"Besides for what jump wrote 08/07/07 17:31 and apurimac wrote 08/07/07 18:57, most of what comprises this thread seems as distasteful, pointless and wasteful as the worst aspects of sprawl itself."
"vado, perhaps you should change your name to stale."
Somewhat distracting. Intended doesn't mean it was successful.
As for the incomprehension, I really didn't understand what your intent was behind - "and in the meantime sprawl moves on." Which is why I was asking your angle.
LB - Do you think it is cultural and social as well? Or again, are they just personal issues?
Aug 8, 07 4:13 pm ·
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Philarch, your wrong if you think I intended to derail this thread. I happen to agree with what jump and apurimac wrote, and I think most of the rest in more or less inconsequential.
vado suggested I change my name, so I suggested he change his.
Personally, I don't foresee sprawl being fixed, more likely someday abandoned.
Of course it is social and cultural. For instance, the sprawl is driven by American's percieved need for a home of a certain size with certain amenities (yard, garage, pool, whatever). But in Europe the expectation of home size and situation are very different. They are used to living in smaller spaces, and in cities a yard and a two-car garage are not expected. That is definitely social conditioning, because quite frankly life goes on either way. But how do you convince people who have lived a luxurious consumerist lifestyle to roll back their expectations?
Aug 8, 07 4:21 pm ·
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You could also say that sprawl is driven by the ability of Americans to invest a large amount of money in land/home ownership. Individual land ownership in Europe has always been a minority situation (and still too expensive for most). And you could well say that what became the United States was indeed founded on individual land ownership.
Apparently. Anyway, it was a comparison, to illustrate that our percieved needs with regards to housing are social constructs and not actual needs, and therefor this is a social problem manifesting as a physical problem.
sans- I guess I can see that, except that one can still own something small, or something centrally located, but Americans on the whole choose to own things that are large and far away from other things. So while ownership is a driving force, I don't think it's the actual creator of the problem, given that within the structure of ownership there are better options available.
Aug 8, 07 4:45 pm ·
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Which brings back (to me at least) the newness factor, and, as the article at the beginning of this thread notes, it's the out-there sprawl that is now affordable.
I now live just within the Philadelphia city limits, and minutes away are very nice older suburbs, which most middle/working class Philadelphians can't afford. So, if you want to move out of the city (and make it a "step up"), you now have to move a lot further out.
If the way cities grew pre-WWII had continued to this day do you really believe..
1. We wouldn't have bad architecture?
2. People would walk/take mass transit more often?
3. Chain stores wouldn't exist?
I blame it entirely on zoning laws. As the cities grew people had to build on bigger lots and be separated from essential services. Henry Ford made the auto cheap transportation and the rest is history.
Now we face a brick wall of declining availability of oil, and an infastructure than is dependant on massive amounts of liquid hydrocarbons.
eastcoast, I don't think anyone thinks s/he "owns" this thread.
Personally, I still think a LOT of Americans would really, really like to live like a LOT of Europeans live- but of course I'm not going to go into specifics because I"m too busy right now.
i think the amerikans who want to live like europeans are, for the most part, already doing so. my lifestyle is very europeanified. i got a doorstop for a car, live in a prewar building have a cat. but it still goes back to the perception that people who are living in the sprawl are living the life they want to live.
and our little oasis of sensibility ain't gonna change that. maybe when every kid in amerika has diabetes and people start living shorter lifespans on average than a previous generation, something will happen.
why doesnt everyone just take an informal poll. just ask some people why they live where they live. what's good about it whats not so good? etc....
Aug 8, 07 5:51 pm ·
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I can see the billboards now...
Move the downtown Indianapolis
and
live like the Europeans
In terms of creating a charette or research project of some sort, I go back to my original convoluted points:
-one cannot look at the problems and advantages of the suburbs without looking at the city. Why do people prefer the suburbs to they city, or think they do. If so, what is the relationship between the city and suburb? is it symbiotic, can one sustain itself without the other, departing from the present situation? What are the different relationships between these two? So I don't think this can be studied overall, unless we gather information on a case by case basis.
Some of these points have been brought up in the time it's taken me to write this...
Whew, you leave for a day and all the thread's unwound...i feel naked. Let me get home and i can organize my thoughts...
Wow, I hit some nerves today. Admittedly, I did have more time today to post because I have been rendering all day, but clearly I need to back off. Maybe I was right with my first post then when I said I wasn't qualified or unbiased enough to contribute.
Either way, there really is some really good stuff on this thread that I'm taking away.
Aug 8, 07 6:36 pm ·
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vado, you call me rita, I call you asshole.
Aug 8, 07 6:40 pm ·
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And you make way too many assumptions. You keep on about other people's perceptions, yet I don't trust yours at all. Forget asshole, culturati wannabe is how I perceive you.
Aug 8, 07 6:44 pm ·
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Oh, and I now speak more German on a daily basis than English. I'm living so European. Ain't it grand!
of the suburban people I know this is the reasoning, or at least the reasoning they own to:
1) moved to the city from the sticks, thought she and hubby were ready for big city life and that's what they wanted, but when they actually got here were frankly a bit scared and settled for a suburb.
