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It's not "hating on" if it's true. Most suburbs are intended as disposable consumer products.
Really now? There are suburbs in this country that are older than some cities, sooooo..... I think you are wrong on that one.
AJNEOA here's another tidbit
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So, spending half an hour walking to and from the store is somehow a less efficient use of your time than driving to and from the store, then driving to and from the gym to spend half an hour walking on a treadmill? I certainly wouldn't consider it more fun, and neither, I think, would most people with any sense.
What can be concluded from Wburg's comment here other than people who use gyms don't have sense? And that he sounds like he has never set foot in a gym if he thinks it's all people walking at a city pace on treadmills. In this context, the gyms are in the suburbs
Wburg, like I said, you know about cities, but your comments about suburbs are best applied to many, not all, but many southern and western suburbs. They do not apply to most east coast burbs.
Again, why not just be more specific in a type of burb you are talking about? Isn't that more informative to anyone who is here trying to learn something?
Let's talk about how gentrification of the cities in New York like Manhattan and Brooklyn actually forced people to relocate to the suburbs and now many suburbs of New York and NJ are MORE diverse than the city. Surely this has happened in other states? I'd be interested to hear about them. Give me specifics. Tell me how things are in specific cities and towns.
Cities and suburbs have always had a close relationship with each other and they have more in common than people think. They work off of each other. One would not be the same without the other.
Last edited by Yankeerose00; 09-06-2011 at 08:45 PM..
You can walk to the downtown, or the train station, and it looks like there are employment opportunities downtown too! Cute little neighborhood; looks like it was a charmingly walkable small railroad town before those low-density appendages grew off of it.
That's a good description of a lot of suburban walkable areas in the northeast. Kinda old and cute, often based as a railroad commuter suburb. The surrounding areas were completely auto-centric.
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Originally Posted by OrangeHudson
The culture from the city to suburbs is different. Many people who live in the city usually don't have a car or cannot afford one or if they do driving a car in the city is a huge hassle. When I lived in the city (Queens, NYC) I would walk to the supermarket which was less then a mile away because there was no place to park the car, but most of I didn't have a driveway and I wanted to keep my sweet spot in front on the house. When I moved to the suburbs the supermarket was also less then a mile away, but I drove because it's much easier. Plenty of parking at the supermarket and coming home to my own driveway.
I see that as a plus. A lot of the supermarkets nearest my parent's house were in a completely pedestrian hostile location. Didn't occur to the designers that anyone would come by a non-car method. If something close enough that I can walk in almost the same amount of time, I'm perfectly happy not to use my car unless I really need to.
Really now? There are suburbs in this country that are older than some cities, sooooo..... I think you are wrong on that one.
AJNEOA here's another tidbit
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What can be concluded from Wburg's comment here other than people who use gyms don't have sense? And that he sounds like he has never set foot in a gym if he thinks it's all people walking at a city pace on treadmills.
Wburg, like I said, you know about cities, but your comments about suburbs are best applied to many, not all, but many southern and western suburbs. They do not apply to most east coast burbs.
Again, why not just be more specific in a type of burb you are talking about? Isn't that more informative to anyone who is here trying to learn something?
Let's talk about how gentrification of the cities in New York like Manhattan and Brooklyn actually forced people to relocate to the suburbs and now many suburbs of New York and NJ are MORE diverse than the city. Surely this has happened in other states? I'd be interested to hear about them. Give me specifics. Tell me how things are in specific cities and towns.
Cities and suburbs have always had a close relationship with each other and they have more in common than people think. They work off of each other. One would not be the same without the other.
Bingo! Glad to know there are other people on the internet who like the suburbs too!
Let's talk about how gentrification of the cities in New York like Manhattan and Brooklyn actually forced people to relocate to the suburbs and now many suburbs of New York and NJ are MORE diverse than the city. Surely this has happened in other states?
What suburbs are you talking about?
Very few suburbs of NYC are more diverse than the city. NYC suburbs have gotten more diverse, but a lot of the outer burbs are still mostly white. It's a fairly segregated metro.
Some California metros, have suburbs that are as diverse as the cities.
Really now? There are suburbs in this country that are older than some cities, sooooo..... I think you are wrong on that one.
