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They might not a suburb to you because they don't match an antiquated "Disney" version of suburbs with white picket fences and a golden retriever that doesn't even exist today, much less 2,000 years ago.
It hasn't really died. Middle-class / upper-middle class suburbia is rather common throughout the country. With some pockets of exceptions, it's not really outdated for Long Island either, though obviously any "Disney ideal is inaccurate.
Suburban life is more peaceful and relaxed. I wouldn't recommend urban living.
My aunt's moved to our suburb's CBD area (pretty much an urban area). I just felt so stressed there - Cars, pollution, traffic, people...I wonder how they'd sleep at night?
What?! More like they built houses on acreage outside of the city once they could afford to do that.
No, it was mostly for people who couldn't afford to live inside the walls. Those that chose to build outside (the super-rich of the time) tended to build towards the edge of these "suburbs", where it was practically rural but not incredibly far from the city.
Additionally, considering how the wall is the only boundary between these ancient "suburbs" and their cities, I'd argue that they were still part of the city. They were an extension of city growth, not a planned escape from it, again differentiating them from modern suburbs.
No, it was mostly for people who couldn't afford to live inside the walls. Those that chose to build outside (the super-rich of the time) tended to build towards the edge of these "suburbs", where it was practically rural but not incredibly far from the city.
Additionally, considering how the wall is the only boundary between these ancient "suburbs" and their cities, I'd argue that they were still part of the city. They were an extension of city growth, not a planned escape from it, again differentiating them from modern suburbs.
This is so wrong. As someone else stated, rich people had country estates outside the city.
Except it wasn't. Wealthy Romans weren't attempting to move to the core when they built their suburban estates. Wealthy NY and Chicago railroad suburbs weren't built because people were attempting to move to the urban core. Emeryville has a lot of new apartment/condos going up because people want to be close to the urban core and can't afford to live in San Francisco. Park Slope in the '80s wasn't gentrified by people trying to get out of the urban core. It was gentrified by people who couldn't afford Manhattan who wanted to be close.
With the bold, that is exactly my point. People want to be part of the urban core, but because they can't, they'll stick with the periphery as it's the closest they can get.
As for the wealthy estates and RR suburbs, the wealthy estates were usually built on the far fringe of urban development outside the city walls, so they might as well have been rural (and that's not even considering the fact that many, if not most, villas were built inside city walls anyway, according to the article listed earlier). RR suburbs were typically founded as early termini (not sure if that's the right word) of the line they were on, then continued life as independent towns after the RR extended beyond them.
The thing is, lots more people these days, want to have the stuff they do often in walking distance. It doesn't matter if that occurs in a "city" or a "suburb."
There is this strange idea that "city" only comes in Manhattan form. And "suburb" only comes in sprawl form. You can build walkability into any sort of community.
Thanks for the information.
My parents are boomers, and they've lived rural and suburban. For most of my life, they painted a depiction of the city as crime-ridden, overcrowded, tons of traffic, wall-to-wall concrete, etc. That's in reference to Rochester NY...which is anything but. Over the past few years, they've started going into the city to have lunch in the Park Ave area, and my father always remarks that it's so beautiful and relaxing. Hardly the exaggerated concept of trying to wade through Times Square in high tourist season.
Additionally, considering how the wall is the only boundary between these ancient "suburbs" and their cities, I'd argue that they were still part of the city. They were an extension of city growth, not a planned escape from it, again differentiating them from modern suburbs.
Again, no different at all than the modern suburb.
Go to Daly City and walk to San Francisco. Let me know exactly the point you cross over.
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With the bold, that is exactly my point. People want to be part of the urban core, but because they can't, they'll stick with the periphery as it's the closest they can get.
