My best friend and I have been best friends since we were 9... so that's nearly 20 years now. He's a middle-class kid with typical middle-class conservative views. Living in a tiny house downtown with liberal, working-class parents, our worlds were quite different, but we've remained best friends regardless of our differences.
Long story short, he got married to his high-school sweetheart (they are both teachers), they bought a house, sold the house 3 years later, and now they're having a house built.
In suburbia.
It shouldn't surprise me, as that's where he's comfortable. But it's disappointing. I want to be excited for the guy - I would love to build my own house! But picking your brick facade out of a catalogue and slapping it on a vinyl-sided house in the most boring subdivision in a boring town is just too much!!!!!!!!'
I want to slap him and his wife. I wish they knew that there are alternatives. I look at the pictures of their developing suburban neighbourhood and it seriously depresses me. What's a guy to do?
I would more perturbed that they didn't seek your advice initially, architecturally of course. If not to design it but on what would be best on all levels. You might really want to reconsider the basis of your friendship
I say that only because it seems to erk you, even in the slightest way. But admitting it ahhh the first step. Vital now go speak to them before the foundation is finished otherwise you might as well sell your soul to the suburban devil as well.
House is nearly done. I guess the kitchen was mostly installed today.
Jealous? Nah. I understand the appeal of the suburbs, especially for a couple who're planning to have some kids in the very near future, and one of them works in a rural area (so there's some commuting time eliminated).
They didn't seek my advice because I'm not an architect, and I don't start my architectural education until September. And about 1000 miles away, too. I'm not bothered by that aspect, really, I guess it just really reinforces the fact that I've never felt comfortable in the 'burbs, and I never will be. Their old house is in a nearby subdivision and it gave me the creeps.
I guess the reason I started this thread is because I'm sure some of you have had situations where your good friends or family are making 'dumb' (to you, anyway) architectural decisions, and you know that you could help, but you don't want to be condescending and whatnot.
I don't want to say that "it's not a value judgment," but it is. Our values are clearly very different.
(I wanted this to be lighthearted, not so serious!)
tell him he doesn't have the guts to be at least contemporary as mc donald's restaurant and get it over with..
seriously, don't waste your architectural time with them.
continue to be as good friends as it has been. he must be good at something to be your best friend all this time, right?
believe me, even they hired you to design their house, it would be at the end turned into an unrecognizable piece of crap from the framing contractor on.
as you are entering new phases of your lives, things are changing. new lives are being built and people are following their own
yello brick rd.
in order for him to get what you know as architect, he has to go through some major changes culturally, economically, socially and politically. 02 cents.. you are a modernist right?
what is the alternative exactly? and why is suburbia polemically bad all the time? i hate this polarisation of attitudes by architects, as it makes us come off as such frickin paternalistic assholes. suburbs have issues, so do inner cities and whatever permutation you care to come up with in between. suburbia simply works easiest, especially if you have young children and not a large enough income to live in comfort downtown. living in discomfort (and with way too much violence) downtown is my major experience in north america, and is certainly the easiest way to get along if poor. maybe that is changing, but don't mean it is a viable alternative for every suburbanite.
for the record, i have spent the last ten years living in very large cities, and am totally happy with the no-car lifestyle, but i am not by any means ready to say that suburbs are intrinsically made of shite.
I grew up in the suburbs, and then moved to the city for years, and now find myself wanting something somewhere in the middle. For this reason, I fear contentment will never be mine.
How many posts does your friend have on archinect? Probably ZERO. Forget him. Look where you turn when you need important advice. Here. Let him settle down with his wife. It's nothing but casual sex and the hottest youtube links, here, where it's at. Just tell your friend that you're planning on home schooling your future kids with nothing but a set of encyclopedia britannica and a Wii, because it's cheap and easy, like the cost of and the ease with which, respectively, their souls were sold to D.R. Horton.
Ah, I have fond memories of D.R. Horton! One lovely afternoon my realtor chauffeured me around town and pulled up to this notorious piece-o-crap-but-it-has-a-yard home. I asked who built this lovely piece of crap? The realtor replied, D.R. Horton, of course, of course!
As I've said in other posts, I like plenty of space. I have to justify this to myself, as I'm also trying to leave a light footprint on this Earth of ours. It's a conundrum, but I'm learning.
This whole topic was supposed to be somewhat lighthearted, as I also mentioned. I don't REALLY care that my best friend is a suburbanite - hell, that's all he's EVER been, and yet he's still my best friend. I don't ever plan to change him. What I was pointing out is that we are very different people but that's okay, and it's even funny. I question my place on this planet, because I have that luxury. He's starting a family and has other concerns. I'm cool with that. I don't think I'll be moving in next door to him, but that's my choice.
I don't want to be polarizing, as jump pointed out. I'm no inner-city kid, either. I was, but I grew pretty tired of that and for the first time in my life, I can spread my arms and not hit a wall or another person. And I like it. I don't think I'm any better or worse than my suburbanite friend, I was just pointing out the disparity in awareness of the effects of our built environment.
*just to be clear - there's more to being a suburbanite than just living in the suburbs. And just because you live in the suburbs, doesn't mean that you're automatically a suburbanite.
then what do you do when one of your mates from uni (now an architect) does the same thing? surburban tract house, 45 min drive from the city centre, morgage so high you cant get them out to the pub after work.
there are affordablility issues. but other friends the same age (24-30) are buying appartments in renovated 60/70's blocks for less, and using the cash from not driving to work every day to do them up, remodeling the interiors etc.
makes you feel like an arsehole for saying 'he should know better', but dammit he should fucking know better.
j, I completely agree that a lot of architects, planners, and almost everyone under the age of 30 has an eletist bias against suburbs. but why do you feel the need to counter that one-sided view of the suburbs with an equally "limited, slanted" view of cities...
