Why on earth would city folks move to suburbs (Chicago: apartment, work)

[via chicago]

Originally Posted by Drover

If the "streetcar-oriented" model was so sustainable, why isn't it still in use today?

are you telling me if you had the choice you would rather sit in traffic for 2 hours hours, rather than taking a 30 minute train ride? the fact is, people arent being given the choice. This is why the entire northern illinois region needs a master plan about how we are going to deal with transportation in the future. Adding additional lanes does not alleviate congestion: its comparable to an obese man loosening his belt.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by via chicago

are you telling me if you had the choice you would rather sit in traffic for 2 hours hours, rather than taking a 30 minute train ride? the fact is, people arent being given the choice. This is why the entire northern illinois region needs a master plan about how we are going to deal with transportation in the future. Adding additional lanes does not alleviate congestion: its comparable to an obese man loosening his belt.

You pretend like people's only choices are a half-hour train ride or a 2-hour car drive, and then base the rest of your post on this ludicrous premise. It's barely worth a thoughtful response.

If anything is unsustainable, it's trying to move more and more and more people into a condensed employment core every day. The continuing decentralization of metropolitan areas has made that plain. What seems to be lost in the whole "sprawl" debate is that the major reason metropolitan areas keep growing is because our population keeps growing, and we can't keep trying to shove everyone into the same place every workday. Much of the point of spreading it out is so that we don't have to try to funnel more and more and more people into the same condensed area. Contrary to your false dilemma, people have more choices than ever about where to live and where to work.

[via chicago]

whatever. keep eating up cornfields until we have subdivisions hitting cedar rapids. im not going to agree with you, you're not going to agree with me.

[rgb123]

this just in....its true, people actually live AND work in the suburbs, and only go to Chicago on occasion to spend their money.

more people would take public transportation if public transportation connected suburbs better, metra is great if you are going to the city. But not everyone is going to the city.

You know, I've said it before but I will say it again. Chicago is not the only 'city' in the area. A lot of the "exurbs" were populated places in their own right before they became suburbs or exurbs. It IS natural as the city grows these places fill in, and by the way its not all cornfields either, we have wetlands, lakes, moraines....bogs.

And white flight happened before most of us were born. Many of us are children or grandchildren of that decision, and many of us moved back to the city to "try to do the right thing"

But who are you to say that home can't be where you were born, where you went to school, and where you went to school with your friends? Who are you to say those people dont belong there and should be in the city?

And really, this argument is not as simple as you make it. I agree with Drover....there is so much more to this debate than the tiring, old ......suburbs are bad, sprawl is bad, density is good.

Open space is just as necessary to a sustainable enviornment as better transportation decisions. And until public transportation is better, people will depend on their cars....and until cars are engineered better and inexpensive enough to be feasible and "clean" (Which I believe is quite near) people will do what they have to, to get around. People dont want to spend $5 for gas......people will make smarter decisions but there are few now.....that are feasible.

And for now, the jobs are moving to the northwest suburbs.....or Mexico. Should everyone move to Lakeview and Wicker Park and put themselves through hell to get to work? You have to find just the right place in walking distance to the metra, and hope your job is also walking distance to the train when you get there....or ride a bike in the snow or depend on pace. It works for a small percentage of people.

Its not so black and white......and I've been working in planning for several years....and its not like no one is working on it or thinking about it....

spend five years in government doing this and see if you think the same way as you do now.

[NYrules]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

Via Chicago, if this board would allow me to give you more positive feedback I would! That's a great collection of quotes.

I've said before that there are suburbs, and there are Suburbs. Popular city neighborhoods like Lakeview were streetcar suburbs before the city annexed them. I personally only have a problem with suburbs that are built exclusively for automobile use (which is basically anything built after World War II). Places like Golf Road and Butterfield road offer a lot of different shops and ammenities, but the vast congested landscape of arterial roads and parking lots is a MISERABLE place to be with no sense of place. Could you imagine being a pedestrian in that commercial landscape trying to buy three things from different stores? People would think you were crazy.

