What would make you like living in a city if you are a suburbanite? (park, zoning)
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.
I'm rather sure I've seen 4 BR apts with 1200 sf. In fact, I don't think the one I'm living in is much larger. Could be as high as 1800 sf though.
Original Levittown homes were 750 sf and 2 BR (there was an unfinished part the buyer could modify to make it larger).
Just about all, perhaps? Other than a few exceptions (mostly isolated beach communities and like) I can't think of a suburbs without normal stores. But I don't think anyone has claimed they exist.
But in any case, these stores aren't in convenient walking distance in most suburbs.
The bedrooms would have to be pretty small for a 4 BR apt. in 1200 sf. Our 1350 sf house had three bedrooms, none huge. It also had a living room, kitchen and family room. No dining room, or even dining "nook". Nor did it have a basement.
Well, many people on this forum talk about having to not only drive, but drive long distances to go to a store. In most burbs, if you were a stay-at-home mom, you would never have to leave your own little area to meet all your needs, except perhaps the need to escape!
What makes you think that so many people are living in more space than that? I would guess that many, many couples live in 700 square feet or less. Not the couples who have purchased houses (and are perhaps thinking ahead to if they have kids), but the average couple renting, sure, 700 square feet seems pretty reasonable.
There's so much more you can do with more space. Separated work or hobby areas. A guest bedroom. A formal dining room (if you're into that; personally I'm not). A larger kitchen. Another bathroom. 700 square feet gives you a smallish kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and living room.
Quote:
The United States uses WAY more than its fair share of the world's resources, and yes, I contribute to that, too. But it's about time that we work to try to cut back on that,
No, thank you. I do not want to move my standard of living even an iota in the direction of that of Bangladash.
Quote:
and ceasing to build new car-dependent neighborhoods seems like an easy, painless way to at least begin a change. And it's not like the people who prefer to live in the Hummer version of a house don't have plenty of existing options to choose from.
It's only painless if you don't want to live in such a neighborhood. As for "existing options", the population is increasing, including the population of those wanting a suburban lifestyle; ceasing to build suburban developments inevitably means there will be a shortage. Fortunately it isn't going to happen.
Quote:
And in most cases, it's NOT a sacrifice. I doubt most people moving to new suburban subdivisions actively want them to not be walkable or to require a car just to run basic errands, or even necessarily want huge square footage -- that's just what's being offered.
You'd be wrong about the square footage thing. Yes, many people want more square footage.
Quote:
On final comment before I forget, I think I've read that most car miles actually come from trips within two or so miles from home, not from commuting. Those very short-distance trips could be easily converted to trips by foot or bike.
Suburbanites generally don't want to spend half an hour walking, even in good weather, when we can jump in the car and drive in 5-10 minutes. Especially when we'll have to carry stuff back.
There's so much more you can do with more space. Separated work or hobby areas. A guest bedroom. A formal dining room (if you're into that; personally I'm not). A larger kitchen. Another bathroom. 700 square feet gives you a smallish kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and living room.
As a homeowner, I've thought a lot about more space, and I just don't see the use for it.
As I said in another thread, our house is a 1240 square foot rowhouse. It's quite long and skinny (interior width only 11.5 feet, IIRC), but we have everything we need. Living room, dining room, and kitchen on first floor. On the second, our daughter's bedroom, den/computer room, dressing room, and bathroom. We've (re)finished our attic and turned it into a master bedroom of sorts.
When our daughter was younger, we had her up in our bedroom, as we set up the part on the opposite side of the attic stairs into a nursery. Since we had a spare bed from when we were both single, we set up a "guest bedroom." No one ever came over. People visited from out of town from time to time, but no one ever stayed with us. We realized it was wasted space for a house so small, and thus abandoned the idea of a "guest room" at all.
We redid our kitchen within a year of moving in. It's built as a dog-leg off the back of our house, so it's even more narrow than the rest of our house. If we open the oven and the dishwasher at the same time, the doors hit. But we used a design which maximizes counter space (U-shaped), and we always have enough room to cook, and don't do bad on storage either. Quite honestly, the huge kitchens confuse the heck out of me, mainly because people are eating out more than ever, so a spacious kitchen is probably of less utility now than it has ever been. People don't need much space for a fridge and a microwave.
Your other examples, separating work/hobby and a formal dining room, have some of the same issues. You get more rooms, but you split up your activities between rooms more. A formal dining room in particular, if only used when guests are around, may only be used a few hours a month.
Second bathrooms are the one thing I'm in agreement about though. We have a toilet in the basement (weird Pittsburgh thing), but lack even a half bath anywhere else in the house, which can be a pain. Besides that, my desire for a bit more space is mainly because my wife is a packrat who never throws anything away. There are boxes of things lining bookshelves, stacked in the basement, hiding under the beds, etc. Sometimes I wish we just had an extra room to cram everything into, so I would't live in such a cluttered house. But I know the problem would only come back again in time.
As a homeowner, I've thought a lot about more space, and I just don't see the use for it.
