Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I believe that character usually accumulates over a long period, if a town/city can grow/change organically.
Agree. Character does accumulate over time and I truly believe every suburb has character if you look for it. Big box retail and chains have their place so people need to stop knocking them. Imagine being in a small town with hardly any options whatsoever and you have to drive miles to get to a big box store? Let's face it, convenience is king and after online, big box rules because the stores are large, convenient, and most of the time have the best price. People will travel to go to those chain stores, so if anything, a town having its own bix box store(s) shows a town on the rise, not on the decline.
People romanticize the notion of town squares and mom and pop stores but that is a bygone time. Many small towns have found themselves becoming suburbs whether they want to or not due to accelerated growth in the bigger towns next to them. They have character but they're instead lumped together and branded "suburb of ......" I'll use Round Rock, for example. It has a rich Texas history - filled with wagon trains, bandits, and outposts. There are many old buildings from the settler era that are still standing, as well as Victorians, Georgians, etc. Yet, people drive down an interstate and see a handful of chain stores along said interstate and right away dismiss an entire, vast city as a "suburb of Austin" filled with "just chain stores" and subdivisions.
Truth is, if there wasn't a demand for "cookie cutter" "characterless" subdivisions, they wouldn't exist. Old time Round Rockers rue the day DR Horton and the like descended upon the area mowing down all of the trees and causing escalating housing prices. But it is what it is, when you have one hundred people moving into the area weekly, daily, there's a demand for housing and that's what happens. More property taxes means more amenities for the city as a whole. They're a necessary "evil". Thanks to a balanced retail and property tax base, our suburb is not dependent on its larger neighbor for sustanance. At the same time, it tries to retain its character...but again, most people judge a handful of stores off an interstate as the entire area. Go figure lol.
With 50 years of environmental law, US rivers are pretty safe to be around from a water quality standpoint. They aren't prestine mountain creeks but Americans have the mentality that unless a river or stream is untouched, it is a filthy nasty sewer that should be avoided at all costs.
Those pristine mountain creeks are invested with Giardia. Take a drink of that untreated pristine mountain stream water at 9000 feet elevation (that is, above all sources of industrial pollution) and you'll get wicked Giardiasis.
Truth is, if there wasn't a demand for "cookie cutter" "characterless" subdivisions, they wouldn't exist. Old time Round Rockers rue the day DR Horton and the like descended upon the area mowing down all of the trees and causing escalating housing prices.
Basically a demand for housing, and if it is brand new, so be it.
I recall a comment that one cookie cutter suburb-I believe it was Levittown-eventually became less cookie cutter, as home owners made changes to their properties over the years.
Basically a demand for housing, and if it is brand new, so be it.
I recall a comment that one cookie cutter suburb-I believe it was Levittown-eventually became less cookie cutter, as home owners made changes to their properties over the years.
It might have been me you recall saying that, about my first neighborhood here in Colorado. There were four floor plans, and numerous variations (sort of putting lie to the idea that these houses are totally cookie cutter). As time went on, additions were built, landscaping grew and a lot of the "sameness" was gone. There is another subdivision of these same houses in a nearby town; what happened there, in addition to what I posted was that another group of houses was built a decade or so later, and they were all of different styles from the first.
Thanks to cities like New York, New Orleans, Boston, Philly, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Portland Maine, Portland Oregon, etc. Not because of all the generic Columbias and Columbuses and Tulsas in the midsection of the country
Thanks to cities like New York, New Orleans, Boston, Philly, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Portland Maine, Portland Oregon, etc. Not because of all the generic Columbias and Columbuses and Tulsas in the midsection of the country
All of those cities have cookie cutter suburbs. Many people move into them because they can't afford big city prices. Many move into them because the schools in the city centers in the more affordable areas aren't good. There are a variety of reasons.
I know in my city, people all want new construction and they want it relatively inexpensively, so it is the cookie cutter planned communities. You can get new construction elsewhere in the tiny communities, but in many cases they are more expensive than the tiny neighborhoods in established communities. For example, we have a 40-home neighborhood going in near me with a base price of $500K for a 1600sqft home and you can probably still squeeze by on $300K or less for something that size in the 10K home planned community.
It is more creative here where I live because most of the neighborhoods are small, but the price is just too high for a lot of people if they are looking for new construction. The better buys are older.
I really don't get the idea that suburbs are "cookie-cutter" housing and cities are. . . not. Most city neighborhoods are very cookie-cutterish. They're older, usually, than their suburban counterparts, so they've acquired that patina that I posted about on New Year's Day. They don't look so much alike as brand new construction. These apartments and townhouses that city people wax rhapsodic about are as "cookie cutter" as they come. A lot of these places even have covenants that require that all window coverings look white from the street and so on. Chicago has blocks and blocks of bungalows that all look the same. Denver has similar, though they seem to be broken up by some other types of housing as well.
I really don't get the idea that suburbs are "cookie-cutter" housing and cities are. . . not. Most city neighborhoods are very cookie-cutterish. They're older, usually, than their suburban counterparts, so they've acquired that patina that I posted about on New Year's Day.
Yeah. Here's a development in the Philadelphia suburbs I used to live in
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