The public realm in today's suburbs is non-existent outside of the privately owned domain of parking lots and shopping malls. Most newer subdivisions don't even have sidewalks! These residential neighborhoods act to separate and isolate people even more, and destroy our sense of community. Houses become islands to themselves in a sea of oversized lawns, and people stay away from each other. Most people only experience the public realm via their automobile in these conditions, with maybe a walk through the neighborhood once or twice a week (dodging cars the entire way, by the way). Where is the place to bump elbows with your common man? Where are the public squares and walkable rows of shops?

And don't even get me started on the recent residential architecture in the suburbs... Houses are getting uglier and uglier every year. We are now seeing every imaginable historical style bastardized and combined in horific ways on the new suburban monstrosities! At least the ranch houses of the past showed some restraint!

Yes for some reason as people become weathier, they like to become more isolated from society by doing things like hiding their houses behind tons of trees and bushes back in the woods for what they call "privacy". My question is privacy from what??? Being a normal social human being where you and your kids can mingle with the neighbors? I see it time in and time out where homes around Orland Park and Palos Park near me are being labeled as prestigous and one of the selling features the "for sale" signs on the vacant lots reads is "lots of privacy!" and from the street all I can see is a solid wall of trees. Just what I would want to do, build a million dollar home that nobody could see.

[Lookout Kid]

People aren't really being given the choice. The choice is to buy what you can afford in an area you can get to work and send your kids to school. If the city offered that for less than $800,000 per house, I'm sure more would jump on the opportunity.

The choice to develop sprawl as it exists today is largely in the hands of developers and transportation planners. In fact, today's suburbs are planned more around transportation systems than anything else. As soon as a new freeway is built, developers plan their subdivisions along the arterial and feeder roads. They plan the cul-de-sacs and drainage ponds which funnel bottlenecked traffic onto the arterial roads. These roads further funnel bottlenecked traffic onto Freeways, and soon you have a system where you can't get from point A to point B without taking the same route as everyone else. Street grids and sidewalks are a thing of the past as everything is planned around automobiles traveling at fast speeds. These are HORRIBLE places to live, but at least you get your 3000+ square feet with a three-car garage and several bathrooms.

[rgb123]

developers have the most power (in my opinion) as do corporations (such as railroads, not the passenger kind...). But what a lot of people fail to see is that the suburbs and exurbs are a conglomerate of separate municipal governments with their own agenda's and zoning codes.

In some cases, you have city's (and they are city's) where the planners are very organized and the zoning is very tough (you can't develop in such and such place "because fill in the blank") but often their hands are tied, or their agenda is more based on revenue than it is on coservation or sustainablity.

A master plan is incredibly hard to make, implement, and enforce when you have over 100 different municpalities, counties, and a metro area involved.

Even then, it may have zero power, even with all those entitites to fight a very wealthy developer, rail company (the freight kind) or some other land use purpose that the general population finds distasteful or unsustainable.

It can be VERY hard to prove, to a judge that a develoment will be harfmul for whatever reason.

[nanannie]

Originally Posted by NYrules

Yes for some reason as people become weathier, they like to become more isolated from society by doing things like hiding their houses behind tons of trees and bushes back in the woods for what they call "privacy". My question is privacy from what??? Being a normal social human being where you and your kids can mingle with the neighbors? I see it time in and time out where homes around Orland Park and Palos Park near me are being labeled as prestigous and one of the selling features the "for sale" signs on the vacant lots reads is "lots of privacy!" and from the street all I can see is a solid wall of trees. Just what I would want to do, build a million dollar home that nobody could see.

I dont think its negative at all- but a choice. I live on 6 acres,lots of trees,lots of privacy. I can skinny dip, have coffee in the morning outside in my pjs, stroll around my property enjoying nature, never hear a peep from neighbors, (but know them just fine ). My son goes down the drive on his bike and visits his pal on the block. No, no trick or treaters, but we have always gone to a relatives party for that.I think its a real privelege to have that space,nature,animals, peace and beauty and be within an hour of a big city. I could care less that people cant see my house when they drive by,WHO CARES??? . If you want open space and neighbors that can watch your every move, fine,but thats not my idea of ideal living-I'll take the privacy--fiile this under 'different strokes'.

[aragx6]

The exurbs are not sustainable because we are running out of gas. My boyfriend took an Energy Systems and Resources class and it would scare the crap out of most people. The major scientific minds in this country know that we are running out of oil more quickly than alternatives are being developed.

[jonjj]

one word: children