I live in a city. In fact, it's widely percieved to be one of the most dangerous cities in the country, yet in my nehighborhood I encounter very few of the problems you describe. If I had a dog I wouldn't have to walk more than a block for it to pee. There are no gay bars (not that there's anything wrong with them), adult bookstores, or dangerous clubs in my neighborhood or anywhere near it. I am rarely bothered by homeless people and the few times I have been they have not been threatening, aggressive, or belligerent. I have never been solicited by a prostitute. My neighborhood is not considered exclusive or high-end by anybody's stretch of the imagination. Still, it's nice and quiet, convenient and affordable.
Finally, I have to take issue with the idea that people in the suburbs are more likely to know all their neighbors than people anywhere else. From my observations comraderie between neighbors seems to be on a neighborhood by neighborhood or even block by block basis. I've seen poor urban neighborhoods with great cohesion between neighbors and I've seen rich suburban neighborhoods with the same.
it's not just architects, j. a distinction should maybe be made between pre-existing suburban living and new development.
the evils of suburban development, for me, have to do with the cancerous growth into previously undeveloped land. the following is not by an architect, or about an architect, nor does it reflect the opinions of anyone related to architecture: http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=365&trv=1
architects pull from a variety of knowledge bases in forming opinions, i hope. i don't look to architects to tell me about the damage of suburban development. i look to planners, civil engineers, environmental organizations, local planning and design agencies, geotechnical engineers, farmers, community leaders (mayors, county judges), metro sewer departments, school administrators, etc. architects are not the only ones who think our burgeoning vinyl cities are bad development.
That's a funny post because my best friend, whom I've been friends with for about 15 years, lives in the burbs too. We all grew up in the burbs, but when I discovered the city and urbanity, I decided I never wanted to leave it. She is scared of the city and, frankly, I'm scared of her neighborhood. Whenever I make make the turn onto her street, I immediately feel a sadness come over me. It's as if, for a moment, I imagine it was myself living out there, pulling into my neighborhood. But then I come back to reality and realize it's her that lives there and I'm just visiting, thankfully.
She boasts about the square footage and calls it a "custom" home because they selected the colors and finishes. Her husband asks what I think of the house he is so proud of, and I just don't have the heart to tell him how terrible I think it is. Oh well. It makes them happy, I guess.
hey guys, i lived in the most hyper crazy city in the world. living in high rise bldg for the past 20 yrs. yes it is convenient and fun and the city just never sleep. i enjoy shopping, hanging out with frds travel to work less 30 mins by subway. but wut's wrong with burbs then?
umm...I am not from US so I cant really understand y you guys dislike the area so much. my aunt live in the suburbs in australia and I think its perfectly ok to live there. it is quiet with lots of greeneries, fresh air and close connection with frds n neighbours and all that. i cant see the difference between an apartment and a suburb house. it is not you who built it anywayz. and y would you want to live high in the sky in their tiny cells with a design that only promote privacy but no community? I just dont get y people perfer to live in mega towers int he city.
hey guys, i lived in the most hyper crazy city in the world. living in high rise bldg for the past 20 yrs. yes it is convenient and fun and the city just never sleep. i enjoy shopping, hanging out with frds travel to work less 30 mins by subway. but wut's wrong with burbs then?
umm...I am not from US so I cant really understand y you guys dislike the area so much. my aunt live in the suburbs in australia and I think its perfectly ok to live there. it is quiet with lots of greeneries, fresh air and close connection with frds n neighbours and all that. i cant see the difference between an apartment and a suburb house. it is not you who built it anywayz. and y would you want to live high in the sky in their tiny cells with a design that only promote privacy but no community? I just dont get y people perfer to live in mega towers int he city.
nothing inherently wrong with the burbs. same for downtown.
same goes other way. nothing inherently GOOD about burbs or downtown. nor density.
i live in tokyo made version of le veille radieuse, and it rocks my socks, totally amazing (though ugly in my eyes), safe, kid-friendly, affordable, light and greenery filled, convenient, and full of neighbours with whom we go to barbeques in the park nearby (you know just like the painting by seurat)...but when i mentioned this to a slightly famous new urbanist fellow i happened to run into, he became incensed. wouldn't hear of it. couldn't be that all those modernist boxes could work anywhere. i mean, he was seriously angry. lesson from that run-in, sometimes people prefer their beliefs to be protected than to deal with reality.
i really believe that if we are going to deal with issues of urban life, whether in the center or in the suburbs, we are going to have to look at them with a fresh persective, and with objectivity.
happily this is starting to happen in the US, with a very large amount of literature emerging that begins to examine the history of suburbia from something other than a polemical perpective...and with surprising results. Not as exciting as Bruegmann's stuff, but certainly as important. only thing is that such work is not likely to be read by architects, and perhaps not even by planners...
ah well, life is maybe more interesting when people just line up and shout over some line or other...
jump, i know this may seem like an intrusion to your privacy, but would you mind telling us what area in Tokyo you're in? I'd like to know a little more about it, it sounds interesting to me.
i live in northern tokyo, in a slightly infamous danchi (housing block area). about 40 minutes from shinjuku, 30 minutes from my university by train. this may sound far but it takes an hour just take the loop train round what most people call the city centre...this is a very large city.
i live here cuz it is cheaper than the centre and far enough away from the financial/business districts to actually have kids living here...and i only have to walk 3 minutes to the subway entrance.
