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Old 07-29-2014, 08:13 PM
 
497 posts, read 550,146 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jukesgrrl View Post
According to the U.S. Census bureau, unmarried households represent 45% of all U.S. households and as of 2000, the most common household type in the U.S. is a person living alone.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-570.pdf

According to the Census Bureau report (see Figure 1), the most common household type is married couples without children. What am i missing here?
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Old 07-29-2014, 08:24 PM
 
Location: Oceania
8,610 posts, read 7,849,206 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luzianne View Post
I'm not saying people are being forced to live in cities against their will. I'm saying that there seems to be an effort to push an urban lifestyle; that people are trying to promote that kind of lifestyle and force it down our throats as the wave of the future and desirable.
Do you mean forced genrification?
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Old 07-29-2014, 08:58 PM
 
Location: Oak Park, IL
5,523 posts, read 13,895,777 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luzianne View Post
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.
Who is showing up at your front door with a gun and force marching you into your new 500 sq ft condo in the city?

I don't know if you were aware, but for much of post WW2, government policy actually promoted suburbanization over existing urban neighborhoods. Not just rhetorically, but with financial incentives. Perhaps what you are sensing is that the pendulum has shifted just a bit to a more neutral baseline. If the day comes where the federal government prohibits housing loans in suburbs, then you may have a case to make.
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Old 07-29-2014, 09:38 PM
 
13,721 posts, read 19,142,055 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by oakparkdude View Post
Who is showing up at your front door with a gun and force marching you into your new 500 sq ft condo in the city?

I don't know if you were aware, but for much of post WW2, government policy actually promoted suburbanization over existing urban neighborhoods. Not just rhetorically, but with financial incentives. Perhaps what you are sensing is that the pendulum has shifted just a bit to a more neutral baseline. If the day comes where the federal government prohibits housing loans in suburbs, then you may have a case to make.
No, what I am "sensing" and seeing is people promoting an urban lifestyle, saying that it is what people "want" now and basically trying to convince people that urban living is cool - or I guess that would be "swag."
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Old 07-29-2014, 10:04 PM
 
Location: Seattle, WA
2,975 posts, read 4,918,327 times
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Based on the UN population projections and the current trend of building zero-line lot "communities" and apartments on the outskirts of town, the traditional suburb is already on it's last legs. Better get used to cities and make them better places to live. I for one prefer urban density over "suburban" density any day.
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Old 07-29-2014, 10:29 PM
 
1,709 posts, read 2,152,902 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luzianne View Post
No, what I am "sensing" and seeing is people promoting an urban lifestyle, saying that it is what people "want" now and basically trying to convince people that urban living is cool - or I guess that would be "swag."
Can you give an example? Just saying you have a hunch isn't quite enough.
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Old 07-29-2014, 10:35 PM
 
13,721 posts, read 19,142,055 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OuttaTheLouBurbs View Post
Can you give an example? Just saying you have a hunch isn't quite enough.
I didn't say I have a hunch. If you had read the post I quoted and responded to, you would have seen that I used the word "sensing" in quotation marks because I was responding to this comment made to me: "Perhaps what you are sensing is that the pendulum has shifted just a bit to a more neutral baseline. If the day comes where the federal government prohibits housing loans in suburbs, then you may have a case to make."
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Old 07-30-2014, 01:41 AM
 
Location: Tucson for awhile longer
8,869 posts, read 16,249,970 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by impala096 View Post
http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-570.pdf

According to the Census Bureau report (see Figure 1), the most common household type is married couples without children. What am i missing here?
I'm quoting a 48-page study called "Examining American Household Composition: 1990 - 2000 by Frank Hobbs, published by U.S. Census Special Reports. The number of single households versus married couples with no children living at home is only one percentage point apart, so it's perfectly likely those places have reversed since then. I haven't seen your report, which obviously is newer. My point is that either group is the type most likely to be attracted to an urban lifestyle.

From the summary of the Hobbs document: "In 2000, the most common type of household had neither a partner nor children (32%), followed by households with a partner and children (31%), households with a partner but without children (26%), and households with children but without a partner (12%)." [Note, that last smallest group would be the single parent that so many people seem to think is rampant in the U.S.]

http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-24.pdf
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Old 07-30-2014, 02:48 AM
 
156 posts, read 192,762 times
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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.

Last edited by That Guy You Met Once; 07-30-2014 at 03:00 AM..
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Old 07-30-2014, 06:12 AM
 
Location: Northern Maine
10,428 posts, read 18,574,864 times
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"What does "promote" mean? Talk about? Write articles about? You're being very vague. What does "force it down our throats" mean?"

OK, I'll explain it. At the 1992 Rio conference on biodiversity, they published an agenda for the next century. The UN stated how they wanted the world to be in the 21'st century. They planned how our lives would be and if we don't like their agenda we are out of touch and non-compliant. From their viewpoint we have no choice, but to comply. Agenda 21 is not the 21'st agenda in a long line of agendas. It is their agenda for the 21'st century.

There are people who don't believe there is such a thing as Agenda 21. I have the book published by the UN. It came from Geneva, Switzerland. You won't find it in your local book store. Part of the agenda is something called "rural cleansing". There are large financial and regulatory incentives to leave rural areas and move to government approved "core service areas". There are several books on the subject. The best I have found is:
"Trashing the Economy
How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America:
by Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb
ISBN 0-939571-17-X

Published in 1994
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