"Because all the functions of life—homes, stores, entertainment, and work-places—are rigidly separated and spread out, everyone needs a car to get around. That means long commutes, traffic jams, and less quality time with family. Local governments are going broke trying to extend water and sewer lines and other infrastructure to outlying areas, even if it's dense once you get there. Sprawl eats up farmland and open space, and investment in sprawling areas has tended to be at the expense of inner cities, worsening social and economic fragmentation."
> a pretty good rundown of some of the symptoms/effects of suburbia.
...and bruegmann and kotkin don't seem to take issue with the fact that suburbia fosters these problems, they merely say that in some places it's 'getting better' or it's 'not as bad anymore' or that 'it's always been this way' or that it's the 'american dream'.
kind of a bait and switch for the author to have mentioned the problems and then provided the comments of bruegmann and kotkin as if they were responses > more like non-sequitur. they don't answer the critiques because they can't give tangible support for this kind of development model. really what they're saying is that, historically, people seem to have liked it and it seems they still do.
both lexington and louisville have been sprawling toward each other (as well as in other directions) for decades now. as a consequence, kentucky's "bluegrass" landscape is on the endangered list of the world monuments fund for 2006. think woodford reserve, horse farms, rail fences, dry-laid limestone walls...
suburbs scare me so much
my family lives in a suburb of kansas city. everytime i go home i have this pit in my stomach, as if im being crushed from the inside. i think its the clouds moving in over a landscape void of landmarks sucking out my soul. they hope to scatter it around, and force me to wander the suburbs endlessly in search of it
the other thing that irks me about suburbs is that they, more often than not, are sterile and homogenous. its residents are exposed to no diversity in culture or ideas, and so its residents become sterile and homogenous. its a sad fact that in my town, there are few people who have desire to leave and experience anything but suburbs, and the ones who do rarely leave in fear that life might be difficult if they do.
it breeds complacency
there's also the fact that that physical separation between functions means that at least half of the place will be empty at any given time. Besides the latent potential for crime because of this, that makes for a pretty boring place to be!
Naahhh....it aint that bad. Have you ever been to suburban areas in Europe? Houses are so small, one must wonder why bother leave the city to live in cramped up tiny houses with no garage and neighbours who can hear you knocking boots.
"Suburb," much like "sprawl," is an increasingly vague term that needs more specificity in these kinds of discussions. Some suburbs have mixed uses, including industry; some are denser than others; not all are bedroom communities devoid of all but single-family housing... as the above examples illustrate.
I agree with citizen. We're still talking about the suburbs as if they haven't changed or evolved from the post-world war ii homogenous, single-use type. Boundaries between city and suburb are blurring. And the suburban landscape is become much more interesting than it once was....
Also, euro sprawl is really quite similar to that in the US. Many of the various political and economic forces that encouraged sprawl were operating on both sides of the Atlantic. I think the above photos are somewhat misleading.
We spend too much time complaining about suburbia and too little time thinking about what opportunities might exist outside of our city centers.
if you can find it, there's a great book about the dutch struggle with these same issues - "rearranging the netherlands/atlas of change" - published by nai.
the great thing about this book, but also the reason that i get frustrated when talking about issues raised by sprawling development in the u.s., is that it becomes clear in the book that not only is sprawl vs. protection of the dutch landscape important to the dutch people, it was a huge political issue at the time of the recent 'fifth report on spatial planning'. real people were debating issues that have bearing on the quality of their surroundings!
if you can believe it the gov of tokyo is working on densifying the city centre too. population of about 30 milln in the metro area, but something like 3/4 live in the suburbs. chuo ward for example has a day night population difference of 1mil vs 100,000 and hey would like to cut down on all that commuting, even though most people travel by train. still, a recent government report showed that nearly half the folks living in the suburbs will not leave where they are.
the suburbs here are arguably just ugly versions of new urbanism and you might think things were going well, but the population is aging and expected to shrink dramatically in the next few decades so there is some real need for the plan. it is also a quality of life issue that resonates with me at least. i live about 30 minutes by train from the city centre but still spend hours getting round the city for work and research on busy days. can't imagine what it is like for those who live really far out...