Like the Justin Bieber CD, they often pass through several hands on their way to the trash pile, while other parts are crumpled up and disposed of like a paper cup and replaced with an equally disposable paper cup. And the older suburbs are merely surviving proof of the fact that we didn't always build cities (or suburbs) this way: the disposable suburb is a product of the postwar era.
I don't appreciate your continued accusation that I think all suburbs are the same. It's not true, and I have mentioned this several times.
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What can be concluded from Wburg's comment here other than people who use gyms don't have sense? And that he sounds like he has never set foot in a gym if he thinks it's all people walking at a city pace on treadmills.
I'm sure you don't recall it by now, but the whole point of gyms came up because I quit my gym membership when I moved to my current house. Now I have a free-weight set in my basement. I use that for strength training, and for aerobic I walk, bike, or go dancing. I sometimes have periods when I'm busy where the weight set doesn't do much but gather dust, but even that is cheaper than the long periods where I had a gym membership I paid for but didn't use. I decided it was a better use of my money (and the weight set was free, from a friend who was getting rid of it.)
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Wburg, like I said, you know about cities, but your comments about suburbs are best applied to many, not all, but many southern and western suburbs. They do not apply to most east coast burbs.
Again, why not just be more specific in a type of burb you are talking about? Isn't that more informative to anyone who is here trying to learn something?
I have mentioned this several times now, but it bears repeating. Streetcar suburbs, like the kinds built in this country from the 1880s to the 1920s, are often an admirable middle ground between high-density city energy and low-density suburban quiet. A lot of people tend to describe streetcar suburbs as "urban" neighborhoods because cities frequently expanded their borders to include nearby suburbs within their city limits, and neighborhoods of row houses and mixed-use buildings don't look at all "suburban" to generations that grew up in single-family tract homes where all the stores had parking lots. We're now starting to get back to that kind of development--but today it's called "transit oriented development." It's really a return to an earlier school of urbanism, plus a lot of the lessons we have learned in the interim that make cities a lot nicer than they were in the 19th century. The neighborhood where I live now, although it is within my city's original city limits, in form resembles a "streetcar suburb": small-lot houses, both single-family and multi-family, interspersed with commercial streets along the old trolley lines. While we lost our old trolley network decades ago, we have light rail that functions in the same role, and reasonably good bus service, generally exactly along the old streetcar lines--and plans to bring the streetcars back! (Someday...)
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Let's talk about how gentrification of the cities in New York like Manhattan and Brooklyn actually forced people to relocate to the suburbs and now many suburbs of New York and NJ are MORE diverse than the city. Surely this has happened in other states? I'd be interested to hear about them. Give me specifics. Tell me how things are in specific cities and towns.
Cities and suburbs have always had a close relationship with each other and they have more in common than people think. They work off of each other. One would not be the same without the other.
Gentrification is a specific process, mostly in response to the collapse of cities' economies during the redevelopment era as downtowns were abandoned and their populations forced out. These areas often became very poor, with many vacancies, and the redevelopment projects typically brought commercial jobs intended for suburbanites. Some of those suburbanites decided they didn't want to live in the suburbs and started occupying and fixing up the remaining residential areas close to downtown. As a result, often property values went up, sometimes resulting in displacement of the original tenants.
There are some problems with simply opposing gentrification. It is predicated on the assumption that a poor, run-down neighborhood should remain poor and run-down, and the people in that neighborhood should simply stay poor because they are poor now. That assumption is incorrect.
The negative effects of gentrification (population displacement) can be limited or eliminated through a process called economic integration. Basically, by making efforts to preserve housing stock and repair existing neighborhoods, rather than demolishing them wholesale, and by using low-income housing ordinances, a repairing neighborhood can be affordable to a variety of incomes. And as a neighborhood repairs, more opportunities appear--not just for those coming to the neighborhood, but for those already in it. The idea is that the formerly poor people in a run-down neighborhood have more access to jobs, education and other opportunities in a repaired, functioning neighborhood--if you include them in the process of neighborhood repair. By increasing total housing units in a neighborhood via infill, but avoiding wholesale demolition via historic preservation, you add more total capacity and housing stock--thus increasing supply to keep pace with demand. Jobs appear in construction and maintenance (fixing up old buildings takes more labor but less materials than new construction) and working in the new businesses that appear in repaired neighborhoods go to neighborhood residents--who, because they live in the neighborhood, can easily walk to work.
