Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > General U.S. > City vs. City
 [Register]
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.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 03-21-2019, 12:50 PM
 
8,256 posts, read 17,242,923 times
Reputation: 6220

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcenal352 View Post
I'll just have to agree to disagree with you.
I find most of Queens to be vastly urban, regardless of SFH. I don't think SFH is a defining trait of what makes an area urban vs non-urban. What is non-urban, suburban?
This is CERTAINLY not "suburban:"

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6804...7i13312!8i6656

IMO anyway...
Queens is easily the most urban suburban place in the country. I don't think people moving to Queens are looking for the urban lifestyle, though. I mean hell yeah I'd live in Forest Hills or Rego Park before I moved to literally any other SFH neighborhood because they're still urban as hell. But they're not the same as Astoria. Someone tried arguing before that because South Ozone Park has residential neighborhoods of SFH it can't be urban. I agree to an extent that South Ozone Park is not urban. As in, it's not urban if we're comparing it to Manhattan and parts of BK and the BX. But it's far more urban than a similar neighborhood in basically any other city in the US.

But I completely agree with you. I guess I'm phrasing it wrong. Queens is still 100% urban land. It's just not urban in the classical sense. You can live in a SFH and find parking when you go places. Street walls aren't as common. But you can easily live there without a car. IMO, Queens is easily one of the best places in the country if you want city living with a SFH. It's not often you find the strong bodega culture and numerous transit options in any similar place.

I was more responding to the whole concept of SFH being suburban in nature. They are. And I guess it phrased it incorrectly. But it is truer than not that people in Queens generally live in Queens to avoid the massively urban parts of the city. Bigger space for a family. Able to own a car to shuttle the kids around. At least a small yard. But easy subway connections to the city for work and play. Way different than similar neighborhoods in other cities, but suburban for NYC standards.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 03-21-2019, 12:53 PM
 
8,256 posts, read 17,242,923 times
Reputation: 6220
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcenal352 View Post
Virtually everyone I know in those cities owns a car. It's a convenience, and a borderline necessity once you have a family in today's world, regardless of where you live. Hauling the kids to practice across town isn't the most ideal thing. Neither is walking down subway stations with 10 grocery bags, some of which are perishable/leaking items.

A single 20 year old, sure. No reason to have a car in those cities. But a mother/father with kids? Borderline needed.

Driving to/from the office is a burden. Owning a car is not.
I'd get that for sure. But I'm in my mid 20s. All my friends are mid 20s to early 30s. None are married and definitely none have kids. The people in SF are not married and don't have kids either. Yet most of them own a car still. One is in law school, who moved up from LA because he hated living in the suburbs and owning a car in LA, yet he now owns a car while in school in SF again. None of these people have a need for owning a car like kids or anything, yet they just do.

Again, going back to the Queens thing. I'd love to live in Queens one day where I could own a car for the grocery shopping and taking kids places sometimes, but be able to take the subway for work. But owning one in SF seems pointless and hypocritical when all I ever heard from people in SF was how it's the NYC of the west coast. Guess not if everyone still owns a car.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-21-2019, 02:28 PM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
14,360 posts, read 16,855,527 times
Reputation: 12390
Quote:
Originally Posted by jessemh431 View Post
If fully admit that LA's built environment does not inspire the same urban lifestyle as many other classically urban cities. But at the same time, I truly believe SF is overrated since not that many neighborhoods are actually truly urban. Really only parts like North Beach, Nob Hill, The Castro, The Mission, Hayes Valley, the Haight, and a few others are. The rest of the city is just a little bit more smushed together than LA, but not exactly urban. Comparable neighborhoods in NYC are still more urban. But the actual footprint of urban neighborhoods in SF is overstated and therefore the city is overrated.