2) guy with a big family, wasn't having luck finding a housing situation that fit in the city. This one is probably the most subject to the 'inflated expectations' concept discussed above.
3) guy & family living in an ethnic community a 'burb, where their families live as well.
Aug 8, 07 6:47 pm ·
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I wonder, does the "inflated expectations" concept apply to higher education aspirations as well?
Ha, well getting to see you is one of the (few) nice things about Indianapolis, vado, so there you go.
In Indy I chose a non-downtown lifestyle because my 10 years in ultra-downtown Philly left me with very high expectations of what a "downtown lifestyle" is, and Indy couldn't meet them. So instead I chose a post-war neighborhood in close walking distance to one of the "cores" outside the main downtown - a former village and canal lock, now a main street with an active college nightlife and lots of boutiques, cafes, and a sense of urbanity. Also, two grocery stores, one organic.
To vado, I live in the suburbs - I'm at 63rd street. To me, the "suburbs" is 86th street and beyond, where the houses and strip malls are less than 15 years old and all look alike - and are all too big for my taste.
Maybe a definition of "Suburbia" is in order*
*beyond the 1984 punk movie of that name - believe me, it's a problem that has been around for a loooong time.
I was thinking about that, too, LB. Technically being in Culver City, I'm in a suburb. A suburb that Los Angeles has swallowed whole, but still a suburb. But it's got it's own downtown, its own little architecture scene, and feels about 100x more urban than Phoenix did, so based on the experience/feel I'd hesitate to call it a suburb. So I guess it's an atypical suburb?
sans, that's a tough one. Higher education is definitely someone one can physically do without, but it's such an important thing. I guess this is where my personal bias starts showing, because I would call locational choices based on school (whether higher ed or primary) valid, and call them equal to choices made based on work.
i think vado calling you rita was meant as an endearment. I think of that name when I read your comments, and in my mind it's an endearment, not a slam, which is how I think you interpreted vado's use of it.
rationalist I think perhaps there are more "atypical" suburbs than typical ones - at least for now there are, but the typical ones are the ones that are spreading anew every day.
i live in downtown detroit because i can own a house by a modern master on an intern architect's salary. there's a part of me though that yearns for the suburbs. i love to drive. there's something incredibly evocative about them, something almost unattainable. two of my favorite movies are "the ice storm" and "the virgin suicides"; both perfectly sum up the appeal of the suburbs.
bruegmann wrote his sprawl book to try to define suburbia and sprawl.
he concludes that sprawl is whatever you want to call it depending on what you are trying to sell. and is therefore meaningless as a term.
jencks comes to same conclusion about sustainability and compact city. there is currently so much research for and against compact living that an argument is easy to make either way, with lots of very credible research to back up both sides (this is really really true), and the only thing that needs to change is the place where the author chooses to stand.
jencks goes on to suggest that what we need now is some more objective research to understand what we really HAVE in suburbia. Not so much has been done on this surprisingly, apart from Gans of "the Levittowners" and a few others. This is intresting because Gans more or less showed/proved that suburbia is not a wasteland and never was one, cultural or otherwise. And that was in the 60's. More recently cultural historians have studied the role of feminism, racism, equality and a range of other topics in relation to suburbia and have found it a rich field of complex activity.
the point of the above is that suburbia dos not really boil down to something as simple as, for example, Strawbeary's (car) ride out of the centre for her holiday and how it takes longer because all the low-brows are taking what should be clearly her space on the edge of the city (because strawbeary has earned it by sacrificing the large life for the small?).
Suburbia holds no charms for me, but also no evils. Or at least not inherent ones. Suburbia was was not inherently bad in herculaneum ( a suburb of some renown 2000 yers ago), and it is not inherently bad in oak park illinois, or in spongy acres (or other choice monniker) just down the road from your current edge abode of choice...
There is also a supreme fallacy about how much energy you are consuming as a centre city person and how much as a suburban person. The embodied energy of a salad at your centre restaurant is probably not that much different than that at your suburban eatery. car traffic as a result of reverse commuting means center life does not even reduce that big bit of concern for a significant number of people...i am sure there are numbers that show centre life is less harmful on environment but i am skeptical. in comparison to what? a suburban house in japan uses 1/7th of the energy of an american house of similar size (suburban homes here are not mcmansions, but not small either). does the centre home in usa achieve same reduction? i doubt it. i would be surprised if it is more efficient at all. which means that energy gains made from living in centre have to come from other activities. do they? really? how big is the difference?
