NJ Transit and Metro North smell terrible, and what's with the (fake?) leather seats getting all greasy? it's so disgusting. and they're slowing than driving. get me a car or move me to europe. or maybe i should move to manhattan and work within walking distance.
suburbia isn't the same around the US.. in any of a formal/morphologically sense, a social/cultural sense or in a programmatic sense. You can have "suburban" communities in Southern California built at sustained densities of 60-75+ dwelling units per hectare, with perimeter blocks and the occasional point tower, you can have a traditional inner suburbs at 20 units per hectare, you can have Atlanta-area monster home subdivisions at 4-8 per hectare, or you can have exurban mini-estates or ranchettes at 0.5-2 per hectare. Programmatically, these may be mixed-use areas organized around existing urbanish village or town centers or they may be monolithic single-land-use arrays. Culturally, these communities may be ethnically specified or not or working class, middle class, upper middle class or just varied and heterogenous.
chase, albiet i'm not from the area and do not use it to commute, i have always loved riding the nj transit. i love the guy who comes around to punch your ticket, the little stations, even the worn vinyl seats. it seems like a very pleasant place to read pulp fiction, a real throw back, and almost a more refined form of public transportation than what you find in other parts of the world.
On atl style suburbs I can say they used to be really nice areas to live in. The older subdivisions were like dense satellites set in miles of pristine forest separating suburban enclaves which themselves were equally leafy and plush. In a way it was kind of an un-city, a suburban city which was there yet couldn't be recognized simply by driving on the main roads. This basically meant if you were a nature lover you could live in the woods and still only be 30 minutes drive from downtown and in the early to mid 90's the driving was actually pleasant on Atlanta area roads. Fast foward to today and streams of yuppie immigrants migrating in from the Northeast and West Coast have converted there massive stockpiles of cash and desire to not live in urban sardine cans into miles of mega-mcmansions with hardly a tree in sight. Developers spec a piece of woods for demolition, completely nuke it, and then build massive 6000sq+ buildings on numerous 1/4 acre lots. The resulting influx has placed massive strain on the road infrastructure and now your typical Atlantan faces over an hour's drive just to get to work in the morning. The people who desire to live in McMansions are usually city folk who do not care about working on a piece of land, instead they just want the largest house for the lowest cost.
While I don't condone the ever expanding sprawl of the suburbs, I do understand many people's wish to get out of the inner city. For me, the lack of greenery always make me feel a little ill at ease. Funny, it's almost like I have a hard time breathing if there is no tree in sight.
Slantsix- I hear what you are saying. I don't live d'town but in one of the "old suburbs." It's great to be able to walk up the hill to get something to eat or pick up something at the natural food store, but even better to have enough of yard to have a small garden. I still have to drive to get a lot of places, but I'm pretty much 10-15 nminutes from everything I need, including my friends, family and work.
It makes me sad to see so many American downtown areas become ghost towns after 5pm and on the weekends. Cincinnati has been trying for years to re-vitalize the d'town, but it alwys seems to fall short. Until we change the way this society thinks about cities, I don't think that will ever change.
Americans still long for this false pastoral notion of the frontier. Every american on some level wants to be a homesteader, a frontiersman/woman. Our huge trucks and suvs are our impervious wagons.
The suburbs allow us to live out that dream of a plot of land and a big house. It's our one attachment to the national foundation myth that we still have.
Suburban lifestyle scares me...agree with Steven ward
NJ Transit and Metro North smell terrible, and what's with the (fake?) leather seats getting all greasy? it's so disgusting. and they're slowing than driving. get me a car or move me to europe. or maybe i should move to manhattan and work within walking distance.
suburbia isn't the same around the US.. in any of a formal/morphologically sense, a social/cultural sense or in a programmatic sense. You can have "suburban" communities in Southern California built at sustained densities of 60-75+ dwelling units per hectare, with perimeter blocks and the occasional point tower, you can have a traditional inner suburbs at 20 units per hectare, you can have Atlanta-area monster home subdivisions at 4-8 per hectare, or you can have exurban mini-estates or ranchettes at 0.5-2 per hectare. Programmatically, these may be mixed-use areas organized around existing urbanish village or town centers or they may be monolithic single-land-use arrays. Culturally, these communities may be ethnically specified or not or working class, middle class, upper middle class or just varied and heterogenous.
chase, albiet i'm not from the area and do not use it to commute, i have always loved riding the nj transit. i love the guy who comes around to punch your ticket, the little stations, even the worn vinyl seats. it seems like a very pleasant place to read pulp fiction, a real throw back, and almost a more refined form of public transportation than what you find in other parts of the world.
On atl style suburbs I can say they used to be really nice areas to live in. The older subdivisions were like dense satellites set in miles of pristine forest separating suburban enclaves which themselves were equally leafy and plush. In a way it was kind of an un-city, a suburban city which was there yet couldn't be recognized simply by driving on the main roads. This basically meant if you were a nature lover you could live in the woods and still only be 30 minutes drive from downtown and in the early to mid 90's the driving was actually pleasant on Atlanta area roads. Fast foward to today and streams of yuppie immigrants migrating in from the Northeast and West Coast have converted there massive stockpiles of cash and desire to not live in urban sardine cans into miles of mega-mcmansions with hardly a tree in sight. Developers spec a piece of woods for demolition, completely nuke it, and then build massive 6000sq+ buildings on numerous 1/4 acre lots. The resulting influx has placed massive strain on the road infrastructure and now your typical Atlantan faces over an hour's drive just to get to work in the morning. The people who desire to live in McMansions are usually city folk who do not care about working on a piece of land, instead they just want the largest house for the lowest cost.
While I don't condone the ever expanding sprawl of the suburbs, I do understand many people's wish to get out of the inner city. For me, the lack of greenery always make me feel a little ill at ease. Funny, it's almost like I have a hard time breathing if there is no tree in sight.
Slantsix- I hear what you are saying. I don't live d'town but in one of the "old suburbs." It's great to be able to walk up the hill to get something to eat or pick up something at the natural food store, but even better to have enough of yard to have a small garden. I still have to drive to get a lot of places, but I'm pretty much 10-15 nminutes from everything I need, including my friends, family and work.
It makes me sad to see so many American downtown areas become ghost towns after 5pm and on the weekends. Cincinnati has been trying for years to re-vitalize the d'town, but it alwys seems to fall short. Until we change the way this society thinks about cities, I don't think that will ever change.
Americans still long for this false pastoral notion of the frontier. Every american on some level wants to be a homesteader, a frontiersman/woman. Our huge trucks and suvs are our impervious wagons.
The suburbs allow us to live out that dream of a plot of land and a big house. It's our one attachment to the national foundation myth that we still have.
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