As I said in another thread, our house is a 1240 square foot rowhouse. It's quite long and skinny (interior width only 11.5 feet, IIRC), but we have everything we need. Living room, dining room, and kitchen on first floor. On the second, our daughter's bedroom, den/computer room, dressing room, and bathroom. We've (re)finished our attic and turned it into a master bedroom of sorts.
When our daughter was younger, we had her up in our bedroom, as we set up the part on the opposite side of the attic stairs into a nursery. Since we had a spare bed from when we were both single, we set up a "guest bedroom." No one ever came over. People visited from out of town from time to time, but no one ever stayed with us. We realized it was wasted space for a house so small, and thus abandoned the idea of a "guest room" at all.
We redid our kitchen within a year of moving in. It's built as a dog-leg off the back of our house, so it's even more narrow than the rest of our house. If we open the oven and the dishwasher at the same time, the doors hit. But we used a design which maximizes counter space (U-shaped), and we always have enough room to cook, and don't do bad on storage either. Quite honestly, the huge kitchens confuse the heck out of me, mainly because people are eating out more than ever, so a spacious kitchen is probably of less utility now than it has ever been. People don't need much space for a fridge and a microwave.
Your other examples, separating work/hobby and a formal dining room, have some of the same issues. You get more rooms, but you split up your activities between rooms more. A formal dining room in particular, if only used when guests are around, may only be used a few hours a month.
Second bathrooms are the one thing I'm in agreement about though. We have a toilet in the basement (weird Pittsburgh thing), but lack even a half bath anywhere else in the house, which can be a pain. Besides that, my desire for a bit more space is mainly because my wife is a packrat who never throws anything away. There are boxes of things lining bookshelves, stacked in the basement, hiding under the beds, etc. Sometimes I wish we just had an extra room to cram everything into, so I would't live in such a cluttered house. But I know the problem would only come back again in time.
OK, so you have 3 people in 1240 sf; 413 sf per person. That is more than we had in our first suburban house with the four of us.
Different rooms are more or less important to different people. We have a dining room and use it, every day. When we moved into this house, we only had one table, so we put it in there. Later, my husband built a low table for the kids to use in the kitchen. When we had our kitchen remodeled 10 years ago, we put in a "snack bar" in the kitchen and got some stools, so we can occasionally eat there. DH and I have talked about whether dining rooms are really necessary, and I said I thought you wouldn't build a nice house w/o one. It is nice to serve your guests somewhere that they don't have to look at the dirty cooking dishes. This is true even when the "guests" are my daughters and their boyfriends.
I was able to look up my daughter's first apt in Denver on the assesor's website. First I'll describe it. It has a small living room, a tiny kitchen, a dining area (really part of the living room) and two bedrooms of the same size (rare in apartments) that are both large enough for a full-size bed and bedroom furniture. She had the second BR set up as an office. One bathroom (small). One parking space off an alley behind the building. Total sf: 766. She lived there alone. One more person would have been fine.
So no, UU, I don't know the living situation of everyone on this thread, but I bet most have at least 400 sf per person. Many suburban single family homes are inhabited by families.
No, thank you. I do not want to move my standard of living even an iota in the direction of that of Bangladash.
How about the Netherlands?
Quote:
Suburbanites generally don't want to spend half an hour walking, even in good weather, when we can jump in the car and drive in 5-10 minutes. Especially when we'll have to carry stuff back.
I can walk to many places faster than one could drive in my parent's suburb.
So no, UU, I don't know the living situation of everyone on this thread, but I bet most have at least 400 sf per person. Many suburban single family homes are inhabited by families.
I definitely have lived under 400 sf per person, I know some who definitely have as well. I may or may not now, likely I'm close to that number. Also it's easier for a shared say 3+ bedroom apartment to have a lower sf per person than a 1 bedroom. A 1 bedroom needs a living room and kitchen while a 3/4 bedroom can have almost the same size kitchen and living room.
Also, if one has housemates, the whole "multi-family is annoying" statement because of shared walls is moot, you're already losing more privacy by sharing walls with others anyway, multifamily isn't going to make too much of a difference. Though, it's harder to control noise issues from people you don't know.
The "big" home I lived in with 588 sf per person (which I thought felt huge) had a dining room we almost never used. Kitchen had a small eating area, and we used that instead. There was also 2 living rooms, really necessary?
I'm curious about what specific changes people would like to see in the more auto-dependent suburbs to make them more environmentally friendly. I've seen a number of posts here that advocate for this general idea, but fewer which get specific about how to make this happen. Here are three ideas which have been suggested in a number of posts that have been specific:
1) Increase the population density of these areas.
2) Improve public transit.
3) Make these areas more walkable (subdivided into making walking easier and
having stores worth walking to).
Some of these get complicated. I agree about public transit. In the suburban area where I live car-free at present, there is a local transit service that uses small busses (a step down from the size of big-city transit busses but significantly larger than vans) and serves this section of the Boston metro area. One can not only ride these busses to local spots beyond comfortable walking distance but also use them for access to a commuter rail station which connects to Boston's metropolitan transit system.