...anyway, whther they do or not i am not so comfortable with the attitude that relatively small lifestyle choices, like living in a city centre, allow a person to assume a position of superiority.
and what exactly is the european lifestyle discussed above? compact city failed in holland cuz everyone chose to drive instead of use rail. programs begin in the 80's have all been shut down cuz the government couldn't override culture. the suburbs there are "better" in many measurable ways than the usa versions, but then again it is still relative. compared to what? what is the standard? clearly even european cities are struggling with energy use and sprawl and all of the rest, so the idea that they have it right is a fallacy.
there are too many humans living a comfortable life. and even a minimal and more efficient comfortable life is still going to be one that involves a lot of consumption. Japanese energy use from petroleum has not gone up since the oil crisis in the 70's. that is a remarkable achievement, partly because there is no central heating, nor central air, and everyine hangs their laundry outside instead of using a clothes-dryer...but they also use a lot of nuclear power...and the cities are still high energy consumers and most people still use lots of energy and harmful chemicals in daily life. how much more can this be reduced and how much of a change come of it on global terms if everyone on planet lived that way? i am skeptical and think it will always be too much.
that is only energy use. the question of how energy use and suburbia are connected is to me slightly fake. two separate problems have been conflated for other purposes. and i am not convinced that those purposes are helping at all. they may in fact be lulling us into thinking that if we live in the centre we have solved a problem. when we have not. we have merely changed the shape of the container.
so what are we to do?
lars lerup suggests retooling suburbia to be sustainable
as a person more interested in architecture than planning i like his approach. and it seems interesting starting point for archinectors maybe...at least better than merely lamenting over traffic and rise of wal-martian in-bred shmuckmeisters from hell (hell translated=suburbs)
it is at least objective, and that objectivity is essential to real solution, i am convinced...
I don't think most people's first choice IS suburbia, I think it is what they settle for when the city doesn't suit them b/c is too expensive. Isn't that why the city IS expensive? Because a lot of people want to live there? There is no demand for suburbs, and they are a dime a dozen, and all alike, therefore cheaper.
I live in a 'suburb' too. The very first turn of the century residential suburb (right beyond the first platted area of the original town, about a mile). So maybe what we are getting at is the newest suburbs look really awkward to those of us who pay attention - no trees, all the buildings and people look alike... the newest ugly face of what is supposed to be important in our lives strikes us oddly (3 turn lanes off a 2 lane road to get to the mall). A suburb, to me, is a place that looks and feels like a developer was playing Sim City and laughed all the way to the bank. I bet LB's suburb doesn't look like that.
Am I the only american who hates to drive? I avoid rush hour at all costs. It is my worst nightmare. My car is 10 years old and I am dreading having to get a new one.
from what strawbeary just said and from lb's and jump's comments before, maybe a starting point would be to begin to make a sort of family tree of suburb-types. you know like scientific naming: family/genus/species, etc. because the turn of the (20th) century streetcar suburb is almost essentially different from the cul-de-sac suburbs of the 70s/80s which are again different from the willy-nilly farmland-sold-off-in-small-chunks-for-survival-of-the-family suburbs of 21st century kentucky.
i know it's just my opinion, and that jump could probably parse why my opinion is evidence of being uninformed (no sarcasm; i love the things i glean from jump's comments), but i'd make the metaphor that the earlier suburbs were planned and thoughtful 'benign' additions to the city but that over the last century that growth has metastasized into something very different and very destructive.
being since i am a culturati wannabe a-hole, i was watching the magnificent ambersons which takes place in turn of 20th century amerika(indianapolis to be precise) and the discussion we are having was addressed in the film. one of the characters had started a horseless carriage company and another character declared the uselessness of the invention. the businessman countered that in fact the invention had already changed the world and there was no going back. but, whether the change was for the better or for the detriment of mankind was yet to be determined. also, the patriarch amberson died broke as he failed to invest in the new suburban developments.
I'm finding most of the assumptions as to why people pick the suburbs quite ignorant and short-sighted. For example, how people "really want to live in the city but..."
I lived in the city for years. I personally have nothing against it. Worked for me at a certain point in my life. Lived the nightlife, had a ton of fun. My bus or car commute to work was approx 8 miles (work in same city).
Today I live in a 1st ring suburb of 50's vintage. Walking distance to a town center with more ammenities I ever had in walking distance while living in the city, minus the bars/nightlife. Live in a very stable community where most people have been there 25+ years = a sense of community I never felt "in the city" where people would move on every couple of years. My commute to the same job is only 5 miles via car or bus. I'm close to highway transportation so my wife can easily get to her job, in the suburbs. Something that was near impossible for her to do when living in the city. I have a backyard organic veggie garden, something much harder to do in the city with limited space. My car or garage has never been broken into. The local school isn't at risk of losing funding thanks to NCLB and awful performance.
The list could go on and on. Our location just made sense for us and I have full confidence saying I live a less energy dependant/more sustainable lifestyle in the suburbs. That doesn't work for everyone in every city. And while I like my location, I abhor the new "exurbs" another 5-10 miles out.
What I hate is the self riteous talk of people saying that the city is this great nirvanna, when it just isn't for most people. So called "hicks" don't move to the city and "escape to the suburbs." They move to the suburbs. That's where most jobs are, that's where most housing is, that's where most retail & commerce is. I straddle that line in-between. The bus ride to the downtown Target store is about the same as the car ride to the suburban Target store. Still, I get berated for living in the "suburbs" even if I take mass transit more often and drive less miles than most city dwellers. Oh well.
