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.
It seems like wburg has a very limited perception of what suburbs can be. That's how it appears anyway. I don't know. Maybe he just hates all suburbs so much that the towns in the links I posted look just as ugly as the sprawly suburbs? To me they don't at all. I don't think anyone is trying to get nitpicky. Just trying to give a different perception.
And the semantics is important in my opinion. Sprawl is a very negative word. Subdivision can also sound negative depending on the way it's used. But the word suburb or neighborhood shouldn't be a negative word. But it seems like some people use the words very interchangeably when they couldn't be more different.
Look at the word "city" versus "inner city" Definitely two different meanings.
I put those links there so anyone can see the street view of how many suburbs look. Honestly, those were the only types of suburbs I had ever seen before I moved to Florida. I grew up and was surrounded by leafy suburbs with homes pretty spaced out, winding roads, mixed in with small farms. Nothing at all like the sprawl I saw take over Florida in the 2000's.
I can see how someone can have a negative view of surburbs if all they've ever seen is ugly sprawl. I can see how they would be left wondering, "How can anyone want that?" But that is not what the suburbs are in all places. In many places they are very desirable and sought after. So when people ask, "How can anyone live in the suburbs?" The answer is, "Very easily." There are many suburbs throughout the US that are VERY pleasant to live.
Nothing at all like the sprawl I saw take over Florida in the 2000's.
I can see how someone can have a negative view of surburbs if all they've ever seen is ugly sprawl.
You have to understand that what you saw in 2000s Florida basically sums up Southern suburbs in general. Even Sugar Land, Texas was once an honest blue-collar town known more for.....well, sugar. And a prison on the edge of town. Now the prison is about to be closed down, leveled and made way to extend the sprawl-o-rama. That might sound like progess to somebody, certainly to developers, but that prison was a big part of that town's identity, one that put its name in old folk and blues songs nearly a century ago.
They'd do the same with the old sugar refinery if there wasn't at least a little bit of a historic preservation effort.
This pretty much sums up what "urbanists" think of the suburbs in this part of the country. If you were in New York and Connecticut long before you came around here, your mileage is going to vary greatly.
wburg.....poorly planned, sprawly neighborhoods give you the worst of both worlds.
Well planned suburban neighborhoods DO give you the best of both worlds. Easy access to get into a city, variety of shopping, yet woods and farms in your own backyard and around your neighborhood.
The problem is that the condition is temporary. I mentioned the suburb where I grew up upthread a ways: in the 1970s and 1980s, there were open fields and farms around the neighborhood, but as the sprawl continued, the fields and farms were covered over by suburbs. And the places that were suburbs when I were a kid were, in turn, farms and fields in the 1940s and 1950s, when my parents' generation were growing up.
Quote:
Not to be rude, but have you even ever seen a nice neigborhood?
This is what I mean with semantics
I live in an extraordinarily nice neighborhood, and have seen plenty of them.
Quote:
Suburban does not mean sprawl. And suburb does NOT mean subdivisions. You can live in the suburbs and not be in a subdivision and not be in sprawl. They are completely different.
I fundamentally disagree with this. Suburbs are the residential form of sprawl, along with their commercial form (shopping malls and strip malls) and industrial/office forms (edge cities and "office parks.") The suburb which is on the edge of the woods today will, in all likelihood, not be there for long, as suburban expansion continues unabated. In all cases, they represent a desire of people to avoid the mental images they have of cities, while taking elements of the cities with them. Inevitably, they replicate what they hoped to escape, while pretending they live somewhere else.
Density and sprawl are opposites. If your idea of a "nice" suburb is one with large lots, and several acres of land per house, big enough to give the impression of "country living," you like sprawl much more than if your idea of a "nice" suburb is one with small lots where it's obvious one is in a neighborhood.
Quote:
This is a street view of a suburb where I grew up in NJ. Tell me this doesn't give one a feeling of country. Yet this is all close to tons of shopping and easy access to jobs.
Street View of a particular perspective of the neighborhood is one thing--but the overhead view tells another story: horse farm new jersey - Google Maps
So there are little stretches that are intended to simulate country roads, but just beyond the first tree-line are cul-de-sacs of mass-produced suburban housing. It's a gigantic lie--like the parts of California's northcoast along Highway 101, where majestic thousand year old trees stand within eyeshot of the state highway where the tourists drive, but if you get off the highway and climb over the first row of hills, there are endless clear-cut fields of stumps.
"The feeling of the country" is not the same as "the country." It's like a habitable form of high-fructose corn syrup: an analog of sugar, supposedly identical, but enormously cheap due to government subsidy so they put it in everything, with predictable bad effects on our bodies.
