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The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

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Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#81

Post by TillE »

trevorgerhardt wrote: post #13
zavulon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I got that part.. but then what? Small towns die out, and everyone moves to the big city?

Take the city model to the suburbs. You don't need more than 100k people to have dense, pedestrian focused development.

Precisely. My general theory is that you could significantly improve most suburbs by knocking down a block (or even just half a block) near the center of the suburb and building a mini "downtown" - a commercial area interspersed with a few modestly-sized apartment buildings.

That's far from the optimal design if you're starting from scratch, but it solves a lot of problems without massive changes.

I grew up in American suburbia and hated it. It wasn't even one of the worst examples, but you still literally could not walk to the local LIRR station or to the park, which were just 1-2 miles away. Absurd. Build commercial areas and some more sidewalks, and it would've been much less terrible.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#82

Post by ghaff »

Zigurd wrote: post #57

Recently a researcher at Toyota predicted that self-driving cars would perpetuate suburbia and enable more driving. A door-to-door ride in my own car would be far faster than riding the Boston area commuter rail, which has an inconveniently sparse schedule, and then the Red Line into Cambridge. The only reason to take the commuter rail is to avoid the chore of driving. The diesel locomotives are not cleaner or more e…

I fully expect that this is correct if you hypothesize the availability of fully (or even largely) autonomous vehicles--however long they take to make it onto the roads. It's only logical. Make driving a "better" experience in the minds of many people in the sense of allowing them to do things in the car other than watch the road and you'll get more driving. To the degree that autonomous vehicles could perhaps ease urban parking, that would make using them more attractive as well.

I don't think anyone really knows how self-driving + electric cars are going to exactly play out in the coming decades, but I fully expect them to make individual car use more attractive, not less.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#83

Post by lliwta »

pnathan wrote: post #75
aaron-lebo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a child of the suburbs and have since moved to the city so take this with a grain of salt. I enjoy the malls, the big box stores, and the clones. Why? I know that pretty much anywhere I go I can get a consistent experience. I can go the local mall and almost anything I can want or imagine is available, which at some level is fascinating. What's more, as cliche as all these places ares, there is a bit of a shared…

> I enjoy the malls, the big box stores, and the clones. Why? I know that pretty much anywhere I go I can get a consistent experience. I can go the local mall and almost anything I can want or imagine is available, which is some level is fascinating. What's more, as cliche as all these places ares, there is a bit of a shared experience for almost everyone. I don't understand this. That is not because you're not lucid…

> I think that making a consistent experience absolutely destroys the unique culture and history of places

To be fair, the unique culture of the place used to be "industrial farming corn field" is most cases. It's not like anyone is tearing down 100 year old neighborhoods to build big boxes to serve suburbs (actually, the suburbs are far more likely to save those places than destroy them).

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#84

Post by ars »

superuser2 wrote: post #56
watwut wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity: would a bicycle solve that routine 2-3 and 4-5 miles walking problem?

Not outside of California. Cycling is a seasonal luxury in the northern states, and car-centric culture makes things extremely dangerous on roads where cyclists are neither expected nor welcome. The number of times I've been shouted at to "get on the sidewalk!" is astounding (riding on the sidewalk is actually illegal in most cities).

That isn't true.

Suburbs frequently have wide roads that make bike riding quite easy. They are also usually flat.

I don't know what you are doing to annoy car drivers, but I've biked a lot and have never been yelled at. (Or heard others yelling.)

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#85

Post by School-Cotton »

mtinkerhess wrote: post #79
Apofis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NYC, and recently I spent two weeks in Simi Valley, a city north of Los Angeles, and was shocked that it's basically impossible to get around without a car. Even in LA, it seems as if the public transport system is nearly non-existent.

NYC is one of the only places in the country where it's feasible to live without a car (without major hassle). Edit: I guess my point was that from my experience visiting New York that's a city where public transit is so good that a car really seems unnecessary. Someone from NYC might be surprised to learn (or be reminded) that it's the exception, and that in most other places in the country it's a hassle not to own…

Is that true? I live in Ballard, a pretty damn residential neighborhood of Seattle, which is only a medium-density city. I live perfectly comfortably without a car. I have heard of people living comfortably without a car in NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and I'm sure others that I'm forgetting.

I even did so myself in Tucson for a year, though I'll grant that that was pretty annoying.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#86

Post by secabeen »

Apofis wrote: post #61
pnathan wrote: post #24

I don't like suburbs. Why? - I don't like the constant driving to get anywhere. - I don't like the malls, the big box stores, the "clone" button that seems applied across the landscape. - I don't like the giant roads carving their way around, splitting communities. - I don't like the squandering of resources on lawns! individual houses! low-density housing! I can say, with confidence, I'd like to live in a place wher…

I live in NYC, and recently I spent two weeks in Simi Valley, a city north of Los Angeles, and was shocked that it's basically impossible to get around without a car. Even in LA, it seems as if the public transport system is nearly non-existent.