Good post, aquapura, and so many relevant aspects in this discussion re: the choices people make. Downtown Philly "worked" for me with a small child, downtown Indianapolis doesn't.
Steven, I LOVE the idea of a subrub type mapping....
(and I also agree re: jump's advanced take on all thus - jump, you've obviously done research into it, and your comments are always so helpful).
Gotta get to work now, but there is so much more to say on all this.
aqua, perhaps I am closeminded, but this is a discussion and yes I am presenting an extreme view, perhaps for the purpose of discussion. I am thinking of friends of mine in the burbs and why they live there, 8 out of 10 of them DID want to live in the city, but found the suburbs the next best thing. Obviously when we talk about suburbs, your scenario is not the one we are dogging on.
aquapura, i might take it one step further and argue that there is a greater sense of human detachment in the city than there is in the suburbs or small towns. i've definitely felt that since moving to detroit. while detroit, a shrinking city, is a bit extreme, i also see it in my friends in nyc and la. many live thousands of miles away from family. they live in anonymous and transient apartment buildings. the continual horizontal job movement doesn't allow for much investment in their office. meetings with friends are infrequent and limited to bars. relationships are usually short-lived. "sex in the city" was as successful as it was because it accurately portrayed its subject. community organizations are largely inaccessible because of the size of the city and its politics. does anyone go to church anymore?
i'm not advocating for anyone to move to the suburbs, but i do see a generational trend to move away from a strong sense of connection to people and place. i think the attraction to the excitement and opportunity in cities is a major reason for this.
And I'll be driving from my neighborhood to what I consider the suburbs - 106th Street, to go to the tile warehouse I mean showroom for bored McMansion-dwelling housewives.
Sorry about getting a little heated earlier today. I do stand by my claim that many people living in the city are self riteous about it. Know several people that sold their exurban places to live right in the city only because it's the cosmopolitian thing to do. However they don't support the local businesses, drive their kids out to the suburban day care, still make weekend trips to Wal-Mart, etc. They are only there for the image of the city life, yet live none of it. Just don't get it.
jafidler - I see what you're saying. Have a relative in Chicago that always complains she cannot make real friends living in the city...yet isn't giving it up for life in the 'burbs. The "city" as LB lives in is where I see a sense of community, however, from my experience the suburbs are much less transient than core cities, at least where I've lived thus far.
my car has never been broken into
my neighbors are awesome, and i actually know their names
our schools are top ranked in the state and have great funding
i have a nice pool and yard
everything i need is within a 10 minute drive
so just keep downgrading us "suburb" folk for wanting to own a patch of grass, because in reality city life just isn't for everyone. that's the way it will always be.
i should apologise for being all preachy. don't mean to be, and don't take myself too seriously in real life. my phd research is about suburbia and i have read a LOT of shit on the subject, and it sorta bubbles out.
i love comments by LB, vado, and others. very interesting and useful...archinect really gots some smart people participatin.
as a final thought, my faculty was founded to solve problems of sustainability, tackling it from every angle, including recombinant dna (guys downstairs are geneticists making bacteria that eat toxic sludge) and urbanism. i think that broadens perspective. suburbia is part of problem but is maybe not the actual enter of things that architects can make it out to be.
i wonder if all those treatises and manifestoes we have to read at school teach architects to be too reductive?
So, if you are looking to acheive sustainability, have you found the suburbs not sustainable? Knowing people that live "downtown" in highrise condos, I find their lifestyle quite un-sustainable. Just curious as to what your findings are.
first a question and it is a serious one. can someone give a definitive definition of "sustainability".
also, and i am sure it has been done and is being done at a thesis level, it seems that a degree focusing on the psychology of the built environment would not be a waste of time. is there such a program in existence?
he goes on to point out that "...[this definition] does not immediately suggest one particular form, or even a preference for high or low densities, dispersed or centralised development or small or large settelements". Which is the really important message to take away, at least for me...
above is the definition i use for my own work, mostly because my research is done in the context of this approach to research. there may be better versions out there. And certainly more broad perspectives, such as with WCED version which is the benchmark since 87.
This is my own observation but i think it is fair to say that most definitions of sustainability have both a social component as well as a physical one. The physical aspect usually describes some form of goal regarding efficency (resources), the social aspect is more mutable but can be boiled down to a matter of access. Access to place, to social and or financial opportunity, etc.
In the usa this is directed to goal of racial + economic diversity (new urbanism has this mantra). In Japan access is about making it easy for the elderly to maintain a comfortable standard of living (the american precoccupations don't exist here)...
spreading like a virus...(discuss)
It's easy to see how/why sprawl is only minimally a design problem and moreso a planning and political problem.
Oops, typo corrected.
"Besides for what jump wrote 08/07/07 17:31 and apurimac wrote 08/07/07 18:57, most of what comprises this thread seems as distasteful, pointless and wasteful as the worst aspects of sprawl itself."
"vado, perhaps you should change your name to stale."
Somewhat distracting. Intended doesn't mean it was successful.
As for the incomprehension, I really didn't understand what your intent was behind - "and in the meantime sprawl moves on." Which is why I was asking your angle.
