Why on earth would city folks move to suburbs (Morton: skyscraper, transplants)

[Chicago60614]

Originally Posted by rgb123

Look at Europe....Holland for instance, its almost entirely urban and "filled in" with large tracts of farms. The difference is they have excellent transportation systems.

There is no reason the suburbs and exurbs cannot be sustainable. The transportation systems are the problem. We need more trains with more connections, not just spokes to the city.

We also need to preserve open space, and people need open space. Density and "building up" looks good on paper....but not neccessarily in reality.

Cornfields are not exactly fully sustainable either, and are not the only use of land outside of the urban core.

The suburbs may not have been expertly planned, but a lot of the resolution is not to abolish them, but to make them more walkable in themself, bikable, and to connect cities better (cities, meaning all of the urban cores of the suburbs and exurbs).

This has already happened or improved SO much in the last few years. People get it and want that to happen . To look down one's nose at this situation does sound simply snobbish or uninformed.

The Netherlands land area is only 12% urban - the rest is mostly agricultural.

They fit 16,000,000 people into 16,500 square miles.

89% of the Netherlands lives in urban areas.

16,500 square miles X 12% urban areas = 1,980 square miles.

16,000,000 X 89% urban = 14,240,000 urban people.

That's roughly 7,191 people per square mile.

Chicagoland:

8,700,000 people living in 2,122 square miles. This is around 4,100 people per square mile.

Chicagoland without the city (which is covered by good bus/train service)

5,800,000 people living in 1,885 square miles. This is around 3,076 people per square mile in the suburbs.

The Netherlands cram 75% more people into their urban areas than Chicago at the moment. This is why mass transit works so well for them, people are much more concentrated, and their land use is that much more concentrated. Our suburban population drops MUCH faster when you're out of the central city then theirs does. I've been to the Netherlands 7 times, and have been all over the country.

Their houses are closer together, their jobs are closer together. In Chicago you have vast areas with maybe 2,000 people per square mile. Then you have random commercial and office center spaced out. It doesn't make as much sense to run busses or trains, because you have such a lower amount of people who could potentially use that specific bus/train given their situation. Metra works well because there are roughly 800,000 people in downtown Chicago every day - and that covers a very small area.

It's all about tightening things up as far as land use, otherwise you pretty much HAVE to drive everywhere or it just doesn't make sense.

[via chicago]

Originally Posted by Chicago60614

It's all about tightening things up as far as land use, otherwise you pretty much HAVE to drive everywhere or it just doesn't make sense.

Thats my point

[rgb123]

I'm not talking about the Netherlands as a whole, I'm talking about the Ranstad, the major cities and towns in Holland, not the more rural provinces.

Of course they built up and outward differently, that is not my point. But there are some major similiarites, and we can learn from them

To completley change our housing and neighborhoods to match theirs is not the point. The point is they have many smaller towns between major cities, all with their own identity and livliehood, and its mostly urban (in the true sense of the definition of urban, which means a populated place...in America that translates to about 2000 people or something, its very low but that is the defnition of urban). They have excellent transportation systems connected the small cities, big cities, and medium cities.

We are more spread out (within our individual cities, not in general), we have bigger houses, we are SuperSized in comparsion to most things in Europe, especially Holland.

But the transportation is a key. We need better connections.

The Dutch cities are a nice model, but neither are they perfect. Most of the population lives in the Randstad and things are changing theire too. People want more open space.

We have that here, we have the open space. At least a good amount of it. We need better trains.

The freighters own the rails in this country...its the main reason Amtrak is not totally reliable and I think we are lucky to have metra....but after spending 6 months in Holland its like night and day compared to here.

[St Starseed]

Would anyone disagree that, even after 60 years of suburban growth and flight from major metropolitan areas, that we still have yet to find a way to offer alternative means of living that make any sense?

You basically, as this particular forum thread suggests, have two choices: a large city or a suburb. Sadly, there are headaches with both, as we all know, and I feel like it comes down to making a choice (for example) between spending $20 in gas and parking every day to idle away your life in traffic for two hours, or accept lower-quality schools, less space and smaller residences in order to have the city experience and be closer to your fellow man.

The fact that we are even faced with this choice is silly. I certainly don't have the expertise to offer any big-picture solutions to this problem, but there must be some answers out there for American cities that don't require us to blow it all up and start over.

I have all the respect in the world for urban and suburban planners, but I know of no city that's gotten it right. This is frustrating, because I too believe exurbs are wasteful and not particularly well thought-out, and I believe major cities are ill-suited for the automobiles that will continue to enter them over the next 10/20/30 years.

Being born near Detroit, I've watched the decay of the inner-ring suburbs and the buildup of far-flung exurbs, and it's so sad. While Chicago seems to have done a decent job avoiding at least the decay part, there is something fundamentally wrong with needing to spend 80 minutes to get from home to work.

Can we work closer to home/at-home, as in pre-automobile days? Can we create hubs of satisfying activity in a well-thought-out manner (downtown Naperville seems like a decent example) that are easy to get to, even if it's by car? Can we make a point to make sure there are USEFUL modes of transportation to hotbeds of excitement (United Center, for example) before we commit to building those hotbeds of excitement? (Again, Detroit example: When the Pistons built a new arena in a suburb called Auburn Hills some 25 miles from Detroit's city center in the late 80s, the builders and team owners basically plopped a roofed structure in the middle of a field that happened to be near I-75. Of course, the I-75 nearness was critical, but guess what happens on gamenights? The freeway is a parking lot. It's silly.)

