Suburban life scares me...especially suburban life in the USA.
I am not from around here and I feel its scary especially in American because of the strange lack of density, need for repetition, fear of diversity that suburban life spawns.
I think most non-Americans will agree with me that there is something odd in suburbanisation here.
Although people live among greenery, they insist on driving all the time.
Although they live away from the city, they seem to be as isolated, and pretty often dont know their neighbours.
Although they say they want to avoid the grime, crime and dust of the city, they seem to also avoid diversity and foreign influences.
of course there are exceptions everywhere....and I am sure there are plenty of people who lead rich nurturing lives in the suburbs, but am I right to say that a larger chunk of the suburban population is the way i described?
I may be wrong ....? I am the outsider ...i may not understand the benefits of life in the American suburbs.
correct me.or is this the case in all other countries too? is this some kind of elitism architects spawn?
if i drive to the suburbs here i get depressed...dont know why.?
As designers, shouldn't we be more interested in how to make suburbs more livable than just dissing them? Just a thought... but hey, if we don't do it, this whole country's gonna look like Celebration, FL and we'll all have to immigrate.
how to make the suburbs more livable? To me that boils down to a couple of things. First, transportation. This is the big one, because I agree that cars are dehumanizing, and I find that driving makes me angry. So what to do? Public transit? Or bike paths? Or, stop zoning code from being so hyper-vigilant and plan-driven so that someone could concievably work and live in the same area? This would also help prevent crime, and is my personal favorite solution. Second, variety. We need to throw out these fucking planning commissions and neighborhood associations that think they have a right to tell you that you need to paint a building pink, not green, and that it must have some sort of a trim at the top..... at very least, if not throw them out (ok, they might do something good I'm not aware of), they need to be far more limited in the scope of their powers, so that cities can develop as needed, and not according to some perfect little homogenous plan.
rationalist, I agree with all that you suggest as an architect, but dont you think there is also a social aspect which is astounding.
by that I mean, I feel the only thing which drives people to the suburbs in America seems to be sq feet and homogeneity. Its not to be closer to nature or to live the quiet life. I feel a lot stems from the mind sets which thinks its better to be in a large house with a yard, amongst people who are supposedly safe-looking and looking down upon public transport.A mind set which is proud about driving a large gas guzzling car which looks like a van.
I can go on and on. Hence I think even if design changes were made on the suburban level, what would stop people from moving furthur in search of what they want, sqft and homegeneity.
A seperate room for everyone, a seperate car for everyone and a townhouse which looks just like million others.
i feel its a social problem as much a design problem.
thoughts?
contrasted to my experiences abroad, most suburbs i've lived in outside the us consisted of heavily used bike paths, far reaching + inexpensive public transport, and a density much higher than those in most u.s. cities. of course you pay a boatload more taxes, but the whole quality of life thing... i think it helps having more than 2 political shams - i mean parties - as well...
blue- in the cities I've lived, the top reasons for moving to the burbs were 1) the impression of less crime, 2) better schools (this one is BIG, it may even be the real #1), and 3) a more relaxed pace of life. People percieve cities as crime-ridden, non-educational, and hectic. They don't like knowing every time their neighbor has sex or argues, and want some basic things for their families. I don't think that mixing it up a little bit as far as zoning or the look of buildings will harm that, especially since the zoning can be configured so as to help in crime prevention.
oh, and also mixing things up zoning-wise would allow more people to walk or bike to and from work, or at very least spend fewer minutes (sometimes hours) in their cars, so this would also cut down on the feeling of life being too hectic.
Surely one of the principle, if not the principle reason for 'emigrating' to the burbs is cost.
Scarcity of city properties drives prices up. Scarcity of land in city areas limits the expandibility of amenities and services. Lower cost land on the fringes as a percentage of building cost means you get more bang for your buck.
Extending rail and roading services from the centre to the periphery costs alot and is reliant on alot of forward planning. Extending these services across a range of planning and civil authorities is problematic and costly. The people in charge of these decision making processes are more or less incompetent or severely limited.
Both the burbs and the city have their pro's and con's. Blaming people for living in the suburbs because you [collectively] perceive it as some kind of cop out is ridiculous. There is a limit in the range of housing situations available. Suburbs are expedient, but necessary and not all bad.
Hmm, i can see where alot of people may get the idea that suburbs lack diverstiy, but that i think is erroneous. My old neighborhood in Atlanta had plenty of blacks, whites, east indians, asians, latinos etc. My public school in my "secluded white suburban neighborhood" boasted FAR more diversity (more than 100 countries represented) than my "international" private school downtown did. Yet, funny enough most of the people i come across in my New York neighborhood living in the dorms are white (Upper West Side). Alot of people still have this "leave it to beaver" mindset about the suburbs, that white middle-class families live there and they commute into town to work. This is not true in Atlanta, the suburban economy is at least as strong, if not stronger than the economy downtown and that means people of all types live in the 'burbs.
Which of course makes traffic a fucking nightmare.
The suburbs i still feel, as much as i dislike them, are the future of american cities. We have to involve ourselves in them and stop ignoring them. The more we ignore them the worse they will be as far as places to live.
And I really think the original poster's 'fear' is a cover for what is effectively snobbery. Fear is not equivalent to distaste.
I walk around my suburb alot, and what I tend to see are families quite content with their lot. Sitting in front of the telly, washing dishes, watering their garden, sitting in their garage having a beer, staring into an LCD screen.
Those who pay attention enough will move on eventually. Those who don't, or don't care won't.
Like I said [but I think vado or abra first said it] everything good and new comes from the suburbs. Perhaps the need for differentiation [steming from the sameness] is what spurs individuals on to greatness [or American Idol].
I agree wholeheartedly with diabase (except I'm not quite sure whether everything good and new comes from the suburbs).
People choose to live in suburbs. You can't just tell them they're wrong. You have to show them why the alternatives are better. You have to convince them that life still works in alternative arrangements. You have to help solve some of the problems of city life (where do my kids play? where do I set up the bbq?).
Persuasion leads to change. Just telling people they are wrong breeds ill-will.
It's the fact that the suburb - due to its sameness and repetition - enforces a collective value that individuals either accept or rebel against. It is the rebels that challenge the system who bring change to the city. It is a Ballardian view really.
I view the suburb as a necessary evil. But so as not to contradict my earlier comments, it is not evil, merely the creation of a collection of expedient economic, social and geographic forces that tend to suit the herd.