tokyo's suburbs are still quite urban. in comparison my parents's homes back in central canada are nearly rural. but not in a good way. last time i visited my wife and i went for a walk but couldn't find anywhere interesting to go, just the same after the same, no trees, no shops, just houses and houses and houses. and looping roads that meant a 10 minute walk to visit the house behind you....
but when i mentioned this to my father he thought i was entirely wrong, he loved every curve, didn't want any of the things i missed, loved to talk about the million dollar mcmasion on the corner, and figgered new urbanism was, well.. downright unamerican. and he was canadian! the thing is the suburb is not only a place, it is also a symbol of status and proof of effort that otherwise no one can see. It isn't aesthetic, it is emotional, so if you wanna deal with it at all it has to be considered on that level. very difficult....
i figger it is just part of the normal evolution of the city and things will change when conditions force it or society changes...will be interesting to see the effect of the coming oil shock...
I find it sad that suburbanites are so often the target of bashing from young singles who seem to have a hard time understanding that for a lot of people there is little choice but to live in the suburbs. As someone looking to buy his first house within the nest 9 months, there are not too many options that are not in blighted neighborhoods yet still within my price range. Although I'm committed to staying in the city and will undoubtedly stick it out until I find something here, I can understand why a lot of people feel priced out. Also, at least in my city, yuppie invasion has robbed the city of much of the charm it once held over the burbs. These are the same people who turn their noses up at suburbanites but then demand their neighborhoods become starbuckified.
The situation gets even stickier if you are trying to start a family. There is not much housing stock here that can comfortably accomodate families, even by the standards of small house proponents. Where such housing does exist and is not in blighted areas, it is very expensive. Unrenovated units often require thousands of dollars in work above already steep purchase prices just to remove lead paint and asbestos. The schools are also so bad in my city that anyone who can afford it either gets out or sends their kids to private school. Given that I'll probably never be able to afford private schools on an architect's salary, even I'll probably jump ship when it comes time to have kids.
married with child, bought a cheap house in a desirable neighborhood and fixed it up, fought starbucks coming in...still hate the 'burbs.
oh, and lead paint and asbestos are smaller issues in residential work. paint over the lead paint ('encapsulate') and remove the asbestos yourself. small amounts won't do you any harm and you can usually even throw away the amount you can generate in one house in your normal trash pickup. contractors won't touch it, of course...
i won't apologize, i grew up in the "suburbs" and while there is a colossal waste of resources and ecological devastation involved in today's american suburb -- i like the idea of everyone having their own home and land -- i like the idea of people having copious contact with nature -- and i like the idea that people can control their levels of interaction with others more than is possible in a dense urban core.
many of these criticisms aren't about suburban forms or planning -- they're about suburban people. there's a stereotype of suburbanites that they're all unsophisticated, closed-minded, and socially conservative. interestingly enough, many of the "adults" living out vastly extended childhoods in america's "urban" cores came from these exact same suburbs that supposedly spawn only narrow-minded machinistic clones. but all THOSE people "escaped" the suburbs.
i only lived in a "real" city for two years (chicago) but was unimpressed as to the level of diversity, tolerance, cultural sophistication, and education of those around me (in general).
i went to decent public schools with significant numbers of mexicans, puerto ricans, vietnamese, cambodians, laotians, thais, koreans, and chinese.
the pizza place my old man liked was run by an albanian.
all of whom were either middle-class, working-class, poor, or dirt poor.
i learned to appreciate rachmaninoff, balanchine, august wilson, stonewall, and burroughs in haltom city, texas. and i did not teach myself nor did i have the internet (nobody did at the time).
and in terms of tolerance and diversity? well, i won't deny that suburbanites can often be closed-minded. but the closed-mindedness goes both ways. it's just as hard to be a republican in chicago as it is to be a democrat in naperville -- oh wait, scratch that, there are plenty of democrats in naperville.
first one of my favorite movies about the post-war origin of levittown...and follows the inhabitants to find out where are they now...
sorry an over simplification of this documentary...but worth a look. wonderland
"i like the idea of people having copious contact with nature"
in the burbs? are you for real? check out the burbs in most suburban rings and you'll find that they ERASED nature and named the subdivision after it.
maybe the pioneer developments, those which take over the greenfields, offer some contact with nature - for about 2-5 years until the other developments follow.
