What's up with the hatred of suburbia?

In My Humble Opinion
121

Indeed, it’s very unusual to refer to fellow citizens as evil. But I’ll get over it.

Again, if you’re unwilling to admit that “quality of life” is best determined by the people living those lives, you’re not appropriately assessing the pros and cons of suburbs.

I was unaware that water used for maintaining lawns was pumped directly from starving African villagers.

If you won’t like water being used to water lawns, do what they do around here; charge for it and ration its use. It works wonders. No reason to tell people to move into a crowded city; just make them use less water by charging what it’s worth. It’s done in many, many places, and seems to work. The lawns get a little yellow every now and then, but thankfully water does fall from the sky from time to time. People bitched about it but they got used to it - theydidn’t move back into the city.

I’m not talking about a “slight” increase. I’m talking about increases large enough to dissuade large numbers of people from moving farther away from the city center, growing exponentially higher with each mile. Perhaps even entirely cutting off at defined boundaries tax-supported infrastructures like power, water, roads, bridges, etc.
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What will you then do about the fact that housing prices in the city will skyrocket, thereby making it impossible for working-class people to find affordable housing?

You’ve moving your goalposts. In your last post you wanted people paying for the externalities. Now it appears that that’s not enough; you don’t want them paying for the externalities, you want to force them to crowd into big cities.

If the gas and property taxes can be raised to an appropriate level that allows government to appropriately mitigate the results of the externalities - ones that can be legitimately demonstrated to exist and that need mitigation, not just worst-possible-imagined-case stuff - would that not be enough? Or must we force an undesirable lifestyle on millions of people?

No, it’s not a principal advantage. There’s no reliable evidence any such advantage exists. It is quite possible your buy local approach is producing more carbon emissions, wasting energy, and is, to use your phrase, tantamount to killing people in the Third World.

Splitting agricultural production up among local farms reduces the drive from Farm X to Destination Y but also incurs significant inefficiencies in economy of scale in both the production of the food and its transportation. One study found that it was in many cases more environmentally friendly to produce food in New Zealand and ship it to England than it was to produce it in England. In terms of pollution, transportation is a small fraction of the impact of food production.

Indeed, if food production is an environmental problem, the absolute #1 part of that problem is the very existence of beef products. You can buy local all you want but until you stop eating beef, Western eating habits will remain environmentally murderous. It would be a thousand times more efficient and logical (that is not an exagerration; if anything it is an understatement) to ignore urban sprawl and start taxing beef.

msmith points out that local produce can be fresher, but (a) in my experience the freshness of produce has a lot more to do with the proximity of the seller to a major food terminal, unless it’s actually a farmer’s market, and (b) let the market make that call. If you want super fresh produce you’ll get it for an appropraite price; if you’re okay with good but not great produce, so be it.

122

Yes. SO MUCH stereotyping. I don’t think I’ve rolled my eyes so much in any thread. :rolleyes:

There are as many different types of suburbs as there are cities. I wouldn’t live in a subdivision of beige boxes by choice, but I have lived in the suburbs most of my life, and it’s been cool. Where I live now the houses are all different, many of them at least 30-40 years old and with lots of character, and there are lots of trees and cool bike paths and parks to walk in with my dog. Right now I live in a small town on the outskirts of a mid-size city and can walk to many stores and restaurants, many of them independently owned. There’s theater and art and live music all over the place, much of it within a three-mile radius. The neighbors who surround me are from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Ireland, Mexico, the Bronx, and Canada. Everybody’s interesting and few if any of them are worried about keeping up with Joneses.

But that’s okay. Y’all keep perpetuating that stereotype. :rolleyes:

123

Actually, having mentioned it twice now, you’ve adequately shown that you are failing to get over it. A remark made in jest even. It’s almost as if you have a chip on your shoulder.

Actually, by giving excessive importance to the quality of life of the people living in the suburbs, you’re giving inadequate weight to the resulting decrease in quality of life of those who don’t move to the suburbs and you’re discounting the future decrease in quality of life of both groups. That’s called a market failure.

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I was unaware that water used for maintaining lawns was pumped directly from starving African villagers.
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Are you suggesting that the suburbs are a closed system?

I’ll note that I haven’t told anyone to domanything at this point. The question was about reasons to disfavor suburban sprawl. Since you’re at the stage of offering solutions, shall I take it that you are implying that up agree that suburban sprawl has significant negative externalities that must be compensated for?

When there’s a market failure by definition you can’t rely in market forces to correct the error. The negative externalities will not be adequately accounted for until there are signs that compensating for them actually hurts bad enough to discourage some people from creating them. And of course the real purpose of compensating for negative externalities impacting the environment in the first place isn’t just to increase tax revenue or to mitigate after the fact but to discourage the creation of those negative externalities in the first place.