Well I think rather than abandoning the suburbs entirely we could maybe attempt to make them more dense or cities less dense? I think the lack of green space can be a real bummer, i get tired of looking at concrete all day and while i like parks I really just like good old fashioned unspolied nature. In Atlanta, we used to have wide bands of just nature than ran through the suburbs but now alot of that green space is being destroyed to make Mc. Mansion type developments that destroy all the trees they can on any given piece of property. Perhaps we could have strips of say, LA or Pheonix style density woven through a fabric of forest? Just a thought.
suburbia is a much greater social problem rather than a design problem. Better design doesn't solve anything... it just makes living in the suburb more attractive. and since being green is such a buzz word now, living in suburbia is not sustainable. want to solve global warming? cities should implement development boundaries and start densifying. it's better for us socially, psychologically, and will eliminate the ubiquitous american ignorance.
Well, poor s, there are massive environmental issues with cities as well you know. They collect huge amounts of waste in small areas that typically local ecology cannot cope with unless human beings implement systems to lighten the load. Imagine if the NYC sewers still emptied directly into the E. river. Now, city dwellers may consume less resources per capita (arguable), but imagine all the forests that are destroyed in order to feed a huge city. Cities contribute huge amounts of waste and require a massive amount of resources to run. Not to mention the fact that cities themselves generate suburbs. I think alot of research should be done on density patterns and their effect on the environment before we declare one density greener than the other. Or perhaps and extreme density, like an arcology, would be the greenest of all, if it was completely self contained, but so far, no one has blended ecology and urbanism together it seems.
enjoying this discussion, despite being name-checked.
i should note that i don't have a disdain for ALL suburban life. i even enjoy old suburbs quite a bit. some were well thought-out and have matured well.
it's just bothered me that the last decade or so there seems to have developed a level of efficiency and mass-production that has made a sort of metastatic expansion of builder boxes, eating up every down-on-their-luck farm family's land at a mind-boggling rate.
it's no longer the metro area in which suburban growth is happening, it's the way-out rural counties that are becoming development targets. people move there because the taxes are low and they vote to keep them that way and then bitch about the slowness of these counties to deliver new infrastructure and new schools. how can this be sustainable?
the development codes of these places are nowhere near as sophisticated as the metro area, so building sites have nasty runoff conditions, planning is substandard/quick/ad hoc, paving runs rampant across every potentially drivable or parkable surface.
a friend of mine is an inspector/expert witness for court cases involving residential builders. you wouldn't be the short cuts and dangerous conditions hidden behind many of these houses' drywall. and he only sees the ones that make it to court because of mold, failure, or someone getting hurt!
from breaking ground to moving-in day - these places are pollution start to finish.
Apurimac- that's part of what makes Phoenix lack density. While visiting for a friend's wedding a few weeks ago, I got lost in a neighborhood only a few miles from where I grew up. I made a turn that I thought would connect me to a certain street that would take me back to my mom's place, and to my delight, found myself winding up a large hill/small mountain. complete with park and picnic grounds (albeit a bit spikier than one could wish for) at the bottom. Being a warm spring weekend, people were out enjoying their little bit of nature in force, and looked strangely at me in my car. Even once I got myself turned around and back into places I knew, for the rest of the day I was noticing the intermittent washes and ravines sprinkled throughout the city, with walking/biking paths for the 95% of the year when they aren't flooded. I think I would have liked growing up in phoenix a lot more if I'd noticed these things sooner.
as margaret mead has pointed out what we know about suburbia is not much at all.
i just finished reading "The New Suburban History", edited byt Kevin Kruse and Thomas Sugrue, and found it a very good reading. The kinds of things that have been conquered and dealt with in suburbia, especially race relations, are profoundly important. Socially suburbs are so important that it is slightly absurd to think that architets keep getting hung up on the aesthetics of the places.
i am not an apologist for suburbia, and don't by Bruegmann's version of the type either, but there is something incredibly essential to american life going on in the suburbs that is being ignored. what things look like is not half as important as what people are doing.
the compact suburb is a bit of a myth btw, for those of you who think densifying suburbia is going to make a difference to car use. That approach has been shown to work only in low-income single-employer economies, something that is not really the aspiration or norm in america anymore. The only way that approach will work is if we somehow reduce the economic employment area for a region...and doing that in a family where more than one person works, and with entirely different professions is problematic. points for trying, though...
I once read somewhere an interview with a man who said "He used to be someone who believed there were two kinds of people in the world: those who live downtown, and those who don't yet realize that they want to." In the interview he admitted that as he aged he began to understnad that some people really DO love what the suburbs have to offer,
I live in a "suburb" that grew up in the 1940-50s. It is small scale, walkable, and a few blocks from a commercial district that in the last two years has turned into a truly viable living/commercial community: organic grocery, early-morning and late-night hangouts, some light industry (lawnmower repair, paving contractor yard, body shop), both used clothing stores and boutiques, and a high school. It's idyllic in every sense, just like diabase described, as the neighbors all know each other and everyone hangs out on nice evenings watching the kids play and sharing beers.
Given the opportunity, though, I'd still prefer to live like I did in Philly for ten years, an essentially car-free existence in a downtown core. But I can see the allure of the type of suburb I live in and I'm living in the moment now and enjoying it.
What I still cannot understand is why people choose to live like so many of my clients do: way far-flung gated communities, surrounded by miles of other gated communities. Miles of driving on sidewalk-less streets to get to any kind of commercial or community amenities.
While I drive through these places I dream of tearing out several acres every 1/2 mile to plant a commercial center, adding bike lanes and sidewalks to every road along with traffic calming (tabletops) ate every intersection, and cutting gaps in all the fences around the gated "communities" to join them to their neighboring "community" on the other side of the street.
Give me 15 yers and I'll have this problem solved. It's a big one, and takes time to implement. Call me liberty "Haussman Moses" bell.
i guess for me the suburban fear does not arise out of any kind of snobbery. I don't think living in the city makes anybody a better smarter person...or a more cultured person.I am sure the suburbs have produced extremly intelligent rebellious people, and I dont argue it. This is not about intelligence...its about a social thinking process where one chooses to keep a distance between itself and the next home, while talking about communities.
When I said fear, i meant i feel a disturbance because of the extreme low density in the American suburbs and the people's choice to live like that. I grew up in a dense Asian city and people moved to the far suburbs not out of choice, more out of dire economic reasons.No matter how less the area of the house, people aspired to live as close to the city.Driving for miles is not a choice as gas is expensive and one can avoid it. People actually like living in this density as the coexistence creates a sense of security.We have the Urban which was dense and expensive, Suburban which was densER and less expensive and semi rural which was cheap and generally for people who lead a satisfied semi rural life with nature.
