Why Suburbia Sucks

https://likewise.am/2016/05/08/why-suburbia-sucks/

by wonder_er • 10 years ago

226 295 10 years ago

ozborn• 10 years ago

I suspect many (perhaps most) of the people reading that article agree that suburbia sucks - the tricky part is fixing it.

ars2• 10 years ago

Or maybe don't fix it because there is nothing wrong with it and people actually like it?

Have you (or the author) considered that not everyone is like you? People like different things.

ape4• 10 years ago

Making other choices available and not expensive would be a start.

jcoffland2• 10 years ago

Through regulation?

jacobolus3• 10 years ago

The fix is hard, requiring decades to reach the necessary policy changes, and decades more for those to play out in built infrastructure.

Changes are needed to zoning, road design, price of parking, state and municipal tax allocations, etc.

The primary problem is that suburban sprawl is cheap for residents, because it is very heavily subsidized, defers many of its costs to the future, and completely ignores the costs of nasty externalities like pollution and environmental destruction.

Based on the required infrastructure per capita, if prices matched costs, living in the city should be dramatically cheaper than living in sprawl. In practice, because well designed cities are old, with limited capacity, and it is illegal to build new ones in many places, living in a nice city ends up being much more expensive than living in sprawl.

mooreds3• 10 years ago

The fix is hard, requiring decades to reach the necessary policy changes, and decades more for those to play out in built infrastructure.

I agree that finding the issued in place would be time consuming, expensive and difficult. However, it is possible we are seeing a different way of fixing the issue: migration back to the urban core with the downtown revitalization of many cities.

Or building new areas that have different characteristics: Stapleton here in Colorado is a mixed use neighborhood built in the last decade or so. Not perfect, but a different set of mistakes.

nathanasmith• 10 years ago

>I suspect many (perhaps most) of the people reading that article agree that suburbia sucks - the tricky part is fixing it.

"Fixing" it by doing what? Making it more like the urban core? That place already exists. If you like it then go live there. Obviously many people like the lifestyle of living in the suburbs. There is room in this country for more than one kind of neighborhood.

dietrichepp• 10 years ago

I live in suburbia right now. I love to walk places—I walk to work, to the store, etc. But my town seems to be built for cars, cars, cars. The exchange with the interstate is huge, and takes forever to cross, by foot, because the signal timing is designed for cars. Then I cross parking lots to get where I want.

I like the idea of having stores with parking in back, having more equal streets rather than privileged highway interchanges, etc. But in the meantime, having the forest closer to me is not worth the cost of spending more time in the concrete sprawl.

jayess3• 10 years ago

Typical of the nanny staters who think that they know what's best for everyone and their non-preferred lifestyle needs to be "fixed."

ars2• 10 years ago

All (most of) those negatives you list I find to be positives.

I can't stand those "charming" dense, oppressive cities.

zyxley3• 10 years ago

Consider the New England states, where there are a lot of organically-developed small towns that are low-density and low-population but still reliably avoid most of the problems in the article.

rpedela• 10 years ago

For just one small example of many: life in a subdivision cul-de-sac stops children exploring and becoming conversant with the wider world around them because it tethers their social lives and activities to their busy parents’ willingness to drive them somewhere. There’s literally nowhere for them to go.

What is this post talking about? I grew up on a cul-de-sac, and I was always outside playing with my friends. When I was a little older, my parents would let me roam the neighborhood with my friends. We played all sorts of games and got into mischief. There are many downsides to suburbs, but that isn't one of them.

jedmeyers• 10 years ago

And nowadays, even if you live in an apartment building in the city, there is no way your child is going to roam around and explore alone.

mooreds3• 10 years ago

Kids where I live do roam around the neighborhood, at least to some extent. I see them out and about.

germanier• 10 years ago

At least in many parts of the US. Here in Germany I see plenty of children roaming around in the city every day.

sotojuan• 10 years ago

That seems to only be true in some parts of the US.

santaclaus• 10 years ago

I certainly prefer to live in an urban environment as an adult, but growing up my anecdotal experience was very different than that described in the article. As a kid in the burbs in the 90s, we'd roam all over the place. Hop on the bikes and ride downtown, tool around greenway close to the hood, take the bus to the mall, etc.

antisthenes2• 10 years ago

It's almost as if though there's a pattern in your activities that naturally gravitates towards more urban areas like 'downtown', 'hood', and 'the mall' ...

