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Why do you assume people who don't share your tastes are "quite a bit less active and outgoing than" you and your family or that they are "homebodies"? Maybe they just have different interests than you do, and those interests lead them to need their cars more than you do. For example, maybe their kids are into hockey or maybe they like to go camping or fishing. Furthermore, not everybody thinks being in the middle of a crowd of strangers = being "outgoing".
You said it better than I could have, and I've been trying for a while. Just what is the big deal with being out with crowds of strangers, or drinking coffee with a group of strangers in a coffee shop, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nei
Some days ago, I talked to someone who grew up in Brooklyn. Mentioned the neighborhood he grew up in was almost entirely "native" a few decades ago, now it's mostly immigrant, mainly Russian [he's a Russian immigrant as well]. Parts to the point it feels like you're in another country. A number of other neighborhoods were similar: mostly "native" in the 70s, natives left and immigrants moved in. Some of these places the demographics have changed so drastically that any old resident moving back would feel out of place, culture completely changed even if the neighborhood is still the same. My dad, who hadn't spent much time in NYC since the 70s, was surprised when I told him a certain subway line was nearly entire non-white and mostly entirely immigrant, it was mostly white when he used it.*
*He told a story of his first time in the city, talking the subway and then a long walk to meet a family friend. He was talking about it being rather confusing, but what sounded really harrowing to me was meeting someone without a cell phone.
Anyhow, that's just one city, but I think plenty of other cities had general "native flight" in the 70s and 80s. In many cases it wasn't exactly flight: the older residents stayed and their children left the neighborhood once they became adults or had children. It my have been "hip" to live in cities but that wasn't the general trend for most. A friend called her grandparent's NYC neighborhood a "grandma neighborhood" because so many of the long-time residents were elderly. As a more entertaining example, the pedestrians in this scene to the opening of this famous 70s movie are almost entirely white. Assuming they're locals in the background not movie extras, a similar scene today would probably be at most half white; the younger generation moved out and got replaced with immigrants.
She described many of the Italian-Americans who remain in Bath Beach [neighborhood in video] as elderly people whose children had long since moved on to Long Island, New Jersey or Staten Island to start families of their own. The recent arrivals bring new life to the area. “It’s so nice to see the young children,” Ms. Samaris said.
Yes, neighborhoods change. In that book about Omaha that I read last year, what is now the black community area used to be Swedish, and so forth. But, like in Pittsburgh, which I referenced in the post you quoted, there are neighborhoods in Omaha that have always been "hip" too, such as Dundee (Warren Buffet's 'hood). When we went DH's HS reunion in 1986, a lot of his classmates were "rehabbing" houses in Dundee.
I've worked in health care and DH has worked in IT/telecom for 30-40 years. I think we're representative of a lot of people.
I've worked at about a dozen jobs in banks, newspapers and nonprofits in my 35-year working life -- I've never worked anywhere that offered a pension. One of the nonprofits I worked for phased out its pension plan a few years before I started working there, in 1998 or thereabouts.
I've read parts of this thread but not all of it, so I apologize if I'm repeating an observation already made by someone else. The word "fleeing" is the emotionally over-wrought word to which I'm objecting. In a given place at a given time, there can be a demographic shift without anyone "fleeing" anything.
It is appropriate to talk about "fleeing" a war zone, or a famine zone, or a high-crime neighborhood. But it's a figment of the original poster's imagination that people are "fleeing" the suburbs.
I think the use of "fleeing" in the title was tounge in cheek... But I haven't read the whole thread to confirm. Certainly it's been used extensively to describe suburban development in the 60s and 70s
I think the use of "fleeing" in the title was tounge in cheek... But I haven't read the whole thread to confirm. Certainly it's been used extensively to describe suburban development in the 60s and 70s
Yes, it's hype, nothing more. Just like "white flight".
@Escort Rider-In another thread, some of us discussed our images of people "fleeing". It was pretty funny.
Realistically, I think these two trends are pertinent to this thread and it's questionable title:
US population continues to grow, meaning there will be more of us.
Large metro areas continue to grow; medium and small metros continue to struggle, some growing tiny amounts and others shrinking a modest amount; rural areas continue to depopulate.
It seems very likely that the suburbs aren't going to go disappear any time soon, no matter how much many urbanists want them to do so. If anything, they're likely to gain population since there's limited space, especially affordable space, within growing metros, and some of these metros have actually reached their limits on reasonable commutes from exurbia.
Contrary to the claims of some urbanists who have long predicted that first ring suburbs would become slums, many are prospering again as practical alternatives to small but pricey city digs and expensive and expansive McMansions a couple of hours in the hinterlands. This is especially true where the suburban governments have paid attention to QOL issues and to their school systems.