Sorry for the rant; the city vs. suburb debate is as interesting as it is painful, as the really good solutions seem so far away.

[M TYPE X]

Originally Posted by St Starseed

When the Pistons built a new arena in a suburb called Auburn Hills some 25 miles from Detroit's city center in the late 80s, the builders and team owners basically plopped a roofed structure in the middle of a field that happened to be near I-75. Of course, the I-75 nearness was critical, but guess what happens on gamenights? The freeway is a parking lot. It's silly.)

You may consider it silly, but it's really annoying. There's nothing to do but sit in the car, moving nowhere, so you can see a bunch of tall sweaty guys run around? And pay for the privilege?

If I'm sitting on the inbound Kennedy on a Saturday night, I get the impression people are going to clubs or parties ... not heading out to a parking lot and back home. Whether Auburn Hills or downtown Detroit, it's the same thing. You need foot traffic. Don't mention the People Mover - it's a joke, except it's a 20-year-joke, so it's a scary one.

[St Starseed]

It's silly, annoying, and preposterous. (For the record, I've pretty much sworn off pro basketball in person...the last straw was the ads on the LED fascias competing with the game for my attention.)

Yeah, the People Mover was an exercise in a terrible idea. Do people need to go from building to building in downtown Detroit on a consistent basis? No one lives there anyway...(well, very few).

[SloopyJ]

Originally Posted by via chicago

And I totally agree that by and large developers are to blame.

Interesting thread, folks, but I have to challenge this point, which has come up by a few folks. How are developers to blame, exactly? Yes, developers are building spread-out tract housing in far-flung exurbs, but obviously there are plenty of people who want those homes. Should the developers not build those homes out of sheer principle? Personal choice be damned, legal zoning and entitlements be damned, they should all just agree not to build any more exurban homes? Or do you think that the developers should build greater density out there - which, by the way, they'd be happy to do if zoning allowed it?

On another note, I had the chance to do some work in Bakersfield, CA, a few years ago and was intrigued to find that despite a weak job market and a 2-hour commute to LA, Bakersfield was the fastest-growing town in CA. Turns out the reason was affordable housing, and the fact that most of those people weren't commuting to LA. They were commuting to places like Valencia, considered a distant suburb of LA, where job growth was occurring.

That's what I see happening here. The I-88 corridor, Schaumburg, Lincolnshire, etc. will grow as employment centers, and folks will be willing to commute 40 minutes to get to those places. Which will put them 2 hours from the city. In a cheap house. May not be sustainable forever, but will be the way it goes for the foreseeable future.

And no, I don't like it. I'm a city-dweller who is moving to an inner burb soon on a Metra line, and I can't stand the exurbs. But I don't expect everyone to have the same feelings that I have.

[bungalowdweller]

[quote=BRU67;2141032]I personally think that ex-burbs are wasteful on many levels, encourage racial segregation. I also think their appeal is going to diminish over time as more and more minorities discover their benefits. QUOTE]

I wonder how much racial segregation is really racial in nature and not cultural.

No one questions when a Puerto Rican person wants to live in Humboldt Park or a Mexican person wants to live in Cicero. Quite often that person will say he/she wants to move there precisely because their group dominates the community and they want to contribute to their ethnic community. Why is it considered wrong when white people feel the same way?

Many young white ethnics have moved to exurbia because they no longer felt safe or welcome in their former communities. Whatever happened to freedom of association?

Is it morally wrong for people to choose to segregate based on race? If so, why are elite subdivisions in suburban Atlanta filled with black professionals considered desirable when towns like Naperville that are racially integrated but majority white criticized? Why is it that when whites choose to live together they are almost universally condemned as racist but when Asian, Black or Hispanics choose to do the same they are applauded?

As a person who has lived in major cities my entire life, I am NOT advocating discrimination in any form. I have spent most of my life in mixed communities. However, I believe that something is lost when people are not allowed to live where and with whom their conscience dictates.

I believe that many people move out, not because of color, but culture. It is not my culture to graffitti buildings, throw trash around, and race my car in the alley. This happens in my town. This is a culture of lawlessness which is encouraged by a certain segment of society. I have no further desire to work to "improve" my community when the majority like it just the way it is.

How many others move out for just the same cultural issues?

[HeadedWest]

Originally Posted by St Starseed

... I feel like it comes down to making a choice (for example) between spending $20 in gas and parking every day to idle away your life in traffic for two hours, or accept lower-quality schools, less space and smaller residences in order to have the city experience and be closer to your fellow man.

You're assuming that 'being closer to your fellow man' is a positive. I think I plug into that long-standing American tradition of 'the further away I am from my neighbors, the better'.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by SloopyJ

Interesting thread, folks, but I have to challenge this point, which has come up by a few folks. How are developers to blame, exactly? Yes, developers are building spread-out tract housing in far-flung exurbs, but obviously there are plenty of people who want those homes. Should the developers not build those homes out of sheer principle? Personal choice be damned, legal zoning and entitlements be damned, they should all just agree not to build any more exurban homes? Or do you think that the developers should build greater density out there - which, by the way, they'd be happy to do if zoning allowed it?

That's OK, developers here in the city get blamed for building too dense in residential areas and increasing traffic, oh and for driving up property values and driving the poor out too. They just can't catch a break, so they'll just keep on building as long as people keep buying and they'll take it from both sides as they head to the bank.