But really, lets move on.
LB - Do you think it is cultural and social as well? Or again, are they just personal issues?
Philarch, your wrong if you think I intended to derail this thread. I happen to agree with what jump and apurimac wrote, and I think most of the rest in more or less inconsequential.
vado suggested I change my name, so I suggested he change his.
Personally, I don't foresee sprawl being fixed, more likely someday abandoned.
Of course it is social and cultural. For instance, the sprawl is driven by American's percieved need for a home of a certain size with certain amenities (yard, garage, pool, whatever). But in Europe the expectation of home size and situation are very different. They are used to living in smaller spaces, and in cities a yard and a two-car garage are not expected. That is definitely social conditioning, because quite frankly life goes on either way. But how do you convince people who have lived a luxurious consumerist lifestyle to roll back their expectations?
You could also say that sprawl is driven by the ability of Americans to invest a large amount of money in land/home ownership. Individual land ownership in Europe has always been a minority situation (and still too expensive for most). And you could well say that what became the United States was indeed founded on individual land ownership.
the last thing americans want is to live like europeans. wtf?
Apparently. Anyway, it was a comparison, to illustrate that our percieved needs with regards to housing are social constructs and not actual needs, and therefor this is a social problem manifesting as a physical problem.
sans- I guess I can see that, except that one can still own something small, or something centrally located, but Americans on the whole choose to own things that are large and far away from other things. So while ownership is a driving force, I don't think it's the actual creator of the problem, given that within the structure of ownership there are better options available.
Which brings back (to me at least) the newness factor, and, as the article at the beginning of this thread notes, it's the out-there sprawl that is now affordable.
I now live just within the Philadelphia city limits, and minutes away are very nice older suburbs, which most middle/working class Philadelphians can't afford. So, if you want to move out of the city (and make it a "step up"), you now have to move a lot further out.
i love how philarch thinks he owns this thread. calm down haus, do you not own enough space in your "urban" home?
If the way cities grew pre-WWII had continued to this day do you really believe..
1. We wouldn't have bad architecture?
2. People would walk/take mass transit more often?
3. Chain stores wouldn't exist?
I blame it entirely on zoning laws. As the cities grew people had to build on bigger lots and be separated from essential services. Henry Ford made the auto cheap transportation and the rest is history.
Now we face a brick wall of declining availability of oil, and an infastructure than is dependant on massive amounts of liquid hydrocarbons.
eastcoast, I don't think anyone thinks s/he "owns" this thread.
Personally, I still think a LOT of Americans would really, really like to live like a LOT of Europeans live- but of course I'm not going to go into specifics because I"m too busy right now.
i think the amerikans who want to live like europeans are, for the most part, already doing so. my lifestyle is very europeanified. i got a doorstop for a car, live in a prewar building have a cat. but it still goes back to the perception that people who are living in the sprawl are living the life they want to live.
and our little oasis of sensibility ain't gonna change that. maybe when every kid in amerika has diabetes and people start living shorter lifespans on average than a previous generation, something will happen.
why doesnt everyone just take an informal poll. just ask some people why they live where they live. what's good about it whats not so good? etc....
I can see the billboards now...
Move the downtown Indianapolis
and
live like the Europeans
and for a vacation...
Visit the
Little Oasis of Sensibility
In terms of creating a charette or research project of some sort, I go back to my original convoluted points:
-one cannot look at the problems and advantages of the suburbs without looking at the city. Why do people prefer the suburbs to they city, or think they do. If so, what is the relationship between the city and suburb? is it symbiotic, can one sustain itself without the other, departing from the present situation? What are the different relationships between these two? So I don't think this can be studied overall, unless we gather information on a case by case basis.
Some of these points have been brought up in the time it's taken me to write this...
Whew, you leave for a day and all the thread's unwound...i feel naked. Let me get home and i can organize my thoughts...
vado, why do you live where you live? What's good about it, what isn't?
well i see you every now and then.
yes by all means rita, if you can tear your self away from your mellor meigs and howe mock tudor.
I own the thread! haha
just kidding.
I feel like ponce....Im working and cant follow it close enough, but good posts/comments by all!
Cheers
Wow, I hit some nerves today. Admittedly, I did have more time today to post because I have been rendering all day, but clearly I need to back off. Maybe I was right with my first post then when I said I wasn't qualified or unbiased enough to contribute.
Either way, there really is some really good stuff on this thread that I'm taking away.
vado, you call me rita, I call you asshole.
And you make way too many assumptions. You keep on about other people's perceptions, yet I don't trust yours at all. Forget asshole, culturati wannabe is how I perceive you.
Oh, and I now speak more German on a daily basis than English. I'm living so European. Ain't it grand!
of the suburban people I know this is the reasoning, or at least the reasoning they own to:
1) moved to the city from the sticks, thought she and hubby were ready for big city life and that's what they wanted, but when they actually got here were frankly a bit scared and settled for a suburb.
2) guy with a big family, wasn't having luck finding a housing situation that fit in the city. This one is probably the most subject to the 'inflated expectations' concept discussed above.
