You do everything at home. Cook your meals, workout at home, TV/movies and games. For social events nothing beats hosting a potluck and playing board games and video games and just talking. Trying to do that at a venue like a bar/game pub is awful, commuting there, getting the table reserved, the noise, the lighting, and honestly the food is awful at most places compared to friends that are experienced cooks. Not to mention expensive - line cook prepared sliders and chicken tenders or microwaved pita bread and hummus with a table reserved at say Vigilante in Austin with a proper tip is like $75 per person. Potluck you can make a feast of chef quality stuff for $25/person.
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North-American Suburbia and the need for cars.
- Thread starter Kyougar
- Start date
You do everything at home. Cook your meals, workout at home, TV/movies and games. For social events nothing beats hosting a potluck and playing board games and video games and just talking. Trying to do that at a venue like a bar/game pub is awful, commuting there, getting the table reserved, the noise, the lighting, and honestly the food is awful at most places compared to friends that are experienced cooks. Not to mention expensive - line cook prepared sliders and chicken tenders or microwaved pita bread and hummus with a table reserved at say Vigilante in Austin with a proper tip is like $75 per person. Potluck you can make a feast of chef quality stuff for $25/person.
Yeah, growing pains. Better than wood, which is what they used to burn and is way worse.
I'm a huge nuclear fan but the tree hunger types destroyed it in the US.
That we agree on no doubt. I wish nuclear could get some support here.
If you're young and single and want a social life, you probably don't live in the burbs unless you live with your parents.
I'm single but I'm not that social, and only do stuff on the weekend with friends. So its not hard for everyone to meet up at someones house and hang out there, or we all get in one or two cars and drive somewhere. Or if its a bar we call an uber.
For me the pros of the suburbs outweigh the cons.
I feel like fission is hit on all sides, idealist leftists that are fixated on storing the waste and the few major events that resulted in safer modern reactors, and Nimbyism from suburbanites. When in reality it is super safe and until batteries are cheap and have no environmental impact like using carbon based graphene instead of toxic rare earth metals, we need fission to eliminate green house emissions.
It's abysmal, especially in a city that is not only spread out, but as spread out as the Houston metro area.
You do when you realize living in the city is more expensive and commuting to work costs time and money. I hate the suburbs, but I love living 7 minutes from the school I teach at (because, again... I fucking hate driving).
My social life is non-existent though and with me starting grad school next year that ain't changing any time soon.
This is us. We live in Eastown TWP and the main roads have sidewalks but none of the secondary roads do. It really sucks
Small world....That's where I grew up, and I know the struggle if you are on some of the bigger back roads. At least you have the R5. I'm outside of West Chester, stuck halfway between the R5 through the Main Line, and the R3 through Media/Route 1.
Haha nice!
It's a good area and we really like it for the most part (great schools, good restaurants finally popping up, close to Wayne). And yes, the R5 is convenient even though neither of us work in the city we usually take it when we go in. We do walk to the Devon Horse show every year though
West Chester is fantastic. About 20 years ago we strongly considered moving there, found an amazing older home on a quiet side street in the Borough, 5 minute walk into downtown. It was just out of our price range and needed some work. My wife and I still drive by it whenever we're in town and think about what could have been.
I grew up in the typical US suburb where the only commercial area in walking distance was the supermarket strip mall with a Blockbuster video (now an asian massage parlor by the looks of it), nail salon, Subway and a pizza joint. Other than that just nothing but houses and schools. After just about 13 years living in Japan you couldn't get me to move back to that.
Enjoy what while it lasts? I what world is suburban or rural living ever going to not be there in US?
Well yeah, you can dismiss a lot of criticism of privileges by saying we're just doing what's best for ourselves and we didn't build those structures we benefit from. I don't expect you to dedicate your entire life to zoning reform, especially since the negatives don't impact you directly
But you could check if there are zoning reform candidates up for Selectman or your zoning board next election
110% I love my garden, my fire pit and grill. 10 minutes away I have large grocery stores, shopping and restaurants. 30 minutes away I have access to downtown metro.
Except Bridgeport, you'll NEED a car to drive around that shit.
In a world of climate catastrophes and societal turmoil that comes with that? Like I said, suburban lifestyle is fundamentally incompatible with what we need to do to solve the climate crisis, as it is wholely dependent on fossil fuel for the raw materials, transportation, and construction. If we are determined to keep living like this, we may as well just give up pretending that we care about the future and enjoy it while it lasts.