Yup. It's been that way for at least 2,000 years. Those apartments in Emeryville aren't exactly cheap, but they get you far more than you would in San Francisco. Of course, if you were fine renting a walk-in closet, that'd be cheaper. There's a long history of renting out closets in San Francisco. But not everyone wants to rent a closet in the urban core. In NYC, the LES spilled out of the urban core as it got the means. They still wanted to be close (especially when they had to walk) but not living in cramped tenements. That resulted in many of the tenements being abandoned from the ground up. That happened long before the car and the modern suburb.
Other people have wanted to get farther away from the urban core. Always been that way, going all the way back to Babylon and Rome. It hasn't changed any today. Lots of changes in technology and transportation, no real changes in how people view suburbs.
I'm sorry, but I concur that the historic norm of poor shantytowns on the edges of cities has little to nothing to do with the modern suburb, other than their location on the fringe of the city. The neighborhoods were fundamentally "urban" through to the early 19th century, insofar as nearly everyone in them walked to work somewhere nearby. Hell, giant ancient cities were for the most part a series of small villages pressed against one another, which could and did operate quasi-independently, as few people (particularly in the lower classes) would leave their own section of town with any frequency.
Things like Roman villas are more similar to the suburban ideal. But this shouldn't be surprising, given the form continued in the fashion of things like the English Country Manor, and the suburban ideal was based upon a progressively scaled-down version of this. But again, until the 19th century with the rise of streetcars, such a lifestyle was only open to nobility and other "men of leisure" - as if you had to work in a city every day it would be simply too inconvenient to have a long commute. And few people call the modern-day equivalent - things like summer cottages in the woods or the beach - to be suburbs per se.
IMHO, the real difference between a suburban and an urban neighborhood boils down to uses. Urban neighborhoods were built from the ground up as mixed use places, where people would live, work, and shop within walking distance. Suburbs were places people moved that were removed from their place of work, and were largely residential. There are a lot of neighborhoods in the U.S. which are suburban which aren't commonly considered as such - not only streetcar suburbs, but many Victorian neighborhoods for the wealthy which originally had horsecar service. But using the definition that you outlined, essentially every city neighborhood would have been a suburb at some point, barring the oldest city center which has in most cases long-since been obliterated to make a CBD.
I'm not saying people are being forced to live in cities against their will. I'm saying that there seems to be an effort to push an urban lifestyle; that people are trying to promote that kind of lifestyle and force it down our throats as the wave of the future and desirable.
I'm not saying this to be mean, but where have you been for the last 60 years?
Suburban living was promoted like crazy at all levels starting post WWII, and it was quite literally "force[d] ... down our throats as the wave of the future and desirable."
Urban living still has a long way to go to reach the levels of the suburban promotion machine that was in effect during the last half of the 20th century.
Rio Linda, etc. Modern poor suburb of Sacramento. It's not exactly a shantytown, but then wealth disparity is nothing like what it was then. Advances in transportation and greater equality of wealth have of course made the idealic suburb more accessible to more of the population, starting with the railroad suburbs and then streetcars and now automobiles. HSR is the next chapter in that that is already occurring.
Back when people had to rely on walking because other transportation was too costly, things were walkable. Nowadays, not really. Older cities like NYC are often very walkable. Younger cities tend not to be. LA isn't really that walkable. Certainly most people do not walk to their jobs in LA. There's still a lot of it that is mixed-use.
Seems very single-use to me. The difference is mostly a gradient of scale. Of course, Park Slope was built as a bucolic suburb for wealthy people to escape the urban core. Later with the streetcar, it became one of the places that the people spilling out of the urban core (LES) could sprawl out into. Today it's much more urban, but thanks to zoning and historic districts it has large stretches of preserved suburban housing the wealthy built before the sprawl engulfed it.
Basically, I think I'd just disagree with your assertion that Park Slopes is suburban. To me, it's an urban neighborhood. That it wasn't built from the ground up for people to live, work, and shop within walking distance doesn't really much matter. It's been urban for a long time now and the vast majority do not work within walking distance. They mostly work in Manhattan or maybe Brooklyn's downtown area, although even that is a pretty long walk.
Last edited by Malloric; 07-31-2014 at 10:59 AM..
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