124

You can easily get from your suburb to downtown with public transportation, but what about from one corner of your suburb to the other? Can kids in all areas of the suburb easily walk or take transit to get to the library? Can they all safely walk to a park? Can the teenager home during the summer walk to the pool, or to a grocery store or fast food outlet in order to have a summer job? Hell, can the housewife walk to the grocery store if the family isn’t a two car family, or does she have to have a car?

A commuter transit line is easy. Suburbs rarely lack for those. But by and large the transit that’s available doesn’t reduce the car-mandatory nature of the suburb because of the sprawl and the subdivision/essential service divide and the commonality of a major highway dividing many homes from the closest businesses and services.

125

True to a large degree. But consider this: The school my wife works at is five minutes from my house. The software company I work for is in another suburb. If we lived in the central city both of our commutes would be much, much longer. That would reduce the quality of our life by more than anything that could be gained by living in the city.

ETA: I, at least, can walk to our library. I’ve done it many times. It’s only 20 minutes. A park is even closer.

126

Is this a quiz? I can answer.

My suburban area is all historical towns that are part of the greater Boston area now. Houses date from all years going back to the 1600’s through today with some subdivisions. There isn’t much to complain about in that regard in terms of environmental destruction. People move in and out but the houses stay mostly the same.

There is no public transportation to speak of but the natives Americans didn’t have it either and neither did any of the other settlers since then. I don’t want to live in an area where public transportation is a consideration to be quite honest with you. It would depend on lifestyles and an environment that I want no part of. There is a commuter rail about 7 miles from here that will take you into Boston but it adds up if you have to take it a lot.

  1. What about from one corner of your suburb to the other? - people can and do walk anywhere. You are only limited by distance and your stamina. Crosswalks are enforced and sidewalks are many miles long.

  2. Can kids in all areas of the suburb easily walk or take transit to get to the library? - I have no idea what everyone else does and I don’t really care. The library is right down the street. It is also nice and quiet and there are no homeless people trying to use it as shelter. There are two parks close enough that you can swim, fish, shoot basketball, or just see quiet nature even with two young kids in tow.

  3. Can they all safely walk to a park? Can the teenager home during the summer walk to the pool, or to a grocery store or fast food outlet in order to have a summer job? Hell, can the housewife walk to the grocery store if the family isn’t a two car family, or does she have to have a car? - They could do all those things here. Most people don’t but you only have to walk a mile or so to get to them on nice sidewalks and traffic that will stop for you when you need to cross. You don’t have to worry about getting mugged or even flipped the bird either. Teenagers can ride their bike practically anywhere. I do myself when the weather permits. I would love to see one of these urban housewives in action sometime. It sounds like they can shoulder a grocery load that would make a camel blush in any weather coming back from the convenience store and still cook up a meal that would make you slap your mother. That isn’t what they showed on Seinfeld, Friends, and Sex in the City. Those people just ordered takeout and had someone drive it to them which is hardly better.

127

I’m fully willing to accept that market failures should be taxed accordingly.

There is no connection between the use of water for watering lawns in Napierville and starvation in Africa. Is it a closed system? No. Is the use of water in suburban America taking water from Africa? Of course not, what a ridiculous suggestion.

I would suggest ALL human habitation has significant negative externalities that must be accounted for, which is why I’m a fan of reallocating taxes from corporate income taxes and low brackets of personal income taxes to consumption taxes on appropriate resources. Where a person lives is not the issue; what they consume is the issue. Many people living in Manhattan consume more than people living in (insert name of suburb.) I think you’re grossly exaggerrating how much worse suburban living is, as it happens, but well thought out tax policy will work either way.

But come on, that’s not what this thread is about; you’re the only person citing economic theory. What this thread is about is elitist bullshit:

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Basically everyone we saw was like a fat version of Dwight Shrute eating disgustingly massive portions of everything. at the local Chilli’s.
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[QUOTE=lindsaybluth]
The people universally do this: go to local college or trade school, graduate by 23, get married by 26, have 2 children before 30, get fat. The women often don’t work. Nobody travels except to see relatives. Everyone eats fake Mexican food or fake Chinese food for dinner out. They go to megachurches on Sunday.
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[QUOTE=Cat Whisperer]
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.
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So actually, I have to give you credit, Acsenray. At least your comments aren’t just outright stupid, which in this thread is saying a lot.

128

And they didn’t have towns designed around it, either. Native Americans also didn’t have vaccines, care to emulate that too? In other words, what, precisely, is the value of this little nugget of historical reference?

