How to deal with (sub)urban sprawl?

Ethanol, you don’t get the concept of examples do you?

What IS the problem with " suburban sprawl" then if it isnt about ineffiecies or excessive impact to the environment?

Is it a problem for the rural folks commuting through the suburbs to get to the city? If so, those evil bastards are commuting even more than the earth hating suburabanites.

It can’t be about the city slickers, because we know they hate the suburbs and never visit.

Or is it the hell that life must be for the suburbanites that actually live there?

Or is it something else?

No, I just don’t get the concept of YOUR example.

That is the problem. Is your point that ethanol is inefficient? Yes, it is, I agree.

Yes, they are, but there are orders of magnitude fewer of them.

Wha?

Wha?

Are you insecure about living in the suburbs or something?

If it costs more to install and maintain then the power saved it’s not a good investment. Even now we are totering on the brink of solar power being cost effective for single family homes.

You’re Welcome.

Stay.

Please.

Ah, of course. But I am concerned that our iso communities will reinterpret the true meaning of commerce, and we will fall head long over the edge of the world and land on an elephant.

Or as I like to put it…… I like living in the country.

To some other suburb, maybe. For example, I’ve worked for various Silicon Valley software companies, and every one of them is located in the suburbs.

In some ways I’d prefer to live in the city, but my commute would actually be longer. I chose my house (in the suburbs) partly because of its location in relation to my job.

Ed

Name three besides American Psycho.

A single family home has less roof space than my building and considering solar has been seeing explosive exponential growth in the past few years I expect that your concerns will be mitigated in the next 10-20 years. Besides, New York is experimenting with putting generators on the riverbed also. No, living in the city will never be 100% self-sufficiency, but it’s not meant to be. We share resources, that’s what makes cities more efficient.

Again what does the country have to do with suburban sprawl?

Not much. I’ve lived in the country and it was a lot different from living in a suburb. That said, I like living in a suburb. I probably wouldn’t like one of those ultra dense suburbs but I like having my own lawn, not sharing a wall, ceiling, or floor with my neighbor, and, well, that’s about the long and short of it.
Odesio

Sure, and I’d probably like living in a suburb that had a walking culture. That’s really what messes it up for me, the inability to walk anywhere and the lack of public transit.

Summer of Sam
Relentless
Dirty Harry

Took me about five seconds.

:shrug: Well, that’s you. I drive to work and if I/we need anything, I’ll pick it up on the way home. It just takes a little bit of forethought and planning. I also keep staples on hand. Once I’m home, I’m home. The same can be said for suburbs. I have no need to walk anywhere. Though I will be taking a walk later today. In National Forest that abuts my property. That’s a walk. Having a 7-11 or Starbucks nearby would do me no good at all.

The county that I work in (not live in) has free public transit paid for by a sales tax. I don’t and can’t use it. Though I do pay for it. That’s OK though. Public good and all that.

It’s really just the market sifting out what people want. You seem to want more highrises and apartments, others want to grill a steak on the patio.

How do people that live in suburbs not share resources?

For that matter, how many families live in your building and would be asking for a share of the solar panel roof energy?

I think that’s the problem. Most cities aren’t designed for public transportation. So if you have to have a car anyway, you might as well live on more space in the suburbs.

I don’t care. I’m still more afraid of getting ass-raped by crazed hillbillies. I’m not saying the rural areas are more dangerous. I’m just not looking to have some family of cannibals use my skin to make a suit is all.

Seriously though, I think one of the problems with the suburbs is that their isolating effect, combined with the constant barage of information from the media leads their inhabitants to both overestimate how “safe” they are while overstating the danger of everyplace else.

I feel less isolated in a house 15 miles from town that I do in a city where everyone ignores each other. Same with suburbia. We knew our neighbors. That does not seem to happen in cities.

As to the first point, what isolating effect? Isolated from what? I keep hearing about this isolation, and I keep not seeing anyone define the term or support it with evidence. What am I isolated from?

As to the second, again, what evidence have you?

I know some of my neighbors. I’ve lived here about six months and it’s likely I know as many of my neighbors as you know of yours.

The division I live in was built in the late 50s and it’s the first one I’ve ever lived in that didn’t have sidewalks. I wouldn’t mind having a few more decent places within walking distance. There are a few crummy restaurants and a bar but nothing I really want to go to. I walk my dog in the evening and it’d be really nice to have a sidewalk instead of walking in the street. Even though I walk on the side there has been multiple times a car has gotten too close for comfort.

Odesio

Agreed. I know what type of place you are talking about. I’ve been to many like it. The lack of sidewalks and buses is unfortunate. What’s strange to me is that private bus companies don’t spring up. The regulations must be prohibitive. In Latin American and African countries there are people who drive around in vans picking people up and driving them to a certain destination. It’s easier to get around Puerto Rico than most American states. I don’t understand why this doesn’t work here.

I think most people in the United States simply like having their own automobiles, mswas. I know I do. Of course auto manufacturers did conspire to bring down public transportation in a large number of cities. The automobile provides me with a degree of independence I could not get with public transportation. If I lived in New York City I could probably do without a car. Even in Germany which had better public transportation than any other place I lived I had a car.
Odesio

To start off with I am opining on suburbs in the U.K.,though a frequent visitor to N.America I am not qualified to comment on the quality of life in a U.S/Canadian/Outer Mongolian. suburb but I am reasonably intelligent enough to comment on logistics,utilities,emergency services etc.

I myself grew up in a suburb,admittedly it was a crime infested,very violent suburb but suburb it was none the less, and before anyone starts making racialist assumptions it was a totally WHITE suburb.
A mate of mine was a member of one of the first black families to move into the area and on their very first night they had to watch the local yobboes set fire to a cross on a piece of wasteland opposite their house.

We’re talking about England remember and there is no Ku Klux Klan here.
I have also lived in an affulent,middleclass(In the British sense which Americans would call posh) suburb and found it totally loathsome,none of the amenities of the city center as in nightlife,specialist shopping or taxi services to name but a few of the things glaringly absent but no real green spaces.no trees and none of the wildlife that are the compensations found in rural areas that make up for the quiteness of country life.

As to the delayed reaction times of emergency services,no the roads may not be as congested as urban streets but the E.S.s not only have to travel a lot further to reach the crisis point but they also have to continuously monitor and physically cover the area.

This means that you either have to have a lot more manpower and vehicles to carry out the task, or the coverage is a lot more sparse and a lot more slower to arrive where needed.

You may only have two murders a year in your suburban idyll but thats no comfort to the victims who become victims by virtue of the fact that the local police force is spread exceedingly thin due to the extent of their territory.

And on a separart issue suburbs are by their very nature are very inefficient utilisers of resources, where it takes more and more to get the same product to the end user,with larger and larger leakage/degradation ,

Anyone or anything different from you?

Suburbs, by their nature, are designed to isolate people. Each house is completely isolated from it’s neighbors. Each subdivision is isolated from any other subdivision. Living and working in a major city, you are just exposed to a much broader and more diverse range of people.