So the article is exactly correct.

wcummings• 10 years ago

In the burbs near where I grew up, there was nothing to do but drive drunk, if the accidents were anything to go by

Semiapies6• 10 years ago

Yes, children being restricted in where they can go is a completely unrelated phenomenon, due to trumped-up fears of crime. When I was a kid, my family let me bike for miles. You can go a long way in a suburb on a bike without encountering faster motor traffic than you might trust a kid to deal with.

lafay• 10 years ago

I had the same reaction. I grew up in suburban Chicago and it seemed nothing like this. We walked to elementary school, to friends' houses, to the center of town for ice cream. When I was a little older we rode bikes all over creation -- to the hobby store, the mall, and plenty of adventures like sneaking into the abandoned Borg-Warner research facility in Des Plaines, or dumpster diving for discarded electronics at Motorola in Schaumburg.

tptacek12• 10 years ago

This graf occurs very early in the post and I winced at it too and had to mentally grit myself into reading the rest of the post. I agree, it's a silly argument and the post would be better without it. But apart from the imprecision of the term "suburb" (the list of suburbs that defy his characterizations is huge), the actual enumerated arguments of the post are much better supported.

jcoffland2• 10 years ago

Suburbia, none of the benefits of the country with all the disadvantages of living in the city.

mooreds3• 10 years ago

Actually, American suburbia is responsible for the widest diffusion of land ownership in history (even if it is only a 1/4 acre or so). So it has got that going for it.

KB1JWQ• 10 years ago

I can see this. It tends to be the "safe" middle group between urban and rural while having none of the benefits of either.

gozur884• 10 years ago

I guess it all depends on what you want. From my perspective suburbia has all the advantages of both without the disadvantages.

mattdeboard4• 10 years ago

Having lived & worked quite a long time in wildly different metro areas -- Santa Clara/Mountain View, Indianapolis, Austin -- this article raises more questions for me more than anything.

What is a suburb, by the author's definition? It seems like it's an area outside the urban core of a city, I guess. But here in Austin, I'm buying a house away from the urban core of downtown, in a subdivision, but it's in a largely undeveloped area 2-3 minutes by car (and 10-15 by bike, at most, thanks to the bike lanes that connect the subdivision) of a mixed-use development area with a lake, park, museum, shops etc. Is this suburban? I consider it suburban but I have trouble connecting what the author is talking about to this spot.

Now in Indianapolis, there were some suburbs. I lived in one growing up. It was indeed far from anything with absolutely no public transpo. Nowadays (I left in 2014) it's slightly better, in terms of availability, as there is a metro bus service. But the accommodation for the bus routes is awful. It's perpetually underfunded, the bus stops are often -- I am not joking -- in ditches, no shelters at the stops, etc., etc. It's almost like the city has gone out of its way to make it clear the bus is for "the poors." But what's the fix? Decades upon decades of urban planning have reinforced this notion. So... what is to be done about it?

In South Bay, I rented a tiny apartment (~650sqft) for, at the time, the outrageous price of $1200/mo. This was ca. 2008. I'm told such units are much higher now. In areas of such inflated housing prices, isn't suburbia supposed to be a pressure valve? People move farther away from where they work and play in exchange for lower housing costs? I am out of touch with the housing scene in the Bay Area nowadays aside from the same articles everyone else gets on HN, so my question is an honest one. But the author's disdain for suburbia -- supported by concrete reasons though it may be -- seems like it might not be so strident if he were living elsewhere.

