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IMO, in the middle of January, I think it would be much easier to walk outside when you're surrounded by a walls of buildings (sort of like an UHI effect) than having the cold brisk wind blowing directly at you while walking pass/through surface lots.
Chicago is a perfect example of this. It caters to those who want to drive everywhere, and those who want to walk everywhere.
The parking can be in garages or underground (or, at worse, behind the commercial structures), and people can enter their home garages from the alley.
My experience with Chicago is somewhat limited, but the city does not appear to be built on the scale for walking for the most part. Yes, there are walkable areas around the train stations, but there isn't anything like the dense transit structure of NYC, and the blocks are far too long for a casual stroll across the city.
That said, with its flat grid system, it's probably a great city for biking, provided there are enough bike lanes.
My experience with Chicago is somewhat limited, but the city does not appear to be built on the scale for walking for the most part. Yes, there are walkable areas around the train stations, but there isn't anything like the dense transit structure of NYC, and the blocks are far too long for a casual stroll across the city.
That said, with its flat grid systm, it's probably a great city for biking, provided there are enough bike lanes.
Chicago's South Side is likely the LeAST walkable part of town, but overall, roughly 75% of its neighborhoods have a walkability score of 70 or greater, and its the 4th most walkable city (just a hair more walkable than Philadelphia) in the country with an overall score of 74.
Chicago's South Side is likely the LeAST walkable part of town, but overall, roughly 75% of its neighborhoods have a walkability score of 70 or greater, and its the 4th most walkable city (just a hair more walkable than Philadelphia) in the country with an overall score of 74.
I have no doubt that most of the neighborhoods are walkable internally. My point is it's generally not that easy to walk from neighborhood to neighborhood, and unless you happen to be traveling to one along a rail line, or don't mind waiting for a bus, you still have a pretty good reason to drive between neighborhoods.
I have no doubt that most of the neighborhoods are walkable internally. My point is it's generally not that easy to walk from neighborhood to neighborhood, and unless you happen to be traveling to one along a rail line, or don't mind waiting for a bus, you still have a pretty good reason to drive between neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods are generally defined by comfortable walking distances--so walking from neighborhood to neighborhood isn't that easy anywhere, no matter how "walkable" the neighborhood is. Getting from neighborhood to neighborhood requires some kind of transportation infrastructure, and if there is public transit infrastructure (trains, buses etc.) then you don't need your own car. But if you get in a car, you need a place to park it more than you need things like sidewalks and mixed uses in a single neighborhood. Cars, and the space needed for them, make walkability irrelevant at best, impossible at worst.
Excellent break-off thread, nighttrain55! I can't wait to see the discussion here. Living in both the suburbs, and urban areas, I have a few things that can go in here:
-Gated neighborhoods are safer. (while resale value is often "safer", your possessions aren't always. Gated neighborhoods mean money and nice things)
-You have to drive everywhere. (depends on the place. In the NYC metro area, there's some suburbs that have rail lines nearby, with access to the city center. Some neighborhoods even have markets within walking distance. In other places, though, this might be true)
-Only traditional families/households live there (On our street, there's my roommate and I -- two college students, a single male across the street, a quirky family who raises chickens in their backyard, a grown man who lives with his mother, and a house filled with presumably illegals -- there's about 20 of them living there)
That's all I'll post for now. I've got positive ones and negative ones. Love playing devil's advocate.
Picking up on the observation that the suburbs are home to many who do not live in standard family households, another misconception is that suburbs lack "diversity." There are well-to-do suburbs of Atlanta where a large percentage of the residents are black. Many 'burbs in the Southwest have large Hispanic populations. I know of a variety of ethnic concentrations in various suburbs of Boston.
Diversity can also mean more than non-white ethnic mixes. There are economic diversity and varied family histories as well. In the suburb of Boston where I grew up, we lived next door to a self-made business executive who had grown up in a blue-collar family. Next door on the other side was an Iranian woman doctor, and across the street lived a family with older relatives who were refugees from the Russian Revolution. A couple of streets from us in one direction lived a Chinese-American family whose father had escaped from China after Mao's takeover. A few streets away in another direction lived a family of Italian ancestry who ran a landscaping business, which they had started some years after the father had immigrated from Italy and had moved on from running a truck farm he had started during his first years in the U.S.