"i like the idea that people can control their levels of interaction with others more than is possible in a dense urban core"
you don't have to contrast burbs with 'dense urban core'. there are dense urban neighborhoods outside the business core which 1) often have existing housing stock requiring renovation and 2) allow just as much control of levels of interaction.
i won't say being outside the city is, in itself a bad thing, just that the current model is broken. if we acknowledge the "colossal waste of resources and ecological devastation involved in today's american suburb" then maybe there is a different model which allows for "the idea of everyone having their own home and land".
i don't believe that suburbanites are unsophisticated, narrow-minded, clones, but i DO think that once they get out of their cars in the protection of their garages, already inside their little box, that they fail to acknowledge that they are part of a larger system and that this system is destructive.
and ochona great post about slough...love the office!
as for my own thought on the burbs... of course we in the archi-com hate them usually. the sameness...from culture, to dining, to thought, etc. it is the bane of any person who takes great stock in their surroundings.
HOWEVER, i have noticed what people have said in the above posts... to keep this post as short as i can...i will just bring up 3 points.
one: it is cheaper as a family to buy there. if you look at it...we see that the areas in the city are "blighted". this is because deep inside our PC hearts, we are still scared of people who are different. of course we have made great strides along race...but poor people are a whole other thing. we have all designed that ideal living situation at one time or another bringing together people of different social/economic situations...but the ghetto is still the ghetto.
the interesting thing i have noticed here in houston...a very interesting laboratory of suburban ideas...is that we have self segregated our suburbs...asians live in asian areas...indians live in indian areas...hispanics...african-americans...whites... etc.
we have found comfort in those areas that are like us.
of course maybe this is not all bad...but i am not sure yet...but at the heart of it comes the second part of the problem...schools are not very good. well could that be because everyone is scared of this school and wants to go to that one?!?
third problem of the suburb...the family. so in order for the parents to feel safe with their child they take them away...miles away from their work etc. so parents travel 1 to 2 hours to get home. to see their child for about an hour before they go to sleep... maybe if parents cared about what their child was doing rather than driving to and from work we would not have isolated children that feel the only way out is guns in schools... interesting how these shooting in schools primarily happen in the SAFE suburbs.
that's what people thought about austin 15 - 20 years ago...
but seriously -- what are coming to the forefront of desirability (to me) are the "in-between" areas that aren't as dense as manhattan or san francisco but aren't as isolated as the exurbs.
many of these desirable areas were once considered "suburban," but the difference in planning way back when (pre-WWII as opposed to now) is that the old "suburbs" were planned with human scale and pleasantness of living in mind, not engineered to move traffic through at maximum speed, not planned to segregate any and all functions, not pro-forma'd to provide maximum return for someone's REIT portfolio.
the question is: most people are moving further and further out. how do we as architects shape those exurbs? there's more forgetting than learning required: forgetting about turning radii, assumptions about property values, and the undesirability of having a grocery store within one mile of one's home.
I really despise the burbs but I'm with Bryan and other in saying they have become a necessary evil for the American family. Singles and DINK's have no problem with living in core cities because they can find ways to afford the city while avoiding the drawbacks.
Once you have a family that all changes. Show be a major American metro where the inner city school districts are better than the suburbs. Show me one where the inner city has less violent crime than the suburbs. Show me one that has lower property tax than the suburbs.
I also disagree that all suburbs are homogonized bastions of upper middle class white people. Many have grown quite diverse over the years.
It's not at all the single family house that I'm against. What I don't like is over-bearing zoning. Throw it all out. It's zoning that keeps the market 5 miles from your home. It's zoning that makes you cross a freeway to get to the dry cleaners. It's zoning that makes lot setbacks so huge that only big box retailers will move into town. Then there are the idiot urban planners that think winding streets make people drive slower, at the same time they make them wider. Those are our problems.