Another problem with the concept of "flight" from the suburbs to the cities is that many employers have themselves moved to the suburbs -- if they ever even had a presence in cities, especially in downtowns. The folks carrying the banner for the imminent demise of the suburbs fail to recognize that there are so many jobs out in the suburbs that many suburban residents don't commute suburb-to-city but suburb-to-suburb or even intra-suburb.
You can add to this the fact that many suburbs started out as small villages with all the "urban" amenities except perhaps mass transit, and now have their own urban downtowns. This is especially true in larger metros that have expanded outward to turn exurbs into suburbs. Places like Fredericksburg, VA and Mississauga, ON are examples of villages/small cities that have become suburbs. Most big metro and many medium sized ones have these kinds of "suburbs".
Then there's the "cloudy crystal ball" scenario. What we see as trends today are based on what we know now. If you look at predictions made about the 1970s made in the 1920s, they missed a whole lot. If you look back at predictions made in the 1950s about the 21st century, they also missed a whole lot, perhaps even more than the folks in the 1920s.
Just looking ahead, we don't know how climate change will affect the US and the world. How will rising sea-levels really affect metros like Boston, NYC, Baltimore, Washington, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Houston, San Diego, LA, San Francisco, and Seattle? What about increased temperatures or more unpredictable weather? Will Buffalo, NY eventually have a climate more like Washington, DC and Washington, DC more like Houston, TX? We also don't know how technology will change our lives. Will we all be driving electric cars in 10 years? Or something else.
Plain and simple, as the pace of technological change increases, our ability to predict the future becomes cloudier.
Realistically, I think these two trends are pertinent to this thread and it's questionable title:
US population continues to grow, meaning there will be more of us.
Large metro areas continue to grow; medium and small metros continue to struggle, some growing tiny amounts and others shrinking a modest amount; rural areas continue to depopulate.
It seems very likely that the suburbs aren't going to go disappear any time soon, no matter how much many urbanists want them to do so. If anything, they're likely to gain population since there's limited space, especially affordable space, within growing metros, and some of these metros have actually reached their limits on reasonable commutes from exurbia.
Contrary to the claims of some urbanists who have long predicted that first ring suburbs would become slums, many are prospering again as practical alternatives to small but pricey city digs and expensive and expansive McMansions a couple of hours in the hinterlands. This is especially true where the suburban governments have paid attention to QOL issues and to their school systems.
Another problem with the concept of "flight" from the suburbs to the cities is that many employers have themselves moved to the suburbs -- if they ever even had a presence in cities, especially in downtowns. The folks carrying the banner for the imminent demise of the suburbs fail to recognize that there are so many jobs out in the suburbs that many suburban residents don't commute suburb-to-city but suburb-to-suburb or even intra-suburb.
You can add to this the fact that many suburbs started out as small villages with all the "urban" amenities except perhaps mass transit, and now have their own urban downtowns. This is especially true in larger metros that have expanded outward to turn exurbs into suburbs. Places like Fredericksburg, VA and Mississauga, ON are examples of villages/small cities that have become suburbs. Most big metro and many medium sized ones have these kinds of "suburbs".
Then there's the "cloudy crystal ball" scenario. What we see as trends today are based on what we know now. If you look at predictions made about the 1970s made in the 1920s, they missed a whole lot. If you look back at predictions made in the 1950s about the 21st century, they also missed a whole lot, perhaps even more than the folks in the 1920s.
Just looking ahead, we don't know how climate change will affect the US and the world. How will rising sea-levels really affect metros like Boston, NYC, Baltimore, Washington, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Houston, San Diego, LA, San Francisco, and Seattle? What about increased temperatures or more unpredictable weather? Will Buffalo, NY eventually have a climate more like Washington, DC and Washington, DC more like Houston, TX? We also don't know how technology will change our lives. Will we all be driving electric cars in 10 years? Or something else.
Plain and simple, as the pace of technological change increases, our ability to predict the future becomes cloudier.
Good points and questions. Especially looking at the highlighted section, here in NY, you have plenty of villages and small cities that offer the walkability, some restaurants and even nightlife, along with at least solid to very good schools and even access to public transportation. So, those communities may be the suburbs people will be looking at more due to offering urban amenities in a smaller scale, as well as having good schools for those that have or are planning on having families in the future.
In London, job growth has focused in the center and declined in the outskirts. Similarly, house prices increased in inner London, declined in outer London.
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Over-wrought language in the thread title