3) guy & family living in an ethnic community a 'burb, where their families live as well.
I wonder, does the "inflated expectations" concept apply to higher education aspirations as well?
Ha, well getting to see you is one of the (few) nice things about Indianapolis, vado, so there you go.
In Indy I chose a non-downtown lifestyle because my 10 years in ultra-downtown Philly left me with very high expectations of what a "downtown lifestyle" is, and Indy couldn't meet them. So instead I chose a post-war neighborhood in close walking distance to one of the "cores" outside the main downtown - a former village and canal lock, now a main street with an active college nightlife and lots of boutiques, cafes, and a sense of urbanity. Also, two grocery stores, one organic.
To vado, I live in the suburbs - I'm at 63rd street. To me, the "suburbs" is 86th street and beyond, where the houses and strip malls are less than 15 years old and all look alike - and are all too big for my taste.
Maybe a definition of "Suburbia" is in order*
*beyond the 1984 punk movie of that name - believe me, it's a problem that has been around for a loooong time.
I was thinking about that, too, LB. Technically being in Culver City, I'm in a suburb. A suburb that Los Angeles has swallowed whole, but still a suburb. But it's got it's own downtown, its own little architecture scene, and feels about 100x more urban than Phoenix did, so based on the experience/feel I'd hesitate to call it a suburb. So I guess it's an atypical suburb?
sans, that's a tough one. Higher education is definitely someone one can physically do without, but it's such an important thing. I guess this is where my personal bias starts showing, because I would call locational choices based on school (whether higher ed or primary) valid, and call them equal to choices made based on work.
Also, sans aspirations:
i think vado calling you rita was meant as an endearment. I think of that name when I read your comments, and in my mind it's an endearment, not a slam, which is how I think you interpreted vado's use of it.
rationalist I think perhaps there are more "atypical" suburbs than typical ones - at least for now there are, but the typical ones are the ones that are spreading anew every day.
i live in downtown detroit because i can own a house by a modern master on an intern architect's salary. there's a part of me though that yearns for the suburbs. i love to drive. there's something incredibly evocative about them, something almost unattainable. two of my favorite movies are "the ice storm" and "the virgin suicides"; both perfectly sum up the appeal of the suburbs.
lb, why should be concerned with what a "culturati wannabe" has to say??? my perceptions are not to be trusted.
bruegmann wrote his sprawl book to try to define suburbia and sprawl.
he concludes that sprawl is whatever you want to call it depending on what you are trying to sell. and is therefore meaningless as a term.
jencks comes to same conclusion about sustainability and compact city. there is currently so much research for and against compact living that an argument is easy to make either way, with lots of very credible research to back up both sides (this is really really true), and the only thing that needs to change is the place where the author chooses to stand.
jencks goes on to suggest that what we need now is some more objective research to understand what we really HAVE in suburbia. Not so much has been done on this surprisingly, apart from Gans of "the Levittowners" and a few others. This is intresting because Gans more or less showed/proved that suburbia is not a wasteland and never was one, cultural or otherwise. And that was in the 60's. More recently cultural historians have studied the role of feminism, racism, equality and a range of other topics in relation to suburbia and have found it a rich field of complex activity.
the point of the above is that suburbia dos not really boil down to something as simple as, for example, Strawbeary's (car) ride out of the centre for her holiday and how it takes longer because all the low-brows are taking what should be clearly her space on the edge of the city (because strawbeary has earned it by sacrificing the large life for the small?).
Suburbia holds no charms for me, but also no evils. Or at least not inherent ones. Suburbia was was not inherently bad in herculaneum ( a suburb of some renown 2000 yers ago), and it is not inherently bad in oak park illinois, or in spongy acres (or other choice monniker) just down the road from your current edge abode of choice...
There is also a supreme fallacy about how much energy you are consuming as a centre city person and how much as a suburban person. The embodied energy of a salad at your centre restaurant is probably not that much different than that at your suburban eatery. car traffic as a result of reverse commuting means center life does not even reduce that big bit of concern for a significant number of people...i am sure there are numbers that show centre life is less harmful on environment but i am skeptical. in comparison to what? a suburban house in japan uses 1/7th of the energy of an american house of similar size (suburban homes here are not mcmansions, but not small either). does the centre home in usa achieve same reduction? i doubt it. i would be surprised if it is more efficient at all. which means that energy gains made from living in centre have to come from other activities. do they? really? how big is the difference?
