It’s the mindset. People who live in cities may care about property values and that sort of thing, but they likely live in the city for different reasons. For example, my grandmother has always lived in the city because she likes to go to museums and concerts and that sort of thing, and she values the diversity that she finds there. She likes having choices in restaurants and concerts; if she doesn’t like one, she can go to another without too much effort. She (and my grandfather, when he was still living) cared deeply about property values and having stuff, don’t get me wrong. But they preferred the accessibility of the things they liked.
Conversely, my aunt has always lived in the suburbs and moved farther from the city as what was suburban became urban. (I’m talking about Los Angeles. My aunt has always lived in the San Fernando Valley; she now lives in Westlake Village.) My aunt wanted the safety and security of the suburbs. She doesn’t go into the city much, if ever. She still does things, she just likes different things and lives where she can get to them.
And as others have already posted, the status of cities vs. suburbs has shifted. In the past, living in the suburbs meant that you’d made it; you didn’t have to live in the city anymore. (Sam Levenson wrote about that in Everything But Money; when he and his brothers became successful adults, they moved their parents to the suburbs, away from the old neighborhood, because that’s where you lived when you were successful.) Now, living in the suburbs may not mean success; it may mean that you can’t afford to live in the city and have to settle. OTOH, living in the city means you can afford to live there and take advantage of what the city can offer.
Partially quoted.
Yes, I think there’s something to this. Look at Chicago: some of the worst places in the country (Harvey and its neighbors) are its suburbs. Maywood, Bellwood, and Waukegan are not nice suburbs. Melrose Park, Wheeling, and Franklin Park have seriously deteriorated since the 1960s. For St. Louis: East St. Louis and Belleville.
I don’t doubt that there are effective PTO presidents out there. I had to stop going to the PTO meetings at the sprog’s school because most of the mothers who attended (and it was always women; I don’t think I saw a father there at all who wasn’t there for some other reason) were Stepford Wives who could whip up three dozen decorated cupcakes on a moment’s notice, and who would look down on mothers who brought store-bought treats to classroom parties. I’m not kidding. The sprog’s room mother complained at a PTO meeting that parents (and she meant herself) who took the trouble to make homemade treats for parties should get more recognition than parents who just brought something from the supermarket. Once her real motivation for her complaint became clear, I quit going. I didn’t feel like being shit on because I don’t have time to make rice krispy treats.
In the city, if there’s a guy sitting on a curb banging on a 5-gallon pickle drum with a bent coat-hanger and a tree branch, people will give him money.
In the suburbs, they’ll have him arrested.
Which is the better option depends on what sort of entertainment you’re interested in, I suppose.
This sums up my feelings pretty well. I settled in the ‘burbs because I prefer a monoculture of people who are exactly like me. Moderately affluent, quiet, and trouble-free. This is the environment in which I prefer to have my family. Diversity makes for a nice motivational poster, but based on my trips into the urban world, it seems to translate into a crappy place to live. I’m referring mainly to income here, but if you want to twist this into racism, knock yourself out. Call me any name you like, but I’m going to raise my kids where it’s safe.
Regarding the objections to driving everywhere; I recently got a chance to sample our fair city’s public transportation when jury duty forced me to park and ride into town. I got to sit between some sort of grimy Rastafarian weirdo who stank like a pig, and a collection of urban hip-hop youths in their “young-felon-of-tomorrow” outfits. After a half-hour of being subjected to some of the most foul and horrific language I’ve heard outside the movies, and listening to Rasta-dude talk to himself, I was fervently renewing my commitment to avoid public transport at all costs.
And seriously… If you think I’ll let my kids be exposed to this, you’re out of your mind. Even at 4 bucks, gas isn’t that expensive. We either drive them, or get them their own cars when they’re old enough.
I think YaraMateo answers the OP’s question exactly. I’m pretty sure the majority of the affected distaste for suburbs is simple envy. It’s a nice comfortable lifestyle that’s far preferable to eking out an urban existence in the city, and people naturally resent those who enjoy it.
