Poll: Suburban Neighborhood Preference

[wburg]

Originally Posted by pvande55

Chicago does not have any streetcars. Nor, I believe, does New York. But both have quite livable railroad suburbs, some 50 miles or more from center city. It might surprise new urbanists that many commuters on the trains commute to other suburbs.

A lot of streetcar suburbs don't have streetcars anymore--but they are still "streetcar suburbs" due to their era of construction (they both DID have streetcars.) My city doesn't have streetcars either, but we did--the neighborhoods constructed are "streetcar suburbs" because they were built in conjunction with streetcar lines, often by the same people (who often also sold both electricity.) They share similarities with railroad suburbs, which New York and Chicago both have, but are more closely built--they tend to be more linear, due to the frequency of streetcar stops, vs. the more widely spaced railroad suburb pattern. Chicago also had a lot of interurban lines, whose development pattern was somewhere in between railroad-suburb and streetcar-suburb.

If we ever stop using cars, the neighborhoods that they created will still be called "automobile suburbs," assuming we don't demolish them.

And no, it is no surprise that many commuters commute from one suburb to other suburbs--anyone who has seriously studied recent urban development knows that job centers have become decentralized, largely due to our transportation network. Streetcar suburbs facilitated this to some extent, although it was the automobile that really disjointed things.

[Chango]

I vote for streetcar suburbs built from the turn of the century through the 30's. The streetcars are gone (although they are coming back here in SLC), but they are by and large the best located and most attractive neighborhoods today.

[LongIslandPerson]

I prefer a mix of "New Urbanist" and "Regular Suburbia".

I live in a somewhat older suburb [most houses built between 50's and 80's] and it has a HUGE variety of in it's housing stock and it keeps me interested looking at all the different types of houses and what creative things people do to it (or can do to it).
(We have ranches, hi-ranches, raised-ranches, older colonials, splanches, cape cods, mcmansions, center-hall colonials, contemporaries.. you name it, and they all share the same communities)

I love seeing the creative ways people extend/renovate/add-on to their houses; it helps keep boring suburban life interesting. I couldn't imagine living in a cookie-cutter community where EVERY SINGLE HOUSE is exactly the same style!!! I would get bored very quickly and perhaps go borderline insane!

AND if these homes were in a denser setting[new urbanism] where everything is walkable then it would be PERFECT but unfortunately most "regular suburbs" were built in an older-time where convenience wasn't in mind.