...anyway, whther they do or not i am not so comfortable with the attitude that relatively small lifestyle choices, like living in a city centre, allow a person to assume a position of superiority.
and what exactly is the european lifestyle discussed above? compact city failed in holland cuz everyone chose to drive instead of use rail. programs begin in the 80's have all been shut down cuz the government couldn't override culture. the suburbs there are "better" in many measurable ways than the usa versions, but then again it is still relative. compared to what? what is the standard? clearly even european cities are struggling with energy use and sprawl and all of the rest, so the idea that they have it right is a fallacy.
there are too many humans living a comfortable life. and even a minimal and more efficient comfortable life is still going to be one that involves a lot of consumption. Japanese energy use from petroleum has not gone up since the oil crisis in the 70's. that is a remarkable achievement, partly because there is no central heating, nor central air, and everyine hangs their laundry outside instead of using a clothes-dryer...but they also use a lot of nuclear power...and the cities are still high energy consumers and most people still use lots of energy and harmful chemicals in daily life. how much more can this be reduced and how much of a change come of it on global terms if everyone on planet lived that way? i am skeptical and think it will always be too much.
that is only energy use. the question of how energy use and suburbia are connected is to me slightly fake. two separate problems have been conflated for other purposes. and i am not convinced that those purposes are helping at all. they may in fact be lulling us into thinking that if we live in the centre we have solved a problem. when we have not. we have merely changed the shape of the container.
so what are we to do?
lars lerup suggests retooling suburbia to be sustainable
as a person more interested in architecture than planning i like his approach. and it seems interesting starting point for archinectors maybe...at least better than merely lamenting over traffic and rise of wal-martian in-bred shmuckmeisters from hell (hell translated=suburbs)
it is at least objective, and that objectivity is essential to real solution, i am convinced...
I don't think most people's first choice IS suburbia, I think it is what they settle for when the city doesn't suit them b/c is too expensive. Isn't that why the city IS expensive? Because a lot of people want to live there? There is no demand for suburbs, and they are a dime a dozen, and all alike, therefore cheaper.
I live in a 'suburb' too. The very first turn of the century residential suburb (right beyond the first platted area of the original town, about a mile). So maybe what we are getting at is the newest suburbs look really awkward to those of us who pay attention - no trees, all the buildings and people look alike... the newest ugly face of what is supposed to be important in our lives strikes us oddly (3 turn lanes off a 2 lane road to get to the mall). A suburb, to me, is a place that looks and feels like a developer was playing Sim City and laughed all the way to the bank. I bet LB's suburb doesn't look like that.
Am I the only american who hates to drive? I avoid rush hour at all costs. It is my worst nightmare. My car is 10 years old and I am dreading having to get a new one.
from what strawbeary just said and from lb's and jump's comments before, maybe a starting point would be to begin to make a sort of family tree of suburb-types. you know like scientific naming: family/genus/species, etc. because the turn of the (20th) century streetcar suburb is almost essentially different from the cul-de-sac suburbs of the 70s/80s which are again different from the willy-nilly farmland-sold-off-in-small-chunks-for-survival-of-the-family suburbs of 21st century kentucky.
i know it's just my opinion, and that jump could probably parse why my opinion is evidence of being uninformed (no sarcasm; i love the things i glean from jump's comments), but i'd make the metaphor that the earlier suburbs were planned and thoughtful 'benign' additions to the city but that over the last century that growth has metastasized into something very different and very destructive.
being since i am a culturati wannabe a-hole, i was watching the magnificent ambersons which takes place in turn of 20th century amerika(indianapolis to be precise) and the discussion we are having was addressed in the film. one of the characters had started a horseless carriage company and another character declared the uselessness of the invention. the businessman countered that in fact the invention had already changed the world and there was no going back. but, whether the change was for the better or for the detriment of mankind was yet to be determined. also, the patriarch amberson died broke as he failed to invest in the new suburban developments.
I'm finding most of the assumptions as to why people pick the suburbs quite ignorant and short-sighted. For example, how people "really want to live in the city but..."
I lived in the city for years. I personally have nothing against it. Worked for me at a certain point in my life. Lived the nightlife, had a ton of fun. My bus or car commute to work was approx 8 miles (work in same city).
Today I live in a 1st ring suburb of 50's vintage. Walking distance to a town center with more ammenities I ever had in walking distance while living in the city, minus the bars/nightlife. Live in a very stable community where most people have been there 25+ years = a sense of community I never felt "in the city" where people would move on every couple of years. My commute to the same job is only 5 miles via car or bus. I'm close to highway transportation so my wife can easily get to her job, in the suburbs. Something that was near impossible for her to do when living in the city. I have a backyard organic veggie garden, something much harder to do in the city with limited space. My car or garage has never been broken into. The local school isn't at risk of losing funding thanks to NCLB and awful performance.
The list could go on and on. Our location just made sense for us and I have full confidence saying I live a less energy dependant/more sustainable lifestyle in the suburbs. That doesn't work for everyone in every city. And while I like my location, I abhor the new "exurbs" another 5-10 miles out.
What I hate is the self riteous talk of people saying that the city is this great nirvanna, when it just isn't for most people. So called "hicks" don't move to the city and "escape to the suburbs." They move to the suburbs. That's where most jobs are, that's where most housing is, that's where most retail & commerce is. I straddle that line in-between. The bus ride to the downtown Target store is about the same as the car ride to the suburban Target store. Still, I get berated for living in the "suburbs" even if I take mass transit more often and drive less miles than most city dwellers. Oh well.
Good post, aquapura, and so many relevant aspects in this discussion re: the choices people make. Downtown Philly "worked" for me with a small child, downtown Indianapolis doesn't.
Steven, I LOVE the idea of a subrub type mapping....
