"Urban rejects" priced out of NYC are clearly absorbing Nassau (and now W. Suffolk), are our Wonder Years behind us? (Brookhaven: houses, neighborhood)
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I dunno. Still alot of nice towns left in Nassau and Suffolk imo. Rockville Centre, Merrick, Islip, Sayville, Garden City, Smithtown, Syosset, Port Jefferson, Stony Brook, Roslyn, Dix Hills, Babylon, Oceanside etc. etc. etc....
I dunno. Still alot of nice towns left in Nassau and Suffolk imo. Rockville Centre, Merrick, Islip, Sayville, Garden City, Smithtown, Syosset, Port Jefferson, Stony Brook, Roslyn, Dix Hills, Babylon, Oceanside etc. etc. etc....
Queens too...its just too expensive.
Little Neck, Forest Hills,Douglaston,Bayside,Jamaica Estates,Malba,Whitestone,College Point etc
LI has really stagnated as far as development since the early 1960s. Ironically, the era (1950s-1960s) when people seem to recall that whimsical, rustic Long Island was also the time that most of it was destroyed and replaced by tract housing....I don't buy the whole "where has my island gone?" rhetoric for exactly that reason. Even the baby boomers BARELY ever sniffed a Long Island that looks anything different than it does today. You would have to be old enough to remember World War II to have seen things really change.
Despite that, I agree with your assessment. We're too stupid out here to realize that we don't live in the country and that we NEVER did. 100 years ago both Nassau and Suffolk had a fraction of the population and yet they had even MORE public transit options. The LIRR reached Greenport in 1844 and had entire branches that are now extinct, there was an expansive trolley system that was replaced by much crappier bus service, the parkways were all built by the 1920s, the LIE and Surnsie Highway were finished over 30 years ago....in my opinion, we're still playing catch-up from the population explosion of the post-WWII era. Give credit to the forward thinking minds of the early 20th century, because our infrastructure essentially hasn't changed one bit since 1940, and we've all survived remarkably well.
I think people really s--- the bed in the 1960s when all the large American cities started to crumble. Trains, buses, blacks, Hispanics, apartments, etc. all became immediately synonymous with crime, poverty and the erosion of society. The reaction to this phenomenon on Long Island was to price out the riff-raff and flat out legislate against any type of development that doesn't cater to the spitting image of the Eisenhower era, Leave-it-to-Beaver family. In some ways, it actually worked....the middle class "suburban" areas of Queens and Brooklyn didn't fare nearly as well through that 60s-70s period of urban exodus, while out here on LI things got expensive but never ugly....
However here we are in a new century, and that old approach to suburban anti-development has proven it's day has come and gone. In this millenium, that line of thinking is fatally flawed....because we've now gotten to a point where that invisible financial barrier can no longer hold back non-whites, who are - let's face it - an enormous symbol of poverty, crime, etc. to the generation of middle class (and up) Long Islanders who lived through white flight. IMO, (and I'm not pointing fingers) this is where the majority of those "LI has changed" claims come from....because development wise or QOL-wise, it certainly hasn't.
Long Islanders need to realize that we are not living in a time machine and that things like public transportation, diverse housing options and people of color do NOT mean that we're headed towards looking like the South Bronx circa 1977. In 2009, Nassau & Suffolk are still some of the best places to live in the Northeast, but the tax-tax-tax model isn't going to work forever. Eventually we're either going to have to wake up after 60+ years and adapt to life as a suburb of the largest city in America or die and rot as a home solely for the haves and have nots as the middle class flee.
LI has really stagnated as far as development since the early 1960s. Ironically, the era (1950s-1960s) when people seem to recall that whimsical, rustic Long Island was also the time that most of it was destroyed and replaced by tract housing....I don't buy the whole "where has my island gone?" rhetoric for exactly that reason. Even the baby boomers BARELY ever sniffed a Long Island that looks anything different than it does today. You would have to be old enough to remember World War II to have seen things really change.
Despite that, I agree with your assessment. We're too stupid out here to realize that we don't live in the country and that we NEVER did. 100 years ago both Nassau and Suffolk had a fraction of the population and yet they had even MORE public transit options. The LIRR reached Greenport in 1844 and had entire branches that are now extinct, there was an expansive trolley system that was replaced by much crappier bus service, the parkways were all built by the 1920s, the LIE and Surnsie Highway were finished over 30 years ago....in my opinion, we're still playing catch-up from the population explosion of the post-WWII era. Give credit to the forward thinking minds of the early 20th century, because our infrastructure essentially hasn't changed one bit since 1940, and we've all survived remarkably well.
I think people really s--- the bed in the 1960s when all the large American cities started to crumble. Trains, buses, blacks, Hispanics, apartments, etc. all became immediately synonymous with crime, poverty and the erosion of society. The reaction to this phenomenon on Long Island was to price out the riff-raff and flat out legislate against any type of development that doesn't cater to the spitting image of the Eisenhower era, Leave-it-to-Beaver family. In some ways, it actually worked....the middle class "suburban" areas of Queens and Brooklyn didn't fare nearly as well through that 60s-70s period of urban exodus, while out here on LI things got expensive but never ugly....
However here we are in a new century, and that old approach to suburban anti-development has proven it's day has come and gone. In this millenium, that line of thinking is fatally flawed....because we've now gotten to a point where that invisible financial barrier can no longer hold back non-whites, who are - let's face it - an enormous symbol of poverty, crime, etc. to the generation of middle class (and up) Long Islanders who lived through white flight. IMO, (and I'm not pointing fingers) this is where the majority of those "LI has changed" claims come from....because development wise or QOL-wise, it certainly hasn't.
Long Islanders need to realize that we are not living in a time machine and that things like public transportation, diverse housing options and people of color do NOT mean that we're headed towards looking like the South Bronx circa 1977. In 2009, Nassau & Suffolk are still some of the best places to live in the Northeast, but the tax-tax-tax model isn't going to work forever. Eventually we're either going to have to wake up after 60+ years and adapt to life as a suburb of the largest city in America or die and rot as a home solely for the haves and have nots as the middle class flee.
Eventually we're either going to have to wake up after 60+ years and adapt to life as a suburb of the largest city in America or die and rot as a home solely for the haves and have nots as the middle class flee.
Yup. And it's already happening.
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