Although this may have been a summation by Elret, it seems to be the default assumption hereabouts; Let me treat you to a few of my own:
• Urban kids walk to a grimy basketball court, hoping not to interrupt the local drug-dealers so they can play. My kids back the boat into the lake and spend their afternoons wakeboarding.
• Urban kids are cooped up in their cramped rooms with nothing but a TV and maybe video games for entertainment. Mine either play with the dogs, or ride the go-cart in our large, fenced, suburban backyard (you remember… that big green lawn the urbanites seethe about).
• Urban kids ride a vile city bus filled with smelly, questionable characters to go see a friend (or to school, I suppose). Mine are safely ensconced in their own cars while traveling to Starbuck’s, the mall, or to the local high school.
• Urban kids go to nasty inner city schools, where money is tight, teachers are marginally competent, and getting an education is iffy at best. Mine go to a safe, new campus where violence is something they only read about, scholastics are strongly emphasized by parents and teachers alike, and their biggest complaint is that the elevator in the band building is broken again.
• Urban kids get a gun to join a gang. My kid takes his gun to the range to compete in skeet shooting.
• Urban moms ride the aforementioned bus, sherpa-ing their (1) bag of groceries home and (one would assume) up the elevator/stairs. My wife drives her car into our safe, lighted garage and unloads all the bags directly into the kitchen. (For that matter, how the hell do you shop for groceries in the city? You can’t carry two weeks’ worth on the bus. Do you just go every day? Use a taxi?)
• For those trendy urbanites fortunate enough to have a car, there seems to be a constant battle over parking, break-ins, and snow-clearing of one’s claimed spot by the curb. In the suburbs, we have room to park all our cars and even a few toys. In bad weather, my wife can travel from garage to the covered parking at her office without even using an umbrella. (I have to brave the elements a bit, since my truck won’t fit in the garage.) As far as crime, in 30 years of suburbia, I’ve never had a car broken into while at home. Not once. Can’t say the same for my ventures into the city, though.
Short answer to the OP; When an urban dweller sanctimoniously disparages life in suburbia, I figure it’s the same as a convict telling me my life sucks ‘cause I have to cook my own meals.
I don’t know how cities in the States are, but in many Canadian cities, the city core surrounded by the suburbs is actually just as bland. When cities were expanding from the downtown core during WWI and WWII, they built cookie-cutter houses called wartime houses. Urban streets are just rows and rows of those houses. There’s a few differences in some of them, like a covered porch or more windows on the lower level, but the same designs are everywhere.
I like suburbs because I like new things and the crime rate is low.
I wasn’t making a generalization about all suburbs. I was talking about the few I see cropping up in my area. Like I said, these aren’t people who are moving from an urban residential area to a suburban development only a short drive away from where they had been previously living. They’re coming from two states over. And I can say with total certainty that if they couldn’t live in a suburban development, and had to live in the city instead, they’d be living somewhere else. More than property, they’re buying a lifestyle. They’re buying an impression of themselves as pioneers. And they’re willing to pay an extraordinary amount of money for it, too.
I know it seems difficult to imagine that anybody could mistake living in a suburban tract with living in the wilderness, but they do. The land on which their homes have been built was nothing but wilderness a decade ago. They can still go outside and see wild animals. They can enjoy the view of the valley. But they’re doing it from inside their svelte front yards, that at this point are starting to look more like traffic medians than actual front yards, so small have they become.
Living in a city and having access to all the museums,art galleries, theaters, libraries,bookstores, specialty hobby shops, historical centers, festivals, music venues, parks, and a variety of cuisines from around the world can be a real drag. Nothing to do but sit inside all day and watch TV, beats venturing out into the urban ghetto wastelands.
From my experiences there seems to be two kinds of suburbs. One is essentially a small town located in close proximity to a city, has been as established town for a long time and has its own sense of community.