My danchi is typical for japan and appears all over the place as a type and model. The landscape and masterplan are not so typical ( i think), with buildings skewed off a grid in interesting ways to create park spaces, and with highly trafficked pedestrian routes meandering through the superblock, so it isn't isolated in any way from its surrounding. I live in a 5 story walk up, though there are several 12 story buildings towards the station. All units face south, and the units are oriented lengthwise east west, so nearly EVERY room has access to a continuous south-facing balcony (which is about 12 meters long), and there is great cross ventilation. no corridors, just access from the stairs, which ensures privacy (not typical in japan).
the taller buildings have devoted the first one or two floors to shops, daycare, vegetable shops, supermarkets, etc etc. and the density is so high that all the businesses are thriving, filled with people and salesfolk inter-ga-mingling in the old japanese way, not unlike a bazaar. very cool ambience.
the buildings themselves are not corbusier quality, but are painted white and are spaced out according to gropius' diagram for effecient light access in housing projects. so they look like typical modernist shite, but work well and are comfy. also, since this place was built in the 60's my light fixtures are very groovy, and all the trees have had time to become mature...oh and the ped paths are all surfaced ith some kind of smooth surface that is absolutely perfect for rollerblading. This is not generally impt, but def makes life wonderful for my oldest daughter and i. Like having our own private skate park...
since coming here i have come to believe that people really are the ones that make buildings work (and NOT the other way round, as we are taught). in london this place would be a hellhole or close enough to make no difference, but here it is something like a worker's paradise and fulfills all the propoganda of the modernists...it is maybe only possible in japan, but am not so sure...after all, even pruitt igoe worked quite well for its first 5 years, and stuyvesant is by all accounts quite ok too. I think the same is also true for suburbia. People matter more than buildings or highways or all the rest.
would people living outside the states have a sense of what has happened in the development of new american suburbs in the last decade?
no offense meant, but i live in the states and, when i go out there to the new burbs, even i'm appalled and amazed that this kind of development has been allowed to do the damage it has.
everything has been so systematized and is so mass-produced: from the laying of asphalt and extruded curb turds to the 10-houses-a-day vinyl installation. plywood signs with fancy printed graphics herald 'great views' and 'country setting' in exactly the place that these things used to be available before the houses blocked the views and chewed up the country.
the automobile, ipod, cell phone have allowed us to create our own little womb worlds. this allows us to remove ourselves from the ugly blandness of the american experience. by personalizing our own vapid lives with custom ringtones, 22inch rims and tinted windows on our suv's all the while bumpin out the latest mass marketed corporate thugmetal rap. we are individuals. freedom is a scary thing. believe me you don't want it that much. my advice for those who hate the suburbs, the blight of the unwashed nascar loving masses is not to fucking go there.
funny thing is that suburbs have been hated for at least the last hunderd years (pretty much about the time the form changed from an evangelical christian retreat to something more egalitarian). and much of the vocab of dislike is the same.
suburbs themselves are totally changed since then though. they used to be accessed by horse-drawn wagon, then trains and now automobiles, and the economic accessability to them has spread hugely. i think it is the latter that has made the biggest difference. and caused the most distaste. suburbia is in some ways only ok when it is for the rich.
recent anti-sprawl advocates are into the early burbs, but not the post-war versions so much. who knows what the view will be in another 20 years. somehow i imagine things will be different as we run out of cheap fossil fuels and social ideals continue to shift. but it certainly would be funny if today's version of the burbs was seen as a golden age...
on freedom, vado, it reminds me of isiah berlin's warning that we should not allow people to get too comfortable with the idea that people need to be saved from themselves...and with the idea that only some of us (you can guess who) are equipped to decide which limits on liberty are acceptable and which truths we are to believe. the flipside of this approach to (non-)liberty is a kind of acceptance of stupidity that may be seen in suburbia. i will take that freedom over the other any day.
here in kentucky the guy who runs the state 'data center' is pretty convinced that in about 10-15 years a lot of the mcmansions will be divided up for multiple tenants because no one will be able to afford to occupy the whole thing and nobody dies anymore.
i'm afraid you're all having this conversation about 40 years too late. the new question is what happens to the suburbs when no one wants to live there. i just took a drive out of detroit to st. clair shores past blocks and blocks, acres and acres, miles and miles, of little 1950s and 60s brick bungalows, three bedroom, one and a half baths, nice yard that absolutely no one is going to want to live in. the current occupants are probably in their 60s and 70s. these little houses might be wiped out for mcmansions, though i wonder who would ever want to live 10+ miles from any sort of "center." the new urbanists might move in and plop down a little mainstreet to try to create a new center. maybe one day they'll sit as empty and forlorn as many of the houses in our old city neighborhoods. frankly the options seem bleak, far worse than the situation many of us are trying to rectify in our cities, but this is going to be the next crisis in american urban planning and designing. debating the merits or lack there of of the suburbs seems a little archaic.
may be too late for detroit, but you wouldn't believe how many brand new burbs kentucky is building RIGHT NOW! we're losing horse farms and bluegrass at an amazing rate. the 'kentucky bluegrass' was listed on the world monuments funds watch in '06 primarily because of the spread of mass-produced builder housing.
i guess my question is what are people complaining about the burbs that they didn't already know? this is no different from what's been going on for the last fifty years. it's only moved farther out because developers are looking for fresher pastures. it's not going anywhere; it's built into our capitalist system. people will continue to build and as architects we should be happy about that. my concern and something that i don't think is being addressed is how do we deal with obsolence. we have far more buildings than we actually need. perhaps it is more stark in detroit because there has been a population decrease, but it's eventually going to be the same problem everywhere. this seems to be a much bigger concern than the inevitable expansion of the burbs, or some vague lifestyle issue that some architects seem to have against the suburbs.
you're convinced it's merely a lifestyle issue that 'some architects' are railing against. i'm convinced it's an unnecessary opportunistic destruction of irreplaceable resources. i think we're having different conversations.
is this supposed to be shocking? this is nothing new; as jump pointed out above, the first ring suburbs that now seem "acceptable" to us were once the same pastoral countryside depicted above. that's my problem with having this conversation as a moralistic debate on the nature of development. it's old news and no matter how much we moan about how awful it is, it's not going to change. i think as architects we need to have a conversation that addresses development in a meaningful way, anticipating problems rather than trying to change a cultural zeitgeist, or closer to home, ostrasizing our friends and family for where they choose to live.
