You’ve made some interesting points in your posts, and have given me something to think about.
Perhaps I’m reading this wrong, but ‘living in lockstep - it comforts them’ this seem rather condescending?
I don’t believe this is quite fair. My neighbor a few blocks down has had her ‘tree man’ up for years now…staring at me as I walk past, and has just created a lovely horse cover for her electric box. Freaks live in the suburbs too.
The way you phrase this reminds me of the goth kids from south park, dripping with disdain for all the ‘conformists’ when they themselves are conformists as well in their own way.
But then what do I know, I’m a conformist, stepping in lock step with everyone around me, as I live in a suburb. Granted, it’s an old suburb with nice leafy streets, kids playing all the time, toys overflowing onto yards, and just try to walk past our African American neighbors without stopping for a chat..
These sections of your post stood out for me.
Wow. Just wow.
I think dangermom has a point. There is some clear class related disdain going on here.
Yeah, me too. I’m kind of appalled. Cities are often great places, but personally I like a little space. So therefore I must be a Stepford wife drone with no culture or intelligence. :rolleyes:
Actually I live in a small city, not a suburb of a giant city. And I live in possibly the most white-bread subdivision you could find–which, as it matures, gains more individuality, like all other neighborhoods. It’s full of very nice people who are friendly and amazingly, have their own personalities. Many of us live in this neighborhood because it’s what we can afford, as opposed to those older, individual, character-full houses further into town–which just happen to cost a fortune. I don’t know what’s so difficult about the fact that tract houses are what people can afford.
Oh, that last post showed up while I was typing. Freaky folks definitely live in suburbia too–when I was growing up, the world-famous Purple Lady lived in a tract home. I used to take exchange students by…good times. You never know what’s going on behind a bland front door…
I don’t think that the suburbs lack culture. I’ve met plenty of intellectually curious people who live in Northern VA and the Maryland suburbs. As an example, Arlington County is fairly walkable, is close in, and has good public transportation. The housing stock isn’t really lookalike and for the most part, there don’t seem to be rigid HOAs.
As I’ve gotten older, I can now see some of the appeal of the suburbs. The crime rates are lower, the houses newer for the most part, and the schools are better. However, at this point in my life, I’m not willing to pay the costs associated with living in the suburbs. My commute is very short and my wife and I are fine with only one car. I can walk to restaurants and stores. In the summer time, there is a farmer’s market six blocks from my house. I’m a twenty five minute scenic walk to the Eastern Market. Even if I choose to drive to a better supermarket it is less than a mile from home and on the way home from work. We are centrally located so we don’t have to go very far for very many things. Once the streetcar installation is complete, it will run two short blocks from my house. There are a few playgrounds and parks I can walk to and let my son run around in.
The main attraction for me in the suburbs are the school systems. Fairfax, Arlington and Montgomery County have very good schools, DC really doesn’t. I could probably get more bang for my buck housing wise in Fairfax or Loudoun than I do where I live. I’d certainly have a bigger yard. However, we would need a second car and our commutes would be much further.
Oh please. I live in what would be considered between urban and suburb (or ‘closest to suburb poor people can get’). This weekend I went to a 7-11 with multiple meth heads tweaking, a couple of shoplifters, and a hobo that my brother was about to lash out on for getting too close to me.
Then my brother drove me home where there was a couple beating the crap out of each other on the front lawn across the street.
And I’m sorry to say they were all from one race.
Fuck that, I wanna go live in suburbia so I don’t have to deal with that shit. I go over to the rich new shopping complex and hit up the 7-11 there and get some rowdy kids buying Slurpees instead of drug addicts shoplifting. Why wouldn’t I want to live there? Why wouldn’t my brother want to live there, so my niece can play in her front yard and not have to worry about used needles littering the street?
Where I live, we’re a long ways away from this urban revitalization you’re talking about. Downtown is homeless diseased-infected crack addicts and disease-infested needles and disease-infested hookers.
Personally, I don’t expect people to move to the big city. But maybe not buying into subdivisions that are so remote and auto-dependent; encouraging their city council to support diverse infrastructures that support cycling and walkability; getting out of their own cars once in awhile and spending more time within their own community as opposed to commuting to the big city for work/play putting more of a burden on those urban environments.
I live in a university town about 20-25 miles south of a big city. I have to commute to work into the outskirts of that city 35 miles roundtrip. My husband does about 60 to the other side of that city. Although we can walk or bike to the store and do plenty of things in our own community in and out of our car, that work commute is a deal-breaker. I’m sad that I’ll be leaving my older, well-established neighborhood filled with dumpy little rentals like mine next to McMansions like ones a block over. We have sidewalks and lots of kids playing in the yards, riding their bikes. We know all our neighbors, even the ones that make way, way more money than we do. It’s an idyllic neighborhood, but we don’t work in our town. So, we’re leaving for a neighborhood located inside the loop. I would totally stay if there existed better transportation issues. As it is I’ve ridden my bike to work several times, but it’s too exhausting to do every day.