(and I also agree re: jump's advanced take on all thus - jump, you've obviously done research into it, and your comments are always so helpful).
Gotta get to work now, but there is so much more to say on all this.
aqua, perhaps I am closeminded, but this is a discussion and yes I am presenting an extreme view, perhaps for the purpose of discussion. I am thinking of friends of mine in the burbs and why they live there, 8 out of 10 of them DID want to live in the city, but found the suburbs the next best thing. Obviously when we talk about suburbs, your scenario is not the one we are dogging on.
aquapura, i might take it one step further and argue that there is a greater sense of human detachment in the city than there is in the suburbs or small towns. i've definitely felt that since moving to detroit. while detroit, a shrinking city, is a bit extreme, i also see it in my friends in nyc and la. many live thousands of miles away from family. they live in anonymous and transient apartment buildings. the continual horizontal job movement doesn't allow for much investment in their office. meetings with friends are infrequent and limited to bars. relationships are usually short-lived. "sex in the city" was as successful as it was because it accurately portrayed its subject. community organizations are largely inaccessible because of the size of the city and its politics. does anyone go to church anymore?
i'm not advocating for anyone to move to the suburbs, but i do see a generational trend to move away from a strong sense of connection to people and place. i think the attraction to the excitement and opportunity in cities is a major reason for this.
liberty bell i will be driving up to your suburb in a bit on some personal bidness.
And I'll be driving from my neighborhood to what I consider the suburbs - 106th Street, to go to the tile warehouse I mean showroom for bored McMansion-dwelling housewives.
actually i don't consider your hood suburban lb. 106th either. that's otherworldly.
Sorry about getting a little heated earlier today. I do stand by my claim that many people living in the city are self riteous about it. Know several people that sold their exurban places to live right in the city only because it's the cosmopolitian thing to do. However they don't support the local businesses, drive their kids out to the suburban day care, still make weekend trips to Wal-Mart, etc. They are only there for the image of the city life, yet live none of it. Just don't get it.
jafidler - I see what you're saying. Have a relative in Chicago that always complains she cannot make real friends living in the city...yet isn't giving it up for life in the 'burbs. The "city" as LB lives in is where I see a sense of community, however, from my experience the suburbs are much less transient than core cities, at least where I've lived thus far.
i think people should just get virtual suburban houses in second life... ...and all the virtual stuff they want...
i agree with you aqua:
my car has never been broken into
my neighbors are awesome, and i actually know their names
our schools are top ranked in the state and have great funding
i have a nice pool and yard
everything i need is within a 10 minute drive
so just keep downgrading us "suburb" folk for wanting to own a patch of grass, because in reality city life just isn't for everyone. that's the way it will always be.
i should apologise for being all preachy. don't mean to be, and don't take myself too seriously in real life. my phd research is about suburbia and i have read a LOT of shit on the subject, and it sorta bubbles out.
i love comments by LB, vado, and others. very interesting and useful...archinect really gots some smart people participatin.
as a final thought, my faculty was founded to solve problems of sustainability, tackling it from every angle, including recombinant dna (guys downstairs are geneticists making bacteria that eat toxic sludge) and urbanism. i think that broadens perspective. suburbia is part of problem but is maybe not the actual enter of things that architects can make it out to be.
i wonder if all those treatises and manifestoes we have to read at school teach architects to be too reductive?
So, if you are looking to acheive sustainability, have you found the suburbs not sustainable? Knowing people that live "downtown" in highrise condos, I find their lifestyle quite un-sustainable. Just curious as to what your findings are.
first a question and it is a serious one. can someone give a definitive definition of "sustainability".
also, and i am sure it has been done and is being done at a thesis level, it seems that a degree focusing on the psychology of the built environment would not be a waste of time. is there such a program in existence?
definitive? is maybe impossible as circumstances change and definition moves with them...
jencks gives us this version for sustainable urban form (urban here includes suburbia), based on compilations of others:
"...a form is taken to be sustainable if it:
enables the city to function within its natural and man-made carrying capacities;
is 'user-friendly' for its occupants;
and promotes social equity.
The criteria that it should also come about through inclusive decision making processes is also included." (achieving sustainable urban form, p. 4; google preview of book here )
he goes on to point out that "...[this definition] does not immediately suggest one particular form, or even a preference for high or low densities, dispersed or centralised development or small or large settelements". Which is the really important message to take away, at least for me...
above is the definition i use for my own work, mostly because my research is done in the context of this approach to research. there may be better versions out there. And certainly more broad perspectives, such as with WCED version which is the benchmark since 87.
This is my own observation but i think it is fair to say that most definitions of sustainability have both a social component as well as a physical one. The physical aspect usually describes some form of goal regarding efficency (resources), the social aspect is more mutable but can be boiled down to a matter of access. Access to place, to social and or financial opportunity, etc.
In the usa this is directed to goal of racial + economic diversity (new urbanism has this mantra). In Japan access is about making it easy for the elderly to maintain a comfortable standard of living (the american precoccupations don't exist here)...
actually I agree about city dwellers not seeing past their own little bubble too.
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