"Show me a major American metro where the inner city school districts are better than the suburbs."
:louisville's school system has a multi-layered system in which your child can go to his/her assigned school or test into a traditional school or a magnet school. while most of the school system in the metro area is pretty good, some of the magnets are recognized as among the the best in the state, they have a statistically large number of national merit scholars, and most magnets are in urban neighborhoods.
"Show me one where the inner city has less violent crime than the suburbs."
:louisville's violent crime levels are fairly even throughout. though we're the 16th largest city, by population, we don't exactly have an inner city. there are more impoverished areas, especially in the vicinity of public housing, where violence is higher. but the suburbs have their share of problems. and lately it's the rural areas and crystal meth that we're hearing more about.
"Show me one that has lower property tax than the suburbs."
:since louisville's merged metro government three/four years ago we're all in the same boat tax-wise, city and county dwellers.
ochona - i like the hummer/10 yr old quip. it's usually the small-man-syndrome builders/developers driving the beasts around, terrorizing the cul-de-sacs.
that is just not right that anyone with kids are forced out!
there are many people in the city that have more kids than you and make much less than you...
you (and yes i am not exluded) are just scared of living with them!
we as white collar people have made the burbs our haven from the toughness of the city...
louisville: colder than austin, warmer than minnesota.
we're actually having our first real fall day today. a little bit of rain this morning, between 50-60 degrees.
we're one of those 'lucky' places that gets both hot in summer (95-100, seldom over that) and cold in winter (5-10, seldom lower, snows 3-4 times but doesn't last). fall and springDERBY are lovely.
i just took the google air to louisville, very nice. good place to design houses. not all the rivers edge is expensive looking, so there is something for every one and i spotted some places towards the northwest of ohio riv that would be fine. i'd like to stay on the north west side of the river where the prices might be more reasonable and still close to the river or on it. i'd never go to hardrock cafe which google features. i'd get a river boat. there are also some feeder creeks, without the muddy waters which i don't mine anyway and it might change the color on certain times of the year i suppose. river must smell nice. you can do a house on stilts not to high though, if the river rises. i don't want too many neighbors but i could go for group of 4-5 old regular houses max. i'd like to get a 10 speed to cruise along the river and smoke pot in my favorite spots take dip in the river and nap on a summer day. in winters i would roast chicken and make turkish soups.
probably i would develop my own work and sell it, and do another one. i don't see surviving there otherwise. what am i gonna do?
true, louisville would be better if you are from there and some relatives around. but i can adopt.
after living in LA for 30 yrs, you kind a become mind traveler often, and i have other spots too. my newest one is louisville.
how much it would cost to buy a .5-1 acre river adjacent land preferable with a small house on it, local ballpark? i know this is about suburbia but i am more for rivers edge.
what's so bad about suburbia...?
can it be all bad?
"Because all the functions of life—homes, stores, entertainment, and work-places—are rigidly separated and spread out, everyone needs a car to get around. That means long commutes, traffic jams, and less quality time with family. Local governments are going broke trying to extend water and sewer lines and other infrastructure to outlying areas, even if it's dense once you get there. Sprawl eats up farmland and open space, and investment in sprawling areas has tended to be at the expense of inner cities, worsening social and economic fragmentation."
> a pretty good rundown of some of the symptoms/effects of suburbia.
...and bruegmann and kotkin don't seem to take issue with the fact that suburbia fosters these problems, they merely say that in some places it's 'getting better' or it's 'not as bad anymore' or that 'it's always been this way' or that it's the 'american dream'.
kind of a bait and switch for the author to have mentioned the problems and then provided the comments of bruegmann and kotkin as if they were responses > more like non-sequitur. they don't answer the critiques because they can't give tangible support for this kind of development model. really what they're saying is that, historically, people seem to have liked it and it seems they still do.
both lexington and louisville have been sprawling toward each other (as well as in other directions) for decades now. as a consequence, kentucky's "bluegrass" landscape is on the endangered list of the world monuments fund for 2006. think woodford reserve, horse farms, rail fences, dry-laid limestone walls...
