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...and this is coming from a person who thinks suburbia is the biggest misallocation of resources in the history of the world, and for the most part, has no future.
Yet, I must admit, it started out as a much more reasonable form of development. But like private corporations, government intervention, regulation and deregulation, the Left and Right, NIMBYism, HOAs and the private automobile, its beginnings were well meant and had good purpose, but it gradually became more and more ridiculous, to the point where costs outweigh the benefits of the system in question. (Yet all of these things I've mentioned relate to suburbia).
Today, we often hear people point out the general unlivelyness of suburbia, and often suggest urbanism as a more "livable community". "We don't need to drive! We'll walk or take trains to work in our wonderful vibrant cities!"
And I'm not saying that's not true. I generally agree with the new urbanist crowd, and I advocate TOD and walkable communities, etc. But I don't like using subjective terms like "livable communities" and "places where people want to live".
Why is that?
The reason why is if you went back to the 1920s-50s, you'd find urban planners and visionaries talking about the "overcrowded, filthy, gritty, polluted" cities and their alternative to this: "Country living for everyone!" "Being able to live in the country with the amenities of the city!" "Your own place!" and most famously "The American Dream!" They weren't envisioning a neighborhood like this. They probably won't like it either.
Futurama, a vision of a drive-in utopia of 1960, envisioned back in 1939.
Yes, they planned "automated highways". (No slow-pokes in the left lane! )
And they were partially right about the situation of the cities, but I think they overestimated the virtues of suburban life, didn't consider any loses to not living in the city, and underestimated the ability for cities to improve without tearing them down. In addition to this was the overoptimism in the private automobile, the ability for the government to build the infrastructure and new technology to solve the problems of the automobile... and the willingness of automakers to deploy these improvements.
Most of you probably know what I'm talking about in the paragraph above...
(cough cough) *flying cars!* (cough cough) *nuclear power will be too cheap to meter!" (cough cough) *electrical cars will stop the pollution from cars, meaning I won't have to cough anymore!* (cough cough)
(Really, many visionaries and futurists believed all of society's problem could be solved if everyone drove an automobile.)
(The phrase "What's good for GM is good for America!" made more sense before the 1970s, back when GM and other automakers were employing millions on livable wages, and things weren't all "Made-in-China")
Anyway...
There's many different forms of suburbia, some more "livable" without an automobile than others, some more available than others, and some I'd rather take a mortgage out on than others. Some of these you could live in easily without owning an automobile.
1) The railroad/streetcar suburb. Common between the 1890s and 1910s. You'd probably like living here. Smaller than post-WWII suburbs, much more walkable, very pleasant, was only a quick trolley ride down to the markets and jobs centers of the cities. No Walmarts or strip malls.
2) Early Automobile Suburbs. Most were built during the 1920s, before the great depression. Probably similar to the railroad suburbs. Still relatively walkable if they were part of a community. Still livable.
3)Leviitown. Early 1950s. Probably the first true automobile suburb. Template for automobile suburbia as we know it. Here it is back when it was built. Here it is today. Here's
People who lived there loved it. From what I've heard, neighbors actually talked to eachother and children played outside! "How European!" Other story.
Many of these early suburbs were built around existing small towns, often with "historic" storefronts and town squares. Still a relatively nice place to live.
Over the next 30 years, the suburbs went from this form to the "modern", mutant, oversized, sprawling mess we have today. Some notable additions include: The Indoor Suburban Mall
Cul-de-sacs and winding streets instead of grids. (http://www.treehugger.com/Cul-de-sac-2.jpg - broken link)
Statistics like these show there wasn't as many environmental byproducts of suburban life back in 1950 as there is today. (http://www.treehugger.com/beer-us-returnables.jpg - broken link) Your consumption doesn't give as big of a ROI in 2007 as it did in 1947.
Blah, I don't have any more links to show you.
4) "Boomburg"/McMansion. 1980s to today. I think you know what I'm talking about. For those who don't, pleaseseethefollowing.
I could go on, but I don't feel like explaining more about the different forms of suburbia, why we continued to invest in suburbia, why it is now failing, what we can do about it and why we aren't doing it.
I'm not saying people should live in super compact cities in overcrowded high rises where automobiles are banned and people live in squalor under a government with complete economic control and/or massive greedy corporations. (quite frankly, many of these aspects already exist in suburbia. )
I do support having real urban spaces, but at the same time, I believe suburbia is a form of development that can be improved. Urban design was something that was perfected over thousands of years, and we should expect the same thing from suburbia.