I pretty much agree with all you said, especially the part about safety. If that’s your concern over everything else, I guess I understand, but as for myself I don’t really want to live that way. I have to wonder what city folks like **pullin **and **kushiel **are talking about where the front lawns are all needles and bullets. Maybe I’d feel the way they do about the city if I grew up in Englewood instead of Logan Square, although Logan Square wasn’t exactly the Gold Coast either.
I was born and raised in Chicago proper and have lived all over the north side of the city my whole life, save the two years I spent living in a suburb of Boston. My childhood in Logan Square was pretty idyllic, actually. My family was lower-middle-class, almost certainly the poorest people on our rather well-to-do block – but there were lots of block parties, backyard birthday parties, games of kick the can running late into the night in the summer. We walked to the neighborhood school and parks, and my folks sent me to the corner store for this or that as a matter of course once I was old enough – six or seven. There were lots of shops and grocery stores within easy walking distance, as were theaters, libraries, and whatnot. The beach and all the museums and galleries the city has to offer were a bus or train ride away, which meant my parents weren’t stuck ferrying my happy ass around, and it gave me a sense of independence. Got lost a few times, found my way back, you know? As I got older I was able to go to age-appropriate music shows and clubs, too. What some people here seem to think city living necessarily entails is way off base.
I’m immensely grateful to my parents for our city upbringing; living here has taught me a lot about how to deal with people that are different from me. I wasn’t insulated from scary things – I was right in the mix at school and in our neighborhood. I think that because of that I can hold my own in a lot of different situations. That’s not to say that this can’t happen in the ‘burbs, but the fearlessness of my parents’ approach to raising a kid in the city and pushing them to take advantage of what the city has to offer really resonated with me. And, I want my kids to be tough the way my parents wanted us to be tough-- not thugs, of course, but unafraid, curious, adventurous, willing to take a risk. Living here helps me do that with my own kids.
When my Houston-raised husband and I were house-hunting a few years back, we could easily have found a place in the 'burbs. We could have gotten a much larger house and a much larger yard, and we wouldn’t have had to deal with the wrangling that comes with the Chicago public schools for our kindergartner. My husband’s reverse commute to the northern 'burbs wouldn’t have been quite as soul-killing. But we both are city people at heart, so looking outside the city was a non-starter. The biggest hurdle was that I am an avid gardener and, having grown up on a double city lot, really REALLY wanted a double lot if we could find it. And we did, so we’re happy in our little bungalow with a big (for the city) backyard. We raise our kids here and are involved in their schools and in the community. There are frustrations that occur with city living, of course – probably once every other month there’s someone having a yelling argument on our block at 10 at night, and the litter in the front yard from passing high schoolers seriously pisses me off – but those irritations are worth everything we get in return, like being able to order Thai at 1 in the morning, or hit a museum on a whim, or walk to the corner store instead of firing up the station wagon for an hour-long errand. It’s a trade off that works for us. And I will say for the record that some of the older suburbs here – Evanston, Oak Park, Park Ridge – provide a lot of what is best of urban life, too, just more…sanitized.
And, as someone who values privacy and a certain level of anonymity, I appreciate how city folks for the most part stay out of your business. There’s no forced friendliness and if I plant a tomato in my front yard, no one’s going to give me crap for it.
It’s funny, now of the four of us I’m the only one that stayed in Chicago; two left for the military and one for school. The sister with the biggest mouth and biggest attitude headed right for the 'burbs. When I visit her it’s…I just don’t like where she lives. There’s nothing there for me, I guess. She loves it – but then, she’s also the one that got up to the most trouble in her teens and she wanted to keep her kids away from that all.
I don’t get it. Are you fucking with me or something? Look up the word “hyperbole”.
[QUOTE=Lady of the Lake]
Perhaps I’m reading this wrong, but ‘living in lockstep - it comforts them’ this seem rather condescending?
[/QUOTE]
Why? If I see a group of people who all act the same. All dress the same. All went to the same State or Community colleges. All married at the same age. Had kids about the same age. All have similar non-descript jobs in large corporations. All have the same weird aversions to anything outside of their comfort zone. All have the same activities like watching sports and drinking beers. Eat at the same restaurants. Have the same bizarre FOX News inundated world view. What should we be like? Congradulations on realizing your dream of being like everyone else you know? Way to think for yourself (good think you happen to think just like everyone else)? Good job avoiding risk?
I think what we are really talking about here is “Middle America” more than suburbs. The suburbs of NYC for example in Westchester, NY, New Jersey and Connecticut are filled with former Manhattanites who have moved further out to save money and get more space to raise a family. They don’t all turn into fat Stepford retards, but there is that connotation that people leave the city to “settle in” to that suburban lifestyle I mentioned.
