I spent the first 25 years of my life in New York City. I’ve spent the last 23 in Austin, Texas, primarily in neighborhoods that were “suburban,” even though they were all well within the city limits.
I was happy in New York, and can name many things I loved about living there. I’ve been equally happy in Austin.
But one thing I can tell you is, the glorious “diversity” of New York is vastly overrated. Yes, in a city of 8 million people, you’ll find representatives of every ethnic, religious and socioeconomic group imaginable. and yet… you’d be amazed at how LITTLE contact each of these groups has with the others! Even in a huge city, people find ways to surround themselves almost exclusively with other people who are just like them!
Blue collar Italian Catholics live with other blue collar Italian Catholics, and send their kids to Catholic schools. Well to-do Jewish doctors and lawyers live among other well-to-do Jewish doctors and lawyers. Artsy gay men live in neighborhoods populated largely by other artsy gay men. None associate much with each other, let alone with Arabs, Dominicans, Pakistanis, Koreans, Puerto Ricans or Nigerians.
It’s incredibly counterintutive, but the quasi-suburban neigborhood I live in now has a FAR more diverse population (ethnically, religiously and economically) than the urban, “sustainable” New York City neighborhood I grew up in.
How long ago did you grow up here? I have lived in NYC for the past twelve years having grown up in NY suburbs and have experienced precisely the opposite.
This idea that suburbs are a 1950s result of cheap gas and autos is too simplified to be taken at face value. I grew up in a town that’s properly called a suburb of New York City – only it was my grandmother, who never owned a car, who moved there back in the 1920s. People got to and from the city via public transit – trains and (mostly ) trolleys, and leter, buses. Most of them didn’t commute into the city daily, but the businesses out there were directly related to the city, and people asociated with them would regularly make trips in.
The newspapers and magazines came from the city. Later, radio, then TV, then cable originated from the cities. The suburbs were bound to the city culturally. But these extra-urban communities existed long before the post-WWII boom.
Of course, that postwar boom fueled a larger exodus to the suburbs. You can read about it in sociological studies, but it’s there pretty clearly in the pop culture of the times, too. The point is, those 1950s and 1960s refugees from the city weren’t exactly fleeing into an empty wilderness – they were going into or near to already existing satellites of the urbs that had existed for decades, and without cheap gas to sustain them. I really do think those original communities are perfectly “sustainable”. Heck, one of the budinesses in my hometown was shipping fruit from the local orchards to urban markets.
I will give you examples from the Boston and New York metro areas as they are the cities I am most familiar with.
By “city” I am typically referring to the urban residental neighborhoods immediately surrounding the Central Business District or “core” of the city (where the big skyscrapers usually are). These neighborhoods usually consist of multifamily walk-ups, brownstones and town houses in older neighborhoods or newer “luxury” condos or appartment towers. The neighborhoods are typically self contained in that you don’t usually need a car on a day to day basis, your amenities like groceries, restaurants, cafes, bars and dry cleaners are all within walking distance and there is easy access to transportation. The Back Bay, Beacon Hill and North End are examples of city neighborhoods in Boston and all of Manhattan, Hoboken, NJ and DUMBO in Brooklyn are examples in NYC.
Cities typically have an outer ring of neighborhoods that are more suburban and residential, but still technically within the city limits. These may blend with the “inner suburbs” that are outside the city proper. These neighborhoods typically consist of single or multi family homes with the occassional appartment complex. They may have their own small downtown or main strip (usually clustered around a train station) but they are not really conducive for walking and you need a car. Brookline, Waltham, Malden and Dedham are examples in Boston. Outer parts of Brooklyn or Queens or Weehawken, NJ are examples around NYC.
Up until now, you are still basically living “city” style. Appartments, townhouses, public transportation, etc. A little futher out, you are now entering the “uban sprawl”, and that is what people are really talking about when they say “suburbs”. Look at this map ofParamus, New Jersey. You can see it even more clearly here in this map of Phoenix, Az. What are you are seeing is the typical suburban layout. Basically a grid of highways, 1 mile on a side. Each 1 mile block is bisected by a main road. And then each half mile block is filled in with feeder roads to suburban “tract housing” or office parks. The highways are typically lined with strip malls and shopping parks and chain restaurants. It’s all very geometric and has an effect of looking like the surface of the Death Star. New Jersey is a lot more hilly and a lot of roads and towns were already there so it’s more organic looking than Phoenix, but the premise is still the same.
That’s what people hate. That sort of endless wasteland of unremarkable generic buildings and stores. There’s no sense of “place” or “neighborhood”. You are geographically isolated to your subdivision usually by a physical barrier plus the 6 lane highway grid. Then within your subdivision, you probably rarely see your neighbors as there are no common areas where people congregate. My experience living in those types of communities has been you basically drive from work to your house and never interact with another human being. That’s how they are designed.
Right. I think what you’d said echoes my earlier post. It’s not suburbs themselves that are unsustainable. Rather it’s the more recent suburbs, especially some of the more recent ones from the 50’s on that make walking anywhere virtually impossible, that are the problem.