suburbs scare me so much
my family lives in a suburb of kansas city. everytime i go home i have this pit in my stomach, as if im being crushed from the inside. i think its the clouds moving in over a landscape void of landmarks sucking out my soul. they hope to scatter it around, and force me to wander the suburbs endlessly in search of it
the other thing that irks me about suburbs is that they, more often than not, are sterile and homogenous. its residents are exposed to no diversity in culture or ideas, and so its residents become sterile and homogenous. its a sad fact that in my town, there are few people who have desire to leave and experience anything but suburbs, and the ones who do rarely leave in fear that life might be difficult if they do.
it breeds complacency
hey man, get over yourself
hey man, get over yourself
Wendell Cox is my hero!
there's also the fact that that physical separation between functions means that at least half of the place will be empty at any given time. Besides the latent potential for crime because of this, that makes for a pretty boring place to be!
driftwood-
i'm afraid. tell me it was sarcasm???
purported "public purpose"
other side
[http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/cox200509270811.asp] "Houston is as good as it is likely to get."[/url]
oops.
"Houston is as good as it is likely to get."
You should be afriad. Very, very afraid...
But yeah, I was being sarcastic.
Naahhh....it aint that bad. Have you ever been to suburban areas in Europe? Houses are so small, one must wonder why bother leave the city to live in cramped up tiny houses with no garage and neighbours who can hear you knocking boots.
are those Dutch examples? the last one looks like it could be that West 8 development, the Borneo and Sporenburg docks in Amsterdam...
"Suburb," much like "sprawl," is an increasingly vague term that needs more specificity in these kinds of discussions. Some suburbs have mixed uses, including industry; some are denser than others; not all are bedroom communities devoid of all but single-family housing... as the above examples illustrate.
I agree with citizen. We're still talking about the suburbs as if they haven't changed or evolved from the post-world war ii homogenous, single-use type. Boundaries between city and suburb are blurring. And the suburban landscape is become much more interesting than it once was....
Also, euro sprawl is really quite similar to that in the US. Many of the various political and economic forces that encouraged sprawl were operating on both sides of the Atlantic. I think the above photos are somewhat misleading.
We spend too much time complaining about suburbia and too little time thinking about what opportunities might exist outside of our city centers.
, a thread on Barbelith.com
if you can find it, there's a great book about the dutch struggle with these same issues - "rearranging the netherlands/atlas of change" - published by nai.
the great thing about this book, but also the reason that i get frustrated when talking about issues raised by sprawling development in the u.s., is that it becomes clear in the book that not only is sprawl vs. protection of the dutch landscape important to the dutch people, it was a huge political issue at the time of the recent 'fifth report on spatial planning'. real people were debating issues that have bearing on the quality of their surroundings!
"The worst part of it is that there is no good reason for urban densification." -WC
...sigh
ya. seriously.
absolutely Steven, the Dutch populous is far more sensitive/aware than the typical North American person.
if you can believe it the gov of tokyo is working on densifying the city centre too. population of about 30 milln in the metro area, but something like 3/4 live in the suburbs. chuo ward for example has a day night population difference of 1mil vs 100,000 and hey would like to cut down on all that commuting, even though most people travel by train. still, a recent government report showed that nearly half the folks living in the suburbs will not leave where they are.
the suburbs here are arguably just ugly versions of new urbanism and you might think things were going well, but the population is aging and expected to shrink dramatically in the next few decades so there is some real need for the plan. it is also a quality of life issue that resonates with me at least. i live about 30 minutes by train from the city centre but still spend hours getting round the city for work and research on busy days. can't imagine what it is like for those who live really far out...
tokyo's suburbs are still quite urban. in comparison my parents's homes back in central canada are nearly rural. but not in a good way. last time i visited my wife and i went for a walk but couldn't find anywhere interesting to go, just the same after the same, no trees, no shops, just houses and houses and houses. and looping roads that meant a 10 minute walk to visit the house behind you....
but when i mentioned this to my father he thought i was entirely wrong, he loved every curve, didn't want any of the things i missed, loved to talk about the million dollar mcmasion on the corner, and figgered new urbanism was, well.. downright unamerican. and he was canadian! the thing is the suburb is not only a place, it is also a symbol of status and proof of effort that otherwise no one can see. It isn't aesthetic, it is emotional, so if you wanna deal with it at all it has to be considered on that level. very difficult....
i figger it is just part of the normal evolution of the city and things will change when conditions force it or society changes...will be interesting to see the effect of the coming oil shock...