Maybe the difference between Asia and America is the perception of space and density.Both have their pros and cons.
i recently moved from the burbs to a downtown bungalow. being a burbanite all my life, i was somewhat hesitant to reside here. the media does a tremendous job placing fear in our lives about downtown.
so, as i meet others who live in the burbs and have heard of my recent move, they ask me all sorts of questions about crime in the area.
i've been living here only 4 months, but i quietly laugh about our ignorance of the communities we live in.
the best part about it is that when i tell some of my new urban friends about the burbs' questions, they say, "it's fucking terrible, stay away!" with hopes that the burb culture will not infest the urban communities.
i know it is best to form a more dense community for sustainability purposes, but i wonder if the burb lifestyle could be transposed to the urban fabric with closed doors, less pedestrians, more television. it's a double-edged sword.
Suburbs are just like cities, except at car scale.
When I'm in NYC, I want to drive, when I'm in Suburban Atlanta I want public transit, ain't no happiness nowhere.
As the best city to live in as far as communities go is by far and away Beijing and its hutongs. Go spend 2 weeks there and I dare you tell me like you don't belong by the end of it.
I hate the suburbs vs. city arguments. Especially ignorant comments like democrats hate the suburbs.
I have numerous gripes about the architecture and land planning on the outer fringes of most cities, not excluding many of the cherished European cities.
That said, simple truth is that most EMPLOYMENT is now located in the outer belts of N. American cities. If people want to live close to their jobs they have to live in the 'burbs. That's something the "I hate the suburbs" people never seem to mention.
It's an old myth, but maybe a dominant underpining still. The idea of staking your own claim, having your own land, your own fields to toil, raise kids, build a life of your own. 40 acres and a mule.
Of course the idea that this has translated into suburbia is ironic, but I think there's a link - that the idea of 'my own' dominates (in the states anyway) - Even if it's like everyone elses, the fact that you own your own piece of land and stand alone house is very attractive - It's an idea that's connected to our cultural and personal identities. And this has been slickly responded to with packaged house / neighborhood deals.
So on the scale between living as an isolated individual and living as an part of the collective, we're pretty far to the isolated side. And maybe this is on purpose, I mean a conscious choice of the people who buy suburban houses - but maybe it's also to be associated with cultural and family based 'programming' or belief system formation. Also with the sense that we have become such consumers that we only know how to make choices among pre-packaged products, (vs. imagining and forming our own unique situations). Combined with the impressive ease-to-buy, what options do we really have?
I think though that a fair amount of people do miss the benefits of collective/ neighborly living - I'm hopeful anyway. And maybe there can be more packaging of living environments that encourage the formation of real local community. Wonder what that would be...
"That said, simple truth is that most EMPLOYMENT is now located in the outer belts of N. American cities."
while that is largely true, i have noticed an interesting trend of corporations moving their hqs from the suburbs back into city cores as a means to attract and retain young talent, i.e. the "creative class." this poses a quandary in the whole sustainability debate as many older employees are now forced to drive longer distances into the city. it's definitely touched a nerve here in detroit (even within my office).
i used to be a big anti-suburb, pro-city advocate. that was 5 years ago though. now i'm sick of tall the discussion and nobody actually doing anything about it. so what i did was: i moved to a decent city, where despite the presence of suburbs, real good city life is possible and fun and exciting and almost everything i wanted it to be. so now i don't even think about the suburbs anymore. live and let live i guess. out of sight out of mind. done and done.
chase, i don't agree with done and done. as we (i hope) in this architectural community are a part of city planning/design regulations/zoning, we must advocate the progression of intelligent design.
our study is human activity and the way they live in the buildings and communities we design. i thought what we slave to do is to influence those who do not do what we do because we are commissioned to think through all these issues.
yeah, nosleep, i do agree with you mostly. thanks for calling me out. i was venting mostly my frustration about how the subject of suburbs is so overdone in architectural discourse but nobody seems to actually have the power to change anything... that lies in governments and developers, maybe a little bit in the free market (homebuyers)
but it is true that i cared more about changing the suburbs 5 years ago, back when i was fresh out of high school and growing up in one... and now that i don't have to deal with them nearly as often, i don't really think about them and they don't seem like as huge of a looming problem. although that's an issue more of my own personal perception than of any shrinking of the american suburban quagmire.
every surly teenager who is artistic and sensitive hates the burbs where they grew up and runaway as soon as possible. why doncha go out and ask the people who live in suburbia and lead their normal average lifestyles what they think. they may not dislike it at all. they may not want to live in your shipping container designs. they may not mind driving an hour to work if it beats riding in a subway that periodical stops without explanation and is occupied by way too many people some of whom don't smell so good. what is the responsiblity of the architect? you may feel that you need to be an evangelist and convert the unwashed masses and you may be right. but to just judge people who live in the burbs as lemmings is not the way to go about it. (even if they are stupid lemmings who are destroying the earth with their greed which is expressed by their ugly homes, suv's and inbred mutant piglet children)
vado, definitely some good points. although i would argue that in many U.S. cities, the situation has become such that if you are middle-upper class and want to have a place to fraternize with similar folks and safely raise your children, there isn't much choice other than the suburbs. architectural anti-suburb preaching will not end the suburb -nor should it try to - but maybe the discourse will help promote a safe, vibrant urban alternative (think europe-style) to suburbia that people can choose if they want to. right now i think a lot of people want to, but in most cities there is no choice. just suburbs.
I don't do backpacks with groceries anymore....been there done that....but still to poor to move to the burbs....but I drive to them
for work...and my burbs are what I call "Rural Burbs"....New Yorker
Weekend Homes....kinda Burbs....the most expensive kinda Burb...
is a Rural Burb in the Right Location....and I don't give a damn where you live...those who have....need to have their time away from the big city....this has been going on in America for so long no one even remembers....
i think a majority of the burbs love their life. the suv, the strip malls, the fenced-in backyard, the manicured lawns; it's all quite comforting. i know the life; i lived it, and then i considered the social/economical/environmental aspects of my life that may be a little larger than myself and i reconsidered.
i think our influence is in our lifestyle. we won't change everyone, but if we strongly voice our opinion, we will make some rethink their day-to-day (e.g. my brother-in-law that lives in the burbs that is now planning on selling to move closer to downtown...it's a step).
also, snooker has a point, rural burbs have a great draw: a get away. But, this is not the burbs, and that was the original design of burbs, a replica of the italian villa in the country. then some of us recognized this was a lie. the rich will always have their true villas, and the ones that attempt to replicate it with their suburban home are only fooling themselves.
there's no completely absolute right or wrong here, but i'm so sick of the tract home building that demolishes the natural landscape to build "profitable" single-family residences for the middle-class hopefuls.