Aside from the economic sustainability (or lack thereof) of suburbs, how about people who don’t like suburbs for other reasons? To me and a lot of my young friends, the suburbs seem like a place for middle-aged people to go when they’re married and looking to settle down. Suburbs almost seem mass-produced. (Warning: generalization follows) They all have the same sorts of neighborhoods with the same sorts of houses. They will all have a Wal-Mart, a pharmacy, a movie theater, and a grocery store. And they’re so boring.
Well…I’ll try and make this short: the inner suburbs aren’t The Suburbs. They never were. They were just…suburbs. They were already pretty full up before WW2 ended and not much more building could be done, at least not in any metro big and dense enough to need it.
The classic suburb is not the archetype; the Levittown-type, GI-loan, farm-field development is. It was a new phenomenon in every way, architecturally, financially, and especially socially - a chance for young people whose lives had been mostly poor and regimented to create a world in their own image.
The pre-WW2 suburbs were not nearly so much of a socially relevant mass movement as the “GI” suburbs. They were only the continuation of a long trend, they happened too early to attract much academic study, and they were mostly settled by a smallish, established middleclass - not a huge new class in the process of being created.
Well, if you drive, there won’t be any long cold walks to the train station, will there? And if you, like many city dwellers (and myself), give up your car, then parking, traffic, and a good portion of crime simply disappear. One of the great points of a city is that you don’t have to park or fight traffic or worry about your car getting broken into. You don’t need a car because you’re already there (I’m a 95).
This is a solid explanation and also conforms to my own experience. Perhaps this image from Edward Scissorhands help drive it home. Suburbs can be bleak places indeed.
Did I associate with many people outside my ethnic/religious group as a kid in New York City? Nope!
My house, my school and my Church were all on the same block, which meant 90% of my life was spent on one block. And until I got to college, 90% of the people I knew were either Irish or Italian.
And I was not atypical. That’s what I’m getting at. People who wax poetic about the diversity of the big city probably DON’T associate much with people outside their own groups… except to the extent that adventurous yuppies and foodies seek out new ethnic restaurants.
This definitely used to be true. My dad grew up on the lower east side, and if he wanted to hang out with the Polish Catholics or the Italian kids, they would have kicked his ass. I get the sense that you have been out of the city for awhile. It is hardly a multicultural utopia, but things are very different.
That’s because you are a student and live three to an appartment. Chances are you probably grew up in a middle class suburb (as I did). Pretty much your experiences until you went to college consisted of living in communities that consisted primarily of married 30 - 50 year olds and their 18 and under children. So you probably naturally assume that most adults return to the suburbs to raise children.
That’s really what most people did. Since the 50s, you had the whole “white flight” phenomenon where anyone who could moved out of the cities into the suburbs. For a long time, most cities were associated with crime and urban decay. It wasn’t really until the 90s with “new urbanism”, Guiliani and shows like Friends, Seinfield and Sex and the City that portrayed people living in Manhattan did it become trendy to live in the cities again. The decade before they were making movies about walling the city off and using it as a prison. Now they are associated more with culture and excitement.
I think New York City is an exception though. Mostly because you really are better off not having a car if you live there. Any other city, including Boston, you probably need a car. And if you need a car and are driving anyway, why live in a cramped appartment when you can live a few more miles out in a bigger place with parking?
There’s no “almost” about it. Tract housing is exactly that. Mass produced houses. They bring 4 or 5 different plans with a couple of different options (window casement “Bravo” instead of “Delta”) and then mix and match them dozens of times in the same subdivision. You get the same big box stores and chain restaurants.
Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go get some coffee and then go to the roof lounge of my office to stare at the NY skyline.
The same phenomenon can be seen in Toronto. Sure, the city’s big and dense and ethnically diverse, but ethnic groups tend to congregate together; Koreans stick with Koreans, Greeks with Greeks, and so on. There’s still pressure to marry only within the in group. They set up their own shops. They own their own businesses and, law be damned, will hire only their own nationality. In the suburbs, ethnic diversity drops off a bit (as compared to the big city - everywhere is more diverse than it was 30, 40 years ago) but the separation of groups also falls away.
I suspect what’s at play here are economic and social factors. As waves of immigrants come into the country their first step tends to be in big cities, but they entrench themselves in isolated communities, an understandable thing when you’re now. As a particular group does through a few generations their weath grows and they beging to spread and many move into suburban areas, but having been in the country longer (and, increasingly, having been BORN in the country and knowing no other) their ethnic identity becomes less important and they mingle with other ethnicities.
The cookie cutter suburbia is typically only in the first few years - that is what my neighborhood looks like. However, now that my area is approaching 10 years - the houses, yards, etc. are beginning to look different. People have taken out the sod and put in coi ponds, or native grasses, or a few fruit trees (I am ripping out grass this weekend to build a large scale vegetable garden). Yes, when we first moved in it was bland hell. Over time, thought, it has changed. Our big box grocer sold out to a locally owned ethnic/organic combo store for example.
Many suburbs take time to develop a personality. My suburban lifestyle is extremely diverse in ethnicity. Culture is available through several theaters, art house movie options, and a symphony. I will admit that it requires a car however.
Finally - many of us head out for our kids. We want a yard for a dog, and a park that is safe. We want our kids to ride their bike to school through a neighborhood.