This is not so unusual in an older city like Boston, as most such cities have long had extensive transit systems. I would be very positive about the idea of having such extensive transit in all major metropolitan areas. Still, there are only so many rail lines that can be built without interfering with other land uses, and there are only so many trains that can be run along a route at one time. It would certainly have some impact on total energy use if every metro area had such a web of public transit, but this alone is not going to solve all problems related to the amount of energy used.
Another idea that has been discussed here is walkability. Ideally this would include having stores within walking distance. My neighborhood points up an issue with this. This area is a postwar '50's/'60's subdivision kind of neighborhood, and was clearly set up with walking in mind, given that the streets have sidewalks. The neighborhood has an elementary school and a middle school. It's not too difficult to imagine kids walking to school 50 or 60 years ago when the area was built. Now, one does not see this often, as people seem to drive most places, and kids take the bus to school. Few people of any age walk, other than those folks who can be seen out taking walks for recreation and exercise. What is interesting about this is that there are businesses within walking distance. These mainly include the sorts of stores that serve everyday needs, such as a couple of grocery stores, a drugstore, banks, haircut places, and a number of local eateries.
However, for larger purchases, it's necessary to travel to malls that are close by but not within convenient walking distance. At the malls and in their vicinity are located warehouse stores and large chain stores. That's where you go to buy clothing, sporting goods, electronic products, office supplies, and on and on. The main commercial street in my neighborhood has small businesses strung along its entire length through this area. It's not too difficult to imagine that there could be small clothing, sporting goods, shoe, electronics, book, and record stores added to the mix. Except that those places could never compete with the large chain stores at the nearby malls.
This is not just a suburban issue, as we live in a time when many downtown areas in non-suburban small and mid-sized towns have lost their past collections of small stores to meet everyday needs, which could no longer compete with large chain stores built along highways just outside of town. I personally really miss the real feel of downtowns in the past. Walk downtown and do your banking, get a haircut, buy a pair of shoes or a new shirt, browse in a bookstore, check out the latest music at a record store, pick up some home repair supplies at the local hardware store, or grab a bite at a local eatery. Except for the last one, now you pretty much have to go to a mall for large items and occasional purchases. It's economic reality, the economy of scale.
The old downtown stores could no longer compete with the big chain stores if people tried to open such small local businesses today, in the CBD's of small towns, nor would such stores fare any better if anyone tried locating them in the commercial strip at the edge of my neighborhood. Businesses that cater to small everyday purchases work well in these sorts of areas, but the reality is that in most places outside of the cores of major cities, not just in suburbs but including suburbs, economic realities make it necessary for most people to drive to the store for major purchases. It sounds nice to say that suburbanites would have to drive less if suburban neighborhoods had more stores to walk to, but the reality is that economics today would limit the options to small stores for everyday purchases.
The dinosaurs had a good run for a long time, but in the end changes in climate spelled their doom, and small animals came back to the forefront. So, too, will the dinosaurs of the business world, once their superabundant food sources aren't quite so superabundant.
Things aren't going to go back to the way they were, though--technology has made location less important, but it has also made centralization less important. You don't need to go to a store to check out the latest music, but there are other places where people spend their time in proximity with each other. And having music "delivered" to your house isn't much difference than when people had groceries or milk delivered to their house because people didn't drive cargo vehicles to go shopping.
I definitely have lived under 400 sf per person, I know some who definitely have as well. I may or may not now, likely I'm close to that number. Also it's easier for a shared say 3+ bedroom apartment to have a lower sf per person than a 1 bedroom. A 1 bedroom needs a living room and kitchen while a 3/4 bedroom can have almost the same size kitchen and living room.
Also, if one has housemates, the whole "multi-family is annoying" statement because of shared walls is moot, you're already losing more privacy by sharing walls with others anyway, multifamily isn't going to make too much of a difference. Though, it's harder to control noise issues from people you don't know.
The "big" home I lived in with 588 sf per person (which I thought felt huge) had a dining room we almost never used. Kitchen had a small eating area, and we used that instead. There was also 2 living rooms, really necessary?
The apartments designed for 3-4 people generally have larger kitchens and living rooms than those designed for 1 or 2. My younger daughter has a "studio" apt, that we estimate is ~500 sf. One main room, where she has a bed, dresser and couch, a kitchen which is big enough for a table and chairs, and a bathroom.
The apartments designed for 3-4 people generally have larger kitchens and living rooms than those designed for 1 or 2. My younger daughter has a "studio" apt, that we estimate is ~500 sf. One main room, where she has a bed, dresser and couch, a kitchen which is big enough for a table and chairs, and a bathroom.
Studio aren't the same as 1 bedroom apartments. Standards on what's small may vary from person to person. But anyhow, I need the exact square footage of places / I've lived seen before I have a real feel to know for sure what I've lived in.
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.
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.
But I know the problem would only come back again in time.
