characterizes the period 1945–1970 as when "suburbia witnessed the expansion of segregated white privilege, bolstered by government policies, exclusionary practices, and reinforced by grassroots political movements".

Levittown famously deed-restricted non-whites from buying a house in that suburb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown says:

> The first black family to buy one of the houses, the Myers, who bought a second-hand house in Pennsylvania's Levittown in 1957, experienced attacks on their house, and up to 500 people gathering outside.

If those hundreds of people solely "wanted peace", why were they attacking others?

Even in the 1980s, one of my father's coworkers - both born post-war - asked why he didn't move out from our immediate post-war suburb housing, which was increasingly non-white, to the newer suburbs where things were more "peaceful".

My father laughed about that a few months later when a house a few blocks from his coworker caught fire. It has been used to process cocaine.

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#43

Post by kkfx »

db48x wrote: post #37
kkfx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? What's wrong in a supermarket, a 500m² (~5400ft²) shed one km (0.6 miles) from your home? It's not open 24/7, it does not smell or smoke, generate special noise, heat and so on. In between a pine wood, a small lake, a bit of grass. My nearest neighbor "pollute" much more with: - noisy party in summer till early morning - smelly fertilizer for his garden - noisy DIY hobby in early morning and late evening of cour…

Nothing, to you. But commercial places are commercial. The idea behind a suburb is that the only thing near you are your neighbors, and a few amenities such as churches and parks and elementary schools. The sound of a party or of children playing is not noise. Even the drone of a lawn mower is not noise. If you can smell your neighbor’s fertilizer, then you don’t live in a suburb (or he used way too much and killed a…

Well, and why this specific idea should persist? Or more precisely why the alternatives should be dense cities, suburbs or isolated countrysides instead of a mixture of them?

> The sound of a party or of children playing is not noise. Even the drone of a lawn mower is not noise.

If you casually came here for a vacations or something similar I can show you what I'm talking about... Yes theoretically children playing around a school should not make much noise, except when they do make many, with some of their parents helps picking them with a Harley, or a rusty old 4x4 with a holed muffler, often honking to attract their child attention, similarly a small electric lawn mower does not makes much noise, but a diesel small tractor at high rpm due to an old alternative mowing bar picking not only grass but also rocks and roots because the owner is not much good at regulating it's height from the seat and the ground is not a flat curated grass only surface but a mix of grass, pines wood, some brambles explicitly put due to same old litigation with another neighbor and his dogs freely moving around... Well... Ah, the fertilizer is manure discharged once per year by another neighbor from a farm trailer aside the border, than left here maybe few days because the neighbor who fertilize have something else to do... That's all part of the natural package. Here it's not like USA homes with a bit of short grass and white low fences, it's more vary, of course not at all terrible as described above but still have such aspects sometimes in the year.

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#44

Post by red-iron-pine »

timeon wrote: post #21
rabbits77 wrote: post #9

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.

Walkable means that you can walk to something, not just walk to another house.

Walkable in the sense that I can meet most of my needs via walking.

I live 2 blocks away from a grocery store, for example. There is a 24 hour pharmacy roughly the same distance, and a couple coffee shops + a gas station + McDonalds not too much further away.

There is an expansive set of tennis courts and beach vollyball area within walking distance, and next to it is a great park & playground. A bit further in the other direction is an elementary school with playgrounds, and beyond that, at the edge of what I'd consider walkable, is a splash park.

Get on a bike and the offerings double.

Meanwhile, my parents are 20 minutes away from anything outside of a single gas station. Plenty of nice houses, and at least one school and fire dept., but they basically have to drive into town -- even though they're surrounded by houses -- just to snag a simple coffee or quick grocery store run.

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#45

Post by tivert »

sien wrote: post #4
mannyv wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Yep. There are surveys on what people want, from 2021 : https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america... The numbers in 2021 of preference : 19% Urban, 46% Suburban, 35% rural.

So, you're saying that 81% of Americans want the wrong things? /s

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#46

Post by flashgordon »

budrickfox wrote: post #6
mannyv wrote: post #3

[flagged]

At the same time, is it too much to ask for a sidewalk? That’s the thing that bothers me the most. Many suburbs seem built to be actively hostile to walkers, rather than just inconveniently sprawling.