The irony, ir burns us. That wouldn’t be your life if you lived in NYC. Over half of New York City residents don’t own a car, and it’s 75% in Manhattan. That would be your life if you lived in the New Jersey suburbs of Manhattan.
I’m not fucking with you, and I know what “hyperbole” means. We’re just using different definitions of culture, and I’m asking you to be more precise. You’re not going to, and I’m going to shut up about it.
And I do all of those things. I moved from a distant suburb to a much closer suburb. I now ride my bike throughout most of the summer to work. I do spend most of my time in my own city; I rarely leave my comfort zone now. I love my tiny little suburb, I love that it borders directly onto the city.
You are right, and I am not disputing you…but that is only one tiny tiny aspect of city living. You did not mention all of the other things that change drastically when you move from small-town or suburbia to the City. It was just one small example that I stated, that when I want to get out of the City, I must fight oodles of traffic, or take public transportation and fight oodles of people.
Besides, I really don’t want to completely do without a car at all in this day and age. Maybe some other people can, but my family and his family are all spread out. We both drive good gas mileage older mid-size sedans, and I plan for my next car to be a hatchback and even better at mileage, but I can’t give up a car entirely.
We have a gigantic country and it seems foolish and silly to all cram ourselves into cities, even when we hate city life.
I’m not sure if it has been mentioned previously, but for some people and families, low density suburbs represent the only form of housing they can afford (even when commuting and car ownership is factored in). In many ways suburbs, despite their obvious drawbacks, make large cities affordable.
I’m not inherently opposed to low-density housing, but I strongly believe that one of the best things suburbs can do for themselves is to diversify their housing stock to allow for more ownership/rental choice which can (theoretically) create a more diverse population. Also easing zoning restrictions on compatible commercial uses within residential areas will also do a lot to mitigate the single-use weakness and lack of redundancy that is rampant in such communities
Some have argued that suburbs, especially those that were devastated during the recession might represent the new ‘slum’. In many situations, the former holder of that title were the inner city regions which (in many jurisdictions) have been seeing a comeback stoked by gentrification.
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. Yeah, I know. Still wondering how this makes him an authority on sanctimony in folk songs. I did not know he was a polymath, but I still don’t know how his supposed authority makes his comment about Little Boxes anything more than an opinion about a folk song. Gee, he must have an asshole, too!
So, whoopdefuckingdo, Tom Lehrer thinks Little Boxes is sanctimonious. Stop the presses! This changes everything!
For another thing, I just visited Chicago for the first time last week and it seriously rocks. Millenium Park is one of the coolest public spaces I have ever seen in my life, and I like pickles on my hotdogs, but DC has free museums, so I’m not sweating it either.
The neighborhood I grew up in was a pretty standard subdivision built in the 50’s-60’s. The houses were all from a menu of 7-10 models. So I had friends who lived in “my” kind of house and other friends who lived in “that kind” of house. But, there was no HOA and no restrictions that I knew of other than the building code and zoning laws. So when my family arrived at this 15-20 year old subdivision, most every house was different in some significant way. Many had additions. Others had interesting paint schemes or at least different landscaping. The previous owner of our house had turned the ordinally sealed off space under the kitchen foundation into a storage area with a door to the back yard. My folks added a second floor deck to the back. All over the neighborhood, the residents had removed much of the cookie-cutter effect.
But, as mentioned above, you can’t get that nowadays thanks to HOAs that prevent any significant changes to your house or property. Conform or be cast out.
As a planner, I now “hate” subdivisions because of the sprawl effect. They almost always require new utility lines and capacity to be added to the county budget. They are insular by design nowadays. The love of gated communities is especially bad in this regard. This insularity generates concentrated traffic loads on certain roads instead of spreading loads out the way an integrated road network does. There were three or four ways to get out of my old neighborhood by car. The developers I deal with now had to be dragged kicking and screaming to agree to make even a second entrance to their proposed subdivisions. (I used past tense because the housing bust killed off that industry down here.) So with only one way in and out of a neighborhood, all the traffic is routed onto one road. Incidentally, people REALLY hate it when another, later, neighborhood is connected to theirs by road. “MY CHILDREN WILL BE RUN DOWN IN THE STREET BY THOSE MANIACS!” Even when the road connection was planned from the begining because the new neighborhood is really just a later phase of the same development.
So, not only do you have all traffic being poured into a few key roads, the general remoteness of many of these neighborhoods means that you are forced into using a car to do any kind of out of house task like working, shopping, or visiting friends.
Nobody buys it when I tell them crime in cities has been down for a long time. And to continue the city lovefest, I visited DC for the first time about two years ago and loved it. Especially the free museums.
You never know what’s going on behind a bland front door…
