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The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

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Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#161

Post by rayiner »

ryandrake wrote: post #122
Tiktaalik wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing it right by living close to your work. Suburbs work well when they're really just small complete cities. Nothing wrong with that. What I was thinking when I when I wrote "I'm not sure anyone loves suburbia" was that I'm not sure anyone loves that big suburban commute to the city. If that's eliminated, or mitigated by excellent transit connections (ie. pre-automobile street car suburbs), then a lot of neg…

One of the chief advantages of suburban life is cost. I don't like suburbia, but I deal with it because I'm not rich enough to live close to work. Sure, I have the additional cost of maintaining and fueling a vehicle[1], and the stress of a 2+ hour commute each way, but that's far outweighed by housing being 3X cheaper, and the decent public schools (I don't have to pay for private schooling for the kid). 1: which is…

> One of the chief advantages of suburban life is cost.

And that's entirely a function of bad city design. When I lived in New York, I lived in a Westchester suburb satellite city over 20 miles away from the city. I had a 35 minute commute by train right to Manhattan. There are tons of such suburbs in Westchester, because they have train lines running through the whole area.

Meanwhile, my parents live in D.C. suburbs that are similarly priced, half the distance out of the city, but where the commuting options are a 1-1.5+ hour drive. In Westchester you've got a little downtown and can walk to shops and restaurants. In the D.C. suburbs you have to drive 20 minutes just to get to the drug store.

It's all about city design.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#162

Post by mschuster91 »

MindTooth wrote: post #41

Crashes Safari on my iPhone 6 Plus (iOS 9.0). But have experienced it on more site recently. Is it all the JavaScript libraries? Sad when I wanted to read it..

Same for Chrome on Android and on an old-ish netbook. Doesn't anyone test their websites with hardware below $2K?!

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#163

Post by rconti »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #63

I'm curious amongst urbanite hackers here: How many would turn down a job at Facebook, Google, Apple or any other company primarily due to their suburban office park nature? Could you see yourself choosing a poorer quality job from an urban company over a better suburban company? Right now I'm a 15 minute bike ride away from my downtown employer. It'd be pretty hard to convince me to give that up. I've done a 30 minu…

I'm a 5 minute bike ride away from Facebook. Gotta choose your suburbs wisely!

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#164

Post by Retric »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #138
stephancoral wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they will bulldoze them and build parks in their place. I can dream.

I too hope for that future. Megacities for some, sustainable homes for others, the rest of the world returned to the wild.

Sustainable homes are a joke in poor taste. Cities are vastly better for the environment than the same number of people in so called ‘green’ homes in low density areas.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#165

Post by bronson »

LordKano wrote: post #158
mixmastamyk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The traffic, the parking, That's the result of a poorly planned city, not intrinsic to cities. If you've been to Europe, or even NYC, you might have experienced the freedom of jumping on a train to downtown and back, with enough exercise to keep you healthy.

Freedom isn't the word that I would associate with being bound by train schedules and routes. Old cities, like NYC or London were established before the existence of the automobile. It makes sense that they were designed to move large numbers of people without automobiles. I don't live near such a city. The geography of my area prevents the kind of mass transit system that exists in NYC.

Would you rather be bound by rush hour, car accidents, and highway routes?

No matter what you choose, you're bound by something.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#166

Post by Shounak »

mschuster91 wrote: post #160

Bit unrelated, but this website crashes Chrome on my Android phone, crashes the WebView inside my HN reader app, and brings my aged netbook to its knees. Oh, and my company MBP's fans blast on full until I close the page. What the fucking fuck is this thing doing with the RAM/CPU of my system? For heaven's sake, it's a load of text with a couple of pictures.

Huh, it works fine for me on Android Chrome (Nexus 5) and on PC (Dell Inspiron/Windows 8.1/Chrome).

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#167

Post by s73v3r »

joshyeager wrote: post #87
Tiktaalik wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure anyone really loves suburbia, but once in place, car oriented development has a way of being self sustaining. This "Cycle of automobile dependency" image shows it pretty well. http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop. I'm a bit concerned that the advent of…

I love suburbia. Living in a city is stressful and crowded. I'd like to live in a rural environment, but then I'd have to drive a very long way to get to work, stores, and entertainment. Living in a quiet suburb gives me the best of both worlds. It's only a 10 minute drive to the downtown library, good restaurants, and other fun stuff. Since I picked a job that's located near my suburb, my commute is also short and a…

The key word in your statement is "drive". I don't want to drive. I want to walk/bike. Driving means I have to get gas, I have to deal with traffic, and I have to find a place to park. I don't want to do any of that.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#168

Post by s73v3r »

LordKano wrote: post #86
Tiktaalik wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure anyone really loves suburbia, but once in place, car oriented development has a way of being self sustaining. This "Cycle of automobile dependency" image shows it pretty well. http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop. I'm a bit concerned that the advent of…

I'm not sure anyone really loves suburbia I would guess that has a lot to do with how one defines the term. I love living outside of the city. I wouldn't have it any other way. When I'm ready to retire, I plan to move even further away from the city. I grew up in the suburbs. I am raising my children in the suburbs. I detest going into the city. The traffic, the parking, the population density and the crammed nature…

The traffic and parking problems are there due to the lack of public transit, which is in part due to the spending of transportation funds on subsidizing you in the suburbs instead of building public transit.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#169

Post by arebop »

astrocyte wrote: post #34

All of this works in cycles. There once was a time when people were flocking to the suburbs. Now, it is fashionable to live in the city. This too will pass when people (a generation maybe) comes to understand the little value obtained from all the chaos and activity. What are people chasing? Technology has made it easier to be in touch and socialize w/ people beyond physical geography. Transportation is getting bette…

Cities grew for thousands of years. Suburbs have had a 50 year run. Maybe it's oscillation on a exponentially increasing frequency, but I'm more inclined to think that suburbs were a temporary aberration.

People seem to like to be together, and throughout technological history the infrastructure scales better in cities as well, so even if people were indifferent to isolation vs. socialization the economics would favor urban development.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#170

Post by toomuchtodo »

Retric wrote: post #164
toomuchtodo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too hope for that future. Megacities for some, sustainable homes for others, the rest of the world returned to the wild.

Sustainable homes are a joke in poor taste. Cities are vastly better for the environment than the same number of people in so called ‘green’ homes in low density areas.

Nothing wrong with low density areas if the homes are sustainable and transportation is electrified.
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