TulliusCicero10• 10 years ago

He's attacking American-style, super-sprawly suburbs, not suburbs in general.

mattdeboard4• 10 years ago

Well fine but that's what I'm saying in my first paragraph. There's a particular kind of suburb he's talking about but it definitely is not inclusive of all suburbs.

cowsandmilk3• 10 years ago

In areas of such inflated housing prices, isn't suburbia supposed to be a pressure valve?

All of his definitions of suburbia apply to Portola Valley, which I would never describe as being a pressure valve on inflated housing prices[1] in South Bay.

[1] https://www.redfin.com/CA/Portola-Valley/16-Santa-Maria-Ave-...

mattdeboard4• 10 years ago

Did you mean to link to empty land plot? It's beautiful though, but doesn't look like what is being discussed in article.

WillAbides• 10 years ago

I don't want to overstep, but I'm curious what part of Austin you are describing. I can't think of any place that is largely undeveloped but is a 2-3 minute drive from a museum.

mattdeboard4• 10 years ago

Yeah museum was inadvertently misleading. Just talking about the Thinkery at Mueller. A children's museum. Was already thinking past that sentence as I was typing it out.

edit: Also, it's more than 3 min by car. It's less than 3 miles but definitely not doing 60mph all the way there.

alkonaut3• 10 years ago

Seems a lot of the arguments is based around the fact that suburban developments are poorly designed, not that the idea of suburban life is flawed.

The "kids have nowhere to go unless their parents drive them" argument I don't understand - is there something preventing a forest from being next to a block of flats? The point of not living in the city for me is being closer to nature. I live in suburbia because I (or my kids) can bike to the lake or walk in the forest. I agree an endless sprawl of square blocks is a bad idea - but developers and city planners surely realize that people aren't willing to pay for non-city life unless it actually delivers the benefits of not living in a city (space, possibility to walk, good air, low noise, safety, proximity to nature).

zyxley3• 10 years ago

Seems a lot of the arguments is based around the fact that suburban developments are poorly designed, not that the idea of suburban life is flawed.

Well, yeah. A well-designed area isn't "suburbia", it's "a small town that happens to be adjacent to a larger city".

alkonaut3• 10 years ago

So the term is a sort of derogatory used only for badly designed sprawling suburbs without proper access to e.g nature?

increment_i• 10 years ago

Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up. I didn't realize this until I had children myself. I remember reaching my teenage years and cursing the dull, boring, culturally bankrupt suburbian neighborhood I grew up in. I left the minute it became feasible.

Fast forward to now, and I'm right back in the 'burbs, in a house where my kids have access to safe streets, parks, and decent schools. I realize now that it was never my parents' responsibility to raise me in a place I would find interesting, but to give me the best possible start in life they could. If I can give my kids a similar start, I hope they can safely reach the age where they can go off and experience the adventure of the big cities and abroad when they're ready, just like I did.

55acdda48ab5• 10 years ago

where my kids have access to safe streets, parks, and decent schools

This all used to be easily achievable in urban neighborhoods. The elephant in the room people don't want to acknowledge is that suburbia has mostly been a way to flee from and exclude social decay. This is why people freak out about public transit to a lot of neighborhoods. The requirement of multiple car ownership in an area is a deliberately constructed mechanism for excluding lower socio-economic people.

If you shut down the public school systems and made all schools private with total freedom to deny any student entry, and you empowered a very aggressive police force (lots of stop and frisk, aggressively enforced vagrancy laws), then you'd see far more urban gentrification.

fiatmoney4• 10 years ago

Bingo. Look at the re-conquest of New York City, which follows pretty exactly the pattern you mentioned. "All private schools" isn't even necessary de jure if you can do it de facto via magnet or charter schools and theoretically open neighborhood schools targeted at particular areas.

lr4444lr3• 10 years ago

The elephant in the room people don't want to acknowledge is that suburbia has mostly been a way to flee from and exclude social decay.