So how is grand parent "against" side walks? In fact I totally welcome it and if you look at places like Australia the public transport is jointly amazing too - that too "radially" from downtown. All without sacrificing or demonizing suburb dwellers.

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#47

Post by rabbits77 »

timeon wrote: post #21
rabbits77 wrote: post #9

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.

Walkable means that you can walk to something, not just walk to another house.

the article states this person is walking in commercial area. that is what is creating the liminal space. she’s not strolling through the woods. she’s basically just bothered that her neighborhood isn’t gentrified enough yet.

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#48

Post by db48x »

kkfx wrote: post #43
db48x wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing, to you. But commercial places are commercial. The idea behind a suburb is that the only thing near you are your neighbors, and a few amenities such as churches and parks and elementary schools. The sound of a party or of children playing is not noise. Even the drone of a lawn mower is not noise. If you can smell your neighbor’s fertilizer, then you don’t live in a suburb (or he used way too much and killed a…

Well, and why this specific idea should persist? Or more precisely why the alternatives should be dense cities, suburbs or isolated countrysides instead of a mixture of them? > The sound of a party or of children playing is not noise. Even the drone of a lawn mower is not noise. If you casually came here for a vacations or something similar I can show you what I'm talking about... Yes theoretically children playing a…

You’re still missing the point. Regardless of how much you like your neighborhood, 50% of Americans would prefer to live in a suburb. Even if there were no constraints such as money or family obligations, they would choose a suburb consisting entirely of houses over your neighborhood which mixes residential and commercial uses. Your neighborhood might be great, but it isn’t what most Americans would choose. In fact, only about 20% would choose it; the rest want to live far out in the countryside with as few neighbors as possible.

That’s the key fact that folks like you miss: you’re the minority. And when you denigrate the suburbs, you are hurting your cause. You are insulting the people who see the suburbs as the ideal place for them to live.

Instead of going on about how the suburb they live in is not the dense urban city that they prefer, the folks who wrote this article should move to an existing city and then advocate to make it nicer. Don't try to turn a suburb into a city, turn a city into a better city.

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#49

Post by kkfx »

db48x wrote: post #48
kkfx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, and why this specific idea should persist? Or more precisely why the alternatives should be dense cities, suburbs or isolated countrysides instead of a mixture of them? > The sound of a party or of children playing is not noise. Even the drone of a lawn mower is not noise. If you casually came here for a vacations or something similar I can show you what I'm talking about... Yes theoretically children playing a…

You’re still missing the point. Regardless of how much you like your neighborhood, 50% of Americans would prefer to live in a suburb. Even if there were no constraints such as money or family obligations, they would choose a suburb consisting entirely of houses over your neighborhood which mixes residential and commercial uses. Your neighborhood might be great, but it isn’t what most Americans would choose. In fact,…

Actually I'm not against the suburbs, I simply agree with the article (just a bit) that the classic suburb model have issues because you can't buy anything nearby and so you need long trips just to buy some milk, that's is. I'm definitively against the city model, because IMVHO there is no way to turn a city into a "better city"m a city is just "a tool" you can use and than dispose and rebuild another, witch is practically next to impossible and so costly that we can't do on scale.

BTW if peoples living in the suburbs like them there is no issues at all, I do not denigrate anyone of them. IF some would like to live still in single family homes BUT also with some shops around without being in the city than the solution it's easy in nature or adapting a suburb, that's because suburbs and empty space could be changed a small step at a time, while cities can't.

That's is. I'm definitively not pro-urban as the article author.

Re: American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We're the Protagonists

#50

Post by theshrike79 »

db48x wrote: post #34
theshrike79 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So churches and cemeteries need to be within walking distance, but a small mom & pop corner store is absolutely horrifying?

You are the one using words like “horrifying”. Folk who like the suburbs just think that the store should be further away than the church. That’s all. The store isn't horrifying, it’s just commercial.

I visit the corner store near me almost daily, it's easy to walk the 5 minutes to grab more milk or some other ingredient I'm missing.

If I were a church going person, I'd go there maybe once a week.

I really don't understand the logic of having more churches than stores =)

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