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Interesting "Everybody and their mama likes to talk about how the suburbs are going to be dead in XYZ years and how the cities will be where it's at soon!"
No one I know talks about that.
No one we hear about is moving to bigger cities. People are fleeing LA and NYC and moving to Texas to escape the bigger cities. Texans love small towns and when cities get to big they move to rural areas.
So I have no idea what you mean about people talking.
- Suburbs allow for a high quality of life that even moderate-income people can afford.
Sprawl is functionally obsolete (and suddenly not as "affordable") once we quit subsidizing it and go to a per-mile gasoline tax, and/or expanding tolls to currently free roads and highways.
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- If you live in the suburbs and want access to the "culture", amenities, museums and unique restaurants that cities offer then you can just take the train or drive into the city
If that train exists. Most suburbs fight that stuff tooth and nail because they're concerned about "undesirables" taking the train to their development. Or, never mind a train, a bus. So in those places you will drive. Driving is the most dangerous thing you can do in most any city, by the way.
I'd rather live either in a city or out on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Suburbs tend to have most of the city aggravations (high taxes, traffic, and yes - crime) without the amenities beyond shopping strips.
This description does not apply to every place that gets labeled a "suburb" of a nearby larger city. You've got Alexandria, Virginia which was there before Washington, DC across the river, for one example.
Sprawl is functionally obsolete (and suddenly not as "affordable") once we quit subsidizing it and go to a per-mile gasoline tax, and/or expanding tolls to currently free roads and highways.
If that train exists. Most suburbs fight that stuff tooth and nail because they're concerned about "undesirables" taking the train to their development. Or, never mind a train, a bus. So in those places you will drive. Driving is the most dangerous thing you can do in most any city, by the way.
I'd rather live either in a city or out on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Suburbs tend to have most of the city aggravations (high taxes, traffic, and yes - crime) without the amenities beyond shopping strips.
This description does not apply to every place that gets labeled a "suburb" of a nearby larger city. You've got Alexandria, Virginia which was there before Washington, DC across the river, for one example.
Except many people like to live in the suburbs, do not want to live in a city or to be cut off living out in the country. What is your objection that you would want to make driving more difficult and expensive.
You better believe we drive into the cities. Even crazy driver cities like Boston. No problem, just a little adventure. Trains? No, no, and no.
Except many people like to live in the suburbs, do not want to live in a city or to be cut off living out in the country. What is your objection that you would want to make driving more difficult and expensive.
It's not even that I want to. I'm here to say it will happen.
It's like when I say a magnitude-8 earthquake will hit LA one day. It's not that I want it to happen. But it will.
My mileage of course is going to vary on the city/suburb/country question. I have no kids, so schools aren't a consideration, and I don't need a lot of space.
Yeah, suburbs are unsustainable if we want to preserve the natural beauty of this country. A city just uses land in a much more thoughtful way. Everywhere there are suburbs there are millions of acres of possible natural habitat that is destroyed to make way for them.
It's not even that I want to. I'm here to say it will happen.
It's like when I say a magnitude-8 earthquake will hit LA one day. It's not that I want it to happen. But it will.
My mileage of course is going to vary on the city/suburb/country question. I have no kids, so schools aren't a consideration, and I don't need a lot of space.
What makes you so certain these things will happen?
Most of the people bashing suburbs are pretentious idiots with no kids, or people who are rich enough to pay for a quality of life that will never be attainable for the average person.
It's easy to commit to $25,000 per year nursery school when you have a lot of money, but the average person needs an environment where they can raise their kids that doesn't cost so much to avoid a deprived childhood.
Cities work well for the very rich, and to some degree for the poor; not so much for everybody else.
This is the correct answer.
That's why I laugh at all the folks on C-D who love to brag about how urban their trendy, super expensive (overpriced) city neighborhoods are and talk about how "boring," "vanilla,' and "lame" their city's suburbs are.
Most of the people bashing suburbs are pretentious idiots with no kids...
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Originally Posted by Babe_Ruth
...a lot of 'burb-bashing is done by childless hipsters rejecting where they come from. ...
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Originally Posted by southernnaturelover
...People always bash places they know nothing about.
I’m one of the rare pretentious idiots without kids, who doesn’t bash suburbs. Instead, I bash the Heartland, having lived here for some 20 years, and thus having some experience with the place. I’d much rather live in the most anodyne and unimaginative suburb/exurb of a major Coastal city, than in the most glamorous downtown of a second-tier Midwestern city.
Suburbia has become shorthand for the drift, ennui and excess of late 20th century America. To bash suburbia simply means to bash the smug but ultimately ignorant trappings of a post-war America whose affluence was phony and unstable. It’s less a rallying-cry for environmentalism, public transit, recycling, bicycles, coffee-shops and organic food, than a condemnation of the sleepwalking stupor by which America frittered away its multiple advantages, through decades of insular conceit.
Of the many oddities of American history and American life, one that especially starkly obtrudes, is that so many Americans are the sons and daughters of landowners. Their great-grandparents moved to the cities for employment. Their grandparents grew up as city-dwellers. Then, these sons and daughters (and their parents) decamped to the suburbs. In most of the rest of the world, a tiny minority – the aristocracy – owned all of the land. Most people were peasants, working the land, but owning nothing. When they moved to the cities, they didn’t trade bucolic freedom for industrial oppression. On the contrary, they moved to the city to find greater freedom. And quite possibly, this urban migration was only 30 or 50 years ago… not in 1900. So, the attitude towards cities is entirely different. The city wasn’t a gritty place, from which to escape, for more space and better schools. Rather, the city was a place to go for indoor plumbing and electricity.
cities are for rich people, and the service workers that support them
i personally would love to move to a suburban/rural area with 5 acres minimum
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