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Old 06-25-2012, 11:47 AM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,244,119 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg;24893904[B
]"Substandard" was a very flexible definition.[/b] Yada, yada, yada.
Yes, but no running water, no plumbing, inadequate ventilation, leaking roofs, floors, walls, etc, are definitely "substandard" by most people's definitions. In many cases, these dwellings weren't worth fixing, either. IIRC, you live in a single family house neighborhood, where retrofitting may be a bit easier, and/or the house may be actually worth retrofitting.

Unlike a lot (probably most) of you, I've actually been in some of these "homes", to use the term loosely. I was a public health nurse back in the early 70s, first in Pittsburgh and then in Champaign, IL. I've seen these places. You can argue till the cows come home that these were some wonderful homes that simply needed a few cosmetic reparis, but that is not accurate in the vast, vast majority of cases. It is shocking what landlords will rent to people, even in those two states, which likely have stricter rental laws than some other, more libertarian places like Colorado.

In any event, all this is Monday morning quarterbacking.
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Old 06-25-2012, 11:58 AM
 
Location: Youngstown, Oh.
5,496 posts, read 9,440,487 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
No. Again, we need roads. Everybody benefits from them. You can't get fresh produce to Whole Foods via streetcar or light rail. Besides, the average state has hundreds to thousands of miles of roads and only a couple dozen miles of track for PT usage (if any at all). And the most prominent form of PT in most states (buses) use those roads whose funding you complain about.
I never said we don't need roads. I just said that the system is too heavily weight toward roads, at the expense of alternative forms of transportation.

In the US, the argument seems to be "everyone drives, so we should spend all of our transportation dollars on roads... oh yeah, and maybe throw a little funding to 'other,' for the people who are too poor--or otherwise unable--to drive." vs. "almost everyone drives, because there isn't a viable alternative." If we spent a little more on transit, making it usable for more people, it would be used by more people. If transit is used by more people, income from user fees increase.
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Old 06-25-2012, 12:56 PM
 
Location: Crooklyn, New York
31,924 posts, read 34,421,649 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JR_C View Post
I never said we don't need roads. I just said that the system is too heavily weight toward roads, at the expense of alternative forms of transportation.
Why do you assume that that money is being spent "at the expense of alternative forms of transportation?" The $3 billion Ohio spends on roads every year may be necessary for the maintenance of those roads (and possibly insufficient). Would you rather see those roads (which have to exist whether there's public transit or not) fall into further disrepair?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JR_C View Post
In the US, the argument seems to be "everyone drives, so we should spend all of our transportation dollars on roads... oh yeah, and maybe throw a little funding to 'other,' for the people who are too poor--or otherwise unable--to drive." vs. "almost everyone drives, because there isn't a viable alternative." If we spent a little more on transit, making it usable for more people, it would be used by more people. If transit is used by more people, income from user fees increase.
In certain parts of the US, this is true. It's not true everywhere in the country, as the government is spending billions of dollars for the Second Avenue Line in New York. But that spending is justified because people will actually use the Second Avenue Line (the current Lexington Avenue express has more ridership than all of the other transit systems in the U.S. combined). It doesn't make much sense to devote more money for transit in cities like Atlanta. They already have mass transit and its severely underused. Is a billion dollars worth an extra 70,000 daily transit riders?
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Old 06-25-2012, 01:00 PM
 
2,552 posts, read 2,448,617 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
Maybe they'll look back and say, "What were they thinking trying to build denser communities? Didn't they realize that auto-centric suburbia was built for good reason?? How foolish they were to move away from that model!"
You mean, in 50 years when oil continues to be a finite resource and the global population has reached 8 or 9 billion and China and India have fully industrialized, coming to consume as much per person as the US? It simply wouldn't make sense to return to auto-centric development in that context.
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Old 06-25-2012, 01:44 PM
 
Location: Vallejo
21,667 posts, read 24,806,479 times
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Yes, but the point was it was a turning point. You had plenty of other turning points. The industrial revolution, railroad suburbs, and streetcar suburbs are all examples. The automobile really wasn't widely adopted until the post-war period. The early cars were too expensive and shortly after the prices came down you had the great depression and then WW1 where very little was built. That's not all that different from streetcars. Very few streetcar suburbs were built the 1830s, mostly they were built in the 1880-1920 period.