This is why I bought in a socially conservative neighborhood: people implicitly police one another into basic civic decency, and I'd much rather suffer an occasional scolding from a few overzealous busybodies than bear the burden of intergenerational poverty and crime. Sure, I may need to drive a bit to find interesting shopping and entertainment options, but at the end of the day if I'm going to make a commitment into an asset as big and un-diversified as a 30 year mortgage, I'd want just about every "negative" the author brings up. And if I'm going to get the fury from HN for saying it, so be it. I'm happy to give up grime, drug trafficking, and violence for an internet tongue lashing.

tptacek12• 10 years ago

I think you're going to get in trouble with generalizations like this. Can you be more specific about the exact metro areas whose urban cores are unsuitable for children? My nerdoreceptors are lighting up with counterexamples, but rather than list them, I'd rather understand better what you're trying to say.

rayiner2• 10 years ago

I doubt the suburbs are actually safer. I once did the math. If you add up shooting deaths and driving deaths, the rich suburb where I grew up is about as risky as one of the north side Chicago neighborhoods. And of course upper middle class white teens are going to be at lower than average risk of getting shot in the city, but at higher than average risk of wrapping themselves around a tree in the suburbs.

As for safe streets and good schools, it's a product of segregationist urban planning, not any intrinsic qualities of cities versus suburbs. We don't build public housing out in the suburbs, we do it in the cities. Our lack of transit makes it impossible for poor people to drive around in the suburbs. So our city schools are 90% low-income and have the problems that come with concentrated poverty.

Note that in places like Paris, the situation is reversed. Rich people live in the city (or out in the country). The suburbs are where the poor are herded into ghettos.

kingkawn2• 10 years ago

Lol at calling the north side risky

ef44• 10 years ago

I doubt the suburbs are actually safer.

You are correct. The average American city dweller now experiences a lower crime rate than in suburbia. (That is an average, obviously some cities are dangerous and some suburbs are very safe.)

Rich people live in the city

Yes, this is the long-run, natural state of cities. It's why they exist in the first place. They are where economic activity is most concentrated.

American has had a weird 60 years where we inverted that situation, but it is already beginning to revert back to historically normal.

TheOtherHobbes• 10 years ago

It could be SUV syndrome.

SUVs feel safer, and they're sold as a safe choice - even though in practice they're dangerous cars.

In the same way, suburbia has always been sold as a safe option, even though politically, culturally, socially, and ecologically, the effects are devastating.

jayess3• 10 years ago

There are many people, usually in so-called "urban planing" positions in cities, that believe that suburbs are something that shouldn't exist. They detest the option of suburbs.

TulliusCicero10• 10 years ago

No, they detest what suburbs are in the US. Which, besides all the problems mentioned in the article, are often funded via a Ponzi scheme of development: http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

abalashov32• 10 years ago

If there were so many people in such positions who held that view, the inhabited areas of the US wouldn't be 90% sprawl.

throwawaybookst• 10 years ago

The choice between "dense urban core" and "suburb" is distinctly American. Especially in Europe, city (in the sense of "not suburb or rural" != center of a large (1M+) population.

In America, any region with a population the order of 100k or less is basically a shopping area surrounded by suburbs. The same is not true in Europe.

In Europe, you can definitely find walkable, breathable, friendly cities while still living in an area that is safer than (and has a smaller population than) the typical Chicago suburban area.

vasilipupkin4• 10 years ago

I disagree. Typical Chicago suburban area is safer than Europe. If you exclude homicides, most of which happen on the south side of Chicago, Europe has a lot more crime

abalashov32• 10 years ago

Indeed; in Europe, you can find the same reproduced at the village and hamlet level, too.

It's a density issue, at heart. Any US "city" (if it should be called that) of 100K-500K occupies 10x-20x the surface area that it would in most parts of the world, removing much of the cohesion that leads us to call places cities or towns in the first place.

