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Why Suburbia Sucks

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Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#51

Post by hasenj »

One thing I can't fathom about cities in North America is this sharp division between residential areas and shopping areas.

I'm by no means a world expert, but the places I've been to (Middle East where I grew up, Japan which I visited a couple of times) don't have this sharp distinction. Sure, there are residential areas and there are shopping areas, but every residential area will have many small shops here and there. You don't need a car to shop for groceries. You can just go down the street and there's likely a small store within 10-15 minutes walking distance that will have most of the things you need.

In North America it seems rather normal to have blocks and blocks of nothing but houses. To buy groceries, you need a car drive (anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes) to get to some plaza (or a mall) with big name stores like Wal-Mart or Target.

This has always bothered me. I think the only exception is the core downtown areas of big cities, but living there has its own downsides. Too expensive, too noisy, can sometimes be somewhat shady.

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#52

Post by jayess »

ozborn wrote: post #2

I suspect many (perhaps most) of the people reading that article agree that suburbia sucks - the tricky part is fixing it.

Typical of the nanny staters who think that they know what's best for everyone and their non-preferred lifestyle needs to be "fixed."

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#53

Post by fiatmoney »

55acdda48ab5 wrote: post #46
increment_i wrote: post #18

Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up. I didn't realize this until I had children myself. I remember reaching my teenage years and cursing the dull, boring, culturally bankrupt suburbian neighborhood I grew up in. I left the minute it became feasible. Fast forward to now, and I'm right back in the 'burbs, in a house where my kids have access to safe streets, park…

> where my kids have access to safe streets, parks, and decent schools This all used to be easily achievable in urban neighborhoods. The elephant in the room people don't want to acknowledge is that suburbia has mostly been a way to flee from and exclude social decay. This is why people freak out about public transit to a lot of neighborhoods. The requirement of multiple car ownership in an area is a deliberately con…

Bingo. Look at the re-conquest of New York City, which follows pretty exactly the pattern you mentioned. "All private schools" isn't even necessary de jure if you can do it de facto via magnet or charter schools and theoretically open neighborhood schools targeted at particular areas.

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#54

Post by alkonaut »

zyxley wrote: post #38
alkonaut wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the term is a sort of derogatory used only for badly designed sprawling suburbs without proper access to e.g nature?

"Suburbia" as a term in the US pretty definitionally includes single-family homes on small plots, single-use zoning, homogenous family incomes and home values, and a strict street hierarchy with culs-de-sac. Add all these up and you tend to get 'bad design' by default. Remove these and you get something resembling an organically developed small town instead of suburbs.

I see. Still don't understand why these zones, however badly designed, aren't properly mixed with reasonably sized pockets of undeveloped land such as forests. It would make the value much higher, make the environment better, make people healthier and so on. It should be a no-brainer in terms of city planning. It doesn't have to be organically grown "proper" suburbs. They just have to be planned to get the same appeal.

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#55

Post by jayess »

increment_i wrote: post #18

Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up. I didn't realize this until I had children myself. I remember reaching my teenage years and cursing the dull, boring, culturally bankrupt suburbian neighborhood I grew up in. I left the minute it became feasible. Fast forward to now, and I'm right back in the 'burbs, in a house where my kids have access to safe streets, park…

There are many people, usually in so-called "urban planing" positions in cities, that believe that suburbs are something that shouldn't exist. They detest the option of suburbs.

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#56

Post by throwawaybookst »

increment_i wrote: post #18

Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up. I didn't realize this until I had children myself. I remember reaching my teenage years and cursing the dull, boring, culturally bankrupt suburbian neighborhood I grew up in. I left the minute it became feasible. Fast forward to now, and I'm right back in the 'burbs, in a house where my kids have access to safe streets, park…

The choice between "dense urban core" and "suburb" is distinctly American. Especially in Europe, city (in the sense of "not suburb or rural" != center of a large (1M+) population.

In America, any region with a population the order of 100k or less is basically a shopping area surrounded by suburbs. The same is not true in Europe.

In Europe, you can definitely find walkable, breathable, friendly cities while still living in an area that is safer than (and has a smaller population than) the typical Chicago suburban area.

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#57

Post by stepvhen »

CameronBanga wrote: post #20

I'm trying to find words to describe my distain for this article, but I can't think of anything that isn't seen as a direct attack on the author, which isn't my goal. Basically America is bad because we had space for cars when they were invented? There are plenty of places in America where you can get by without a car. I live in "suburbia". A small city of 30,000 in Indiana called Valparaiso. We have a vibrant downto…

Howdy neighbor, I'm in the suburbs of Indianapolis, and I am much more sympathetic to the article. I think living just outside 465 is more akin to the author's suburbia than Valprasio or Plainfield or Evansville.

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#58

Post by forrestthewoods »

I can't possibly roll my eyes hard enough. But if the author thinks suburbia is bad I'd hate to hear what he'd say about my rural upbringing.

Meanwhile I'd consider an urban upbringing the worst option. Give me rural America for kids any day of the week. Suburbia works in a pinch. But dense urban? Urgh, no thank you.

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#59

Post by _delirium »

arkades wrote: post #41
CameronBanga wrote: post #20

I'm trying to find words to describe my distain for this article, but I can't think of anything that isn't seen as a direct attack on the author, which isn't my goal. Basically America is bad because we had space for cars when they were invented? There are plenty of places in America where you can get by without a car. I live in "suburbia". A small city of 30,000 in Indiana called Valparaiso. We have a vibrant downto…

> Basically America is bad because we had space for cars when they were invented? I think you did an admirable job of expressing my source of dissatisfaction with the article. That, and the author interjecting his personal preferences as architectural dogma - his passage about "No Street Enclosure" was very much of "I grew up in the tight spaces of old European cities, therefore preferring the tight spaces of old Eur…

I think he's also looking at European cities with quite rose-colored glasses. There are nice European cites, and (perhaps more to the point) nice areas of European cities. I lived in central Copenhagen for years, and I really liked it! But they're far from universal, and European development models also produce vast swathes of neighborhoods and housing that suck. In different ways than American suburbia, but still not somewhere you'd want to live, given the choice.

Example of the European equivalent of suburbia, which I'd argue is overall a less nice place to live than American suburbia: the more affordable London suburbs, or even worse, the more affordable Paris suburbs. They aren't vibrant, quaint, walkable cities, but just huge expanses of low-quality commuter housing, with bad commutes. Realistically for many people, the European equivalent to a lower-middle-class Houston suburban house with freeway commute isn't a nice apartment in a vibrant city center, but a small, somewhat shabby terrace house way out near Luton with a 75-minute bus+rail+tube commute into London. Compared to that version of Europe, the Houston suburbs don't look all that bad.

Re: Why Suburbia Sucks

#60

Post by lafay »

rpedela wrote: post #6

For just one small example of many: life in a subdivision cul-de-sac stops children exploring and becoming conversant with the wider world around them because it tethers their social lives and activities to their busy parents’ willingness to drive them somewhere. There’s literally nowhere for them to go. What is this post talking about? I grew up on a cul-de-sac, and I was always outside playing with my friends. When…

I had the same reaction. I grew up in suburban Chicago and it seemed nothing like this. We walked to elementary school, to friends' houses, to the center of town for ice cream. When I was a little older we rode bikes all over creation -- to the hobby store, the mall, and plenty of adventures like sneaking into the abandoned Borg-Warner research facility in Des Plaines, or dumpster diving for discarded electronics at Motorola in Schaumburg.
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