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Are you saying I'm lying? Are you saying I"m stupid? Are you saying that somehow the urban planners of today are endowed with greater powers to do what is "right" than those of 50 years ago?
No, no and no. I'm saying that entire paradigm doesn't exist anymore, just as sure as the 1960s don't exist anymore.
The razed neighborhoods back then weren't always poor. They declined after the first wave of suburban out-migration, immediately post-war, post-GI Bill. There was also the phenomenon of "block-busting" that ran the white middle class out almost overnight because of the backward racial attitudes of the time. We've still some work to do on that front, but it's come a long way since then.
With this said now, you still haven't answered my question. What bad can come out of making something out of a decaying city core?
I'm talking about in this past decade or two, not 50 years ago. The new urban developments are not public housing projects for the poor, so this is not a valid comparison.
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Originally Posted by VeniceBound
Some people like living in dense areas with lots of people and traffic, and lots of things close by, so there are urban areas.
Some people like living in less dense areas, with bigger lots, lower crime and a slower pace, so there are suburbs.
Lots of generalizing here. Here in Houston, where the inner city has a density more like that of Northeastern suburbs than, say, Manhattan, there are parts of our suburbs with just as much or more traffic and crime. Crime follows money and people, not environments.
I also see a lot of subdivisions with houses on tiny lots where you can pretty much shake hands with your next door neighbor without either of you leaving your house. This is not "space" as I would reckon it, anyhow.
The urban planners of 50 years ago assumed that America would be an incredibly wealthy nation forever, that oil would always be cheap, and that nuclear power would make electricity too cheap to meter. They also lived in a world of very high top tax rates and high middle-class paychecks, which provided lots and lots of government money to do things like build superhighways, buy up downtown land, and subsidize projects to turn the land around the superhighways into suburbs and the downtown neighborhoods into business centers, so that's exactly what they did. Lots of things have changed since then.
They also lived in a world where it was still quite legal to forbid people from buying property in a neighborhood if their skin was the wrong color, or they didn't go to the right church. And if people of the wrong color did inhabit a neighborhood, property values went down and people couldn't get loans--thus, the destruction of their neighborhoods was not so much due to deliberate racism or malevolence as a matter-of-fact, dollars-and-cents decision that property values had to go up.
The housing projects of 50 years ago were often incredibly wrong-headed, and generally woefully inadequate both in number and in follow-through, and based on some pretty ridiculous ideas. And yes, in many ways, the planning profession has learned enormously from those mistakes.
Will people look back at the planning decisions of today 50 years ago with some criticism? Almost certainly. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take time to learn from our mistakes and improve. What could be more ridiculous than realizing we are doing things wrong--and then continuing to do them, on the assumption that someone in the future will criticize us anyhow?
The urban planners of 50 years ago assumed that America would be an incredibly wealthy nation forever, that oil would always be cheap, and that nuclear power would make electricity too cheap to meter. They also lived in a world of very high top tax rates and high middle-class paychecks, which provided lots and lots of government money to do things like build superhighways, buy up downtown land, and subsidize projects to turn the land around the superhighways into suburbs and the downtown neighborhoods into business centers, so that's exactly what they did. Lots of things have changed since then.
They also lived in a world where it was still quite legal to forbid people from buying property in a neighborhood if their skin was the wrong color, or they didn't go to the right church. And if people of the wrong color did inhabit a neighborhood, property values went down and people couldn't get loans--thus, the destruction of their neighborhoods was not so much due to deliberate racism or malevolence as a matter-of-fact, dollars-and-cents decision that property values had to go up.
The housing projects of 50 years ago were often incredibly wrong-headed, and generally woefully inadequate both in number and in follow-through, and based on some pretty ridiculous ideas.And yes, in many ways, the planning profession has learned enormously from those mistakes.
Will people look back at the planning decisions of today 50 years ago with some criticism? Almost certainly. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take time to learn from our mistakes and improve. What could be more ridiculous than realizing we are doing things wrong--and then continuing to do them, on the assumption that someone in the future will criticize us anyhow?
That was pretty much the attitude when acres of dilapidated, substandard housing were bulldozed for public housing projects, eh?
