What are some misconceptions people have about the suburbs? (railroad, class, subdivision)

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by wburg

...most folks in my neck of the woods consider my tree-lined, low-rise neighborhood of single-family detached homes and 2-3 story apartment buildings (and the four-plex and six-plex buildings that are our local variant on the "triple-decker") to be "urban" compared to the broad, car-centric ranch homes, auto-court apartment complexes and other postwar tract housing that makes up most of the metro are where I live. By East Coast standards, my neighborhood would be called suburban--on the West Coast, it's the city.

I'd say from east coast standards, it would be called a "streetcar suburb."

To my mind, the hard line between the "least urban urban" and suburban is driveways. If front-facing driveways are rare to absent, and clearly not an original feature of the neighborhood (just something people later added as they paved over the side of their yard, or in some cases had a chance to build when an adjoining lot ended up vacant), then it is an urban neighborhood. If driveways are universal, it is not.

[nei]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I'd say from east coast standards, it would be called a "streetcar suburb."

To my mind, the hard line between the "least urban urban" and suburban is driveways. If front-facing driveways are rare to absent, and clearly not an original feature of the neighborhood (just something people later added as they paved over the side of their yard, or in some cases had a chance to build when an adjoining lot ended up vacant), then it is an urban neighborhood. If driveways are universal, it is not.

Most houses here usually have driveways because there's enough space between houses. But no garages. And some houses have parking spots rather than driveways — a car length paved spot in front of their house (sometimes 1 car wide, sometimes 2)

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by nei

Count me as one of those that likes triple-deckers as well. They also scream New England to me in my mind. Though I agree long stretches of nothing but triple deckers gets a bit tedious. In many of the nicer triple decker neighborhoods, you see other housing stock mixed in. Some of the nicer triple deckers are ornamented. The run down ones in bad neighborhoods are often blah.

I dunno. I think they work well in small leavenings, particularly in the smaller cities, but I think cities like Providence would have been much nicer with a few brick neighborhoods to break up the monotony. It goes straight from urban to SFH to my eyes.

Originally Posted by nei

The advantage of triple deckers over rowhouses is that you can get more light than a row house.

I suppose I can see that. Every room in my house has at least one window, however, which works out fine for the most part.

Originally Posted by nei

That decreases the insulation value, but the 3 floors give it some energy efficiency.

Depends upon which floor you live on. Admittedly, it's great for the second-floor tenant though.

Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81

Well, that's a new one on me. Your misconception is a misconception. That would make every small town in the United States a suburb, and no one with half a brain would believe that. That would make suburbs out of cities like Cincinnati (just recently dropped below 300,00), Toledo and Dayton ... suburbs of what? Cleveland? Detroit?

No, that is not what I was saying. You completely misread and distorted what I wrote there.

I said that is a misconception with “Any city/town with a population below 300,000 is automatically a suburb.” I already know that is not true. There is still a significant amount of people that really do think any place with below that population is a suburb.

I was first stating misconceptions I observed some people have and below that I proved how they are not true.

For that one this is what I said below that: “Also not true. There are a lot of cities/towns below that population and even below 40,000 that are not suburbs and are a separate type of place.”

Originally Posted by Katiana

There are some suburbs with a population over 300K, e.g. Aurora, Colorado, which shares a boundary with Denver (600K).

I already know that there are suburbs that exist with more than 300,000 people, but I was not talking about that.

Other than Aurora in Denver metro area, another huge suburb that exists in the USA is Mesa, Arizona with 439,000 people. Mesa is located in the Phoenix metro area and it claims to be the largest suburb in the USA based on population. Outside of the USA, there are a few suburbs that have an even higher population than that.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by wburg

And again, my western upbringing betrays me. Row houses where I live tend to be wooden and detached, because the ground here is soft (brick buildings tend to sink), wood was cheap and abundant, and because we have a hot, dry climate with mild winters. Instead of the insulation value of shared walls and brick, narrow but detached row houses allow breezes to blow between houses and passive thermal cooling, with enough space for shade trees.

My information about Boston comes from Sam Bass Warner's book "Streetcar Suburbs" which discusses residential dispersal patterns, including the role of that sort of multi-level housing. And often neighborhoods that start out as "suburbs" end up becoming "urban" as a new development gets built out beyond it--most folks in my neck of the woods consider my tree-lined, low-rise neighborhood of single-family detached homes and 2-3 story apartment buildings (and the four-plex and six-plex buildings that are our local variant on the "triple-decker") to be "urban" compared to the broad, car-centric ranch homes, auto-court apartment complexes and other postwar tract housing that makes up most of the metro are where I live. By East Coast standards, my neighborhood would be called suburban--on the West Coast, it's the city.

Perhaps you should take a trip out there and see what these houses really look like. I've seen these triple deckers in former mill towns in CT, too; they're not just in suburbs. Every book reflects the author's bias.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I'd say from east coast standards, it would be called a "streetcar suburb."

To my mind, the hard line between the "least urban urban" and suburban is driveways. If front-facing driveways are rare to absent, and clearly not an original feature of the neighborhood (just something people later added as they paved over the side of their yard, or in some cases had a chance to build when an adjoining lot ended up vacant), then it is an urban neighborhood. If driveways are universal, it is not.

Very interesting idea you've picked up on with driveways. In thinking about this, what I've come up with as one key distinction between outer-urban and inner-suburban has to do with the reason the area became populated and developed. Outer sections of cities were settled largely by immigrants and other newcomers moving to the city intending to join its population, who settled just beyond the fringe of the developed areas, where there was room for new settlement. Often, these areas quickly became densely populataed and built up in their own right, effectively extending the city's boundaries.

By contrast, inner suburbia did not grow due to an influx of newcomers moving to cities, but developed as people already living in cities moved a short distance beyond urban boundaries specifically to leave the city and find places to live with a little bit of open space around them. That meshes well with your driveway idea, Eschaton, since the very purpose of settling the suburbs ensured that these places would be developed with some space between houses, at the very least enough for a driveway. My earlier assertion that many triple decker sections of Boston developed as urban districts rather than suburbs had to do with the fact that these areas were often settled by immigrants seeking to join the city's populace, not by those moving out away from the city.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Perhaps you should take a trip out there and see what these houses really look like. I've seen these triple deckers in former mill towns in CT, too; they're not just in suburbs. Every book reflects the author's bias.

Good point, Katiana. Though reading is good, and better than having no information at all, seeing and experiencing are better still. I'll take my experience actually growing up in the Boston area and living most of my life in southern New England, actually seeing the triple decker housing in the region's old industrial cities, over what Wburg, or anyone, has read in one book.

I don't see why the history of triple decker neighborhoods is relevant anyway, when one talks about monotony of architecture. These places are very much located within the urban parts of cities now, so they are part of the landscape that urban-dwelling critics of the suburbs apparently don't notice all around them when they criticize suburbs for the uniformity of housing styles in suburban subdivisions.

[wburg]

Warner was talking about triple-deckers as features of Boston horsecar suburbs, not saying every triple-decker everywhere had to be in a suburb. Some folks just take things far, far too literally. And yes, there are suburban neighborhoods within cities--also known as "suburbs."

[ogre]

Or some folks read what you write and what it says, and don't make assumptions about what else might have been there that you don't elaborate on until later.

And I still don't see what the history of how these areas developed originally has to do with the fact that they are now very much a part of the urban cores of the cities that have such neighborhoods, meaning that any city dwellers who happen to like criticizing the suburbs for the uniformity of architecture in their subdivisions are themselves surrounded by examples of repetitious building styles.