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The difference in result between automobile and railroad/streetcar suburbs is the latter tends to result in some degree of centralization and the city center having some importance is it's the most convenient point accesible by transit. With the automobile, concentrated areas are often less convenient, due to parking and traffic congestion.
Park Slope is single-use in the sense most jobs are elsewhere, however residents are within a short walk to most shops though big shops are elsewhere.
Is that because urban schools are so commonly struggling and suburban schools are so commonly much better off? I don't know much about it admittedly, but a large percentage of urban neighborhoods have been financially neglected for quite some time.
Maybe to some extent but that's a non-spoken sub-text. Here it's more tied to sprawl and infrastructure cost. The big tie in is the Chesapeake Bay. Starting in the 1980s a lot of state mandates revolve around it due to lawsuits and federal directives.
We are now under a Watershed Improvement Plan which deals mostly with stormwater runoff. The 20 year cost for my small County of 85K people is $2B. For my small town of less than 2000 people the cost is $20M.
As everyone's mentioned, no one's trying to force it.
However, you're right, it is being encouraged. There are some very good reasons for that, though.
First, suburbs are wasteful. You might not personally like city living, but it's way cheaper and more efficient to build, wire, heat, and install plumbing for twenty small units in an apartment building than twenty separate McMansions. Then the people in the McMansions have to keep the lawns green or the homeowner's association will be on their ass - but the amount of water, fertilizer and chemicals that go into maintaining lawns alone is unbelievable. Then the water can't be reused, because it's contaminated with cow poop and insect poison. And space is limited, so to keep building suburban developments, you have to take it from either forests or farms.
Then they all have to buy cars. One of the main reasons the US is so oil-dependent, and so foreign-oil-dependent as an extension, is that so many of us live in places where you can't get around without a car. And when you think about it, it is pretty foolish to make a neighborhood so spread-out that your own feet no longer work as transportation. Not to mention that the longer people have to commute to work, the worse traffic gets. (e.g., Los Angeles.)
Secondly, if cities are seen as undesirable and everyone moves out to the suburbs, the cities are left to rot. It looks really bad when the cities - which have historically been points of pride for a country - turn into giant crime-ridden ghettos because the only people left there are the ones too poor to move. Look at New York in the late '60s-early '90s, Philadelphia and Baltimore until recently, or places like Detroit and St. Louis today.
Why is this foolish? Just because it isnt your preference?
Is that because urban schools are so commonly struggling and suburban schools are so commonly much better off? I don't know much about it admittedly, but a large percentage of urban neighborhoods have been financially neglected for quite some time.
In most areas, the cities have higher per-pupil expenditures than the suburbs.
In most areas, the cities have higher per-pupil expenditures than the suburbs.
That's true, but the challenges are far greater in a lot of cases. More money doesn't always help, that's for sure. However, I imagine that there aren't a lot of alternatives in really bad schools.
The UN published an agenda? That's the best evidence you have of cities being forced down people's throats? A body with no real ability to enforce anything publishing a document? Very weak stuff. Even if this document was binding, the US defies the UN all the time.
How does crow taste? Your state, county, city or community has most likely signed on already.
Get ready to do your homework and belch the aftertaste of that crow.
It looks like a lot of the focus here is on getting people to move to urban areas instead of suburban areas. Why? I know those of you who are younger think people should flock back to urban areas and you think that is the wave of the future. Maybe it is the wave of the future in the short term, but I think it will come full circle again when YOUR children decide they don't want to live in a population dense area and want room to spread out like their grandparents did.
I really don't understand the current push for urban living. The majority of the population is still going to live in the suburbs. A lot of the population never has and never will like urban living. I just don't understand trying to convince everyone that urban is better. To me, it's definitely not.
Urban living is better for the environment: Less emissions from commuting, less heating/cooling energy needs due to smaller living spaces and fewer outside walls in the case of multi-unit residential buildings, less electrical line transmission loss, less inefficient food distribution, etc.
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