I've lived in various downtown cores my whole life, but most of my friends grew up in suburbs.
I just moved to a new city, from a small house on a side street (off a major thoroughfare) to a small apartment on a small street (which becomes a major thoroughfare during rush hour).
My recent thoughts:
I like being able to walk to work, one block away.
I hate paying an insane amount of money for groceries, simply because there's only one option within walking distance.
While I don't hate taking public transit as much as I used to, I still don't ever enjoy it.
I miss having space to store stuff. We got rid of half our stuff before moving here, and I still had to build a huge 8'x8' loft bed so we could store tools and winter clothes underneath.
I hate my neighbours. If the couple who live above us aren't fucking right above us, she's vacuuming at midnight (for two hours) and he's taking a loud piss in the toilet right above my head as I lay down in bed at night.
Living in the 'trendy' hip area of town, kids and adults alike seem to enjoy partying on our front steps. Every night of the week. Every single night. This means a lot of yelling at all hours of the night, broken bottles, condom wrappers, and a nice big dent in the hood of my car.
Back at our old place, we had a yard with more than enough room for a huge vegetable garden, parking for our motorcycles (now long gone), and a hammock hanging from a tree. We had a compost pile. Here in this new city, downtown, there's barely even recycling if it's not paper or aluminum.
I know this isn't really comparing suburbs to downtowns, but rather, perhaps, a few thoughts on what makes a place liveable (for me). I'm basically a crotchety old (youngish) man. I want to come home to see my girlfriend and not be bothered by asshole neighbours, drunks sleeping on the front steps, and the constant blare of police sirens.
At least Winnipeg just lost its title as Murder Capital of Canada. It feels safe enough here, as long as you don't enter the north end of the city. And that's a shame. There's no reason every neighbourhood shouldn't be much more liveable than it is.
In conclusion: I'm looking to move south of the city, as I had planned to do some time ago. Not to a suburb, but rather a country home or a home in a small town. Yes, I'll have to commute a bit, but probably not as far as I currently do.
i used to work as a sign painter in the north end of winnipeg slantsix. was kinda scary sometimes...but i was going through my roadie-lookin phase and probly looked scary enough no one bothered me. talked with a cop there once who said he showed some dude from LA around cuz he was studying how they were dealing with gangs and drugs there. can you frickin believe it? cops form LA studying a canadian city? so much for michael moores version of canacks being peace-nicks...
anyway, about the topic...
for me the most ironic thing about suburbia is that it was invented by fundamentalist christians to remove women and children from the influence of satan (the city), and then legally sanctified to make sure other perversions couldn't intrude either...and yet, in spite of all this there is a very large amount of research available (going back nearly 50 years) that shows us how diverse, interesting and important suburbia is as a place. not as a myth, not as an american dream sort of thing, but as a real place, lived in on daily-basis by regular people. there is apparently a lot of subtelty going on in suburban communities that is often missed. that there are problems with suburbia is certainly the case, and equally there are problems with traditional urban cores. neither really wins on a livability or sustainability basis.
my feeling is that suburbs will evolve. actually, check that, suburbs will continue to evolve... as fuel costs and other incentives emerge to cause changes. what those incentives might be i don't know. planners seldom get things right on a mere 5 year plan basis, never mind 20 or more...
but i am looking forward to seeing what happens...interesting times.
another note about commuting, a trip say from the far north of chicago to the loop, 45 minutes, a forty mile drive from my last job to home driven on a state highway and some backroads,45 minutes.
a commute for someone living in the far north almost burbs of indy to downtown 45 minutes. its all the same and now with cellphones, iphones itunes ipods etc in your car it can be some personal time for people who rarely think they have it. whereas riding a train is crowded you're alone among the madding crowd, you're probably getting flu germs spread on you, you get to see the crappy novels people read on the train etc.
A spin on what Vado said - I live in the downtown "core" of Chicago, and commute on the most horrific subway service imaginable. So many people crammed in they actually fall out when the doors open at my stop. Then the train goes literally 10 mph and you are waiting to freak out from claustrophobia. The bomb sniffing dog wait at Chicago ave is a nice reminder of the fact your in a tube under a river.
2 years ago I was reverse commuting by car to the burbs. The drive home was hell. But there was a morning ritual of coffee, phone calls to the job sites, music and news radio updates that honestly made me want to work from my car. Plus I got to drive around and see shit.
So - I guess what makes it a great country is if you dont like the outer burbs, hey, theres an inner burb with a bungalow for you, or if thats not your cup of meat you could live in a highrise condo or 3 flat greystone. Whatever way you like it, its probly better than living in shipping containers, tee pees, Bivowacs, igloos or sod houses.
Whatever, Evil and Vado. I love riding the CTA in Chicago every day, and would rather stick sharp pencils under my toenails than drive through dense traffic to some office park somewhere surrouned by asphalt and mowed drainage ditches. Even in the crowd aboard the train, I can read a book--or just look at the crowd, which is often quite interesting. Also, I've been in Chicago long enough to remember what the "L" was like before the slow zones and "three track operation", and realize that it will someday go fast again. Years ago I would sit in a car on the Kennedy Expressway watching the Blue Line trains cruise by on the median passing all of the cars... This will happen again.
speaking of bad books on the train, oddest thing i find in japan is the salarymen reading manga porn on the train. big colorful covers and images of folks doing what folks do in manga porn on the inside. totally unashamedly...
they also have special cars here for women only cuz they were being pawed so much in the crowded rush hours when it was impossible to find the offending owner of a straying hand. yeesh.
on other hand subways here are not dark, are never urine-smelling, and run on time, to the second. get tired of them, but wattaya want in a city with over 30 million people...?
Suburban lifestyle scares me...agree with Steven ward
Suburban life scares me...especially suburban life in the USA.
I am not from around here and I feel its scary especially in American because of the strange lack of density, need for repetition, fear of diversity that suburban life spawns.
I think most non-Americans will agree with me that there is something odd in suburbanisation here.
Although people live among greenery, they insist on driving all the time.
Although they live away from the city, they seem to be as isolated, and pretty often dont know their neighbours.
Although they say they want to avoid the grime, crime and dust of the city, they seem to also avoid diversity and foreign influences.
of course there are exceptions everywhere....and I am sure there are plenty of people who lead rich nurturing lives in the suburbs, but am I right to say that a larger chunk of the suburban population is the way i described?
