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The overwhelming majority of us have enough common sense to know what they want, where they can buy it, and whether or not they are willing to pay more for a gallon of milk at a 7-11 or a mom & pop convenience store a block or two from their house ($4.59 here in Los Angeles) or drive 5 minutes away to a shopping center with a Ralphs & CVS side-by-side, and buy the same gallon of milk for $3.39 and perhaps a few other things.
Suburbs are fine for those of us willing to improve our quality of life for ourselves as well as our kids, or for personal objectives such as buying a home in a good school district in a safe neighborhood.
Some urban planners are really full of themselves, and are constantly exposed as being extremely stupid and/or clueless about how frequently their 'bright' ideas turn out to be hysterically asinine when they're put into motion by local politicians, leaving their so-called 'projections' not being worth the paper they were written on, esspecially when you toss in their 'projections' when they're discussing transit-oriented developments.
Do you have any specific examples that you are referring to or is this a subjective post about preferring unplanned suburbs over planned suburbs?
Greek Unemployment Hits Record High
**ATHENS, Greece -- Unemployment in Greece rose to a new record high of 27.6 percent in May, leaving almost two thirds of young people without a job, the Hellenic Statistics Authority said Thursday.
The jobless rate rose from 27 percent in April and 23.8 percent in May last year. Young people were by far the worst affected, with unemployment among job-seekers aged 15 to 24 standing at 64.9 percent. **
Yes, let's do what they're doing!
The better question is what exactly is it supposed to show anyway?
Gini coefficient is what it used to compare income inequality, period.
Gini before taxes and transfers
Greece: .436
US: .486
While that places Greece towards the bottom of income inequality of developed nations and the US towards thae top, there's not much difference. Nor is there any correlation. Italy (.534) and Mexico (.494) both top the US.
So yeah, not only is Greece's economy in the crapper, there's not even any relation between inequality and percentage of people working in small (<50 employee) businesses. In fact, the only correlation between corporate employment, income equality, and suburbs is that im_a_lawyer personally doesn't like them. Hopefully for his clients' sake his legal analysis is better than his grasp of statistics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/bu...=1&#map-search
No significant difference in social mobility between San Francisco, San Jose, or Sacramento. All three metro areas are among the highest in the nation for upward class mobility All of have essentially the same class mobility. Interesting differences between the West (especially CA/NV/AZ/CO) and NYC. In NYC, it doesn't much matter where your parents placed. You'll do slightly better than average in the U.S. Totally different here. If you're on the bottom, there's a lot more upward mobility here. If you're on the top, there's a lot more DOWNWARD mobility here. Much more of a meritocracy here which means less class stability. Less of a permanent parasite class and less of a generational wealth class than the US as a whole.
Too bad it doesn't differentiate between Riverside/Inland Empire, which beats Atlanta at sprawl so handily it isn't even funny, and LA. Greater LA has basically the same income mobility profile as the Bay Area does.
Why take care of something old when our highway, gas, and mortgage subsidizes allow you to move a few miles down the road and have a new house for the same price.
It is not a state of mind issue. It is a policy issue.
So everyone who lives in a suburb or small town is a mindless drone following the subsidy? Get real.
Government policies open up the option for people to live in sprawling environs but people choose to do so for a multitude of reasons:
(1) privacy
(2) elbow room
(3) personal space
(4) proximity to natural elements
(5) more quiet time during the day and night
(6) ability to grow things other than herbs and houseplants
(7) enjoy real, hardcore outdoor activities
(8) lower exposure to criminals
(9) fewer legal restrictions
Do you know the total municipal debt in this country? It's trillions of dollars and that money will never paid because too many suburbs depended on taxes from future residents that never came. Look at what's happening in California.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AtkinsonDan
Government policies open up the option for people to live in sprawling environs but people choose to do so for a multitude of reasons:
and all those policies have failed and has caused the decline of this country.
So everyone who lives in a suburb or small town is a mindless drone following the subsidy? Get real.
Government policies open up the option for people to live in sprawling environs but people choose to do so for a multitude of reasons:
(1) privacy
(2) elbow room
(3) personal space
(4) proximity to natural elements
(5) more quiet time during the day and night
(6) ability to grow things other than herbs and houseplants
(7) enjoy real, hardcore outdoor activities
(8) lower exposure to criminals
(9) fewer legal restrictions
Government policy decreased the opportunity for people not to live in the suburbs.
Things are not also so binary. We have a big redwood forest in the middle of my city, and a ton of other green space. There are a couple of community gardens within a mile of my apartment, on the other hand other people on my block have yards and in the surrounding areas there are citrus trees all over the place.
There is a trend right now for people to live in more walkable places. Walkable urban and walkable suburban. It is not an either or proposition. There are people (like me) who prefer walkable urban places. I have other friends that want walkable suburban places.
Unfortunately the only areas we left walkable are pretty much urban areas. We took the walkable out of the suburbs.
Is it just me, or is a big part of our sprawl problem that we seem to always have a need to have new and shiny things? In my state anyway, the older suburbs are starting to get neglected with roads falling apart. Instead of fixing the streets and sidewalks, seems like here, and seemingly everywhere else, decide that just building a new neighborhood is better than rehabilitating an existing one. Coupling that with American consumerist attitudes, can it be explained (whole or in part) that we Americans desire something "new and shiny" as opposed to old and renovated?
New and shiny is always exciting. But that doesn't mean it has to only be in the far reaches of a place.
There's nothing more fun for me (relatively) than seeing an old worn out bit of urban landscape get renovated and re-purposed into something new and shiny. Like the old Milwaukee Road shops in the city's Menomonee Valley become the industrial park. That has been really impressive.
The entire Valley is undergoing an elaborate transformation into a vibrant corridor of work and play.
I just strongly resent the knee-jerk, rote descriptions of "oh, sprawl. Oh, consumerism." Come up with something relevant on your own.
This isn't Europe. This is where my ancestors came to from Europe and everywhere else to build better lives. We are frontier people. We look for the edges and the wild places to live. This is who we are.
Suburbs weren't a government plot. They were the will of the people.
By the way. the US population when I was born was 179 million. Now it is 308 million. Gotta live somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, I already hear you.
I'm saying there is no sprawl problem or strip mall problem.
This isn't a debate either. I'm saying my piece and it's said. I hope it was on topic.
I'm out.
Last edited by mbradleyc; 02-22-2014 at 02:43 AM..
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