steven, to address your point more specifically, there are a lot of people that are fighting the good fight against development and are successful. portland's greenbelt is a good example, but frankly this seems like a quick fix, motivated by nostalgia, instituted by a few progressive communities, not mainstream america. your point about the wmf getting involved to help preserve kentucky bluegrass is an interesting, creative solution to stem devleopment; i wonder though if there aren't ways to work within the system rather than resisting the system to create better outcomes.
oh my god...a kid walking past a gay bar! better incubate that frail little thing, and the parents insecurities, in a nice, trouble free suburb with nice people with nice children and nice cars and nice furniture and nice lawns and nice bushes and nice words and nice schools and nice roads and nice sidewalks that lead to nice township roads widened to eight lanes with nice cars that drive to nice strip malls...sounds nice! and little jonny wont know anything else but nice stuff. just like his nice father whos having an affair with some guy he met on craigslist while his wife shops to death because of the hollowness of their nice life. a nice lighthearted thread....
Most of us can probably agree that suburban sprawl has many downsides. However, most of us (excluding Detriot) live in cities that have grown vastly in population since the 1950's. The suburbs became a solution to a rising population. The only problem is that inexpensive oil and great wealth afforded grossly oversized housing lots, which reduced density and fostered a dependence on the auto.
I live in a 1st tier suburb that's less than 3 miles from the downtown city center. When my wife and I went looking at housing stock, comparing everything we needed, proximity to work, transit, commerce, quality of schools, sense of community, etc., the choice was simple. We could live in a decent neighborhood "in the city" and be farther distance from our employers, etc. The other "in the city" option was the neighborhood close to work but always featured on the nightly news. So, I'm a suburbanite by definition, but drive less miles than most city dwellers.
Since most people actually work in the suburbs these days I think it's totally reasonable for most people to live out there. Drive around any city loop highway and just count the office towers. If anything I place the fault of suburbs on the companies that choose to move out of the city centers, abandoning the core cities and creating many of the problems they are plagued with today. Newer companies started in the past 50 years also have not made it a priority to locate "in the city."
James Kunstler writes a lot about the suburbs being this great "misallocation" of our national wealth. He envisions a world with declining fossil fuels where the suburbs will be abandoned. I'm not so sure. Yes, they are grossly spread out, but the population of most major metros have no way of condensing into the core cities. Nor does small town America have the ability to absorb these populations. The suburbs are here to stay for sure. What they'll look like in 20+ years, that's anyone's guess.
those people would probably resist acknowledging that housing is not universally good: there is good housing and bad housing.
they would probably assume that housing was the best use of this land, but forget that more of the land would actually be used for asphalt, concrete, and chemically-treated manicured lawns than housing proper.
...and of course those people would have no idea about the stewardship of this land or the care the animals receive.
but that wouldn't stop them from saying it anyway. you're so right.
age 0-6 lived in country.
age 6-19 lived in a tract subdivision in a town of 20,000. had a stingray bike and then a ten speed and then a ford maverick and then a trans am.
age 19-21 lived in brighton ma. no car.
age 21-28 lived in bloomington in. no car.
age 28-40 lived in albucrackee. had girlfiends with cars but didnt buy a car til age 35
age 40-43 lived in chicago got rid of car.
age 43-46 lived in a small town in indianastan bought a honda.
age 46 to present live in indy, one mile from work still have car. thinking of selling it buying a beater pickup or jeep and a triumph motorcycle. prolly wont do it though.
+ Live in town (35,000) have a 96 jeep with 150,000 mi.
+ 1982 Mercury Grande Marqius with 40,000 mi.
Wish i could get rid of both of them, but I tell myself why should I get rid of two perfectly good cars. Jeep is good in snow, Merc is good
for long trips...it is ride engineered...
I have to travel a hell of alot just because most of my clients live in
the country or in adjoining towns.
steven we are indeed consuming farmland. not enough to count more than a percentage point of land being converted, and certainly not enough to affect agricultural independence, etc...
i agree with you in principal, but i still got to wonder where people should go then, if not to suburbs? USA total popn is increasing and is going to increase even more over then next decades. looking at the lessons of holland and the uk , for example, we KNOW that infill only takes you so far, and brownfield sites are not numerous enough to avoid growth on the edges somewhere.
certainly there is good and bad housing. that means we should do what? stop all suburbs until suitable architects are found? But even if we DID build a perfect suburb it still wouldn't reduce auto use. New Urbanism has not worked out that way, why should anything else? People work all over the place in a city, and in multi-member families very often in different directions. hence the increase in autodependency. making a better planned suburb will not address that issue very much.
As for people and companies moving out of the suburbs, well it is cheaper for businesses to buy land for factories outside the centre, and taxes are lower too...there is not a moral issue at all. In some parts of the country more than 50% of an economy takes place in the suburbs...so no surprise the focus of city is not in the centres anymore. in the case of detroit and a few others the move has been acute (check out the shrinking cities website for info on detroit in particular) and this is hard to remedy, but i don't believe we are going to make much progress in dealing with any of the issues if we are only able to take moral and condescending stances. what we have to work with is what we got. and we have to start with reality.
as an aside, kunstler is an entertaining fraud, who uses data and information like george bush trying to sell wmd's to the public. i have all of his books and like them, but they are nearly useless as sources of factual insight. which is a pity, cuz the dude is clearly smart.
Apr 16, 07 8:07 pm ·
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my best friend's a suburbanite
My best friend and I have been best friends since we were 9... so that's nearly 20 years now. He's a middle-class kid with typical middle-class conservative views. Living in a tiny house downtown with liberal, working-class parents, our worlds were quite different, but we've remained best friends regardless of our differences.
Long story short, he got married to his high-school sweetheart (they are both teachers), they bought a house, sold the house 3 years later, and now they're having a house built.
In suburbia.