I may be wrong ....? I am the outsider ...i may not understand the benefits of life in the American suburbs.
correct me.or is this the case in all other countries too? is this some kind of elitism architects spawn?
if i drive to the suburbs here i get depressed...dont know why.?
many americans agree with you, we call them Democrats.
As designers, shouldn't we be more interested in how to make suburbs more livable than just dissing them? Just a thought... but hey, if we don't do it, this whole country's gonna look like Celebration, FL and we'll all have to immigrate.
how to make the suburbs more livable? To me that boils down to a couple of things. First, transportation. This is the big one, because I agree that cars are dehumanizing, and I find that driving makes me angry. So what to do? Public transit? Or bike paths? Or, stop zoning code from being so hyper-vigilant and plan-driven so that someone could concievably work and live in the same area? This would also help prevent crime, and is my personal favorite solution. Second, variety. We need to throw out these fucking planning commissions and neighborhood associations that think they have a right to tell you that you need to paint a building pink, not green, and that it must have some sort of a trim at the top..... at very least, if not throw them out (ok, they might do something good I'm not aware of), they need to be far more limited in the scope of their powers, so that cities can develop as needed, and not according to some perfect little homogenous plan.
rationalist, I agree with all that you suggest as an architect, but dont you think there is also a social aspect which is astounding.
by that I mean, I feel the only thing which drives people to the suburbs in America seems to be sq feet and homogeneity. Its not to be closer to nature or to live the quiet life. I feel a lot stems from the mind sets which thinks its better to be in a large house with a yard, amongst people who are supposedly safe-looking and looking down upon public transport.A mind set which is proud about driving a large gas guzzling car which looks like a van.
I can go on and on. Hence I think even if design changes were made on the suburban level, what would stop people from moving furthur in search of what they want, sqft and homegeneity.
A seperate room for everyone, a seperate car for everyone and a townhouse which looks just like million others.
i feel its a social problem as much a design problem.
thoughts?
urbanist, did you mean emigrate?
grew up in the 'burbs, not a fan.
contrasted to my experiences abroad, most suburbs i've lived in outside the us consisted of heavily used bike paths, far reaching + inexpensive public transport, and a density much higher than those in most u.s. cities. of course you pay a boatload more taxes, but the whole quality of life thing... i think it helps having more than 2 political shams - i mean parties - as well...
blue- in the cities I've lived, the top reasons for moving to the burbs were 1) the impression of less crime, 2) better schools (this one is BIG, it may even be the real #1), and 3) a more relaxed pace of life. People percieve cities as crime-ridden, non-educational, and hectic. They don't like knowing every time their neighbor has sex or argues, and want some basic things for their families. I don't think that mixing it up a little bit as far as zoning or the look of buildings will harm that, especially since the zoning can be configured so as to help in crime prevention.
oh, and also mixing things up zoning-wise would allow more people to walk or bike to and from work, or at very least spend fewer minutes (sometimes hours) in their cars, so this would also cut down on the feeling of life being too hectic.
Surely one of the principle, if not the principle reason for 'emigrating' to the burbs is cost.
Scarcity of city properties drives prices up. Scarcity of land in city areas limits the expandibility of amenities and services. Lower cost land on the fringes as a percentage of building cost means you get more bang for your buck.
Extending rail and roading services from the centre to the periphery costs alot and is reliant on alot of forward planning. Extending these services across a range of planning and civil authorities is problematic and costly. The people in charge of these decision making processes are more or less incompetent or severely limited.
Both the burbs and the city have their pro's and con's. Blaming people for living in the suburbs because you [collectively] perceive it as some kind of cop out is ridiculous. There is a limit in the range of housing situations available. Suburbs are expedient, but necessary and not all bad.
Hmm, i can see where alot of people may get the idea that suburbs lack diverstiy, but that i think is erroneous. My old neighborhood in Atlanta had plenty of blacks, whites, east indians, asians, latinos etc. My public school in my "secluded white suburban neighborhood" boasted FAR more diversity (more than 100 countries represented) than my "international" private school downtown did. Yet, funny enough most of the people i come across in my New York neighborhood living in the dorms are white (Upper West Side). Alot of people still have this "leave it to beaver" mindset about the suburbs, that white middle-class families live there and they commute into town to work. This is not true in Atlanta, the suburban economy is at least as strong, if not stronger than the economy downtown and that means people of all types live in the 'burbs.
Which of course makes traffic a fucking nightmare.
The suburbs i still feel, as much as i dislike them, are the future of american cities. We have to involve ourselves in them and stop ignoring them. The more we ignore them the worse they will be as far as places to live.
And I really think the original poster's 'fear' is a cover for what is effectively snobbery. Fear is not equivalent to distaste.
I walk around my suburb alot, and what I tend to see are families quite content with their lot. Sitting in front of the telly, washing dishes, watering their garden, sitting in their garage having a beer, staring into an LCD screen.
Those who pay attention enough will move on eventually. Those who don't, or don't care won't.
Like I said [but I think vado or abra first said it] everything good and new comes from the suburbs. Perhaps the need for differentiation [steming from the sameness] is what spurs individuals on to greatness [or American Idol].
Well it seems that the solution is somewhere in between
take the space, green, good schools from the suburbs with the culture, mixed density, useage of the city...hmm what shall we call it? Oh yea utopia
"everything good and new comes from the suburbs"
Not to disagree, but how exactly?
I agree wholeheartedly with diabase (except I'm not quite sure whether everything good and new comes from the suburbs).
People choose to live in suburbs. You can't just tell them they're wrong. You have to show them why the alternatives are better. You have to convince them that life still works in alternative arrangements. You have to help solve some of the problems of city life (where do my kids play? where do I set up the bbq?).
Persuasion leads to change. Just telling people they are wrong breeds ill-will.
Well techno - it's more of a 'suburban' myth.
It's the fact that the suburb - due to its sameness and repetition - enforces a collective value that individuals either accept or rebel against. It is the rebels that challenge the system who bring change to the city. It is a Ballardian view really.
I view the suburb as a necessary evil. But so as not to contradict my earlier comments, it is not evil, merely the creation of a collection of expedient economic, social and geographic forces that tend to suit the herd.