Actually, LA has a very good public transportation system. It's just bus-based, can be slow compared to driving, and is widely considered as only for poor people. Higher-income people have a strong aversion to taking the bus, even while happily taking subways.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#87

Post by anthony_d »

saosebastiao wrote: post #54
ctdonath wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can badmouth any living conditions. I like my suburban "not-gated but has just one entrance" for safety, a good-sized easy-maintained lawn for the kids to play in, no ugly/noisy commercial buildings, and a quick EV drive to a vast array of options that I don't want to actually live right next to. Pedestrian infrastructure is pointless as it's faster to drive to what you actually want to go to than to walk to what…

Its perfectly fine to like that, just as it is perfectly fine to like private jets and caviar. The discussion, at least in this article, is how sustainable it is from a cost perspective. You are talking about liking something that has tax revenues that cover mere fractions of the costs incurred. How much would you like it if your property taxes were 50% higher? 2000% higher?

I live in a suburb and my property taxes are about 3 times higher than the nearby city. I wouldn't consider moving. I like the fact that my suburb actually is financially stable, unlike many large cities.

Really it sounds like the whole article could be sumarised by saying many suburbs have taxes that are too low. The article's author worked in a town with poor planning; there are plenty of large cities with poor planning.

This is really a non-story playing up to many of the prejudices common to HN.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#88

Post by School-Cotton »

protonfish wrote: post #80
modoc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW my suburban town has almost no chain anythings. I can walk to local coffee shops (have to drive to a Starbucks). We have an amazing collection of local restaurants covering almost every possible cuisine. We have a great library, rail trails, public forrest and green spaces, a local CSA my wife bikes to once a week to pick up our veggies, and much more.

I am not sure that the suburbs you are talking about are the same suburbs everyone else is talking about.

His experience sounds a lot like Tucson. Everyone else's in this thread sounds a lot like Phoenix. I've lived in both for multiple years.

The point is, not all suburbs are the same. Some are a lot nicer to live in than others.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#89

Post by zheshishei »

saosebastiao wrote: post #54
ctdonath wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can badmouth any living conditions. I like my suburban "not-gated but has just one entrance" for safety, a good-sized easy-maintained lawn for the kids to play in, no ugly/noisy commercial buildings, and a quick EV drive to a vast array of options that I don't want to actually live right next to. Pedestrian infrastructure is pointless as it's faster to drive to what you actually want to go to than to walk to what…

Its perfectly fine to like that, just as it is perfectly fine to like private jets and caviar. The discussion, at least in this article, is how sustainable it is from a cost perspective. You are talking about liking something that has tax revenues that cover mere fractions of the costs incurred. How much would you like it if your property taxes were 50% higher? 2000% higher?

The article isn't pointing out that all suburbs are unsustainable. It's talking about how treating the suburbs as something they are not (a higher population density area, like a city) leads to infrastructure that is inappropriate for the community, which then leads to the tax revenue to infrastructure cost disparity. In the jargon of HN, it's a premature optimization. Charles Marohn is still championing suburbs. What he's against is irresponsible spending by local townships.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#90

Post by potatolicious »

modoc wrote: post #14
ufmace wrote: post #9

My skepticism of suburbs has mostly been about how the long distance and personal car dependence they create tends to isolate people and households. Build a suburban "gated community" for safety, give everyone a huge lawn that they're obligated to constantly maintain, don't allow any commercial buildings in because they're considered ugly, and you get an environment where it's pretty tough to get anywhere without a c…

Your vision of a suburb has very little to do with the reality of my suburban existence. It's like someone from the country talking about the horribly dangerous ugly city with its filthy air, roving gangs shooting strangers, and huge rats running in the streets. I'm not saying suburbs are perfect, but you've basically thrown up a stack of strawmen here.

I dunno, I grew up in the suburbs and ufmace summed it up pretty well. My neighborhood wasn't explicitly gated, but the meandering streets with a million dead-ends may as well have been a wrought iron gate.

It's pretty obvious to everyone that the nonsensical street layout was designed to keep everyone but residents out.

Every house had huge lawns, and because the houses were all built as part of the same subdivision development, they were all roughly the same age. This created a lot of keeping up with the Joneses, where one neighbor getting a new roof meant a cascade of people getting new roofs. One house got a paint job and suddenly the whole damn fuckin' street is painting houses.

Getting anywhere without a car is nigh impossible. The neighborhood, despite being upscale, lacked sidewalks (I guess they never thought anyone would need 'em, the residents ain't poor after all), and once you leave the neighborhood you face a 5-lane arterial where the unofficial speed limit is 50mph and drivers have no conception of pedestrians. The sidewalks are wide enough for one person - if you're unlucky enough to meet someone coming the other direction you get to do a silly dance around each other so nobody has to step into 50mph traffic.

Crossing this street is also nigh impossible until well after I moved out of that place. There are pedestrian crosswalks painted in, but good luck getting any of the drivers to stop for you. Thankfully as of a few years ago they installed a real honest to God traffic signal. Small victories.

Anyways, long rant, but ufmace's "nightmare" suburb does exist. I grew up in one.

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