It shouldn't surprise me, as that's where he's comfortable. But it's disappointing. I want to be excited for the guy - I would love to build my own house! But picking your brick facade out of a catalogue and slapping it on a vinyl-sided house in the most boring subdivision in a boring town is just too much!!!!!!!!'
I want to slap him and his wife. I wish they knew that there are alternatives. I look at the pictures of their developing suburban neighbourhood and it seriously depresses me. What's a guy to do?
are you jealous?
Git new frenz!
seriously...
I would more perturbed that they didn't seek your advice initially, architecturally of course. If not to design it but on what would be best on all levels. You might really want to reconsider the basis of your friendship
I say that only because it seems to erk you, even in the slightest way. But admitting it ahhh the first step. Vital now go speak to them before the foundation is finished otherwise you might as well sell your soul to the suburban devil as well.
I have good friends who have built cookie-cutter houses in the burbs.
No sweat off my back; the burbs just work for most people.
my best friend is my hand
House is nearly done. I guess the kitchen was mostly installed today.
Jealous? Nah. I understand the appeal of the suburbs, especially for a couple who're planning to have some kids in the very near future, and one of them works in a rural area (so there's some commuting time eliminated).
They didn't seek my advice because I'm not an architect, and I don't start my architectural education until September. And about 1000 miles away, too. I'm not bothered by that aspect, really, I guess it just really reinforces the fact that I've never felt comfortable in the 'burbs, and I never will be. Their old house is in a nearby subdivision and it gave me the creeps.
I guess the reason I started this thread is because I'm sure some of you have had situations where your good friends or family are making 'dumb' (to you, anyway) architectural decisions, and you know that you could help, but you don't want to be condescending and whatnot.
I don't want to say that "it's not a value judgment," but it is. Our values are clearly very different.
(I wanted this to be lighthearted, not so serious!)
tell him he doesn't have the guts to be at least contemporary as mc donald's restaurant and get it over with..
seriously, don't waste your architectural time with them.
continue to be as good friends as it has been. he must be good at something to be your best friend all this time, right?
believe me, even they hired you to design their house, it would be at the end turned into an unrecognizable piece of crap from the framing contractor on.
as you are entering new phases of your lives, things are changing. new lives are being built and people are following their own
yello brick rd.
in order for him to get what you know as architect, he has to go through some major changes culturally, economically, socially and politically. 02 cents.. you are a modernist right?
if he doesn't know there are alternatives, how about telling him that there are?
yeah right.
what is the alternative exactly? and why is suburbia polemically bad all the time? i hate this polarisation of attitudes by architects, as it makes us come off as such frickin paternalistic assholes. suburbs have issues, so do inner cities and whatever permutation you care to come up with in between. suburbia simply works easiest, especially if you have young children and not a large enough income to live in comfort downtown. living in discomfort (and with way too much violence) downtown is my major experience in north america, and is certainly the easiest way to get along if poor. maybe that is changing, but don't mean it is a viable alternative for every suburbanite.
for the record, i have spent the last ten years living in very large cities, and am totally happy with the no-car lifestyle, but i am not by any means ready to say that suburbs are intrinsically made of shite.
Everything good comes from the burbs.
I grew up in the suburbs, and then moved to the city for years, and now find myself wanting something somewhere in the middle. For this reason, I fear contentment will never be mine.
How many posts does your friend have on archinect? Probably ZERO. Forget him. Look where you turn when you need important advice. Here. Let him settle down with his wife. It's nothing but casual sex and the hottest youtube links, here, where it's at. Just tell your friend that you're planning on home schooling your future kids with nothing but a set of encyclopedia britannica and a Wii, because it's cheap and easy, like the cost of and the ease with which, respectively, their souls were sold to D.R. Horton.
Ah, I have fond memories of D.R. Horton! One lovely afternoon my realtor chauffeured me around town and pulled up to this notorious piece-o-crap-but-it-has-a-yard home. I asked who built this lovely piece of crap? The realtor replied, D.R. Horton, of course, of course!
As I've said in other posts, I like plenty of space. I have to justify this to myself, as I'm also trying to leave a light footprint on this Earth of ours. It's a conundrum, but I'm learning.
This whole topic was supposed to be somewhat lighthearted, as I also mentioned. I don't REALLY care that my best friend is a suburbanite - hell, that's all he's EVER been, and yet he's still my best friend. I don't ever plan to change him. What I was pointing out is that we are very different people but that's okay, and it's even funny. I question my place on this planet, because I have that luxury. He's starting a family and has other concerns. I'm cool with that. I don't think I'll be moving in next door to him, but that's my choice.
I don't want to be polarizing, as jump pointed out. I'm no inner-city kid, either. I was, but I grew pretty tired of that and for the first time in my life, I can spread my arms and not hit a wall or another person. And I like it. I don't think I'm any better or worse than my suburbanite friend, I was just pointing out the disparity in awareness of the effects of our built environment.
*just to be clear - there's more to being a suburbanite than just living in the suburbs. And just because you live in the suburbs, doesn't mean that you're automatically a suburbanite.
Smile.
then what do you do when one of your mates from uni (now an architect) does the same thing? surburban tract house, 45 min drive from the city centre, morgage so high you cant get them out to the pub after work.
there are affordablility issues. but other friends the same age (24-30) are buying appartments in renovated 60/70's blocks for less, and using the cash from not driving to work every day to do them up, remodeling the interiors etc.
makes you feel like an arsehole for saying 'he should know better', but dammit he should fucking know better.
I have to justify my car payments by having a reason to drive. Perhaps I should just live in my car, and just build a small garage around it.
the more you drive, the less intelligent you become.
I recently moved, driving 1500+ miles ... I thought it was the altitude making me slow. :(
j, I completely agree that a lot of architects, planners, and almost everyone under the age of 30 has an eletist bias against suburbs. but why do you feel the need to counter that one-sided view of the suburbs with an equally "limited, slanted" view of cities...