Well I think rather than abandoning the suburbs entirely we could maybe attempt to make them more dense or cities less dense? I think the lack of green space can be a real bummer, i get tired of looking at concrete all day and while i like parks I really just like good old fashioned unspolied nature. In Atlanta, we used to have wide bands of just nature than ran through the suburbs but now alot of that green space is being destroyed to make Mc. Mansion type developments that destroy all the trees they can on any given piece of property. Perhaps we could have strips of say, LA or Pheonix style density woven through a fabric of forest? Just a thought.
addendum... Okay, its not a fact.
suburbia is a much greater social problem rather than a design problem. Better design doesn't solve anything... it just makes living in the suburb more attractive. and since being green is such a buzz word now, living in suburbia is not sustainable. want to solve global warming? cities should implement development boundaries and start densifying. it's better for us socially, psychologically, and will eliminate the ubiquitous american ignorance.
Well, poor s, there are massive environmental issues with cities as well you know. They collect huge amounts of waste in small areas that typically local ecology cannot cope with unless human beings implement systems to lighten the load. Imagine if the NYC sewers still emptied directly into the E. river. Now, city dwellers may consume less resources per capita (arguable), but imagine all the forests that are destroyed in order to feed a huge city. Cities contribute huge amounts of waste and require a massive amount of resources to run. Not to mention the fact that cities themselves generate suburbs. I think alot of research should be done on density patterns and their effect on the environment before we declare one density greener than the other. Or perhaps and extreme density, like an arcology, would be the greenest of all, if it was completely self contained, but so far, no one has blended ecology and urbanism together it seems.
Social problems are design problems, unless you have a very narrow view of design.
enjoying this discussion, despite being name-checked.
i should note that i don't have a disdain for ALL suburban life. i even enjoy old suburbs quite a bit. some were well thought-out and have matured well.
it's just bothered me that the last decade or so there seems to have developed a level of efficiency and mass-production that has made a sort of metastatic expansion of builder boxes, eating up every down-on-their-luck farm family's land at a mind-boggling rate.
it's no longer the metro area in which suburban growth is happening, it's the way-out rural counties that are becoming development targets. people move there because the taxes are low and they vote to keep them that way and then bitch about the slowness of these counties to deliver new infrastructure and new schools. how can this be sustainable?
the development codes of these places are nowhere near as sophisticated as the metro area, so building sites have nasty runoff conditions, planning is substandard/quick/ad hoc, paving runs rampant across every potentially drivable or parkable surface.
a friend of mine is an inspector/expert witness for court cases involving residential builders. you wouldn't be the short cuts and dangerous conditions hidden behind many of these houses' drywall. and he only sees the ones that make it to court because of mold, failure, or someone getting hurt!
from breaking ground to moving-in day - these places are pollution start to finish.
Apurimac- that's part of what makes Phoenix lack density. While visiting for a friend's wedding a few weeks ago, I got lost in a neighborhood only a few miles from where I grew up. I made a turn that I thought would connect me to a certain street that would take me back to my mom's place, and to my delight, found myself winding up a large hill/small mountain. complete with park and picnic grounds (albeit a bit spikier than one could wish for) at the bottom. Being a warm spring weekend, people were out enjoying their little bit of nature in force, and looked strangely at me in my car. Even once I got myself turned around and back into places I knew, for the rest of the day I was noticing the intermittent washes and ravines sprinkled throughout the city, with walking/biking paths for the 95% of the year when they aren't flooded. I think I would have liked growing up in phoenix a lot more if I'd noticed these things sooner.
I dunno, i was trying to think of an example and the older neighborhoods in LA and Pheonix jumped to mind.
development on these suburban areas definately needs to be kept in better check.
as margaret mead has pointed out what we know about suburbia is not much at all.
i just finished reading "The New Suburban History", edited byt Kevin Kruse and Thomas Sugrue, and found it a very good reading. The kinds of things that have been conquered and dealt with in suburbia, especially race relations, are profoundly important. Socially suburbs are so important that it is slightly absurd to think that architets keep getting hung up on the aesthetics of the places.
i am not an apologist for suburbia, and don't by Bruegmann's version of the type either, but there is something incredibly essential to american life going on in the suburbs that is being ignored. what things look like is not half as important as what people are doing.
the compact suburb is a bit of a myth btw, for those of you who think densifying suburbia is going to make a difference to car use. That approach has been shown to work only in low-income single-employer economies, something that is not really the aspiration or norm in america anymore. The only way that approach will work is if we somehow reduce the economic employment area for a region...and doing that in a family where more than one person works, and with entirely different professions is problematic. points for trying, though...
I once read somewhere an interview with a man who said "He used to be someone who believed there were two kinds of people in the world: those who live downtown, and those who don't yet realize that they want to." In the interview he admitted that as he aged he began to understnad that some people really DO love what the suburbs have to offer,
I live in a "suburb" that grew up in the 1940-50s. It is small scale, walkable, and a few blocks from a commercial district that in the last two years has turned into a truly viable living/commercial community: organic grocery, early-morning and late-night hangouts, some light industry (lawnmower repair, paving contractor yard, body shop), both used clothing stores and boutiques, and a high school. It's idyllic in every sense, just like diabase described, as the neighbors all know each other and everyone hangs out on nice evenings watching the kids play and sharing beers.
Given the opportunity, though, I'd still prefer to live like I did in Philly for ten years, an essentially car-free existence in a downtown core. But I can see the allure of the type of suburb I live in and I'm living in the moment now and enjoying it.
What I still cannot understand is why people choose to live like so many of my clients do: way far-flung gated communities, surrounded by miles of other gated communities. Miles of driving on sidewalk-less streets to get to any kind of commercial or community amenities.
While I drive through these places I dream of tearing out several acres every 1/2 mile to plant a commercial center, adding bike lanes and sidewalks to every road along with traffic calming (tabletops) ate every intersection, and cutting gaps in all the fences around the gated "communities" to join them to their neighboring "community" on the other side of the street.
Give me 15 yers and I'll have this problem solved. It's a big one, and takes time to implement. Call me liberty "Haussman Moses" bell.
I've always been of the mind that i wan't to either live in the middle of nowhere or in the middle of a city.
holz,
I mean, emigrate out of US to run from the viral suburbia.. I was just kidding :P
Read Peter Rowe's "Making the Middle Landscape" (1991) for a good treatment on suburbia
i guess for me the suburban fear does not arise out of any kind of snobbery. I don't think living in the city makes anybody a better smarter person...or a more cultured person.I am sure the suburbs have produced extremly intelligent rebellious people, and I dont argue it. This is not about intelligence...its about a social thinking process where one chooses to keep a distance between itself and the next home, while talking about communities.