FWIW, if SF is so urban and walkable, why do I keep seeing people I know there buying cars left and right? Nobody I know in Boston, NYC, Philly, DC or Chicago owns a car, but I know tons of people in SF that own cars. If it's so urban, shouldn't the car be a burden and shouldn't people not want to own one there, just like in the other urban cities?
I agree that people tend to overrate the urbanity of SF. Really when people discuss "San Francisco" they mostly mean its northeastern quadrant, plus a few nearby extensions like Mission District and Haight-Ashbury.

Of course, the same is true for every big city in the country. Philly's core is plenty walkable, but large outlying parts of the city, while dense and full of rowhouses, don't have that many commercial amenities to walk to. Boston's southern neighborhoods are pretty suburban. Lots of Chicago is functionally speaking suburban. Even NYC has plenty of little suburban and suburban-ish enclaves.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcenal352 View Post
I'll just have to agree to disagree with you.
I find most of Queens to be vastly urban, regardless of SFH. I don't think SFH is a defining trait of what makes an area urban vs non-urban. What is non-urban, suburban?
This is CERTAINLY not "suburban:"

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6804...7i13312!8i6656

IMO anyway...
I can flip the view around and I see a Rite Aid with a surface parking lot at the corner, which is a suburban retail typology.

IMHO the highly urban portions of queens are mostly limited to its northwestern quadrant - barring areas like Flushing and the high-density corridor through central Queens like Jamaica and Ozone Park that have subway access. Lots of Queens - in terms of land area - looks like this though.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-21-2019, 02:48 PM
 
Location: West Florida
16,829 posts, read 14,961,983 times
Reputation: 23366
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
I agree that people tend to overrate the urbanity of SF. Really when people discuss "San Francisco" they mostly mean its northeastern quadrant, plus a few nearby extensions like Mission District and Haight-Ashbury.

Of course, the same is true for every big city in the country. Philly's core is plenty walkable, but large outlying parts of the city, while dense and full of rowhouses, don't have that many commercial amenities to walk to. Boston's southern neighborhoods are pretty suburban. Lots of Chicago is functionally speaking suburban. Even NYC has plenty of little suburban and suburban-ish enclaves.



I can flip the view around and I see a Rite Aid with a surface parking lot at the corner, which is a suburban retail typology.

IMHO the highly urban portions of queens are mostly limited to its northwestern quadrant - barring areas like Flushing and the high-density corridor through central Queens like Jamaica and Ozone Park that have subway access. Lots of Queens - in terms of land area - looks like this though.
Huh... That IS Ozone Park... And it's literally right under the A/C line, under a stop and where A/C split into two...

It's not like the place is LITTERED with surface parking. There are a few [small] ones at that corner and that's it.

IIRC, Hudson Yards has a massive surface parking lot, and I don't think that's suburban...

I am aware that Queens has multiple "suburban-ish" areas, but my point was that SFHs doesn't automatically equate to that.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-21-2019, 03:04 PM
 
2,639 posts, read 1,977,044 times
Reputation: 1988
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
I think you point out the reason here. While San Francisco has a lot of single-family homes, and many have front-facing garages, there are other factors to consider. For example, many of the houses are attached to each other, they often have zero setback from the sidewalk, and they're typically two to three stories tall. Thus the "street feel" is semi-urban.
.
Good point. There was a thread that discussed different versions of semi-urban.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-21-2019, 03:11 PM
 
8,256 posts, read 17,242,923 times
Reputation: 6220
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcenal352 View Post
Huh... That IS Ozone Park... And it's literally right under the A/C line, under a stop and where A/C split into two...

It's not like the place is LITTERED with surface parking. There are a few [small] ones at that corner and that's it.

IIRC, Hudson Yards has a massive surface parking lot, and I don't think that's suburban...