Mostly white/Caucasian, yes, but with a rich diversity of backgrounds. Most residents of that town fell into a generally similar economic level at that point in their lives, but had reached that place by a great variety of routes.
Picking up on the observation that the suburbs are home to many who do not live in standard family households, another misconception is that suburbs lack "diversity." There are well-to-do suburbs of Atlanta where a large percentage of the residents are black. Many 'burbs in the Southwest have large Hispanic populations. I know of a variety of ethnic concentrations in various suburbs of Boston.
Diversity can also mean more than non-white ethnic mixes. There are economic diversity and varied family histories as well. In the suburb of Boston where I grew up, we lived next door to a self-made business executive who had grown up in a blue-collar family. Next door on the other side was an Iranian woman doctor, and across the street lived a family with older relatives who were refugees from the Russian Revolution. A couple of streets from us in one direction lived a Chinese-American family whose father had escaped from China after Mao's takeover. A few streets away in another direction lived a family of Italian ancestry who ran a landscaping business, which they had started some years after the father had immigrated from Italy and had moved on from running a truck farm he had started during his first years in the U.S.
Mostly white/Caucasian, yes, but with a rich diversity of backgrounds. Most residents of that town fell into a generally similar economic level at that point in their lives, but had reached that place by a great variety of routes.
My own neighborhood has a gay single mother, couples with babies, empty nesters, widows, widowers, single parents, childless couples, multi-generation families, and yes, families with kids.
One neighbor has a camera repair business in his home. We used to have an electrician running a business out of his home. We have university professors from both the University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado School of Mines. We have the unemployed. We have more than one nurse, and a couple of nursing assistants.
To add my take to the earlier posts about cookie-cutter architecture in the city, in Boston, as well as a number of old industrial cities in southern New England, the regional variation on the concept of tenement housing is the "triple deckuh," or "three deckuh." Feast your eyes on a few examples of these beauties:
In the original design, each floor was an apartment, so three families lived in one such house. Sometimes I hear people in Boston express some affection for these eyesores, presumably because of their distinctively local flavor, but if you toss aside the sentiment, these heaps look exactly like what they were built to be back in the day, cheap housing where poor immigrants crammed in as best they could. Drab, dreary, the sight of them starts sad music weighing heavily in my head, and, despite slight differences in the details, they all look basically the same.
A row of these is definitely the kind of street where, as the old joke goes about suburban subdivisions, one could head home drunk one night and enter the wrong house. Every bit as samey as McMansion developments and postwar ranch house subdivisions--more so really, because at least the suburban developments typically have several basic designs in various mixes. Say what you will about city vs. 'burbs in terms of other features, but when it comes to aesthetics, if I had to have cookie cutter I'd run--I mean RUN--for the ranch houses or even the McMansions if that were the available option for getting as far as possible from these triple decker gems.
05-30-2012, 10:55 PM
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Misconception 1: All suburbs have a lack of character, lack of excitement, lack of pedestrian friendliness, lack of urban amenities, are boring, and limiting.
Most are similar to that but it is still not true for all suburbs. There is still some suburbs that have much more character, excitement, much better pedestrian friendliness, and urban amenities than other suburbs.
Misconception 2: All suburbs have low crime rate compared to major cities.
Crime rate can vary between suburbs with some having a much higher crime rate than others. Those suburbs can have just as much crime as the major cities and sometimes even more, depending on the suburb and major city being compared.
Misconception 3: All suburbs have good schools.
Plenty of bad and mediocre schools can still be found in suburbs.
I prefer a good school in a major city/non-suburban town over a good school in a suburb most of the time.
Misconception 4: Any city/town with a population below 300,000 is automatically a suburb.
Also not true. There are a lot of cities/town below that population and even below 40,000 that are not suburbs and are a separate type of place.
Misconception 5: Suburbs have a lower amount of diversity and cosmopolitan activity.
That aspect of suburbs has changed in the past few decades with a lot of suburbs getting much more diversity, and cosmopolitan activity. Some suburbs can actually have just as much of that as major cities/non-suburban towns.
Misconception 4: Any city/town with a population below 300,000 is automatically a suburb.
Well, that's a new one on me. Your misconception is a misconception. That would make every small town in the United States a suburb, and no one with half a brain would believe that. That would make suburbs out of cities like Cincinnati (just recently dropped below 300,00), Toledo and Dayton ... suburbs of what? Cleveland? Detroit?
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