I move between S Kor and US every few years for work and the concerns have more or less been covered by everyone in the topic, but yea... it's really a doozy every time I come back to US. Need a car to do x y z, convenience is 5m drive away, stores are 5-10m, everything is driving distance. In a way it dissuades me from going out much except for occasions.
Whereas much of E. Asia is like the Western downtown experience, walk out your door and a good chunk of commercial necessities and comforts will be in walking distance. People obviously have cars but it's not like this thing you absolutely have to have to survive and get to work and do shit.
Whereas much of E. Asia is like the Western downtown experience, walk out your door and a good chunk of commercial necessities and comforts will be in walking distance. People obviously have cars but it's not like this thing you absolutely have to have to survive and get to work and do shit.
Yeah I don't get this take like at all. There would be substantially more harm done to the environment rebuilding up and throwing out the 100+ million homes already built, especially with the technology we have now. It's similar to the disdain of large vehicles even after they're 100% renewable.
Pure idealism, should focus on 100% renewable now, replacing coal and natural gas with fission, voting for subsidies to get us there faster. We should also gradually build up a much better funded NASA like entity to research, engineer, and deploy climate reversal techs over the next millenia because it's no longer about our generation and the next few it's about humanity's survival. We should create waste water and fresh sustainable, systems for the rest of the world. We should engineer massive salt water and freshwater seas in arid basins to shift climate naturally, generate electricity, and provide fresh water.
The Devon Horse Show is awesome. That whole area really is great (except the traffic on 30...it seems to get worse every year). We do love West Chester even if we live a bit outside of the Borough (East Goshen). #49 on the top 100 Best Places to Live this year, and interestingly, the smallest population on the list.
edit...had last year's list
West Chester, PA Ranked #49 Best Place to Live in 2021 | Livability
Home to just 20,000 people, West Chester, PA is a charming, historic borough located about an hour from downtown Philadelphia. This college town is
livability.com
I'm all for it. I haven't and definitely won't ever vote to support politicians that are actively against it.
Of course it's not realistic to destroy all existing suburbs, but it's not like all these cheaply built wood frame houses are going to last forever. It's about changing zoning laws to allow denser development and set policies that incentivize people to move back to urban centers. Keeping things as is means that we still have to maintain the massive suburban infrastructure, which is energy intensive and dependent on fossil fuel. And I think shifting the real estate development priorities is probably a more realistic goal than waiting for NASA to develop some magical future technology.
Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)
Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-suburbs-that-don-t-suck-streetcar-suburbs-riverdale-torontoCar-dependent suburbs ...
youtu.be
This whole YouTube channel is great. Lots of good videos on suburbs, stroads, shitty city design. Would recommend if you hate American suburbs.
Edit: see someone else already posted. My mistake. Still an excellent YouTube channel..
There are a lot people who don't want to move close to people. And even if you change zoning, millions are still going to keep their land and their houses as they are. Like I said, in what world does that go away? It doesn't.
I have no opposition to changing the zoning (lol autocorrect said coming) laws. But that isn't a solution to climate changes if all of the technologies are net 0 emissions, it doesn't matter if they're in suburbs or urban areas for wealthy areas. They will continue to exist.
And even if we did do all urban cities with 0 emissions, what I'm talking about is neither magical nor optional. The vast majority of Earth will be uninhabitable in 200 years even if we stop all emissions today. It's locked in. We're pretty sure the North Atlantic current will stop, making northeast NA and northern Europe uninhabitable. The west coast of the US is probably going to be uninhabitable. The deserts of Africa, Australia, southwest US, middle east and Asia will expand significantly. Large coastal urban areas like Miami and New Orleans will be lost. This will happen, we can't stop it. We must reverse by leveraging the natural processes of earth to our advantage. Routing sea water into arid basins generates massive amounts of hydro power from gravity, it cools the land, and evaporates shifting the climate towards a semi temperate grassland and forests. We can irrigate the desalinated water to provide it to the masses and grow bio engineered forests which captures carbon and further retains water in the soil. Whether or not we put together a government program to do this or if we wait until there's real money as people are dieing in a cyberpunk distopia, it must happen or people will die.
The real struggle of the next millenia isn't efficient cities it's mass death from lack of water, food and survivable land.
The Eastern US will continue to be wealthy and have plenty of water.
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I live in the suburbs of the Bay Area and it's fine for me. Yeah I need a car, but that's pretty much the reality of the entire state unless you live in SF.
Going to Japan definitely blew me away in terms of how well the urban planning is. Train stations, malls, corporate buildings, everything is planned so we'll. You can walk and take public transit literally anywhere on the country. It's incredible. I remember being quite sad coming back to the bay area after 2 weeks in Japan and riding BART lol. Just complete trash.