I am aware that Queens has multiple "suburban-ish" areas, but my point was that SFHs doesn't automatically equate to that.
And yeah there's definitely a difference between a surface lot here or there (what city doesn't have them) and strip mall after strip mall for miles on end. LA suffers from the plethora of strip malls IMO. I know they pack a lot into an area and are sometimes more than 1 story tall and they provide a place for residents to walk to, but they're uninspiring. Similarly uninspiring are the vast SFH neighborhoods of LA. There may be stuff to walk to within them or near them and they may be crossed with numerous bus corridors, but they'll never be truly urban. There is still a real difference in feeling and vibe between a neighborhood of SFH in Queens v. SF v. LA though. Queens SFH areas still feel far more urban. SF's Sunset and Richmond and outer southern neighborhoods are closer in vibe to LA than they are to Queens IMO.

And for the record, I'm agreeing with you lol. Just saying there are various levels to urbanity in SFH neighborhoods. Plenty of cities have SFH neighborhoods that are urban, and many others have high/mid rise districts that are nothing more than urban suburbs. I'm talking about places that keep throwing up 4-8 story box apartments. Those neighborhoods are not urban, they're just densely built. Ozone Park and Forest Hills and the Sunset and Fairfax are way more urban than those places could ever wish to be.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-21-2019, 03:25 PM
 
Location: In the heights
36,881 posts, read 38,781,820 times
Reputation: 20894
Queens isn't a city, but if it were and given the comments made in this thread, then it might be a contender for underrated urbanity.

Something like a third of residential Queens' area (so not the airports, parks, cemeteries, and strictly industrial zoned areas where no one lives) is within a fifteen minute walk to rapid transit and even more are within within a fifteen minute walk to a major bus line or commuter rail station. Those areas that are within walking distance of mass transit also generally are a lot denser than those not so host a large proportion of the Queens population.

There are neighborhoods where SFH is the most common form and those are usually argued as less urban than those not dominated by SFHs. However, there's a wide variety in what SFH can mean and how much lot space they take with a lot of the Queens home being multistory homes sitting on small lots within close walking distance to main streets. It's also good to note that these areas are often peppered with other types. Going from the Ozone Park example near Rockaway Blvd station there's within walking distance these twin homes / duplexes, these rowhomes, and apartment complexes.

You can have an urban walkable neighborhood with SFHs, but the question is how large the lots for those SFHs are, if there are multiple commercial districts nearby, how the streets are designed (cul-de-sacs? long stretches without crossings for major roads?) and if there's a mix of other housing types in the area and to what degree. I believe LA has several areas sort of developing into that kind of mix and they are walkable and they are urban.

Last edited by OyCrumbler; 03-21-2019 at 03:45 PM..
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-21-2019, 03:36 PM
 
Location: In the heights
36,881 posts, read 38,781,820 times
Reputation: 20894
Quote:
Originally Posted by jessemh431 View Post
And yeah there's definitely a difference between a surface lot here or there (what city doesn't have them) and strip mall after strip mall for miles on end. LA suffers from the plethora of strip malls IMO. I know they pack a lot into an area and are sometimes more than 1 story tall and they provide a place for residents to walk to, but they're uninspiring. Similarly uninspiring are the vast SFH neighborhoods of LA. There may be stuff to walk to within them or near them and they may be crossed with numerous bus corridors, but they'll never be truly urban. There is still a real difference in feeling and vibe between a neighborhood of SFH in Queens v. SF v. LA though. Queens SFH areas still feel far more urban. SF's Sunset and Richmond and outer southern neighborhoods are closer in vibe to LA than they are to Queens IMO.

And for the record, I'm agreeing with you lol. Just saying there are various levels to urbanity in SFH neighborhoods. Plenty of cities have SFH neighborhoods that are urban, and many others have high/mid rise districts that are nothing more than urban suburbs. I'm talking about places that keep throwing up 4-8 story box apartments. Those neighborhoods are not urban, they're just densely built. Ozone Park and Forest Hills and the Sunset and Fairfax are way more urban than those places could ever wish to be.
For the bold'd in regards to Los Angeles, constantly throwing up 4-8 story box apartments does lead to pretty traditional urbanity if those are replacing empty brownfield sites, surface parking lots, car washes and car dealerships, gas stations, drive-throughs, and strip malls (strip malls I put last, because yea, they do often have multiple stories with some really interesting shops and it's interesting to cut through them when they're on street corners that you're walking through), and have mixed-use on ground level within walking distance of rail stations and frequent bus lines. That is a lot of what's happening right now, but since that nadir in the urban core was pretty severe, it takes time.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-21-2019, 03:42 PM
 