Flight of the affluent occurred long before the post-war development both with the widespread adoption of railway and streetcar suburbs. NYC went through the tenement boom to house the poor, then you had a series of technological advances -- rail, streetcars, and finally the automobile -- that allowed the upper crust and then middle-class to move out and finally working-class to move out. Oak Park used to be working-class suburb of Sacramento in the 1890s (which is why it's so confusing that people think suburbs were ever only for the well-off) through around 1960. The loss of railyard jobs, the biggest employer by far in Sacramento, hit it hard as did flight to newer suburbs. When downtown was depopulated, many ended up moving to Oak Park since the property values and rents were very cheap. It's also a good example of this myth that we knew how to build back then... Maybe half, and probably less, of Oak Park is original construction. It's mostly basic bordering on crude construction, nothing like what you see in the white-collar street car suburbs of Land Park or East Sacramento. Different building methods, but it's cheap construction just like you find in so many mid-century tracts. It's been sixty years and those ticky-tacky boxes are still standing, some like Eichlers have cult followings. That's not dissimilar to Seattle's turn-of-the-century foursquares. They're du jour now and highly sought after, but not long ago they were the subject of derision, poor housing for poor people, ticky-tacky boxes. Personally, I prefer the minimalist mid-century modern design to what we see in contemporary architecture which often runs to ostentatious with embellished rooflines, grandiose entrances scaled down to fit on a suburban house, stainless steel and polished granite and tile are too austere.

Streetcars segregated land-use quite a bit by concentrating commercial business mostly at the intersections of two lines or perhaps lining the busiest routes. Cars were just a continuation of that separate land-use. There were many streetcar lines that had no or little commercial activity because you could more easily get around. Same with the car. Since people are getting around with cars there are parking lots. Usually put on the street so people can drive in quickly rather than the buildings being right up to the sidewalk. They're not generally all that great to look at, although you have plenty of newer strip malls that do quite a bit of landscaping in and around the parking lots as well as a shift towards lifestyle center/outdoor malls where much more attention is being paid to pedestrian activity. Maybe you still drive there but they have shade, patios, places to sit, fountains, etc that make them pleasant places to walk from store to store rather than just hustling along a dirty sidewalk.
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Old 06-25-2012, 02:20 PM
 
8,276 posts, read 11,848,085 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana View Post
I am addressing all of the posters on here who go on and on about the "post war suburbs", as if that marked some turning point in US society.

As nei said, the 50s houses were pretty small. They were often built on small lots, too. I recall reading a story about one of the Levittowns recently (there were at least two) that said there was a covenant prohibiting fences, for the puropse of encouraging socialization among the residents, something else that is supposedly lacking in the suburbs, to read a lot of posts on this forum.

OTOH, a lot of people on this forum, to read their posts anyway, who do think there was a "magical transformation of American society in 1945 that transformed the construction industry from building everything wonderfully to building crud". I could go back and find examples all over this forum, in thread after thread.

Anyone who denies that this is a recurrent them on this forum is being disingenuous.

See you all at Lewis and Clark landing!
I think that 1945 WAS a turning point in US history, both for the housing industry and the nation as a whole, but not neessarily a turn for the worst; mostly, it was for the betterment of our country ( especially the concurrent GI Bill, which made higher education more democratic)...

I still think of the old Norman Rockwell painting ( which I can't reproduce here), which had the GI returning to his parent's "house" ( looked more like a tenement to me), with the parents and siblings falling all over the porch in the back alley, and the supposed girlfriend over in the shadows, just waiting her turn. I can't help but think that the GI just wanted to get the h#ll out of there, get married, and go find his place in the sun that included a yard and some privacy. Thus, we have the beginnings of both A) suburbia, and B) the postwar baby boom.