When I said fear, i meant i feel a disturbance because of the extreme low density in the American suburbs and the people's choice to live like that. I grew up in a dense Asian city and people moved to the far suburbs not out of choice, more out of dire economic reasons.No matter how less the area of the house, people aspired to live as close to the city.Driving for miles is not a choice as gas is expensive and one can avoid it. People actually like living in this density as the coexistence creates a sense of security.We have the Urban which was dense and expensive, Suburban which was densER and less expensive and semi rural which was cheap and generally for people who lead a satisfied semi rural life with nature.
Maybe the difference between Asia and America is the perception of space and density.Both have their pros and cons.
i recently moved from the burbs to a downtown bungalow. being a burbanite all my life, i was somewhat hesitant to reside here. the media does a tremendous job placing fear in our lives about downtown.
so, as i meet others who live in the burbs and have heard of my recent move, they ask me all sorts of questions about crime in the area.
i've been living here only 4 months, but i quietly laugh about our ignorance of the communities we live in.
the best part about it is that when i tell some of my new urban friends about the burbs' questions, they say, "it's fucking terrible, stay away!" with hopes that the burb culture will not infest the urban communities.
i know it is best to form a more dense community for sustainability purposes, but i wonder if the burb lifestyle could be transposed to the urban fabric with closed doors, less pedestrians, more television. it's a double-edged sword.
Suburbs are just like cities, except at car scale.
When I'm in NYC, I want to drive, when I'm in Suburban Atlanta I want public transit, ain't no happiness nowhere.
As the best city to live in as far as communities go is by far and away Beijing and its hutongs. Go spend 2 weeks there and I dare you tell me like you don't belong by the end of it.
I hate the suburbs vs. city arguments. Especially ignorant comments like democrats hate the suburbs.
I have numerous gripes about the architecture and land planning on the outer fringes of most cities, not excluding many of the cherished European cities.
That said, simple truth is that most EMPLOYMENT is now located in the outer belts of N. American cities. If people want to live close to their jobs they have to live in the 'burbs. That's something the "I hate the suburbs" people never seem to mention.
Don't underestimate the American Dream.
It's an old myth, but maybe a dominant underpining still. The idea of staking your own claim, having your own land, your own fields to toil, raise kids, build a life of your own. 40 acres and a mule.
Of course the idea that this has translated into suburbia is ironic, but I think there's a link - that the idea of 'my own' dominates (in the states anyway) - Even if it's like everyone elses, the fact that you own your own piece of land and stand alone house is very attractive - It's an idea that's connected to our cultural and personal identities. And this has been slickly responded to with packaged house / neighborhood deals.
So on the scale between living as an isolated individual and living as an part of the collective, we're pretty far to the isolated side. And maybe this is on purpose, I mean a conscious choice of the people who buy suburban houses - but maybe it's also to be associated with cultural and family based 'programming' or belief system formation. Also with the sense that we have become such consumers that we only know how to make choices among pre-packaged products, (vs. imagining and forming our own unique situations). Combined with the impressive ease-to-buy, what options do we really have?
I think though that a fair amount of people do miss the benefits of collective/ neighborly living - I'm hopeful anyway. And maybe there can be more packaging of living environments that encourage the formation of real local community. Wonder what that would be...
archinect as a city. discuss.
"That said, simple truth is that most EMPLOYMENT is now located in the outer belts of N. American cities."
while that is largely true, i have noticed an interesting trend of corporations moving their hqs from the suburbs back into city cores as a means to attract and retain young talent, i.e. the "creative class." this poses a quandary in the whole sustainability debate as many older employees are now forced to drive longer distances into the city. it's definitely touched a nerve here in detroit (even within my office).
i used to be a big anti-suburb, pro-city advocate. that was 5 years ago though. now i'm sick of tall the discussion and nobody actually doing anything about it. so what i did was: i moved to a decent city, where despite the presence of suburbs, real good city life is possible and fun and exciting and almost everything i wanted it to be. so now i don't even think about the suburbs anymore. live and let live i guess. out of sight out of mind. done and done.
chase, i don't agree with done and done. as we (i hope) in this architectural community are a part of city planning/design regulations/zoning, we must advocate the progression of intelligent design.
our study is human activity and the way they live in the buildings and communities we design. i thought what we slave to do is to influence those who do not do what we do because we are commissioned to think through all these issues.
*vent*
yeah, nosleep, i do agree with you mostly. thanks for calling me out. i was venting mostly my frustration about how the subject of suburbs is so overdone in architectural discourse but nobody seems to actually have the power to change anything... that lies in governments and developers, maybe a little bit in the free market (homebuyers)
but it is true that i cared more about changing the suburbs 5 years ago, back when i was fresh out of high school and growing up in one... and now that i don't have to deal with them nearly as often, i don't really think about them and they don't seem like as huge of a looming problem. although that's an issue more of my own personal perception than of any shrinking of the american suburban quagmire.
every surly teenager who is artistic and sensitive hates the burbs where they grew up and runaway as soon as possible. why doncha go out and ask the people who live in suburbia and lead their normal average lifestyles what they think. they may not dislike it at all. they may not want to live in your shipping container designs. they may not mind driving an hour to work if it beats riding in a subway that periodical stops without explanation and is occupied by way too many people some of whom don't smell so good. what is the responsiblity of the architect? you may feel that you need to be an evangelist and convert the unwashed masses and you may be right. but to just judge people who live in the burbs as lemmings is not the way to go about it. (even if they are stupid lemmings who are destroying the earth with their greed which is expressed by their ugly homes, suv's and inbred mutant piglet children)
vado, definitely some good points. although i would argue that in many U.S. cities, the situation has become such that if you are middle-upper class and want to have a place to fraternize with similar folks and safely raise your children, there isn't much choice other than the suburbs. architectural anti-suburb preaching will not end the suburb -nor should it try to - but maybe the discourse will help promote a safe, vibrant urban alternative (think europe-style) to suburbia that people can choose if they want to. right now i think a lot of people want to, but in most cities there is no choice. just suburbs.
my hoods safe cept for the speeding suvs blastin through on their way to the burbs. oh and the occasional murder but everybody's got that.