Going to Japan definitely blew me away in terms of how well the urban planning is. Train stations, malls, corporate buildings, everything is planned so we'll. You can walk and take public transit literally anywhere on the country. It's incredible. I remember being quite sad coming back to the bay area after 2 weeks in Japan and riding BART lol. Just complete trash.
This is a good video but it misses the point, which is that the 'shitty design' is intentional. Building places for cars is the biggest car industry subsidization program in the history of the US and the model was exported to the anglosphere. The video wants to believe that we can choose to build less car-reliant suburbs, and this is true, we 'can', but no one wants to because car suburbs = money = votes.Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)
Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-suburbs-that-don-t-suck-streetcar-suburbs-riverdale-torontoCar-dependent suburbs ...
This whole YouTube channel is great. Lots of good videos on suburbs, stroads, shitty city design. Would recommend if you hate American suburbs.
The flat and spacious design is intentional. It's not a matter of engineering ability, but political will.
Meh,I grew up in a city and couldn't wait to move to the burbs. There was little benefit to living in the city. Public transportation, a closer farmer's market, and cheaper gas was about it.
I lived just as far away from the supermarket as I do now. Public transportation sucks now, but it still exist if I had to use it. Having a car was better for city life too, but the traffic was far worse in the city. Parking is much easier outside of the city. The city didn't have any decent jobs for someone that went to school for IT like me, so again I needed the car. I had to drive 40 minutes to work then and now. Without the car I would have to wake up 2 and half hours before work to use public transportation to get to my job on time, maybe.
In the burgs it's not nearly as noisy and I have ton more space. I can still walk to the shopping center in my area and it's actually a shorter walk than any spot I stayed at in the city. There are actually sidewalks on I can use as well as a path through the wilderness to get to the shopping center.
I hate the layout of the burgs but I love that it's not as run down as the city got .
I lived just as far away from the supermarket as I do now. Public transportation sucks now, but it still exist if I had to use it. Having a car was better for city life too, but the traffic was far worse in the city. Parking is much easier outside of the city. The city didn't have any decent jobs for someone that went to school for IT like me, so again I needed the car. I had to drive 40 minutes to work then and now. Without the car I would have to wake up 2 and half hours before work to use public transportation to get to my job on time, maybe.
In the burgs it's not nearly as noisy and I have ton more space. I can still walk to the shopping center in my area and it's actually a shorter walk than any spot I stayed at in the city. There are actually sidewalks on I can use as well as a path through the wilderness to get to the shopping center.
I hate the layout of the burgs but I love that it's not as run down as the city got .
Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)
Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-suburbs-that-don-t-suck-streetcar-suburbs-riverdale-torontoCar-dependent suburbs ...
This whole YouTube channel is great. Lots of good videos on suburbs, stroads, shitty city design. Would recommend if you hate American suburbs.
Edit: see someone else already posted. My mistake. Still an excellent YouTube channel..
Toronto is an example of how to do it mostly right. Nothing is perfect, but it's pretty darn close. "Inner suburbs" as they call it, though significant bike infrastructure still lacking. Very walkable though with lots of (crowded) buses.
Eh, its mostly in very particular types of developments. I've spent years living in both Minneapolis and Chicago, both of which in their core have very well built out walking and transit infrastructure, and both of which have a lot of a particular type of big-box mall and single-business parcel lot structure out in the suburbs where its not uncommon to not have sidewalks
I live in the suburbs and don't drive a car, but it leads to stupid ass situations like me being on a bus for three hours (both ways total, to get there was an hour and a half) to get breakfast at an IHop with my partner (who lives 30 minutes away from me by car, but the place we met at was more like 15-20 minutes away) yesterday lol.
Sure...most developments have sidewalks, but you have to get from the development to the nearest town. That's miles and miles of road that was probably a country road a few decades ago. Who's going to build 10 miles of sidewalk just to connect a development to a town?
I lived in an old Suburb of a major city. I could walk 5 mins to a train station and be downtown in the city in like 35 minutes. The train was above streets or below ground, never in traffic. I think the longest walk to the train from any point in the suburb was 15 mins at most. There was a little downtown with a ton of stores, restaurants, etc. I lived in a multi unit building and there were also lots of reasonably sized single family homes with yards, access to parks, and tons to do. It had pretty much everything.