Sorry about the confusion about Louisville, CO, but it's still too far from Denver for any easy transit. I tried to put theory into practice recently by taking a bus from a subway stop to a local mall, only a few miles away. It took 40 minutes because of all the stops, which were necessary, but all too frequent. I'd prefer to live near a commuter rail, with frequent access to a major city's popular destinations, which will limit my options..
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Old 06-25-2012, 02:38 PM
 
8,680 posts, read 17,203,538 times
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Periodization is always dangerous--it kind of has to be done when writing histories in order to organize a work into outline form, but generally they are artificial structures rather than something intended to be taken super literally.

Obviously, the shift from walkable urban forms to the auto-centric suburb was a slow process of transition that took about a century, but I don't think it is reasonable to include a mini US urban history in every single post on this board discussing the general, overall patterns of urban construction in the second half of the 20th century. If someone assumes that when I say "postwar suburbs" I mean an utter, magical and total transformation which didn't exist at all until 1945 and was completely universal thereafter, I am not responsible for that decision, and it is their problem.
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Old 06-25-2012, 02:54 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,244,119 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MassVt View Post
I think that 1945 WAS a turning point in US history, both for the housing industry and the nation as a whole, but not neessarily a turn for the worst; mostly, it was for the betterment of our country ( especially the concurrent GI Bill, which made higher education more democratic)...

I still think of the old Norman Rockwell painting ( which I can't reproduce here), which had the GI returning to his parent's "house" ( looked more like a tenement to me), with the parents and siblings falling all over the porch in the back alley, and the supposed girlfriend over in the shadows, just waiting her turn. I can't help but think that the GI just wanted to get the h#ll out of there, get married, and go find his place in the sun that included a yard and some privacy. Thus, we have the beginnings of both A) suburbia, and B) the postwar baby boom.

Sorry about the confusion about Louisville, CO, but it's still too far from Denver for any easy transit. I tried to put theory into practice recently by taking a bus from a subway stop to a local mall, only a few miles away. It took 40 minutes because of all the stops, which were necessary, but all too frequent. I'd prefer to live near a commuter rail, with frequent access to a major city's popular destinations, which will limit my options..
Apology accepted. Maybe you should try looking at the links from the RTD (Regional Transit District) that I have posted many times over. Louisville is only 25 miles from Denver. You can catch those regional buses at the Park and Ride (US 36 at Superior) and get to Denver pretty quickly. Most people who live in Louisville don't work in Denver anyway. Many work in Boulder. My DH worked there for 10 years. He could have walked 1/4 mile from our house to the RTD stop and taken the bus straight in, if he had wanted to, which he did not.

I'm not familiar with that particular Norman Rockwell picture, but he had a gift for capturing those things. I agree that the 1945 turning point was for the betterment of the country. Many people would not have gotten an education w/o the GI bill. Many people would not have been able to buy a house w/o a VA loan, either. I do think owning one's home is preferable to renting. The 50s houses were no great architechtural masterpieces but they did give people a place to live.
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Old 06-25-2012, 03:05 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,244,119 times
Reputation: 35920
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg View Post
Periodization is always dangerous--it kind of has to be done when writing histories in order to organize a work into outline form, but generally they are artificial structures rather than something intended to be taken super literally.

Obviously, the shift from walkable urban forms to the auto-centric suburb was a slow process of transition that took about a century, but I don't think it is reasonable to include a mini US urban history in every single post on this board discussing the general, overall patterns of urban construction in the second half of the 20th century. If someone assumes that when I say "postwar suburbs" I mean an utter, magical and total transformation which didn't exist at all until 1945 and was completely universal thereafter, I am not responsible for that decision, and it is their problem.
Well, bully for you! 1945 was the end of "the war". That is the start of the post-war period. The Baby Boom started in 1946. Those are pretty significant dates. The war was over, people were marrying and starting families. Lots of young families meant a need for more housing. Levittown, NY was started in 1947, though the early houses built were rentals. The Levitt Company started building houses for sale in 1949, showing that even then, there was a difference between what was built for rental and what was built for ownership. This is a very interesting (to me anyway) history of Levittown, NY.
History
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Old 06-25-2012, 03:08 PM
 
8,276 posts, read 11,848,085 times
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The Norman Rockwell painting is called "The Homecoming"...
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