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The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

nytimes.com

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Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#21

Post by alistairSH »

jedberg wrote: post #9
nextstep wrote: post #5

I'm a millennial. I don't want any kind of suburb. I refuse to live anywhere that isn't well-connected/dense enough to provide a good lifestyle completely car-free (i.e. all travel is quick, ubiquitous and convenient on foot/bike/public transportation). I do not ever wish to drive and this is not possible in any suburban development.

Out of curiosity, do you have kids? It's mighty convenient to have a car with all the stuff in it and plenty of space to park that car nearby, and also lots of space for the kids to play outside.

Carry less stuff? The amount of crap people haul around for their kids is astonishing.

The only reason I drove anywhere with my son was because our region wasn't easily walk-able. That, and travel sports (though if the immediate area was walkable, that would have been reduced to weekend games).

He's since moved out, and we've traded our single-family for a TH in a denser area (though still suburban). I walk to work, walk to the park, have access to many trails, and only drive on the weekends to run errands. It was more QOL-improving than I ever imagined.

Anyway, I've grown to hate suburban sprawl. I find dense suburb packed around transit to be much better from a QOL perspective.

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#22

Post by francisofascii »

jedberg wrote: post #9
nextstep wrote: post #5

I'm a millennial. I don't want any kind of suburb. I refuse to live anywhere that isn't well-connected/dense enough to provide a good lifestyle completely car-free (i.e. all travel is quick, ubiquitous and convenient on foot/bike/public transportation). I do not ever wish to drive and this is not possible in any suburban development.

Out of curiosity, do you have kids? It's mighty convenient to have a car with all the stuff in it and plenty of space to park that car nearby, and also lots of space for the kids to play outside.

We have kids, we struck a balance of one car. Older kid is able to walk to school, wife drives to work, and I can take the bus or ride a bike to work.

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#23

Post by ThrustVectoring »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #3
fenwick67 wrote: post #2

"Millennials want a different kind of suburban development that is smart, efficient and sustainable" Suburban or Sustainable, pick one.

Why are they inherently incompatible?

Infrastructure costs scale approximately linearly with road frontage. 1000 feet of road with associated water lines, power lines, street lights, etc, costs roughly the same whether it serves ten households or fifty.

A sustainable development will necessarily have a high number of households per foot of road frontage. This will not have the suburban look and feel of single-family homes with yards. At best it's going to be medium-density townhomes and row-houses to eliminate wasting infrastructure on the space between houses.

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#24

Post by ashark »

cpursley wrote: post #18

This trend must be a price over preference issue. The desirable cities in the US are just so damn expensive to live in town. If you want to buy, it's either the 'burbs, or most of your income going to rent/buy in the city. Of course, if you really do the math, even beyond being unsustainable from an economic and infrastructure/governance standpoint, on a personal level, owning and maintaining a house in the suburbs h…

It's that plus the schools, at least in this city.

If we lived in the city, it'd take ~2-2.5x as much money to buy a house with one fewer bedrooms than our current 'burbs house has (two of our kids could have bunk-beds I guess) and probably 500-100sqft smaller overall and in kinda so-so shape, and that's outside the heart of the city and not in a ritzy neighborhood (but also not a slum). Then we'd also have to hope our kids got into one of a couple good waiting-listed charter schools, or else pay another $2-3K/month for private school. We couldn't afford that at all, and even if they got into the charter schools we'd be living like paupers thanks to the much-higher mortgage (or rent).

So, lifeless, boring 'burbs full of seemingly-intentionally-ugly houses it is.

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#25

Post by santaclaus »

jedberg wrote: post #9
nextstep wrote: post #5

I'm a millennial. I don't want any kind of suburb. I refuse to live anywhere that isn't well-connected/dense enough to provide a good lifestyle completely car-free (i.e. all travel is quick, ubiquitous and convenient on foot/bike/public transportation). I do not ever wish to drive and this is not possible in any suburban development.

Out of curiosity, do you have kids? It's mighty convenient to have a car with all the stuff in it and plenty of space to park that car nearby, and also lots of space for the kids to play outside.

> kids?

I have lots of carless friends with kids in NYC, and they seem to get by no problem.

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#26

Post by notahacker »

it wasn't until I noticed the animated clouds in the background that I was sure the image of the "future" suburb with houses that weren't shaped like regular houses and the staggering innovation of roads that are curved hadn't been drawn at some time in the, say, 1930s.

On closer inspection, there is a difference in vision, but they might want to reconsider the sustainability implications of the bird that disappears and is replaced by a drone...

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#27

Post by amyjess »

rayiner wrote: post #12
AstralStorm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low density is more expensive in all ways. This affects sustainability.

Suburbs aren’t necessarily low density, though they usually are. In places like New York, many “suburbs” are just small satellite cities well connected to the downtown core with rail.

I don't know if NY suburbs are a great example, though. Things are much more spread out and loosey-goosey there than in younger cities.

Here's Plano, TX, which was mostly developed in the '90s and the 21st century: https://i.imgur.com/TmIlgBh.jpg

Here's Westchester County, NY, developed much earlier than that and not nearly as dense: https://i.imgur.com/pSIettu.jpg

(I used Google Maps zoom level 14 for both screenshots)

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#28

Post by pascalxus »

Its fun to dream about the future. But, a dream is all it'll ever be. how does anyone expect to build this stuff, when we can't even build regular housing, anywhere near the amount that is required to match demand.

The only way, I can see this being built, is if new cities are created. These cities need to be populated by employers first: once that's there, most people that works there will find housing there too.

I wish these articles would stop pretending like everyone has a plethora of housing choices available - talking about what millenials "want" ~ our so called housing preferences. Our housing preference, first and foremost is to have a roof over our head without it costing more than 60% of our paycheck.

People go where the jobs go, there's no choice - this will always be the case as long as people need money, at least until remote work becomes possible

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#29

Post by francisofascii »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #7
nextstep wrote: post #5

I'm a millennial. I don't want any kind of suburb. I refuse to live anywhere that isn't well-connected/dense enough to provide a good lifestyle completely car-free (i.e. all travel is quick, ubiquitous and convenient on foot/bike/public transportation). I do not ever wish to drive and this is not possible in any suburban development.

I feel the same way that you do, but I worry that the realities of the housing market are going to drive my family to some stupid suburb where I have to get a car and spend 30 minutes every morning screaming inside it.

I suggest looking into 'inner' suburbs or pre WW2 housing built around a town. At least that allows you to walk to stores, schools, and usually closer to a city. The trade-off is an older house and possibly a higher cost.

Re: The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here

#30

Post by gozur88 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #10
wildmusings wrote: post #8

> Yet millennial suburbanites want a new kind of landscape. They want breathing room but disdain the energy wastefulness, visual monotony and social conformity of postwar manufactured neighborhoods. That's a hell of a claim, and no evidence whatsoever is provided for it. Could it be that the New York Times writers are projecting their slavish political devotion onto the rest of us? Once we're all married with school-…

Another way to put it would be that roads, sewers, and mortgages aren't heavily subsidized in other places.

Roads, sewers, and mortgages aren't subsidized in my suburb. We pay for all of it.
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