And anti-suburban sentiment has long been a staple of left-wing rhetoric.
Regards,
Shodan
Interesting article on why and how cities skew towards the Democratic Party: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/02/what-makes-some-cities-vote-democratic/4598/
Why? That’s entirely reasonable. You can have a walkable community without the huge density of a city, and as has been pointed out, not everyone wants to live in a place with that much bustle. Like miss elizabeth, I think anything to cut down on car use and encourage walkable communities is a great thing, regardless of if we’re talking about a big city (like where I live, Chicago), a smaller city, a suburb, or a town/village surrounded by farmland.
For that, see Peter Calthorpe’s Pedestrian Pockets idea – walkable density in a suburban development.
Not the same; that only goes back to the 1950s – conservative anti-urbanism goes back to the 19th Century at least. In fact, it goes back to 18th-Century Britain at the very least and one can find antecedents in ancient Rome.
I live in a neighborhood built in the late 50s in what was then the western part of Little Rock, Arkansas. While I’m technically not in a suburb I do get many of the inconveniences of living in one. There are no sidewalks, the nearest real grocery store in 1.1 miles away and if I want to walk north on the main road I’m afraid of getting hit by a car while walking through the underpass to get north of highway 630. But if you want to buy a three bedroom one/two bath house you’re looking at anywhere between $80-$110,000 dollars depending on the condition.
I looked at condos in the River Market area of downtown Little Rock today and was a bit shocked. I can get a 959 square foot 1 bedroom 1 bathroom condo for $189,000 dollars. It’s near the main library, five museums including the Clinton Presidential Library, a few bars and restaurants and one trendy little restaurant/grocer called the Copper Grill & Grocery which I could not afford to buy from very often. Since I don’t go to bars for entertainment any more, there’s no place close to me for groceries, and, quite frankly, I’ve been to those museums in the area many times so the only real advantage to living in that area would be that I could walk to work. Which, I’ll grant you, is a pretty neat advantage. But I can get more house for less money 20 minutes to the west of the River Market. Hell, even factoring in the cost of maintaining a vehicle it’s more expensive for me to live in the urban center of Little Rock.
And while my neighborhood does look like a suburb it is entrenched in the city and has many of the same problems. My first month here my air compressor was stolen, someone smashed my car window and rifled through my stuff and I had to call 911 because there was a brawl on my front lawn involving 15+ young men in their late teens/early 20s. I’ve lived here six years and have had my car broken into four times. Thankfully most of the thieves have been courteous enough not to smash my window. I won’t walk to the grocery store because my neighborhood gets rougher the further south you go and I don’t have any desire to get mugged.
I think people are a little unfair when it comes to crime in the inner city. I’ve been living in Arkansas for about twelve years now and there are some rural areas and small towns that are pretty goddamn scary. And there are areas in New York and Chicago that are perfectly nice and you don’t have a lot of crime. I tend to associate that kind of thing with poverty rather than a city versus suburb thing.
No cite, but I did once read that, adjusted per capita, there is actually far more violent crime in rural than urban areas (nothing said of the suburbs).
I tend to think the latter. Over my lifetime the population of L.A. (city) has nearly doubled and the county population has gone up by about half; I find it hard to believe it isn’t more as I look around me. Up until about 1980 or so there wasn’t much difference politically between L.A. and Orange County. After that, as the population increased the pendulum started swinging the other way, to the point where L.A. votes reliably Democrat in national and state elections.
Surprisingly, I came across one of the harshest rejections of suburbia I have ever seen in an article about something else entirely.
And I don’t think that’s overly harsh; it tells it like it is.
Given that you have to count Detroit as one of your urban areas I have my doubts. You also have to figure out how someone defines urban in terms of crime statistics. Plano, Texas might be a suburb of Dallas but it’s got over 250,000 people living in it. It’s an urban area even if it isn’t the same density as New York or Mega City 1.
And, no, a quick Google search seems to indicate that there is more crime in urban rather than rural areas. And the gap for violent crimes is even higher.
Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
William Jennings Bryan
But Bryan was feared by Conservative big business, who threatened their workers that they’d shut down their factories the day after Election Day if he won, just like we were hearing in 2012.
Adjusted per capita? Remember, the rural population is much smaller.
Well, Bryan was a social conservative and an economic populist; nearest modern equivalent would be Pat Buchanan.
Not exactly supporting his claim, but I did find this:
That’s nice that you have an SUV. Congrats.