Then I moved in to help relatives for 2 months in their subdivision in a newer city and suburb where you can't even safely walk to the walmart and starbucks that are literally 1/4 mile away. One of my relatives was so proud of the giant subdivisions going up. I hated having to drive everywhere for everything. Forgot to pick up a grocery item? Someone goes off in the car and comes back 30 mins later. Want to go for a walk? Load up in the car and drive 15 minutes to a park. Want to go downtown to a museum? 1+ hr in 6 lane traffic. It was awful.
Why must we do this? We used to do it well.
Then I moved in to help relatives for 2 months in their subdivision in a newer city and suburb where you can't even safely walk to the walmart and starbucks that are literally 1/4 mile away. One of my relatives was so proud of the giant subdivisions going up. I hated having to drive everywhere for everything. Forgot to pick up a grocery item? Someone goes off in the car and comes back 30 mins later. Want to go for a walk? Load up in the car and drive 15 minutes to a park. Want to go downtown to a museum? 1+ hr in 6 lane traffic. It was awful.
Why must we do this? We used to do it well.
Wtf is this a joke. Why has it taken. You so long to consider moving away. That's a hell situation
We can't even fix our roads, there's no way we're going to be redesigning cities or fixing the car reliability in suburbs.
I can't imagine an America that builds/updates things at all.
Our bridges will literally crumble before our eyes and we'll just go "That sucks."
I can't imagine an America that builds/updates things at all.
Our bridges will literally crumble before our eyes and we'll just go "That sucks."
As a german always when i see american cities and suburbs i can't help but think who wants to live there? Who votes for such shitty planing? It's totally car dependent, it's economically unsustainable, it's dangerous and it's ugly. I live in a 30k suburb in an apartment, it's quiet because there is next to zero car dependency, cars are loud not cities. In 5 min walking distance in different directions i have two grocerie stores, several pubs and restaurants, fields and small forests. It takes me 20 min by bus or 10 min by train which is also in walking distance to get to the heart of the city. The inner city is pretty much car free. I don't need a car since i can get pretty much get everywhere within 30 minutes by bike or public transit. The city where i live wasn't always like that, in fact it was very much car dependant but in the last 30 years they overhauled the city/suburbs and infrastructure in between because they realized how bad the design was and changed it.
Oh you guys are talking about highways? Yea I never thought about it like that, it would be cool if more highways had sidewalks.
I work at a major resort tucked in a sizeable suburban area along a major road in between two malls, a three minute drive from the largest airport in the state, and just 5-10 minutes from casinos in either direction.
The entirety of one side of this road for two and a half miles has no sidewalk. If someone wanted to walk from the first mall to the western suburban community over two miles away withou, they'd have to sit through three traffic lights and cross the street just as many times if they didn't want to cut through dirt paths.
A lot of people like cars. Also distance between each other is enjoyable for those I know who like the suburbs. Also you get a lot of space to raise a family.
Not even highways. Literally 2 lane, tree and house lined country roads. Check out the pictures on the listing here:
1607 E Strasburg Rd #2, West Chester, PA 19380 | Trulia
1607 E Strasburg Rd #2, West Chester, PA 19380 is a 1,200 sqft, 2 bed, 1 bath home. See the estimate, review home details, and search for homes nearby.
www.trulia.com
A road like this may have a development every half mile or so creating a ton of vehicle use, with no room for a sidewalk without cutting down tons of trees and pissing off old people who don't want a sidewalk in their front yard.
I mean...I'm just telling you how this nation works. No one is gonna give up their cars.
Sure, but also people didn't love their cars in the same way before all these highways and suburbs got built in the first place. Planning can drive preference, much like the induced demand problem in highway construction, people adapt to the living and transportation options that are provided. A conscious choice, at a high level, to prioritize dense construction and transit options, can shift patterns in how some swathe of people live
And you can like cars and still plan an economically healthy suburb, which the american suburbs are not as several studies point out, that is not car dependant and spacious. The planning in the US is just not smart and only accomodates to very few life styles. My apartment building is next to several single family homes with big yards and a playstreet in between them.
Damn, that's wild lol. That looks so bizarre to me, but I guess my grandparents house in NorCal had no sidewalks, just a big ass shoulder. They had no real town tho, just a grocery store and post office.Not even highways. Literally 2 lane, tree and house lined country roads. Check out the pictures on the listing here:
1607 E Strasburg Rd #2, West Chester, PA 19380 | Trulia
1607 E Strasburg Rd #2, West Chester, PA 19380 is a 1,200 sqft, 2 bed, 1 bath home. See the estimate, review home details, and search for homes nearby.
A road like this may have a development every half mile or so creating a ton of vehicle use, with no room for a sidewalk without cutting down tons of trees and pissing off old people who don't want a sidewalk in their front yard.