You're all missing what's worst about the Burbs. It isn't the structures (GAWD knows it can't be called architecture, mostly).
The worst thing is <<Music>> 'The People'.
i read that....
i just think i spit up a little bit in my mouth...
but seriously...is there anybody who grew up in the city that like the burbs?
mysterman....you are so right...the people in the burbs suck...myself being on of them....
rajish... get over your face! HA! jk
and no... that wasnt sarcasm... suburbs really do scare me
Postal,
Then we both know firsthand. Meanwhile, if the deal on my land closes here, I'm 'hittin' the road @ 110 per..'
Shame! None of you listed the #1 and #2 offenders of Suburbia!!!
#1 - Sports Bars
#2 - AppleBees
please explain...
Slough
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.
And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.
It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
--Sir John Betjeman
I find it sad that suburbanites are so often the target of bashing from young singles who seem to have a hard time understanding that for a lot of people there is little choice but to live in the suburbs. As someone looking to buy his first house within the nest 9 months, there are not too many options that are not in blighted neighborhoods yet still within my price range. Although I'm committed to staying in the city and will undoubtedly stick it out until I find something here, I can understand why a lot of people feel priced out. Also, at least in my city, yuppie invasion has robbed the city of much of the charm it once held over the burbs. These are the same people who turn their noses up at suburbanites but then demand their neighborhoods become starbuckified.
The situation gets even stickier if you are trying to start a family. There is not much housing stock here that can comfortably accomodate families, even by the standards of small house proponents. Where such housing does exist and is not in blighted areas, it is very expensive. Unrenovated units often require thousands of dollars in work above already steep purchase prices just to remove lead paint and asbestos. The schools are also so bad in my city that anyone who can afford it either gets out or sends their kids to private school. Given that I'll probably never be able to afford private schools on an architect's salary, even I'll probably jump ship when it comes time to have kids.
married with child, bought a cheap house in a desirable neighborhood and fixed it up, fought starbucks coming in...still hate the 'burbs.
oh, and lead paint and asbestos are smaller issues in residential work. paint over the lead paint ('encapsulate') and remove the asbestos yourself. small amounts won't do you any harm and you can usually even throw away the amount you can generate in one house in your normal trash pickup. contractors won't touch it, of course...
i won't apologize, i grew up in the "suburbs" and while there is a colossal waste of resources and ecological devastation involved in today's american suburb -- i like the idea of everyone having their own home and land -- i like the idea of people having copious contact with nature -- and i like the idea that people can control their levels of interaction with others more than is possible in a dense urban core.
many of these criticisms aren't about suburban forms or planning -- they're about suburban people. there's a stereotype of suburbanites that they're all unsophisticated, closed-minded, and socially conservative. interestingly enough, many of the "adults" living out vastly extended childhoods in america's "urban" cores came from these exact same suburbs that supposedly spawn only narrow-minded machinistic clones. but all THOSE people "escaped" the suburbs.
i only lived in a "real" city for two years (chicago) but was unimpressed as to the level of diversity, tolerance, cultural sophistication, and education of those around me (in general).
i went to decent public schools with significant numbers of mexicans, puerto ricans, vietnamese, cambodians, laotians, thais, koreans, and chinese.
the pizza place my old man liked was run by an albanian.
all of whom were either middle-class, working-class, poor, or dirt poor.
i learned to appreciate rachmaninoff, balanchine, august wilson, stonewall, and burroughs in haltom city, texas. and i did not teach myself nor did i have the internet (nobody did at the time).
