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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

#161

Post by LordKano »

I like the suburbs.

I like that I have about 1/6 of an acre of land that my house sits on.

I can grow a garden. My children have a safe yard to play in. I have a nice warm and dry garage in which I can perform my automotive repairs. I can barbecue without choking my neighbors with the smoke from my grill. I can play loud music late at night and not bother everyone nearby. I have trees from which we get organic, pesticide free fruits.

Suburbs will never die, as long as there are still people like me.

The author's epiphany seems to have come from the realization that despite his engineering background and his status as an "expert", he still didn't know as much as the hoi polloi about what was best for their neighborhoods but he still didn't learn the correct lesson.

The problem was caused by other "experts", to whom the state deferred for determining the standards in the first place. Every town is different. Every town has different needs. Forcing them to all use the same plan has consequences, even if he was not able to see them.

Widening those streets and removing those trees only encouraged people to drive faster and caused more accidents and deaths. It was a bad idea to help people drive faster through residential neighborhoods. Were he not so enamored with enforcing external standards, he might have been able to see that.

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

#162

Post by cwal37 »

CalRobert wrote: post #153
cwal37 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really accurate. Suburbs have a lower overall amount of crime, but you need to think about relative rates of crime based on the number of people living in an area. Here's a simple study that discusses a lot of that: http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc00/professi... Personally, I found it pretty easy to live in two different college towns (less than 100k pop), not own a car, and enjoy relative…

My experience was with Oakland, which probably skewed my data, to be fair. I also have only lived in CA (or outside the US entirely) so perhaps that has biased me towards thinking walkable areas like Berkeley, SF, and Santa Monica are incredibly expensive.

The Bay Area is about as skewed as you can get (outside of NYC and parts of Boston/DC). Definitely would have put a gigantic qualifier on your statement.

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

#163

Post by ufmace »

watwut wrote: post #44
ObviousScience wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like to usually "me too", but the grand parent comment very accurately described my experience of suburbs as well. We jokingly referred to it as "the suburban cultural wasteland", because you had to walk 2-3 miles to find anything that wasn't more houses, a grocery store with corporate specialty stores attached (Starbucks coffee, various automotive places, etc), or a school. Most of what you could find in tha…

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

Not really. I am a bit of a cycling enthusiast, but the roads in the type of places I'm talking about are designed for cars first, with anything else a vague afterthought, and it shows.

Main roads being 3+ lanes and with huge parking lots on each side and little to no sidewalks or pedestrian lights on traffic lights. Residential roads are wide and have the houses, trees, mailboxes, etc set way back, have no street parking, and also often have no sidewalks, or sidewalks that do strange things like start and end randomly. All of this creates kind of a feedback loop where the wide spaces encourage driving fast, and the usual lack of obstacles and good bike lanes and sidewalks discourages walking and cycling. The feedback is that the faster drivers and fewer other non-drivers tends to discourage anybody else from getting around any other way. Make it so that it feels nerve-wracking to cross the street or cycle a few blocks, and virtually nobody will do it.

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

#164

Post by ufmace »

lliwta wrote: post #23
modoc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 generally agree, except that the not being able to get around without a car bit is really True in my experience. edit: It's easy to know your neighbors in suburbia if you're outgoing, and things vary from street to street. But there generally is way less interaction than if you were to have a neighborhood pub at the end of your street, or side-to-side porches everyone lounges on during summer nights. It tends to be…

This is a better description of what I was talking about. IMHO, suburbia certainly doesn't make it impossible to know your neighbors, but it kinda subtly discourages it, while more tightly-packed cities subtly encourage it.

The super-outgoing will always know their neighbors, and the super-quiet never will. A little proximity and shared interests/spaces tends to help those in the middle along some.

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

#165

Post by ufmace »

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.

Reading it again, it does come off a bit more ranty than I usually like to be. But it does accurately represent the feel I get from the suburbs I have lived in. I can't say that they're all like that, and it sounds like you have one where most of the bad parts aren't there, and the others are things I dislike that you enjoy.

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

#166

Post by Zigurd »

pouetpouet wrote: post #148
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…

Nobody knows. Robotaxis are a bit like carsharing, they change the economics. A private ownership car bears a lot of fixed costs, and each mile get cheaper. Once you own one, you are likely to use it all the time. With pay-as-you-go robotaxis the incentives are different. Going car-free will be easier. Self driving cars will relieve downtowns/walkable places from dead parking space. That means more destinations reach…

I suspect local economics dominates the issue. Even the ticky tacky hundreds-of-townhouses-all-the-same sprawl into the garlic fields (are there still garlic fields?) south of San Jose will not feel any pinch from... what? San Francisco is full and Silicon Valley spews wealth. San Jose should benefit from higher density and more urban cultural life, but it's not going to make a dent in demand. If the money is there, the sprawl will remain. Conversely, if it isn't, there won't be any urban revitalization.

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

#167

Post by DinkMeeker »

saosebastiao wrote: post #124
DinkMeeker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This is about incorrect management rather than inherent unsustainability of being spread out. Years ago people were spread out way more than now.

They also had minimalist infrastructure. I'm pretty sure if we went back to the days of outhouses and running to the local creek for water, that it would be more cost sustainable to be as spread out as we are. It would also be a regression.

I pretty sure there is a happy medium somewhere before you hit outhouses. Just like living in cities doesn't necessarily mean you have to be stacked in like cordwood with 120 square feet allocated per person.

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

#168

Post by dllthomas »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #64
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'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 can go the local mall and almost anything I can want or imagine is available"

I regularly want things I can't find at a suburban mall.

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

#169

Post by dllthomas »

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…

I live in Oakland and work in Alamo, CA. My commute by public transit is roughly 3x my commute by car. I do one or the other, depending on the day. Driving takes less time, but transit takes less useful time away from me. When I worked in Oakland, my wife and I could certainly have gotten by without a car, except for our trips to Tahoe, Sonoma, and Santa Cruz...

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

#170

Post by bane »

gohrt wrote: post #150
bane wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5-10 minutes. It's an easy walk. Maybe...2 or 3 long blocks in NYC. I realize of course that I got "lucky" and live in a really especially great suburb. However, I've noticed most of the developments in my area tend to be similar. A central "town center/shopping mall" surrounded by condos and apartments, surrounded by townhouses, surrounded by single family homes.

> central "town center/shopping mall" surrounded by condos and apartments, surrounded by townhouses, That's not the kind of suburb at issue. That's a small town.

Welcome to the new suburbia.
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