_delirium3• 10 years ago

I don't think it's a distinctly American term. The distinction between the "city" and "suburbs" or "commuter belt" is pretty common in Europe too, at least in cities that actually have such a pattern, especially with a radial commuter-rail network and clearly defined commercial center. For example I don't think anybody that lives in Ishøj or Brøndby is under the impression that they live in an independent "city"; they live in a suburb of Copenhagen, whose main virtue is that it's cheaper than Copenhagen but has good access via the S-train.

A large proportion of the commuter belt of London, Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Brussels, Rome, etc. are places like that, some nicer and some more depressing, but definitely suburbs that exist mainly to house people who commute in to the city.

TulliusCicero10• 10 years ago

Fast forward to now, and I'm right back in the 'burbs, in a house where my kids have access to safe streets, parks, and decent schools.

You seem to be confused. The article is saying that American suburbs are particularly poorly designed, not that suburbs as a general rule are terrible.

Here is Gröbenzell, a suburb just west of Munich that's surrounded by farmland: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gr%C3%B6benzell,+Germany/@...

In the states, such a suburb would be super-low-density and car-dominated, with all the negative features the author describes. There in Germany, Gröbenzell actually has a population density 30% higher than Seattle, and the whole town is within easy walking or biking distance of an S-Bahn station that gets you to the center of Munich in 20 minutes.

It's possible to have suburban towns that are still walkable, that still allow kids some measure of independence, that do not kill any sense of place. In the US, we've just chosen not to create them.

unethical_ban• 10 years ago

I believe it is the fault of bureaucrats over-zoning. I would love to have a pub and a market next to every neighborhood. I love the idea of the Post Office providing basic financial services such as checking and money transfers. Let's make it as easy as possible to have peaceful neighborhoods AND retail/business in the same area. Dangerous or loud industrial businesses still need away from residence, but other than that... loosen up!

vasilipupkin4• 10 years ago

Don't forget that US is really big and has lots of different types of suburbs. For example, Chicago has quite a few dense walkable suburbs with easy access to public transport

criddell5• 10 years ago

There in Germany, Gröbenzell actually has a population density 30% higher than Seattle

Population density doesn't always tell the whole story. Portland, OR has a lower population density than Beaverton (one of the surrounding cities that is basically a suburb).

op00to• 10 years ago

Those tight, transit attached suburbs exist. Look to inner ring suburbs around northeastern cities. I live a in a safe, quiet neighborhood with parks, great schools, interesting restaurants, etc. I'm 10 minute walk from a 24 hour metro that takes me to a major urban center in less than 20 minutes.

Maarten882• 10 years ago

I live in a suburb in the Netherlands and recently visited a school friend who now lives in a nice US suburb. We both have families with kids about the same age. We compared our living conditions.

His beautiful wooden house stands on ten times the area as mine, with a very nice garden and ample parking space. It looks very nice. But my concrete/brick house is bigger inside, and much better constructed. Parking space for visitors can be an issue with me.

Our kids go to school by bike. His kids can't. Although the school is not far, biking is too unsafe. They go by bus. The school even closes when there is snow, because that would make even the bus too unsafe!

Our kids play in the street with their friends, they walk up to each others houses spontaneously when they want to play. My friends' kids had fewer friends, had to set playdates, and played more online.

The conversation we had confirmed many more things from the article.

YuriNiyazov• 10 years ago

The safety that someone under 12 requires is very different than the safety that someone over 12 requires. Seems like the teenage you were content with just cursing your dull suburban neighborhood, rather than setting your neighbors' houses and cars on fire for shits and giggles.

Yes, it is part of parental responsibility to provide an environment stimulating enough that vandalism, arson, or drugs aren't an attractive option.

ricardobeat2• 10 years ago

You are mistaken to believe that only a suburb fits the quiet & safe criteria (or even is the best fit). A traditional european city apartment, with a central courtyard, parking in the back, mixed use zone, is likely safer and just as quiet, yet you are within walking distance of shops, schools and public transport and are still in contact with other humans. I can't imagine a better environment for raising a child (except maybe some kind of dense rural community).

patrickburke2• 10 years ago

This might be true but the option for Americans is the American city or the American suburb. A lot of bloggers who rail against the suburbs juxtapose it against some beautiful European city.