I live in a city. In fact, it's widely percieved to be one of the most dangerous cities in the country, yet in my nehighborhood I encounter very few of the problems you describe. If I had a dog I wouldn't have to walk more than a block for it to pee. There are no gay bars (not that there's anything wrong with them), adult bookstores, or dangerous clubs in my neighborhood or anywhere near it. I am rarely bothered by homeless people and the few times I have been they have not been threatening, aggressive, or belligerent. I have never been solicited by a prostitute. My neighborhood is not considered exclusive or high-end by anybody's stretch of the imagination. Still, it's nice and quiet, convenient and affordable.
Finally, I have to take issue with the idea that people in the suburbs are more likely to know all their neighbors than people anywhere else. From my observations comraderie between neighbors seems to be on a neighborhood by neighborhood or even block by block basis. I've seen poor urban neighborhoods with great cohesion between neighbors and I've seen rich suburban neighborhoods with the same.
it's not just architects, j. a distinction should maybe be made between pre-existing suburban living and new development.
the evils of suburban development, for me, have to do with the cancerous growth into previously undeveloped land. the following is not by an architect, or about an architect, nor does it reflect the opinions of anyone related to architecture: http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=365&trv=1
architects pull from a variety of knowledge bases in forming opinions, i hope. i don't look to architects to tell me about the damage of suburban development. i look to planners, civil engineers, environmental organizations, local planning and design agencies, geotechnical engineers, farmers, community leaders (mayors, county judges), metro sewer departments, school administrators, etc. architects are not the only ones who think our burgeoning vinyl cities are bad development.
That's a funny post because my best friend, whom I've been friends with for about 15 years, lives in the burbs too. We all grew up in the burbs, but when I discovered the city and urbanity, I decided I never wanted to leave it. She is scared of the city and, frankly, I'm scared of her neighborhood. Whenever I make make the turn onto her street, I immediately feel a sadness come over me. It's as if, for a moment, I imagine it was myself living out there, pulling into my neighborhood. But then I come back to reality and realize it's her that lives there and I'm just visiting, thankfully.
She boasts about the square footage and calls it a "custom" home because they selected the colors and finishes. Her husband asks what I think of the house he is so proud of, and I just don't have the heart to tell him how terrible I think it is. Oh well. It makes them happy, I guess.
in denver, you go to the burbs to get your crack and hookers anyways.
here you live in town or out of town....no berbs! I guess that is why New Yorkers love to live here on weekends.
hey guys, i lived in the most hyper crazy city in the world. living in high rise bldg for the past 20 yrs. yes it is convenient and fun and the city just never sleep. i enjoy shopping, hanging out with frds travel to work less 30 mins by subway. but wut's wrong with burbs then?
umm...I am not from US so I cant really understand y you guys dislike the area so much. my aunt live in the suburbs in australia and I think its perfectly ok to live there. it is quiet with lots of greeneries, fresh air and close connection with frds n neighbours and all that. i cant see the difference between an apartment and a suburb house. it is not you who built it anywayz. and y would you want to live high in the sky in their tiny cells with a design that only promote privacy but no community? I just dont get y people perfer to live in mega towers int he city.
hey guys, i lived in the most hyper crazy city in the world. living in high rise bldg for the past 20 yrs. yes it is convenient and fun and the city just never sleep. i enjoy shopping, hanging out with frds travel to work less 30 mins by subway. but wut's wrong with burbs then?
umm...I am not from US so I cant really understand y you guys dislike the area so much. my aunt live in the suburbs in australia and I think its perfectly ok to live there. it is quiet with lots of greeneries, fresh air and close connection with frds n neighbours and all that. i cant see the difference between an apartment and a suburb house. it is not you who built it anywayz. and y would you want to live high in the sky in their tiny cells with a design that only promote privacy but no community? I just dont get y people perfer to live in mega towers int he city.
nothing inherently wrong with the burbs. same for downtown.
same goes other way. nothing inherently GOOD about burbs or downtown. nor density.
i live in tokyo made version of le veille radieuse, and it rocks my socks, totally amazing (though ugly in my eyes), safe, kid-friendly, affordable, light and greenery filled, convenient, and full of neighbours with whom we go to barbeques in the park nearby (you know just like the painting by seurat)...but when i mentioned this to a slightly famous new urbanist fellow i happened to run into, he became incensed. wouldn't hear of it. couldn't be that all those modernist boxes could work anywhere. i mean, he was seriously angry. lesson from that run-in, sometimes people prefer their beliefs to be protected than to deal with reality.
i really believe that if we are going to deal with issues of urban life, whether in the center or in the suburbs, we are going to have to look at them with a fresh persective, and with objectivity.
happily this is starting to happen in the US, with a very large amount of literature emerging that begins to examine the history of suburbia from something other than a polemical perpective...and with surprising results. Not as exciting as Bruegmann's stuff, but certainly as important. only thing is that such work is not likely to be read by architects, and perhaps not even by planners...
ah well, life is maybe more interesting when people just line up and shout over some line or other...
jump, i know this may seem like an intrusion to your privacy, but would you mind telling us what area in Tokyo you're in? I'd like to know a little more about it, it sounds interesting to me.
i live in northern tokyo, in a slightly infamous danchi (housing block area). about 40 minutes from shinjuku, 30 minutes from my university by train. this may sound far but it takes an hour just take the loop train round what most people call the city centre...this is a very large city.
i live here cuz it is cheaper than the centre and far enough away from the financial/business districts to actually have kids living here...and i only have to walk 3 minutes to the subway entrance.