and in terms of tolerance and diversity? well, i won't deny that suburbanites can often be closed-minded. but the closed-mindedness goes both ways. it's just as hard to be a republican in chicago as it is to be a democrat in naperville -- oh wait, scratch that, there are plenty of democrats in naperville.
but i'll admit, i fricking hate applebee's.
first one of my favorite movies about the post-war origin of levittown...and follows the inhabitants to find out where are they now...
sorry an over simplification of this documentary...but worth a look.
wonderland
"i like the idea of people having copious contact with nature"
in the burbs? are you for real? check out the burbs in most suburban rings and you'll find that they ERASED nature and named the subdivision after it.
maybe the pioneer developments, those which take over the greenfields, offer some contact with nature - for about 2-5 years until the other developments follow.
"i like the idea that people can control their levels of interaction with others more than is possible in a dense urban core"
you don't have to contrast burbs with 'dense urban core'. there are dense urban neighborhoods outside the business core which 1) often have existing housing stock requiring renovation and 2) allow just as much control of levels of interaction.
i won't say being outside the city is, in itself a bad thing, just that the current model is broken. if we acknowledge the "colossal waste of resources and ecological devastation involved in today's american suburb" then maybe there is a different model which allows for "the idea of everyone having their own home and land".
i don't believe that suburbanites are unsophisticated, narrow-minded, clones, but i DO think that once they get out of their cars in the protection of their garages, already inside their little box, that they fail to acknowledge that they are part of a larger system and that this system is destructive.
and ochona great post about slough...love the office!
as for my own thought on the burbs... of course we in the archi-com hate them usually. the sameness...from culture, to dining, to thought, etc. it is the bane of any person who takes great stock in their surroundings.
HOWEVER, i have noticed what people have said in the above posts... to keep this post as short as i can...i will just bring up 3 points.
one: it is cheaper as a family to buy there. if you look at it...we see that the areas in the city are "blighted". this is because deep inside our PC hearts, we are still scared of people who are different. of course we have made great strides along race...but poor people are a whole other thing. we have all designed that ideal living situation at one time or another bringing together people of different social/economic situations...but the ghetto is still the ghetto.
the interesting thing i have noticed here in houston...a very interesting laboratory of suburban ideas...is that we have self segregated our suburbs...asians live in asian areas...indians live in indian areas...hispanics...african-americans...whites... etc.
we have found comfort in those areas that are like us.
of course maybe this is not all bad...but i am not sure yet...but at the heart of it comes the second part of the problem...schools are not very good. well could that be because everyone is scared of this school and wants to go to that one?!?
third problem of the suburb...the family. so in order for the parents to feel safe with their child they take them away...miles away from their work etc. so parents travel 1 to 2 hours to get home. to see their child for about an hour before they go to sleep... maybe if parents cared about what their child was doing rather than driving to and from work we would not have isolated children that feel the only way out is guns in schools... interesting how these shooting in schools primarily happen in the SAFE suburbs.
wonder why...
everybody come to louisville!
you can buy a cool minor-fixer-upper 100yr old house
for under 100k
in one of the most desirable urban neighborhoods (10 minute walk from downtown)
with some of the best public schools in the district
within walking distance of a huge olmsted park and some smaller ones
within walking distance of a slew of great bars/restaurants
etc.
i know, i bought one of these houses.
SW -- shh, that's how gentrification starts...
that's what people thought about austin 15 - 20 years ago...
but seriously -- what are coming to the forefront of desirability (to me) are the "in-between" areas that aren't as dense as manhattan or san francisco but aren't as isolated as the exurbs.
many of these desirable areas were once considered "suburban," but the difference in planning way back when (pre-WWII as opposed to now) is that the old "suburbs" were planned with human scale and pleasantness of living in mind, not engineered to move traffic through at maximum speed, not planned to segregate any and all functions, not pro-forma'd to provide maximum return for someone's REIT portfolio.
the question is: most people are moving further and further out. how do we as architects shape those exurbs? there's more forgetting than learning required: forgetting about turning radii, assumptions about property values, and the undesirability of having a grocery store within one mile of one's home.