I think there's a handful of American cities with good urbanism, where as Europe has presumably thousands.

SN76477• 10 years ago

This exactly... my friends live in the city and make the same amount of money as me. Pay 50% more for a house and pay for private school, an additional 20K a year.

Just to be closer to some nice restaurants? No thanks. my suburban life is quite and close to starbucks, Im satisfied.

cloudjacker• 10 years ago

You miss the idea, no fact, that the people in the city scoff at the idea of considering Olive Garden a fancy meal

gaur• 10 years ago

I hope they can safely reach the age where they can go off and experience the adventure of the big cities

Conversely, I feel grateful that my parents chose to raise me in a dense urban area, instead of moving out to some suburban hellhole in an attempt to give me a bubble-wrapped existence.

I mostly took care of my own transportation to and from public school from the age of 10 onward (walking or public transit), and was never robbed, assaulted, kidnapped, conscripted into a gang, or whatever it is that suburbanites imagine happens to children in urban environments. I'm not a drug addict, I don't have a criminal record, and I'm gainfully employed.

I would never, ever raise a child in a suburb unless I had to for financial reasons.

criddell5• 10 years ago

If you let a ten year old use transit themselves today, there's a decent chance parents will get a visit from the police. I think it's ridiculous, but that's how it seems to be.

JPKab• 10 years ago

I grew up in two different environments:

A small, late 1800's built, pedestrian friendly town in a rural county, and later after moving to another house, in the countryside in the same county. In both places, there was a lot of economic diversity. Kids who lived in trailers socialized and spent the nights out with kids who lived in old houses, and vice versa.

Something I've noticed about people like you whose entire childhood was spent in the typical suburbs of the USA: You associate these awful places and their awful traits with "safety".

"Safe" streets, "safe" parks, "decent" schools: As a person whose raised my kids in an urban environment, the idea that these weren't available (without driving) in our location is a myth that only burbs raised people buy into.

Two years ago I moved to a part of the country (for a job) that has no urban center nearby. I now live in a subdivision. Never again. The neighbors don't interact with, let alone socialize with each other. The streets are vacant, because nobody walks because why would you walk to nowhere. Vacant streets means kids by themselves have no eyeballs on them, so parents don't feel comfortable letting them explore.

The most evil part of it all is the economic segregation. My kids currently go to school with other upper middle class kids. Nobody lives in trailers in their school, or even apartments. No economic diversity translates to minimal racial diversity. It's terrible.

I'm moving away from here in a few months, and I'll never live in one of these shitholes ever again. You can find nice suburbs that aren't laid out in pedestrian hateful designs like the typical ones you see these days.

Zach_the_Lizard4• 10 years ago

The most evil part of it all is the economic segregation. My kids currently go to school with other upper middle class kids. Nobody lives in trailers in their school, or even apartments. No economic diversity translates to minimal racial diversity. It's terrible.

That's by design. The suburbs have many laws built to enforce 1950s racial segregation without mentioning race. E.g. your house must be large by law, meaning the poor are entirely excluded. Streets must be built for cars first, then people, because the poor can't afford cars.

mahyarm2• 10 years ago

Quiet safe urban areas actually exists in large amounts of Germany, while the only real urban areas that exist in the USA are in SF and NYC. SF & NYC have a sizable homeless population, poop on the streets and similar with large amounts of traffic. Suburban city centers attract the homeless and have a large amount of traffic because everyone has to drive in.

German urban areas tend to barely have any road traffic for the density since almost nobody owns a car, a quiet train that passes by once in a while and most things closing at 8pm latest. Need some medicine? The pharmacy is a 5 minute walk away. Board the metro in another 5 minute walk, get to work in 20m. There are barely any homeless or poop on the streets for the most part because they are actually put in social housing and programs (or jail) if the police find them doing that.