My danchi is typical for japan and appears all over the place as a type and model. The landscape and masterplan are not so typical ( i think), with buildings skewed off a grid in interesting ways to create park spaces, and with highly trafficked pedestrian routes meandering through the superblock, so it isn't isolated in any way from its surrounding. I live in a 5 story walk up, though there are several 12 story buildings towards the station. All units face south, and the units are oriented lengthwise east west, so nearly EVERY room has access to a continuous south-facing balcony (which is about 12 meters long), and there is great cross ventilation. no corridors, just access from the stairs, which ensures privacy (not typical in japan).
the taller buildings have devoted the first one or two floors to shops, daycare, vegetable shops, supermarkets, etc etc. and the density is so high that all the businesses are thriving, filled with people and salesfolk inter-ga-mingling in the old japanese way, not unlike a bazaar. very cool ambience.
the buildings themselves are not corbusier quality, but are painted white and are spaced out according to gropius' diagram for effecient light access in housing projects. so they look like typical modernist shite, but work well and are comfy. also, since this place was built in the 60's my light fixtures are very groovy, and all the trees have had time to become mature...oh and the ped paths are all surfaced ith some kind of smooth surface that is absolutely perfect for rollerblading. This is not generally impt, but def makes life wonderful for my oldest daughter and i. Like having our own private skate park...
since coming here i have come to believe that people really are the ones that make buildings work (and NOT the other way round, as we are taught). in london this place would be a hellhole or close enough to make no difference, but here it is something like a worker's paradise and fulfills all the propoganda of the modernists...it is maybe only possible in japan, but am not so sure...after all, even pruitt igoe worked quite well for its first 5 years, and stuyvesant is by all accounts quite ok too. I think the same is also true for suburbia. People matter more than buildings or highways or all the rest.
funny how we are talking about the suburbs as being evil and negative but that phenomena doesn't exist all around the world.
here you live in the suburbs with the exception of a few, the city is for business, violence and history.
in the uk living is mostly suburban too - a bit too homogenized
would people living outside the states have a sense of what has happened in the development of new american suburbs in the last decade?
no offense meant, but i live in the states and, when i go out there to the new burbs, even i'm appalled and amazed that this kind of development has been allowed to do the damage it has.
everything has been so systematized and is so mass-produced: from the laying of asphalt and extruded curb turds to the 10-houses-a-day vinyl installation. plywood signs with fancy printed graphics herald 'great views' and 'country setting' in exactly the place that these things used to be available before the houses blocked the views and chewed up the country.
the automobile, ipod, cell phone have allowed us to create our own little womb worlds. this allows us to remove ourselves from the ugly blandness of the american experience. by personalizing our own vapid lives with custom ringtones, 22inch rims and tinted windows on our suv's all the while bumpin out the latest mass marketed corporate thugmetal rap. we are individuals. freedom is a scary thing. believe me you don't want it that much. my advice for those who hate the suburbs, the blight of the unwashed nascar loving masses is not to fucking go there.
funny thing is that suburbs have been hated for at least the last hunderd years (pretty much about the time the form changed from an evangelical christian retreat to something more egalitarian). and much of the vocab of dislike is the same.
suburbs themselves are totally changed since then though. they used to be accessed by horse-drawn wagon, then trains and now automobiles, and the economic accessability to them has spread hugely. i think it is the latter that has made the biggest difference. and caused the most distaste. suburbia is in some ways only ok when it is for the rich.
recent anti-sprawl advocates are into the early burbs, but not the post-war versions so much. who knows what the view will be in another 20 years. somehow i imagine things will be different as we run out of cheap fossil fuels and social ideals continue to shift. but it certainly would be funny if today's version of the burbs was seen as a golden age...
on freedom, vado, it reminds me of isiah berlin's warning that we should not allow people to get too comfortable with the idea that people need to be saved from themselves...and with the idea that only some of us (you can guess who) are equipped to decide which limits on liberty are acceptable and which truths we are to believe. the flipside of this approach to (non-)liberty is a kind of acceptance of stupidity that may be seen in suburbia. i will take that freedom over the other any day.
here in kentucky the guy who runs the state 'data center' is pretty convinced that in about 10-15 years a lot of the mcmansions will be divided up for multiple tenants because no one will be able to afford to occupy the whole thing and nobody dies anymore.
i'm afraid you're all having this conversation about 40 years too late. the new question is what happens to the suburbs when no one wants to live there. i just took a drive out of detroit to st. clair shores past blocks and blocks, acres and acres, miles and miles, of little 1950s and 60s brick bungalows, three bedroom, one and a half baths, nice yard that absolutely no one is going to want to live in. the current occupants are probably in their 60s and 70s. these little houses might be wiped out for mcmansions, though i wonder who would ever want to live 10+ miles from any sort of "center." the new urbanists might move in and plop down a little mainstreet to try to create a new center. maybe one day they'll sit as empty and forlorn as many of the houses in our old city neighborhoods. frankly the options seem bleak, far worse than the situation many of us are trying to rectify in our cities, but this is going to be the next crisis in american urban planning and designing. debating the merits or lack there of of the suburbs seems a little archaic.
may be too late for detroit, but you wouldn't believe how many brand new burbs kentucky is building RIGHT NOW! we're losing horse farms and bluegrass at an amazing rate. the 'kentucky bluegrass' was listed on the world monuments funds watch in '06 primarily because of the spread of mass-produced builder housing.
i guess my question is what are people complaining about the burbs that they didn't already know? this is no different from what's been going on for the last fifty years. it's only moved farther out because developers are looking for fresher pastures. it's not going anywhere; it's built into our capitalist system. people will continue to build and as architects we should be happy about that. my concern and something that i don't think is being addressed is how do we deal with obsolence. we have far more buildings than we actually need. perhaps it is more stark in detroit because there has been a population decrease, but it's eventually going to be the same problem everywhere. this seems to be a much bigger concern than the inevitable expansion of the burbs, or some vague lifestyle issue that some architects seem to have against the suburbs.