Location: West Florida
16,829 posts, read 14,961,983 times
Reputation: 23366
Quote:
Originally Posted by jessemh431 View Post
And yeah there's definitely a difference between a surface lot here or there (what city doesn't have them) and strip mall after strip mall for miles on end. LA suffers from the plethora of strip malls IMO. I know they pack a lot into an area and are sometimes more than 1 story tall and they provide a place for residents to walk to, but they're uninspiring. Similarly uninspiring are the vast SFH neighborhoods of LA. There may be stuff to walk to within them or near them and they may be crossed with numerous bus corridors, but they'll never be truly urban. There is still a real difference in feeling and vibe between a neighborhood of SFH in Queens v. SF v. LA though. Queens SFH areas still feel far more urban. SF's Sunset and Richmond and outer southern neighborhoods are closer in vibe to LA than they are to Queens IMO.

And for the record, I'm agreeing with you lol. Just saying there are various levels to urbanity in SFH neighborhoods. Plenty of cities have SFH neighborhoods that are urban, and many others have high/mid rise districts that are nothing more than urban suburbs. I'm talking about places that keep throwing up 4-8 story box apartments. Those neighborhoods are not urban, they're just densely built. Ozone Park and Forest Hills and the Sunset and Fairfax are way more urban than those places could ever wish to be.
Yes, I know lol. And I agree with you too.

I live in an area surrounded by neighborhoods that keep throwing up those box apartments in an effort to create a false urban atmosphere. Strip malls after strip malls and giant highways cutting through town. Despite having few to no SFHs, these neighborhoods have little to nothing urban about them.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 03-21-2019, 04:00 PM
 
8,256 posts, read 17,242,923 times
Reputation: 6220
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
For the bold'd in regards to Los Angeles, constantly throwing up 4-8 story box apartments does lead to pretty traditional urbanity if those are replacing empty brownfield sites, surface parking lots, car washes and car dealerships, gas stations, drive-throughs, and strip malls (strip malls I put last, because yea, they do often have multiple stories with some really interesting shops and it's interesting to cut through them when they're on street corners that you're walking through), and have mixed-use on ground level within walking distance of rail stations and frequent bus lines. That is a lot of what's happening right now, but since that nadir in the urban core was pretty severe, it takes time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcenal352 View Post
Yes, I know lol. And I agree with you too.

I live in an area surrounded by neighborhoods that keep throwing up those box apartments in an effort to create a false urban atmosphere. Strip malls after strip malls and giant highways cutting through town. Despite having few to no SFHs, these neighborhoods have little to nothing urban about them.
If those 4-8 story box apartments have ground floor retail, then great! However, many don't. And even those that build ground floor retail don't always get tenants. It might be better than replacing an empty lot, but a gas station with a convenience store attached is probably adding more life to the neighborhood than a 4-8 story box in which every resident owns a car and drives it all over.

LA needs to start lowering parking minimums throughout LA County, or at least the city. All other major cities need to start mandating that all those boxes include ground floor retail. And like other cities are doing or have at least thought of doing is fining the developers for letting storefronts sit empty for extended periods of time. Having tons of people living in a defined area with nothing to walk to or to do is meaningless for urbanity. I.e. Playa Vista has some retail and stuff within it, but it's still nothing like other parts of LA. Just because it's lots of apartments doesn't make it more urban than Fairfax or Mid-City. I'd take living in a SFH in Fairfax or Mid City any day over Playa Vista. There's more to walk to, more to do, and MUCH better public transit access, even though they're SFH neighborhoods.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
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.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > General U.S. > City vs. City

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top