I don't do backpacks with groceries anymore....been there done that....but still to poor to move to the burbs....but I drive to them
for work...and my burbs are what I call "Rural Burbs"....New Yorker
Weekend Homes....kinda Burbs....the most expensive kinda Burb...
is a Rural Burb in the Right Location....and I don't give a damn where you live...those who have....need to have their time away from the big city....this has been going on in America for so long no one even remembers....
i think a majority of the burbs love their life. the suv, the strip malls, the fenced-in backyard, the manicured lawns; it's all quite comforting. i know the life; i lived it, and then i considered the social/economical/environmental aspects of my life that may be a little larger than myself and i reconsidered.
i think our influence is in our lifestyle. we won't change everyone, but if we strongly voice our opinion, we will make some rethink their day-to-day (e.g. my brother-in-law that lives in the burbs that is now planning on selling to move closer to downtown...it's a step).
also, snooker has a point, rural burbs have a great draw: a get away. But, this is not the burbs, and that was the original design of burbs, a replica of the italian villa in the country. then some of us recognized this was a lie. the rich will always have their true villas, and the ones that attempt to replicate it with their suburban home are only fooling themselves.
there's no completely absolute right or wrong here, but i'm so sick of the tract home building that demolishes the natural landscape to build "profitable" single-family residences for the middle-class hopefuls.
we ignore the suburbs at our own peril. Our complete disregard of them has helped lead to our lack or relevance.
I've lived in various downtown cores my whole life, but most of my friends grew up in suburbs.
I just moved to a new city, from a small house on a side street (off a major thoroughfare) to a small apartment on a small street (which becomes a major thoroughfare during rush hour).
My recent thoughts:
I like being able to walk to work, one block away.
I hate paying an insane amount of money for groceries, simply because there's only one option within walking distance.
While I don't hate taking public transit as much as I used to, I still don't ever enjoy it.
I miss having space to store stuff. We got rid of half our stuff before moving here, and I still had to build a huge 8'x8' loft bed so we could store tools and winter clothes underneath.
I hate my neighbours. If the couple who live above us aren't fucking right above us, she's vacuuming at midnight (for two hours) and he's taking a loud piss in the toilet right above my head as I lay down in bed at night.
Living in the 'trendy' hip area of town, kids and adults alike seem to enjoy partying on our front steps. Every night of the week. Every single night. This means a lot of yelling at all hours of the night, broken bottles, condom wrappers, and a nice big dent in the hood of my car.
Back at our old place, we had a yard with more than enough room for a huge vegetable garden, parking for our motorcycles (now long gone), and a hammock hanging from a tree. We had a compost pile. Here in this new city, downtown, there's barely even recycling if it's not paper or aluminum.
I know this isn't really comparing suburbs to downtowns, but rather, perhaps, a few thoughts on what makes a place liveable (for me). I'm basically a crotchety old (youngish) man. I want to come home to see my girlfriend and not be bothered by asshole neighbours, drunks sleeping on the front steps, and the constant blare of police sirens.
At least Winnipeg just lost its title as Murder Capital of Canada. It feels safe enough here, as long as you don't enter the north end of the city. And that's a shame. There's no reason every neighbourhood shouldn't be much more liveable than it is.
In conclusion: I'm looking to move south of the city, as I had planned to do some time ago. Not to a suburb, but rather a country home or a home in a small town. Yes, I'll have to commute a bit, but probably not as far as I currently do.
i used to work as a sign painter in the north end of winnipeg slantsix. was kinda scary sometimes...but i was going through my roadie-lookin phase and probly looked scary enough no one bothered me. talked with a cop there once who said he showed some dude from LA around cuz he was studying how they were dealing with gangs and drugs there. can you frickin believe it? cops form LA studying a canadian city? so much for michael moores version of canacks being peace-nicks...
anyway, about the topic...
for me the most ironic thing about suburbia is that it was invented by fundamentalist christians to remove women and children from the influence of satan (the city), and then legally sanctified to make sure other perversions couldn't intrude either...and yet, in spite of all this there is a very large amount of research available (going back nearly 50 years) that shows us how diverse, interesting and important suburbia is as a place. not as a myth, not as an american dream sort of thing, but as a real place, lived in on daily-basis by regular people. there is apparently a lot of subtelty going on in suburban communities that is often missed. that there are problems with suburbia is certainly the case, and equally there are problems with traditional urban cores. neither really wins on a livability or sustainability basis.
my feeling is that suburbs will evolve. actually, check that, suburbs will continue to evolve... as fuel costs and other incentives emerge to cause changes. what those incentives might be i don't know. planners seldom get things right on a mere 5 year plan basis, never mind 20 or more...
but i am looking forward to seeing what happens...interesting times.
another note about commuting, a trip say from the far north of chicago to the loop, 45 minutes, a forty mile drive from my last job to home driven on a state highway and some backroads,45 minutes.
a commute for someone living in the far north almost burbs of indy to downtown 45 minutes. its all the same and now with cellphones, iphones itunes ipods etc in your car it can be some personal time for people who rarely think they have it. whereas riding a train is crowded you're alone among the madding crowd, you're probably getting flu germs spread on you, you get to see the crappy novels people read on the train etc.
A spin on what Vado said - I live in the downtown "core" of Chicago, and commute on the most horrific subway service imaginable. So many people crammed in they actually fall out when the doors open at my stop. Then the train goes literally 10 mph and you are waiting to freak out from claustrophobia. The bomb sniffing dog wait at Chicago ave is a nice reminder of the fact your in a tube under a river.
2 years ago I was reverse commuting by car to the burbs. The drive home was hell. But there was a morning ritual of coffee, phone calls to the job sites, music and news radio updates that honestly made me want to work from my car. Plus I got to drive around and see shit.
So - I guess what makes it a great country is if you dont like the outer burbs, hey, theres an inner burb with a bungalow for you, or if thats not your cup of meat you could live in a highrise condo or 3 flat greystone. Whatever way you like it, its probly better than living in shipping containers, tee pees, Bivowacs, igloos or sod houses.
Whatever, Evil and Vado. I love riding the CTA in Chicago every day, and would rather stick sharp pencils under my toenails than drive through dense traffic to some office park somewhere surrouned by asphalt and mowed drainage ditches. Even in the crowd aboard the train, I can read a book--or just look at the crowd, which is often quite interesting. Also, I've been in Chicago long enough to remember what the "L" was like before the slow zones and "three track operation", and realize that it will someday go fast again. Years ago I would sit in a car on the Kennedy Expressway watching the Blue Line trains cruise by on the median passing all of the cars... This will happen again.
speaking of bad books on the train, oddest thing i find in japan is the salarymen reading manga porn on the train. big colorful covers and images of folks doing what folks do in manga porn on the inside. totally unashamedly...
they also have special cars here for women only cuz they were being pawed so much in the crowded rush hours when it was impossible to find the offending owner of a straying hand. yeesh.
on other hand subways here are not dark, are never urine-smelling, and run on time, to the second. get tired of them, but wattaya want in a city with over 30 million people...?
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