A lot of the housing demolished during the redevelopment era was neither dilapidated or substandard--it was "redlined," and thus not eligible for mortgage financing and artificially depressed property value, primarily because the people who lived in this housing wasn't white.
Most redevelopment projects were not for housing--they were used to build office complexes, or highways, or public plazas, or even monuments like the St. Louis Arch (which sits on top of what used to be an African American neighborhood.) Only a fraction of the destroyed housing was replaced--replacing buildings that may not have been much to look at, but were generally functioning, complete neighborhoods. The units that replaced them were basically human warehouses, detached from employment centers, and never in enough quantity to make up for what was destroyed.
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That's ridiculous. Know why? Because it didn't happen.
Except it did happen--just not very quickly. The exodus of the middle class from American city centers happened over the course of a half-century or so. The social engineering project to segregate American classes and places took decades--long enough to convince generations of Americans that their homes and cities were disposable consumer products, not permanent places worth caring about or fighting for. Redevelopment just helped destroy much of the evidence that there was ever an alternative.
I really could go on, but I'm going to leave at least a bit of the information-hunting up to you. You can access this topic, so I'm going to guess you can access a search engine.
Anyway, are you capable of debating anything without getting ridiculously defensive and calling others' views "distorted" or otherwise false without anything to back it up? (And then having the gall to quote other people's posts and demand links to information) If not, you need to head back to the politics forum with the rest of the talking-point parrots.
Living in the burbs is okay
but does anyone else see a trend happening of people moving closer to work
personally its wearing me and my wife down
the burbs are fine for raising a family
but when your job is say 45 mins on public transportation
and you think about how much time your actually wasting on the train
for me its moving time once i can unload the house and get into the city
alot of companies are also starting to move back from the burbs to the central part of cities where the young people like to live
i just see cities reviving in the very near future and burbs kind of going the way of the indoor shopping malls
A suburb is defined as neither city nor country. Suburb is not the same thing as subdivision. So a person can live in the suburbs but not necessarily live in a subdivision. I don't know why the two words are used so interchangeably on this board.
The suburbs have lots of subdivisions but it's possible to live in the burbs and not live in a souless, cookie cutter subdivision.
I'm trying to read through the thread but the animosity toward the burbs is astounding. It would be like me saying I hate the city because it's full of nothing but gangsters and self important hipsters.
I'm a country person at heart but even I'm getting defensive for the people who choose life in the burbs, lol
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just see cities reviving in the very near future and burbs kind of going the way of the indoor shopping malls
I see what you mean and I can see this happening in some aspects but not entirely. For one, there is not near enough space in any city to provide housing for our population. So there will always have to be some type of suburb. The US is a different culture and we like our space. I can't imagine living like they do in Japan. Their apartments make NYC apartment looks big. So unless we all packed into the cities like they do in countries overseas, there just isn't enough room for everyone. We need the suburbs whether we like it or not.
Another reason the burbs will always be there is cost of living. The cost of living in cities is simply too high for many people. People who have 3 and 4 kids pretty much have the choice of living in squalor in a city or living a decent life in a decent sized house in the burbs. If you want a dog and a yard, you can get much more for your money further out. Most suburban neighborhoods have all the amenities a person could need so why deal with the parking in the city?
Friends of ours recently moved out of the city (this was DC) and moved back out to the burbs that they hated so much. They said that while they enjoyed their time in the city, it just wasn't conducive to their lifestyle any longer. They have one child and one on the way. They said they still needed a car because you can't possibly walk home with groceries all the time. On rainy or snowy days they were stuck inside pretty much and their place was tiny.
Sure there is lots to do in the city but much of it costs money and going out all of the time starts to hit your wallet pretty hard. There are free things like parks but again, if the weather isn't cooperating, you need something to do.
Between cities, suburbs and country living, I don't see what is the big deal with a person choosing any of it. I don't know why there is such backlash if a person decides to give up city life and move to suburbs. People need to do what is best for them and their lifestyle. If there is anybody we should get on it's the towns that give permits to builders to build these ticky tacky tract homes. Maybe if the towns would demand some better and more diverse planning for new neighborhoods, then the suburbs would look a lot nicer.
Last edited by Yankeerose00; 08-29-2011 at 12:27 PM..
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