Which is great for you, because you want to walk or drive everywhere, but not everyone is able to do that. Is your community designed with any consideration for those people, or just for those with access to a vehicle or ability to walk considerable distances, up/down hills, etc.?

And there are sidewalks near the houses? You don’t have subdivisions full of sidewalkless streets?

Right, because it’s not like you’re part of a community or anything. If the kids who live on the other side of the 4 lane highway can’t get to the library on their own, who gives a damn, right?

129

The bus stop is closer to my house in California than it was to my house in Queens. I don’t know if you count buses as public transportation, but you couldn’t use a subway to get to my mail route in Queens either - car or two buses.
I think a lot more people rode the bus 40 years ago than do here, but it is available. I don’t know the routes, but I’m pretty certain you can take a bus or two to the library. Or BART. Or the train. Or several shopping centers.

130

I think miscommunication is wrife in this thread because “suburban” and “urban” mean different things to different people.

When I say “urban”, I not only mean the downtown and business districts where housing may be co-located, but also nearby residential areas that are zoned that way. They don’t sit in the shadow of the skyscrapers, but you can see the skyscrapers and other buildings in the not-so-far-off horizon. You have your modest plat, which may or may not be smack-dab next to another. There may be a multi-family zoning (not necessarily highrises or apartment complexes) in your neighborhood. If you want to go to a laudromat or get take-out, you typically do not have to get in a car (or at least drive too far), but you may have to drive to go to the movies, a furniture store, or to a fancy restaurant. Some type of public transit is less than a mile away from you. There are sidewalks.

So this definition includes everything from the slums of Newark, NJ to the posh parts of Buckhead, Atlanta. Admittedly, this also describes some suburbs. South Orange, NJ is urban or suburban depending on who you talk to and where you are standing. According to the definition mentioned above, it would be considered urban (and I considered it such when I lived there). But Summit, which is just few miles away, would, IMHO, be considered more suburbany.

I think we can all agree that based on my definition, there are horrible urban areas and wonderful urban areas. Right?

When I think of suburbs, my mind instantly goes to something like this. And I think that’s what most urban dwellers think of as well, even if we know intellectually that not all suburbs look like that. Now we can argue all day long about suburbs being cultural deadzones and environmentally unsustainable. But I think we can all agree that there’s nothing aesthetically pleasing about that stereotypical suburban scene I linked to. Even if right behind those houses is a beautiful lake and virgin woodlands. Those features may outweigh the ugliness of those houses for someone looking to buy a house. But I don’t think it’s irrational for someone to despise that bland, homogeneous aesthetic and wonder why someone would be attracted to it. Just like I don’t think it’s irrational for someone to despise Cabrini Green-type highrises and question why people would want to live all stacked up on each other like that (though the former is more of a mystery than the latter, at least for me).

131

In that case, I’d be smart to tip my hat and quit while I’m ahead.

132

Incorrect. It just happens to be a little-known problem overall (I certainly didn’t know anything about minimum parking requirements until I read this). I found this a very interesting piece:

133

I would be very surprised if one in ten people knew about the ludicrous minimum parking requirements some municipalities place on businesses.

I work with a lot of business and only heard about this problem a few years ago, and was really only vaguely aware of it until last year when a customer of mine - a manufacturer - moved to a new location and was forced by the city to construct something like 120 parking spots. This, mind you, was a manufacturing facility, not a retail outlet, so there are few people ever showing up who are not employees. At PEAK periods they had 35-40 people on site. The absolute maximum number of workers who could possibly have worked there would be, oh, maybe sixty, if they really planned the layout well. But the city wanted 120 parking spots.

What’s fascinating about minimum parking requirements is that they appear to be wholly arbitrary or based on assumptions that are dubious at best and flatly imbecilic at worst. Business after business complains about them and they quite frequently cannot be rationally defended, but believe me; when you are dealing with municipal government, you are dealing with the absolute bottom of the professional food chain, and evidence and logic will get you nowhere.

An excellent study on the matter:

134

I’ll have to read through that later; thanks.

Seems to me the problem is arguing second-order effects against first-order. It’s easy to say that we should have enough more than parking for everyone–because who likes searching for a parking space forever? It’s much harder to argue the case for the other side, which involves more secondary effects, such as higher costs passed on to consumers; the negative effects of lowered density; the ugliness of endless parking lots; etc.

135

Okay. Don’t. This is IMHO, right? The song pretty much illustrates what I hate about the burbs. Granted, not all burbs are alike, but the one Ms. Reynolds was singing about, and the ones I dislike, are perfect examples of homogeny. Those are, by and large, made up of what I refer to as builderhoods. You can’t go anywhere from those neighborhoods without a car. Many suburbs are rife with them and the infrastructure does not support bike and/or foot traffic safely, nor cohesively.