I really despise the burbs but I'm with Bryan and other in saying they have become a necessary evil for the American family. Singles and DINK's have no problem with living in core cities because they can find ways to afford the city while avoiding the drawbacks.
Once you have a family that all changes. Show be a major American metro where the inner city school districts are better than the suburbs. Show me one where the inner city has less violent crime than the suburbs. Show me one that has lower property tax than the suburbs.
I also disagree that all suburbs are homogonized bastions of upper middle class white people. Many have grown quite diverse over the years.
It's not at all the single family house that I'm against. What I don't like is over-bearing zoning. Throw it all out. It's zoning that keeps the market 5 miles from your home. It's zoning that makes you cross a freeway to get to the dry cleaners. It's zoning that makes lot setbacks so huge that only big box retailers will move into town. Then there are the idiot urban planners that think winding streets make people drive slower, at the same time they make them wider. Those are our problems.
newsflash (and not from the onion):
Families Can Live in the City! Kids, Too!
you can't see a 10-year-old in the street from the driver's seat of a hummer
A-
"Show me a major American metro where the inner city school districts are better than the suburbs."
:louisville's school system has a multi-layered system in which your child can go to his/her assigned school or test into a traditional school or a magnet school. while most of the school system in the metro area is pretty good, some of the magnets are recognized as among the the best in the state, they have a statistically large number of national merit scholars, and most magnets are in urban neighborhoods.
"Show me one where the inner city has less violent crime than the suburbs."
:louisville's violent crime levels are fairly even throughout. though we're the 16th largest city, by population, we don't exactly have an inner city. there are more impoverished areas, especially in the vicinity of public housing, where violence is higher. but the suburbs have their share of problems. and lately it's the rural areas and crystal meth that we're hearing more about.
"Show me one that has lower property tax than the suburbs."
:since louisville's merged metro government three/four years ago we're all in the same boat tax-wise, city and county dwellers.
you just wanted one, right?
indeed. alright, sw!
ochona - i like the hummer/10 yr old quip. it's usually the small-man-syndrome builders/developers driving the beasts around, terrorizing the cul-de-sacs.
what's a DINK?
dual income no kids
i've also heard the term "bobos" (bourgeois bohemians)
or maybe it was "bohos"
is louisville cold?...
that is just not right that anyone with kids are forced out!
there are many people in the city that have more kids than you and make much less than you...
you (and yes i am not exluded) are just scared of living with them!
we as white collar people have made the burbs our haven from the toughness of the city...
let's be honest...
louisville: colder than austin, warmer than minnesota.
we're actually having our first real fall day today. a little bit of rain this morning, between 50-60 degrees.
we're one of those 'lucky' places that gets both hot in summer (95-100, seldom over that) and cold in winter (5-10, seldom lower, snows 3-4 times but doesn't last). fall and springDERBY are lovely.
same here
hey, my morning jacket are from louisville so not so bad, eh?
Okay, I'm done. Archinect, take me off this thread!
i just took the google air to louisville, very nice. good place to design houses. not all the rivers edge is expensive looking, so there is something for every one and i spotted some places towards the northwest of ohio riv that would be fine. i'd like to stay on the north west side of the river where the prices might be more reasonable and still close to the river or on it. i'd never go to hardrock cafe which google features. i'd get a river boat. there are also some feeder creeks, without the muddy waters which i don't mine anyway and it might change the color on certain times of the year i suppose. river must smell nice. you can do a house on stilts not to high though, if the river rises. i don't want too many neighbors but i could go for group of 4-5 old regular houses max. i'd like to get a 10 speed to cruise along the river and smoke pot in my favorite spots take dip in the river and nap on a summer day. in winters i would roast chicken and make turkish soups.
probably i would develop my own work and sell it, and do another one. i don't see surviving there otherwise. what am i gonna do?
true, louisville would be better if you are from there and some relatives around. but i can adopt.
after living in LA for 30 yrs, you kind a become mind traveler often, and i have other spots too. my newest one is louisville.
how much it would cost to buy a .5-1 acre river adjacent land preferable with a small house on it, local ballpark? i know this is about suburbia but i am more for rivers edge.
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