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Regardless of what I think of sprawlburbia, I'm all for using things the way they're intended to be used, rather than trying to graft alien sensibilities into them. These are pointless boondoggles with predictably lackluster results. If all other variables are held constant, there's zero point in building sidewalks in a place like Cobb.
It reminds me of when I used to live in Athens, GA, and would walk on the (very car-oriented) East Side. Every 0.25 - 0.5 mi, someone would ask if I were lost, if my car broke down, and/or if I needed help. It's as if the universe were trying to tell me: "You're suburbing wrong!" And I was. One is not _supposed_ to walk there. I had just missed the memo. In that sense, long sidewalks to nowhere are misleading.
I think that's very central to the criticism. I mentioned it in my original article. Sidewalks are a pointless farce in places where people are not, for every other imaginable reason inherent in the design of the place (starting with the fact that it's built to automobile scale, not human scale), going to walk.
I'm actually strongly against such misuse of taxpayer funds. Half-assed attempts to turn the Greater Sprawl Metro Area into something they're not are just a waste of resources.
I don't necessarily disagree, although in this case the SPLOST was voted on by residents.
When reading the criticism of suburbs, isn't "walkability" always one of those things listed? The problem has always been, as I and others have argued on this board for years, that "urban lifestyle bigots" who post here refuse to acknowledge that people move to and live in the suburbs precisely BECAUSE they lack many of the things found in cities and crowded urban areas.
"Walkability" generally isn't important to suburban dwellers, but urban dwellers can't understand how anyone would prefer to drive or live further than walking distance to the Whole Foods.
When reading the criticism of suburbs, isn't "walkability" always one of those things listed?
Yes, but "walkability" is more than just surfaces to walk on. Sidewalks do not a walkable place make, and their formal existence doesn't mean anyone's going to use them. Nobody's going to walk 4 mi on a lonely sidewalk alongside a six-lane road to get to Whole Foods.
One has to take a psychological view of walking and ask empirically: in places where people walk, what is it that makes them do so? One quickly arrives at the conclusion that, quite apart from sidewalks, those places aren't built at all like, say, Cobb County.
At a minimum:
1. Scale; the distances have to be measurable in pedestrian minutes, not car minutes. If I have to hoof it for 45 minutes just to get anywhere at all, I'm not going to bother.
Similar considerations apply to width of streets, kerb radii, and other things that optimise a street for vehicles but are user-hostile to pedestrians.
2. Enclosure and geometry; people walk on streets that have some architectural geometry around them that delineate and protect the pedestrian realm and provide a meaningful visual relationship to the things that abut the street.
A cardinal rule of suburban (and often urban, in the US) planning ordinances is that buildings have to be set back from the street to accommodate front-side parking. That very fact removes easy pedestrian access and the relationship between the pedestrian and the buildings.
3. Stimulation: for lack of a better term, the walk has to be rudimentarily "interesting". This can include widely-cited elements like street life and cafes and good architecture, but more fundamentally, just some intimation of human activity and presence, and at a sufficient density. People don't walk alone, they walk where other people walk. If nobody's walking and walking is boring, they're going to drive. I would too.
people move to and live in the suburbs precisely BECAUSE they lack many of the things found in cities and crowded urban areas.
As to this point, I would have to disagree.
Certainly, some people move to the suburbs precisely for those reasons. However:
1. The suburban layout accounts for the overwhelming majority of available housing stock and residential development in America, and these areas are often where funding and resources are concentrated, whether because of demographics and income, or as a deliberate contrivance of policy (and often both).
As a result, a great many people simply have no choice because of some combination of these reasons:
a. Housing in more urban places is expensive and scarce (NYC, SF, Chicago);
b. The urban centre is run-down and dilapidated (Detroit, most Rust Belt and northeastern industrial cities, a good chunk of downtown Atlanta);
c. The urban centre is strictly a "business district" and there are no residential options available. This frequently co-occurs with B.
d. No coherent urban centre of sufficient size and density exists to begin with.
2. A lot of Americans haven't seen many alternatives to this model, since the vast majority of the country is built out as highways, drive-up shopping strips and distant single-family houses in strictly residential zones.
Here, a lot of folk get irate at the perceived condescension and arrogance, but it's not meant that way. It's just true; statistically, most Americans have never lived any other way, and obviously, people come to see the way they've always lived as the normal default. There's also a strong national folklore of aversion to cities due to apprehensions about crime, noise and the like. This is true even of Americans that live in places we understand to be "cities", because, although we call them that, they're really just giant agglomerations of suburbs either mostly or near-entirely (LA, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, etc.) There aren't really many cities in the US -- in the classical sense of the term. NYC, Chicago and SF are among the very few.
Critically, that's not to say that, given proper exposure to functional, well-implemented urban settings, Americans would choose to live there instead. However, it's a big, isolated, and largely homogenous country in terms of development and land use. Some perspective can be helpful. Regardless, there's a lot of evidence that the present state of affairs is the outcome of heavy-handed policy engineering as much as it is some sort of overwhelming, democratic national social consensus. I'm not buying the idea that the whole country looks like this because nearly everyone wants it that way.
Last edited by abalashov; 05-29-2016 at 01:35 PM..
If someone ever asks me, "Describe the Atlanta City-Data forum in one thread.", I would point them here. It captures everything I love and hate about this forum.