Oh, and Tom Lehrer is an authority on what? Suburbs? Folk songs? Sanctimony? Please. :rolleyes:

136

If desiring to be educated, cultured, relatively healthy through diet and exercise, professionally and financial successful, and intellectually stimulated is “elitist bullshit”, then guilty as charged.

137

The question is though, why is there an assumption that people in the suburbs can’t be those things? Earlier in the thread there was an eye-rolling challenge to go ahead and say oh I’M different, MY neighbourhood isn’t like that. I didn’t rise to it then, but will now because I’m bewildered at the insistence that the people who live in suburban environments are all the same. My area really is a small town as opposed to suburbs technically, but I do live in a new house in a new neighbourhood that is not unlike what’s described in that Monkees song - bbqs aplenty, lots of people who enjoy gardening, houses that while different from each other, are of a similar “new” style that I agree is not as interesting as a lot of older homes. I take no offense to criticism of how my neighbourhood looks, but I absolutely disagree with the stereotyping of the people and lifestyle.

My husband and I are both university educated, he in education and me in music and visual arts. We are very active and eat a very healthy diet, including locally grown produce and, in the summer, produce almost exclusively from our own garden. We walk to parks, libraries, and the grocery store. We go to local art shows, concerts and festivals regularly, and our neighbourhood, while admittedly largely (not entirely) white, consists of people from varied backgrounds - teachers, artists, doctors, factory workers, firefighters, an ex-professional football player, a butcher, etc. There are young families, single folks, elderly people, and childfree couples. On my street, I know probably half the neighbours by name, and the ones close by exchange gifts on holidays, borrow a cup of sugar from time to time, help each other with shovelling and yard work, look after each others kids, watch each others homes during vacations, and can be called on at any hour of the day or night to help in a pinch.

I get that not all developmenty neighbourhoods are like that, but it’s as ignorant to ignore that some are as it is to pretend that all urban neighbourhoods are filled with interesting architecture, people, and experiences.

Homes ugly? Sure, it’s not to everyone’s taste.

People boring and culturally void? Come on.

138

I don’t really understand what suburbia haters want us all to do. Move into the cities? But I hate city living, I really do. Right now I live in a suburb of Albany, right on the bordor of it. Albany is a medium sized town, so I live less than ten minutes from downtown.

There is literally not enough money in the world for you to make me live in NYC or such. It is filthy and disgusting. It is worth it to visit, but even Forbes magazine said a few years ago that NYC is one of the top ten worst places to live.

A couple of years ago we were driving somewhere from NYC to NJ and it took us an hour to cross a six mile bridge. And everyone just took it as routine. “Oh, an hour is nothing!” That’s bullshit! I don’t want to live in a place like that.

I live in a small suburb in the middle of two major streets. It’s walking distance to many places, and is on the bus line. Yes, it is predominantly white - though myself and my SO are not white. The houses don’t look cookie-cutter to me, and we don’t have HOAs. There is a German American club in the middle of it. Kids play though there are no sidewalks. Taxes are low and it was ranked as the safest municipality of its size in America (which will give away the name of the town). And that is important to me and my SO.

It is a day trip to NYC if I want to go. A day trip to Boston, or Montreal. I think I am wonderfully situated and hope to eventually buy a house here. I won’t ever move to the city, or to rural areas - it’s just not worth it to me.

139

I don’t think it is accurate to assume that urban dwellers are jealous of the suburban life style, I think many of the city dwellers posting here could afford to live in the suburbs if they wanted to.

We live in DC and could certainly afford to live in the suburbs in the region if we wanted to, but anytime I drive through the suburbs of Northern Virginia, usually to visit a relative or to get out to the Shenandoah Valley, I think “there is no way I could live here.” I grew up in the suburbs of Norther Virginia and I know it isn’t for me.

In general, I find the culture to be smothering. People seem afraid of new ideas and people who don’t fit into clearly defined roles. When I get roped into some kind of social event down there conversation seems to be centered around sports and television (and not particularly good television either).

The emphasis on safety, it is mentioned many times in this thread, is oppressive. I think that suburbanites are unduly afraid and that this fear has narrowed their life choices into a series of very boring channels.

I know that is harsh, but it is a thread asking what people don’t like about the burbs.

140

I’m sorry, I have to come back at your use of “cultured” since you did it again. Even the blandest of suburbanites are cultured. If you want to claim your culture is better than theirs—and for all I know it is—please give some sort of measure you can use to compare them. “They have none” is ignorant, but it’s also lazy.