Quote:
If a person feels that the burbs are the worst of both worlds for them, then that is their right to feel that way. But it's false to say that all suburbs are built the same way. They just aren't. We're not talking about opinion anymore. Now it's just giving false information plain and simple
Nobody said the suburbs are all built the same way. Obviously, they vary, and some use better illusions to hide their true form. Some disguise themselves as farms or woods, others disguise themselves as quaint small towns based on small towns most of us only saw on TV. But suburban life is not the same as small-town life, or rural life, or life in the actual wilderness. It just pretends to be, with varying levels of effective simulation, depending on one's ability to self-deceive.
Ariel views of any town always look bad. I've been house hunting for the past year and I've found that ariel views never give a good feel of what the town is. From the ground, it always looks nicer.
Quote:
The feeling of the country" is not the same as "the country
Yes but who said that suburbs are "in the country"? The suburbs are the suburbs. I'm saying that not all suburbs have the sprawly, open, flat feel. Many suburban towns have winding roads, woods, small hills. These are things that cannot be seen from the ariel view. You have to do the street view. Topography is completely lost in an ariel view. Yes there are lots of homes, but driving around, because of hills and trees, it doesn't feel as crowded. And how a place feels is very important for most people.
But anyway, I don't see what is wrong with the suburbs having a country feel. It means that the builders left some of what was there rather than bulldoze the entire place. For many people, having some trees and a country feel is all the country they want. If they wanted more, they'd move to the actual country. If they wanted less, they'd move to the city.
We know there are 3 types of places: City, Suburb, and Country. But there is such variation within each of these that it's really not fair or accurate to label them as all the same. All suburbs are not created equal just as all cities were not.
Quote:
It's a gigantic lie
What is a lie? You don't like sprawl where they just come and bulldoze everything in sight. But you also don't like if neighborhoods were developed and some trees were left behind? I really don't understand.
These neighborhoods are still not near as dense as a city. What is wrong if people choose to live there? Do you think that there should only be city or country? Nothing in between? I just really don't get your point of view, like at all .Those are nice neighborhoods that I posted street views of and even the most dense is still not like living in a city. So I'm not sure what you mean by a lie?
Last edited by Yankeerose00; 09-05-2011 at 04:38 PM..
In all cases, they represent a desire of people to avoid the mental images they have of cities, while taking elements of the cities with them. Inevitably, they replicate what they hoped to escape, while pretending they live somewhere else.
You do not know what everyone in the suburbs thinks or feels. One can look at it another way: people in the suburbs have what they LIKE about the city ( shopping, entertainment )and they leave behind what they don't. (dense living, crime in many areas, cost of living, city taxes)
Quote:
Density and sprawl are opposites. If your idea of a "nice" suburb is one with large lots, and several acres of land per house, big enough to give the impression of "country living," you like sprawl much more than if your idea of a "nice" suburb is one with small lots where it's obvious one is in a neighborhood.
So now sprawl includes homes that are more spread out and not on top of each other? Neighborhoods with 1 and 2 acres lots are considered sprawl? I don't think so. Totally disagree.
Call it what you want. Doesn't really matter. All suburbs are different. We have 50 states that were built up over the past 100 years. Different topography, landscape, architecture. To say that all suburbs are the same is just bizarre to me.
I can assure you, promise you, that nobody who is living in a suburb is "pretending" to live in wilderness. They are very much aware that they live in the suburbs whether they live on 1/2 acre or 3 acres. If anything, it's the people coming from the city who act like the suburbs are the boon docks! The people in the burbs don't think that.
I honestly don't know why I give a sh*t about any of this. It's just a lot of what I'm reading here confirms what I originally thought about SOME people ( not all mind you) who call themselves urbanist, new urbanist, whatever. Total misconceptions about how other people live.
Last edited by Yankeerose00; 09-05-2011 at 05:02 PM..
Ariel views of any town always look bad. I've been house hunting for the past year and I've found that ariel views never give a good feel of what the town is. From the ground, it always looks nicer.
I don't agree about aerial views. I'm a big fan of aerial views, and in fact have a big aerial view of a chunk of the city where I live on my wall, taken in the mid-1970s. It's quite engaging, and becomes a big conversation piece for visitors. In the background of the photo are big open fields of farmland that are now suburbs, which is almost as sad as looking at the spots in the 1970s that had been neighborhoods that were flattened for highways and parking lots.
But hey, let's take a look at that Street View of the neighborhood you like:
This link is from the not-so-pretty part, not the part disguised as a quiet country road, but the low-density housing part. I'm just not impressed.
Quote:
Yes but who said that suburbs are "in the country"? The suburbs are the suburbs. I'm saying that not all suburbs have the sprawly, open, flat feel. Many suburban towns have winding roads, woods, small hills. These are things that cannot be seen from the ariel view. You have to do the street view. Topography is completely lost in an ariel view. Yes there are lots of homes, but driving around, because of hills and trees, it doesn't feel as crowded. And how a place feels is very important for most people.