...obsolescence...
you're convinced it's merely a lifestyle issue that 'some architects' are railing against. i'm convinced it's an unnecessary opportunistic destruction of irreplaceable resources. i think we're having different conversations.
aerial views of lane’s view subdivision and adjacent lane’s end horse farm, ky.
the developer:
not just ky. it's happenin' all over:
a pennsylvania example
is this supposed to be shocking? this is nothing new; as jump pointed out above, the first ring suburbs that now seem "acceptable" to us were once the same pastoral countryside depicted above. that's my problem with having this conversation as a moralistic debate on the nature of development. it's old news and no matter how much we moan about how awful it is, it's not going to change. i think as architects we need to have a conversation that addresses development in a meaningful way, anticipating problems rather than trying to change a cultural zeitgeist, or closer to home, ostrasizing our friends and family for where they choose to live.
steven, to address your point more specifically, there are a lot of people that are fighting the good fight against development and are successful. portland's greenbelt is a good example, but frankly this seems like a quick fix, motivated by nostalgia, instituted by a few progressive communities, not mainstream america. your point about the wmf getting involved to help preserve kentucky bluegrass is an interesting, creative solution to stem devleopment; i wonder though if there aren't ways to work within the system rather than resisting the system to create better outcomes.
oh my god...a kid walking past a gay bar! better incubate that frail little thing, and the parents insecurities, in a nice, trouble free suburb with nice people with nice children and nice cars and nice furniture and nice lawns and nice bushes and nice words and nice schools and nice roads and nice sidewalks that lead to nice township roads widened to eight lanes with nice cars that drive to nice strip malls...sounds nice! and little jonny wont know anything else but nice stuff. just like his nice father whos having an affair with some guy he met on craigslist while his wife shops to death because of the hollowness of their nice life. a nice lighthearted thread....
Most of us can probably agree that suburban sprawl has many downsides. However, most of us (excluding Detriot) live in cities that have grown vastly in population since the 1950's. The suburbs became a solution to a rising population. The only problem is that inexpensive oil and great wealth afforded grossly oversized housing lots, which reduced density and fostered a dependence on the auto.
I live in a 1st tier suburb that's less than 3 miles from the downtown city center. When my wife and I went looking at housing stock, comparing everything we needed, proximity to work, transit, commerce, quality of schools, sense of community, etc., the choice was simple. We could live in a decent neighborhood "in the city" and be farther distance from our employers, etc. The other "in the city" option was the neighborhood close to work but always featured on the nightly news. So, I'm a suburbanite by definition, but drive less miles than most city dwellers.
Since most people actually work in the suburbs these days I think it's totally reasonable for most people to live out there. Drive around any city loop highway and just count the office towers. If anything I place the fault of suburbs on the companies that choose to move out of the city centers, abandoning the core cities and creating many of the problems they are plagued with today. Newer companies started in the past 50 years also have not made it a priority to locate "in the city."
James Kunstler writes a lot about the suburbs being this great "misallocation" of our national wealth. He envisions a world with declining fossil fuels where the suburbs will be abandoned. I'm not so sure. Yes, they are grossly spread out, but the population of most major metros have no way of condensing into the core cities. Nor does small town America have the ability to absorb these populations. The suburbs are here to stay for sure. What they'll look like in 20+ years, that's anyone's guess.
indeed they would, j. indeed they would.
those people would probably resist acknowledging that housing is not universally good: there is good housing and bad housing.
they would probably assume that housing was the best use of this land, but forget that more of the land would actually be used for asphalt, concrete, and chemically-treated manicured lawns than housing proper.
...and of course those people would have no idea about the stewardship of this land or the care the animals receive.
but that wouldn't stop them from saying it anyway. you're so right.
age 0-6 lived in country.
age 6-19 lived in a tract subdivision in a town of 20,000. had a stingray bike and then a ten speed and then a ford maverick and then a trans am.
age 19-21 lived in brighton ma. no car.
age 21-28 lived in bloomington in. no car.
age 28-40 lived in albucrackee. had girlfiends with cars but didnt buy a car til age 35
age 40-43 lived in chicago got rid of car.
age 43-46 lived in a small town in indianastan bought a honda.
age 46 to present live in indy, one mile from work still have car. thinking of selling it buying a beater pickup or jeep and a triumph motorcycle. prolly wont do it though.
+ Live in town (35,000) have a 96 jeep with 150,000 mi.
+ 1982 Mercury Grande Marqius with 40,000 mi.
Wish i could get rid of both of them, but I tell myself why should I get rid of two perfectly good cars. Jeep is good in snow, Merc is good
for long trips...it is ride engineered...
I have to travel a hell of alot just because most of my clients live in
the country or in adjoining towns.
steven we are indeed consuming farmland. not enough to count more than a percentage point of land being converted, and certainly not enough to affect agricultural independence, etc...
i agree with you in principal, but i still got to wonder where people should go then, if not to suburbs? USA total popn is increasing and is going to increase even more over then next decades. looking at the lessons of holland and the uk , for example, we KNOW that infill only takes you so far, and brownfield sites are not numerous enough to avoid growth on the edges somewhere.
certainly there is good and bad housing. that means we should do what? stop all suburbs until suitable architects are found? But even if we DID build a perfect suburb it still wouldn't reduce auto use. New Urbanism has not worked out that way, why should anything else? People work all over the place in a city, and in multi-member families very often in different directions. hence the increase in autodependency. making a better planned suburb will not address that issue very much.
As for people and companies moving out of the suburbs, well it is cheaper for businesses to buy land for factories outside the centre, and taxes are lower too...there is not a moral issue at all. In some parts of the country more than 50% of an economy takes place in the suburbs...so no surprise the focus of city is not in the centres anymore. in the case of detroit and a few others the move has been acute (check out the shrinking cities website for info on detroit in particular) and this is hard to remedy, but i don't believe we are going to make much progress in dealing with any of the issues if we are only able to take moral and condescending stances. what we have to work with is what we got. and we have to start with reality.
as an aside, kunstler is an entertaining fraud, who uses data and information like george bush trying to sell wmd's to the public. i have all of his books and like them, but they are nearly useless as sources of factual insight. which is a pity, cuz the dude is clearly smart.
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