BLAH.
Discuss. Better than the typical anti-suburbia rant?
I think America would have been much better if they did have suburbs, they would still have stuck with the 1890s-1910, possibly even the 1920s (in limited amounts and still in a very TOD fashion) type of suburbs and still continue to have built that way until now even in the age of the car. Even if we continued to build streetcar type of suburbs, people could still use their car if they wanted to but they have to pay the full cost of their activity and know that the place isn't made for cars. However, I think Levittown was the one that made the suburbs become very ecologically unsustainable and give us a lot of problems.
As far as urban living goes, I don't think we should strive for Soviet communist style highrises filled with broken windows and bursting pipes or whatever. Much of the urban enviornment can be built like a Jane Jacobs type of neighborhood like Greenwich Village. Old NYC had a lot of good examples of how to build a good city. If you ever been to Greenwich Village, it has a nice park and Central Park is a great way to give people their fill of exercise and nature space while still having people in a good dense urban enviornment, we should have invested in creating more NYC type places (actually creating new cities from scratch where none existed before) and not in McMansion type of sprawl. Go to Greenwich Village and see how it has the charm and small town feel that people flock to suburbia to supposedly find (however our modern suburbs don't really even give that type of feel) while still being urban and more enviornmentally sustainable.
There's many different forms of suburbia, some more "livable" without an automobile than others, some more available than others, and some I'd rather take a mortgage out on than others. Some of these you could live in easily without owning an automobile.
1) The railroad/streetcar suburb. Common between the 1890s and 1910s. You'd probably like living here.
On a tennis court in Brooklyn? No thank you.
Smaller than post-WWII suburbs, much more walkable, very pleasant, was only a quick trolley ride down to the markets and jobs centers of the cities. No Walmarts or strip malls.
2) Early Automobile Suburbs. Most were built during the 1920s, before the great depression. Probably similar to the railroad suburbs. Still relatively walkable if they were part of a community. Still livable.
3)Leviitown. Early 1950s. Probably the first true automobile suburb. Template for automobile suburbia as we know it. Here it is back when it was built. Here it is today. Here's
People who lived there loved it. From what I've heard, neighbors actually talked to eachother and children played outside! "How European!" People in Europe don't seem to have kids. Other story.
Many of these early suburbs were built around existing small towns, often with "historic" storefronts and town squares. Still a relatively nice place to live.
Over the next 30 years, the suburbs went from this form to the "modern", mutant, oversized, sprawling mess we have today. Some notable additions include: The Indoor Suburban Mall
Cul-de-sacs and winding streets instead of grids. (http://www.treehugger.com/Cul-de-sac-2.jpg - broken link)
Statistics like these show there wasn't as many environmental byproducts of suburban life back in 1950 as there is today. (http://www.treehugger.com/beer-us-returnables.jpg - broken link)
I could go on, but I don't feel like explaining more about the different forms of suburbia, why we continued to invest in suburbia, why it is now failing, what we can do about it and why we aren't doing it.
I'm not saying people should live in super compact cities in overcrowded high rises where automobiles are banned and people live in squalor under a government with complete economic control and/or massive greedy corporations. (quite frankly, many of these aspects already exist in suburbia. )
I do support having real urban spaces, but at the same time, I believe suburbia is a form of development that can be improved. Urban design was something that was perfected over thousands of years, and we should expect the same thing from suburbia.
BLAH.
Discuss. Better than the typical anti-suburbia rant?
I agree with the gist of the OP, that earlier suburbs were much better designed than newer ones. The details one could quibble with. As one goes in a metro area out to the newer suburbs one find the development becomes unwalkable and often filled with unattractive strip malls. I'm posting a few links to compar newer suburbs with older ones (I'm using the NY metro area because I'm most familiar with it).
Perhaps the suburban-loving posters here wouldn't mind the last two links, but I think the difference between the two is clear. While I can see why some would prefer suburbs over cities, I don't see much advantage of the newer suburbs compared to the older ones. The old suburbs offer a yard, quiet (not on the commercial streets) and good schools while maintaining decent public transit and walkability, the car is still the norm. They also look better to me. The new suburb links have no useful public transit.
Maybe the title should be why the cites got so bad that people started mass exiting as they could.
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