The neighborhood you linked is an extraordinarily low-density suburban neighborhood--which is, in many ways, the very archetype of sprawl, and then claimed it wasn't sprawl because it kind of looks like the country. Feel is important--but so is reality.
Quote:
But anyway, I don't see what is wrong with the suburbs having a country feel. It means that the builders left some of what was there rather than bulldoze the entire place. For many people, having some trees and a country feel is all the country they want. If they wanted more, they'd move to the actual country. If they wanted less, they'd move to the city.
More typically, no, the builders didn't leave what was there, they bulldozed what was there and then added landscaping to marginally resemble what they had just destroyed. And yes, for the customer, a country feel IS all they want--which is why people who move to new suburbs near farmland often end up complaining about the smell of cow poo in their new neighborhoods, sometimes to the point where they end up rallying to drive actual farmers out of business. Or they live near the forest and then some kid gets mauled by a wild animal, and the neighborhood goes hyper-vigilant to get rid of the wild animals whose former habitat their house sits on. They want simulated countryside, not the real thing.
Quote:
We know there are 3 types of places: City, Suburb, and Country. But there is such variation within each of these that it's really not fair or accurate to label them as all the same. All suburbs are not created equal just as all cities were not.
If a criticism I have about a suburb does not describe the suburb where you live, rest assured that I am not describing your suburb, so there is no need to take offense.
Quote:
What is a lie? You don't like sprawl where they just come and bulldoze everything in sight. But you also don't like if neighborhoods were developed and some trees were left behind? I really don't understand.
These neighborhoods are still not near as dense as a city. What is wrong if people choose to live there? Do you think that there should only be city or country? Nothing in between? I just really don't get your point of view, like at all .Those are nice neighborhoods that I posted street views of and even the most dense is still not like living in a city. So I'm not sure what you mean by a lie?
The function of neighborhoods like this is to suggest to the buyer that they are living "in the country" when they are actually not. The illusion is temporary: as time goes on, the open farmland or fields near the subdivision that maintain that illusion slowly turn into more suburbs, so what was once on the periphery is now stuck in the middle of suburbia, and the adjacent farmland is now an hour's drive away. Traffic gets worse as there are more people driving past their neighborhood to get to the new suburbs farther out, and because the doctors and lawyers that used to be the neighbors move to the new trendy suburbs, less well-to-do people moves in, and the neighborhood gets less "nice" as property tax revenue drops.
In a suburb, less is more: denser than a certain point, the suburb becomes less appealing. In a city, more is more: more density means more utility, more convenience, more walkability and more options. So as cities age and develop they get more appealing--as suburbs age and develop they get less appealing, unless the folks who live there have enough political power to stop further growth in their own neighborhood. But even if they are successful, it does not stop the growth totally: it moves the growth farther away from the core, using up even more space and more land.
Where did I say that I do? Did I ever say that people who move to the city are pretending it's something it's not? Am I trying to tell people that their city is a lie?
This is absurd. Really. I'm not a city person yet I'm fully aware that there are different types of city. Is it so hard to expect a city person to be aware that suburbs aren't the same either? I guess so.
There really is no defense here. All suburbs are no the same. They weren't built the same. They don't look the same. People who live in one type wouldn't want to live in another type.
If someone hates all things suburb then hate it. But understand that you are hating different things. Dont' tell people that their neighborhood is nothing but sprawl.
When you tell someone they don't know what they're talking about, it does kind of imply that you know better. So does this mean you don't really know better and his assertion is just as good as yours? Or do you really know better?
When you tell someone they don't know what they're talking about, it does kind of imply that you know better. So does this mean you don't really know better and his assertion is just as good as yours? Or do you really know better?
That's all I'm asking.
If a person hates all suburbs equally, that is their opinion.
Stating that all suburbs are sprawl and that all suburbs are nothing but subdivisions is incorrect. It's no longer a matter of opinion.
What do you think I'm the only person who thinks that suburbs are diverse? And that you can't paint all of the suburbs with one brush?
Quote:
he function of neighborhoods like this is to suggest to the buyer that they are living "in the country" when they are actually not
You are forgetting one big huge thing.....this is what people from the CITY are sold when they look to leave the city. Oooh a tree! See? You're in the country! Only a person from a city would see a few trees and think they are in the country.
People who were born and raised in the burbs or have spent any significant time in the burbs are VERY well aware it's the burbs! I promise you.
And no all the trees weren't bulldozed. My house was across from a forest that had trees over 100 years old. There were huge trees all over place.
It's obvious you don't know sh*t about the east coast. It's probably best you address the suburbs as western suburbs or whereever the heck you live.
You don't like that street view of the NJ burbs? Don't live there. But don't even try to say that view is anything like this view and expect a shred of credibility
This is sprawl. This should be what pisses you off. Not neighborhoods.
Last edited by Yankeerose00; 09-05-2011 at 08:57 PM..
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.