The other one is the kind that was built in the last 20 years, is usually composed of similar or identical housing developments and condo complexes. The only businesses around are chains, big box stores and high end shops. Everything is miles apart and only easily accessible by car. At night the whole place turns into a ghost town by 8:30. Neighbors barely interact with one another and people isolate themselves from the world around them with some strange sense of superiority that they are above the huddled urban masses. This is the kind that I think people are thinking of when they say they don’t like the suburbs.
Isn’t this the adult equivalent of your mom telling you the other kids are avoiding you because they’re jealous - and not because you’re smelly and socially awkward?
I’m not jealous at all of people living in Utaupia (or Beigeburbia, if you prefer ). My husband had to explain to me that all the people living in identical, repetitive housing developments LIKE that feeling of everyone doing the same thing in lockstep - it comforts them. I hadn’t figured that out on my own - I didn’t get why anyone would choose that life. It’s not right for me, but it’s obviously right for a lot of people.
I think we’re going to see a shrinking of cities in the not too distant future due to gas and transportation problems as well as our huge, wasteful footprints on the land where cities are located, but I’ll enjoy my outer edge of inner city house and yard until then. And paint it whatever damned colour I feel like.
It’s not envy. They just don’t think your lifestyle is more enjoyable.
Your assumptions seem to be based on the idea that all urban areas are grimy , crime-ridden slums.Let me correct some of them.
Kids in my neighborhood either use the hoop in their backyard/driveway ,walk to the playground ( where the only people they might interrupt are the Asians doing their tai chi) or walk to the much larger park (500+ acres) with bike paths,baseball fields, tennis and basketball courts, a golf course, a skate park and bridle paths.
My kids and our large dog played in our big-enough , fenced city backyard.
Younger urban kids generally walk to school or are driven by a parent. Older ones may take a school bus, a city bus, or a train. They may sometimes encounter a strange ,smelly character, but the trains and buses certainly are not full of them.
Some do. Others go to schools like Stuyvesant High school or the Hunter College Campus Schools. Or non-selective schools which still do a good job.
Some urban areas don’t have supermarkets. Resident of those areas may take the bus/train to another area to shop and take a taxi back. The rest of us generally shop at least once a week. Those of us who don’t have cars have personal shopping carts to transport groceries. And we don’t all live in apartments.
Depends on the area. Parking is usually not a problem where I live. Some of my neighbors have garages, and some even have extra garages that they rent out. Snowstorms cause minor parking problems a couple of days a year. Can’t remember the last time a car was broken into on my block.
Now look at my location- I live in freaking NYC , am not rich (nor are my neighbors) and own a single-family house and two vehicles. City living is not all slums and high-rises. And the problems you describe exist in suburban areas - maybe not yours, but suburban life is not always clean, quiet ,and crime free with good schools.
Touche’:dubious:. Perhaps I’m exhibiting the same smugness that I’m decrying in the city-dweller (only in reverse). But you have to admit the “…suburbs are bland, sterile wastelands filled with racist white people..” kind of statement is enough to raise one’s ire. It sort of launched me into minor defensive rant.
With all due respect, I can drive into the city at any time. I have the same access to everything you’ve mentioned. The only difference is that I drive back out to a safer neighborhood when I’m done. (I have no idea where you are, but the crime map for my city clearly shows the overwhelming majority of offenses clustered around the very museums, art galleries, etc. which you mention.)
If what a place looks like is the only criterion, then google up some images of Central Park. You’ll see many corners of the place that are even more bucolic, and seemingly untouched by the hand of humankind, than Naperville. Obviously, the immediate environment of a huge city like New York is almost anti-bucolic, but the collective environmental footprint of the people who live there is far smaller than for an equivalent population of suburbanites.
The truth is that for as long as there have been cities, there’s been a large cohort of people who’ve said “this is a great place to work, but no way in hell would I live here.” Any way they could escape them – whether by carriage, train, trolley, bus or car – they took advantage of it.
Suburban life is sometimes bland and sterile, but urban life isn’t always full of clubs and mseums, either. My kids walked to school (on sidewalks!) played with kids of other races and somehow managed to assimilate enough culture to be able to discuss both Shakespeare and Lady Gaga.