Have you considered the enormous number of people on the planet who are not you? The elderly, kids, disabled people, broke people, DUI people, fitness folks, eco freaks, evening strollers, etc. who may prefer to or have to walk places?
It is fully possible to build walkable suburbs. It’s not that hard or much more expensive. I know we are just realizing now that it’s important and things are improving, but I do mourn for all of the roads we’ve already laid in poorly planned communities.
That’s not too surprising. If I got into a serious accident while living in rural Arkansas it might have taken me up to an hour to get to the nearest hospital. That’s assuming the ambulance got to me within 20 minutes.
So if you’re living in a rural area you’re more likely to commit suicide by firearm and if you’re in an urban area you’re more likely to die by firearm homicide.
Either way, you’re not getting your cleaning deposit back.
I’ll be 36 next month, I could see it going either way.
Charlotte, we have both (new and shiny and dirty and grimy).
Except as you get even older, suburbs again make no sense. It’s probably great for a 5 year old to live in the suburbs, but that doesn’t mean the 12 year old who needs a ride to her friend’s house thinks it’s so great. I know my niece and nephew were jealous of their city cousins those years. Every one of my relatives who lived in the city was able to age in place past the point where suburban relatives had to move to retirement communities or to live with their children.Living in the city won’t keep you from becoming so sick or disabled that you need actual nursing home care , but basically healthy people who live in cities and towns can function by using public transportation and/or cabs even after they can no longer drive.
And about walkable suburbs- I think that non-walkability is one of the defining characteristics of a suburb, whether that non-walkability is because of distance or the layout of the roads or because getting anywhere requires walking along or crossing a four to six lane road with highway speed traffic. If *most *kids can walk to school, to the playgrounds, to the store, etc it might be a small village ,town or city but it's not really a suburb. It's not like the only possibilities are big cities, suburbs or rural areas and anything that's neither big city nor country must automatically be a suburb.
I will vehemently deny that all day long.
Wait, what? You can look at my posts upthread and see that I am not one who is just reflexively dismissing everything conservatives say about liberals and their attitude towards suburbs. But this one is just bizarre. Your premise is that when gas is cheap and abundant and people drive large vehicles solo on long trips to work or shopping centres, that is a scenario that environmentalists should have no problem with? Really? I almost don’t know what to say to that.
Almost. I will just point out that in the late '90s, when gas was extremely cheap and big vehicles were all the rage, every environmentalist I knew was agitating for a big increase in gas taxes to discourage people from using so much. Burning gasoline hurts the environment. Sprawl and the decimation of habitat hurts the environment. No environmentalist worth his or her salt likes “cheap, abundant” gasoline, I assure you.
Just…wow.
I see Marley23 downthread is noting much the same thing. I wonder if there are many people on the right who have this basic and monumental a misunderstanding of what the environmentalist agenda is about? It’s fascinating to ponder that and what it might mean for policy discourse.
Okay, now I have to come back to the reality check side. Are you being disingenuous or are these your actual questions?
There are tons of high-quality photos of kids playing in fire hydrants, and it is just the sort of iconic thing that lots of people love (myself included). I suspect the people who like them are more likely than not to be liberal, because the typical conservative will see that as a breach of order and just kind of a distasteful urban ethnic way of living.
“Ethnic mural” may be a maladroit way of describing it, but I think we all know what is meant by that, and it is something else that does warm the cockles of many a liberal’s heart, again including mine:
A series commissioned by the city of Baltimore
IMO those are a lot cooler looking than the dorky shit that many conservatives like to look at.
That is seriously fucked up and so pointless. Even if it is not the fault in some cases of the people making these commutes, we should be trying much harder as a society to put housing and work near each other.
My wife’s commute is 1.8 miles, and we have seriously contemplated moving to within a half-mile to make it easier.
Very true. I always hung out with urbanite liberal types in college, but I often would visit their suburban homes with them and their parents clearly disapproved of going into the city, and it was also clear that they never did so themselves unless they had to, or perhaps occasionally for a baseball game. Most of my wife’s family is like this as well.
So much this.
Speak for yourself–I recently turned 44 and would love that.
As madmonk noted, this appears to be a myth. Which is of course very bad news for conservatives who are hoping for Millennials to come over to their side in their later years.
But that just means the generation that was born in the '80s is more liberal than other generations. It doesn’t mean they will later get conservative. The generation that was born in the '60s was conservative when young and conservative now.
You do recognize that as a problem, don’t you? But that’s another discussion.