Of course, not everyone in the run-down neighborhood is necessarily going to stay. The drug dealers and prostitutes generally have a harder time, and as housing opportunities increase, generally there end up being fewer homeless. But that's the price of progress, I suppose!
Very few suburbs of NYC are more diverse than the city. NYC suburbs have gotten more diverse, but a lot of the outer burbs are still mostly white. It's a fairly segregated metro.
Some California metros, have suburbs that are as diverse as the cities.
Suburbs on Long Island and New Jersey specifically. Brooklyn used to be affordable for people. So were parts of Manhattan before they were gentrified. The city of Manhattan is diverse, but specific Manhattan neighborhoods saw a lot of diversity go bye bye with gentrification.
Don't get me wrong. Manhattan today is a much more pleasant place than it was in the 70's and 80's as far as crime. But the gentrification wasn't good for the average middle class person and minorities who now had to move further out.
I personally don't have a problem with it because I'm not anti-suburb. I don't see it as a big deal if a person can only afford a house in the suburbs. But others don't agree.
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'm sure you don't recall it by now, but the whole point of gyms came up because I quit my gym membership when I moved to my current house.
Nope, that must have been before I got here. I mentioned stopping at the gym after work. That's when you spoke of driving all over the place, and irony of driving to the gym and then walking on the treadmill and that anyone who had any sense wouldn't do that.
I still think that when speaking of poorly built neighborhoods and "disposable" suburbs, you need to be specific IF you aren't talking of all suburbs. Otherwise if you keep saying "suburbs are this" and "suburbs are that" then YES people are going to think you don't like all suburbs. It's the only logical conclusion.
It's no secret that the word "sprawl" is a negative word. It's no more flattering than the word "fat". You said all suburbs are sprawl. How is this not insulting all suburbs?
Last edited by Yankeerose00; 09-06-2011 at 09:15 PM..
Gentrification is a specific process, mostly in response to the collapse of cities' economies during the redevelopment era as downtowns were abandoned and their populations forced out. These areas often became very poor, with many vacancies, and the redevelopment projects typically brought commercial jobs intended for suburbanites. Some of those suburbanites decided they didn't want to live in the suburbs and started occupying and fixing up the remaining residential areas close to downtown. As a result, often property values went up, sometimes resulting in displacement of the original tenants.
Much of the gentrification in NYC, and I would suppose in many other cities, happened not because the downtown was abandoned (the center of NYC never had a huge decline) but because many undesirable areas were undesirable for reasons that don't exist anymore, namely industry. And so once the industry left, after some time they "gentrified".
For example, Manhattan has a neighborhood called the "meatpacking district". Once the industry was gone, it turned into a seedy area and then later gentrified.
Suburbs on Long Island and New Jersey specifically. Brooklyn used to be affordable for people. So were parts of Manhattan before they were gentrified. Don't get me wrong. Manhattan today is a much more pleasant place than it was in the 70's and 80's as far as crime. But the gentrification wasn't good for the average middle class person who now had to move further out.
I was thinking of Long Island specifically, as well. Sure the suburbs are more diverse than they used to be. But they're nowhere near as diverse as NYC.
I was thinking of Long Island specifically, as well. Sure the suburbs are more diverse than they used to be. But they're nowhere near as diverse as NYC.
Did you see my link?
Long Island as a whole is not as diverse as Manhattan. I'm saying there were specific neighborhoods in Manhattan that got less diverse as people had to relocate further out. A lot of buildings with rent control went co-op. People couldn't afford to buy their apartment so off to the burbs they went. Or to a less desirable part of the city.
Yes, NEI that is a great link! Lots of good info. I saw another map like that before and I was actually surprised at how little diversity many parts of Manhattan has. Though Jersey is the same. There is a lot of diversity in NJ like there in Manhattan, but the diversity is very segregated to certain neighborhoods. So it really isn't as melting pot as people think. You'll see towns full of Asian, Indian, Hispanic, Black and White but very sectioned off from one another.
Long Island as a whole is not as diverse as Manhattan. I'm saying there were specific neighborhoods in Manhattan that got less diverse as people had to relocate further out. A lot of buildings with rent control went co-op. People couldn't afford to buy their apartment so off to the burbs they went. Or to a less desirable part of the city.
Oh, I thought you were talking about the whole city since you had written earlier:
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now many suburbs of New York and NJ are MORE diverse than the city
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