ITP/OTP p***ing contest? Check.
Contempt for those who live outside the Perimeter? Check.
Veiled disdain for Millennials and people who live inside the Perimeter? Check.
Complaining about traffic? Check.
Crapping all over those who would even dare to call Cobb "a great place to live"? Check.
Someone who wishes for more MARTA access in the suburbs? Check.
Random GIFs and internet images made in reply to a long-winded post? Check.
Smug feelings of superiority on the part of users who live in Atlanta, proud of all the amenities they have access to that the poor, poor suburbanites don't? Check.
Smug feelings of superiority on the part of users who live in Cobb/PTC/[insert suburb here], proud of the great schools, sidewalks(!!!), and amenities they have access to that the poor, poor Atlantans don't? Check.
Smug posts from users (such as myself) who want to know about why this bickering over suburbs is such a big deal? Check.
It's fun and pathetic at the same time. All we're missing is someone complaining about the poor implementation of the streetcar.
Yep. For the most part, it's all pretty subjective and tied up in personal tastes, preferences, customs, habits, formative experiences, cultural background, and so on. That's where most of the discussion energy has gone.
The parts that I think are pretty ironclad and worthy of serious deliberation are:
1. The lack of choices here, and in most of the country.
By and large, the suburban/car paradigm is all we've got almost everywhere, by such a lopsided and overwhelming majority, that almost any talk of personal choice and lifestyle preference is missing the point. There is no choice. The legislative framework in which we live, downtown and otherwise, privileges suburban and car-oriented development assumptions to such a degree that alternatives are, in the aggregate, negligible.
This holds even for those of us well ITP--and even in the inner downtown core--becuase we are, by and large, beholden to planning regulations, land-use ordinances, building codes, budgetary allocations and legislative iniquities that preclude the effective formation of thriving urban life and economies--for those who want them.
There have been some laudable efforts at urban build-up and rehabilitation over the years, but in the absence of any integrated regional planning support, handicapped by anaemic resource commitments, they're small islands with no critical mass, and do not a viable urban downtown make. There may be some condo high-rises and a handful of skyscrapers here, but this is still a car city with a useless (for all practical purposes, nonexistent) public transport system and a woeful lack of pedestrian corridors.
2. The absence of a thriving public realm in America in general, and the way in which this hinders and disadvantages children, as well as the way it shapes and mediates our social relationships and civic involvement.
3. The impact of our Balkanisation into suburban municipalities and silos on social equality and the common welfare.
4. [rather obviously] The questionable fiscal and environmental sustainability of the near-ubiquitous suburban setup in its present form.
Last edited by abalashov; 05-29-2016 at 04:19 PM..
Yep. For the most part, it's all pretty subjective and tied up in personal tastes, preferences, customs, habits, formative experiences, cultural background, and so on. That's where most of the discussion energy has gone.
The parts that I think are pretty ironclad and worthy of serious deliberation are:
1. The lack of choices here, and in most of the country.
By and large, the suburban/car paradigm is all we've got almost everywhere, by such a lopsided and overwhelming majority, that almost any talk of personal choice and lifestyle preference is missing the point. There is no choice. The legislative framework in which we live, downtown and otherwise, privileges suburban and car-oriented development assumptions to such a degree that alternatives are, in the aggregate, negligible.
This holds even for those of us well ITP--and even in the inner downtown core--becuase we are, by and large, beholden to planning regulations, land-use ordinances, building codes, budgetary allocations and legislative iniquities that preclude the effective formation of thriving urban life and economies--for those who want them.
There have been some laudable efforts at urban build-up and rehabilitation over the years, but in the absence of any integrated regional planning support, handicapped by anaemic resource commitments, they're small islands with no critical mass, and do not a viable urban downtown make. There may be some condo high-rises and a handful of skyscrapers here, but this is still a car city with a useless (for all practical purposes, nonexistent) public transport system and a woeful lack of pedestrian corridors.
2. The absence of a thriving public realm in America in general, and the way in which this hinders and disadvantages children, as well as the way it shapes and mediates our social relationships and civic involvement.
3. The impact of our Balkanisation into suburban municipalities and silos on social equality and the common welfare.
4. [rather obviously] The questionable fiscal and environmental sustainability of the near-ubiquitous suburban setup in its present form.
ZzzzzzZzzzzzZzzzzzZzzzzz!!!!!
BTW ... this is an American forum. The proper American English spelling of words that end in "or" is "or" -- not "our" (as in neighbOR not neighBOUR, etc).
If you're using European English here to try and make yourself sound more intelligent, you failed miserably. It just makes your arguments look all the more transparent and foolish.
BTW ... this is an American forum. The proper American English spelling of words that end in "or" is "or" -- not "our" (as in neighbOR not neighBOUR, etc).
If you're using European English here to try and make yourself sound more intelligent, you failed miserably. It just makes your arguments look all the more transparent and foolish.
BTW ... this is an American forum. The proper American English spelling of words that end in "or" is "or" -- not "our" (as in neighbOR not neighBOUR, etc).
If you're using European English here to try and make yourself sound more intelligent, you failed miserably. It just makes your arguments look all the more transparent and foolish.
Wow, so you have nothing to say in response so you nitpick? He's not trying to sound intelligent. What he's saying actually makes sense. He clearly knows a lot more about urban planning than most of us. He uses logic in his arguments rather than emotion.
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