Yes, a good deal of the disdain expressed for suburbs appears to actually be disdain for the people who choose to live in them. A certain slice of the '50s-era intelligentsia found the concept of postwar home-ownership somewhat threatening. All those proles getting above themselves, as it were…
No less an authority than Tom Lehrer described this song as “the most sanctimonious song ever written”. It’s hard to argue the point.
Funny, in my urban neighborhood – urban as in its in a city and urban as in most of the residents are black people – the kids walk to a very nicely kept park that’s right across the street from my house, with several nicely kept and recently upgraded basketball courts, a huge playground, two baseball diamonds, a running track and wooded walking paths, one of which will take them to a second even larger, recently modernized playground and public recreation center that offers everything from computer classes to line dancing to access to free weights, treadmills, exercise bikes and other such equipment, all entirely free of charge. (There’s also a daily lunch program for senior citizens, and a summer lunch program for kids.) And about two weeks after school ends, there’ll be (sigh) Little League and Pony League baseball, a game every evening and 4 games every Saturday and Sunday, with lots of parents, siblings and friends on the bleachers and a full serve concession stand (hot dogs & hamburgers even) dishing up baseball treats. Grimy basketball court, indeed.
Wow you have space and another gas combustion engine for your kids, whoohoo. Parks, skate parks, splash parks, community pools, bike trails, community centers, libraries, science centers are all within easy reach for kids in my community. They are allowed beyond their own backyards, regardless of the size.
Oooh, the mall, the Starbucks. (Why the hell are kids so young they still need mommy and daddy to ferry them around drinking coffee, anyway?) How homogenized can life be? Also? Vile city bus? Your experiences are not universal, my friend.
I was going to continue to go down the bullet list, but frankly, it’s just so much bigoted, blindered nonsense that it’s not worth a point by point rebuttal.
My suggestion: talk about what you know, the mall and the go-karts and the children hopped up on caffeine, texting a mile a minute. Your supposition about what you don’t know is both ridiculous and simply wrong.
Exactly. I am very bothered by disdain for millions of people based on the fact that they want to own (or rent) houses. The stereotypes are insane and can’t possibly be true for everyone who happens to live in a tract house.
Take that bullshit somewhere else. You know exactly what pullin meant. Do you think he would still feel uncomfortable in a clean and orderly subway car with three black professionals in suits, or a group of well behaved black teenagers in polo shirts and khakis, or even just some black blue collar workmen in coveralls? If pullin sees this question and says “yes,” then okay, he is a racist.
But he won’t. Because it’s damn clear to me that he was bothered by the “young felon of tomorrow” affectation that he mentioned, not the color of their skin. And yes, there absolutely is a gangsta look that is specifically designed to look intimidating and give the finger to “polite society.” And maybe it’s even stupid to be bothered by this look - but it is not “racist.”
I was going to say something like this. I don’t hate all suburbs or even the idea of suburbs. But just like there are cities I hate, there are suburbs (or a profile of suburbs) that I hate too.
The ones I can’t stand:
-the ones that are basically a series of gated subdivision after gated subdivision (with precious names to go along with them), separated by an occassional stip-mall-aganza. I lived in an area like this when I was down in Miami. Everything was a variation of “The Hammocks.” HATED IT.
-the newer ones, where the houses are all McMansiony and have sodded lawns, no trees and no sidewalks
-tracts where the houses are designed exactly alike, with garages that jut out in front of the house, like ugly mouths)
-if a murder happens there and a resident is on the news saying something like, “Things like this just don’t happen HERE!” I’m automatically going to hate that place. Automatically.
When I lived in northern New Jersey, the little bedroom communities along the commuter rail going out west were well-established places that had a “small town” appeal to them. Even if they weren’t entirely self-contained, they had that feel.
). My husband had to explain to me that all the people living in identical, repetitive housing developments LIKE that feeling of everyone doing the same thing in lockstep - it comforts them. I hadn’t figured that out on my own - I didn’t get why anyone would choose that life. It’s not right for me, but it’s obviously right for a lot of people.