You tend to have about 10 square miles of urban area, with 7 story buildings as far as the eye can see and then a sudden drop off into small villages that are everywhere. You can rent or buy large 5 room 2000sqft apartments in these places and actually raise the typical 2.5 kid household in them. In the center of the block there are little common parks with a playground for small kids to play.

If you want your car and SFH lifestyle, the entire city is then surrounded by wooded areas with small villages that are everywhere. You can live in a small village and drive into work into the city about 30m away for fairly cheap. The villages themselves have small urban centers you can then walk into. And some of them have trains, so you can just take the train into the city if you want.

My experience is only with Germany, but I'm guessing there are many other places such as Barcelona, Italy or the UK that is designed like this.

lsc2• 10 years ago

German urban areas tend to barely have any road traffic for the density since almost nobody owns a car, a quiet train that passes by once in a while and most things closing at 8pm latest.

Everything closes at 8pm? Jesus, I thought that silicon valley was bad, just 'cause it is hard to get a decent meal after 10pm.

_delirium3• 10 years ago

the only real urban areas that exist in the USA are in SF and NYC

I wonder where I was living then, since I've lived in several urbanized parts of the U.S., where I walked or took public transportation everywhere, but have never lived in either of those two cities. :-)

Zach_the_Lizard4• 10 years ago

Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up.

No, that's not why modern sprawling suburbia exists. For most of American history, cities have been home to the middle class and wealthy. Not having to travel far for work or entertainment is a luxury, and middle class and wealthy Americans took advantage of it just like their world counterparts. The Bronx, for instance, was full of middle class families.

However, unlike many parts of the world, America had a terrible race problem. What do you do if you're a racist white American who holds that blacks are inferior, criminals, and going to rape your daughters after smoking the devil's weed? You enact legal prohibitions against them, of course. Squeeze them into one part of the city full of concentrated poverty.

But then courts started overturning legal prohibitions against minorities as attitudes against them improved. Schools were integrated. You even might have to work along side them. That's scary to racists who believed they were all criminals.

It's clear that racist covenants were on their way out, so directly mentioning race wasn't a good enough solution. But you still want race-based results. What do we do? Incomes amongst whites are higher today, and that was true back in the day. We can exploit that to keep blacks out, and as a bonus we can keep out the poor in general.

But we can't just slap up a 'no poors allowed' sign; that would be bad PR. What can we do?

Wait, I know! We can make it illegal to build housing that would be affordable for the poor. Since the poor are less likely to drive, we can also legally force all houses and businesses to cater to cars. If we couple that with laws that make it so our yards are big, and that houses, businesses, schools, etc. are all not near each other, then we can make it so that the poor can never afford these areas.

The beauty of this strategy is it allows co-opting non-racists. You're building the city of the future, as utopian 1950s urban planners thought. A world where no one has to walk because magical cars will save us from all social ills. Good schools, magically no traffic on the way to work, more space, who would be against that?

All we have to do is demolish large portions of urban neighborhoods, enact very restrictive zoning laws that exclude the poor and minorities, and then spend trillions (in current dollars) to build the interstates to make it all work.

Yeah, we'll wreck the environment, kill off passenger rail and public transit, cause urban blight, reduce economic growth, and drastically increase the price of housing (although that would take a generation or two to make it so the young couldn't afford housing, by which time we'll own housing anyways so that we can profit from that explosive housing price growth), but we'll finally never have to see a person with more melanin than us. It'll be great!

And that's how sprawling suburbs in America came about. There are harsh laws that enforce it, as otherwise it is not economical. Even just the laws that require free parking to be provided greatly increase the cost of construction and make many areas impossible to build in.

Yes, even Houston, the magical land without zoning (but many laws that are part of other cities' zoning codes, like minimum lot sizes, setbacks, parking requirements, etc.) has this. Even big cities like NYC, SF, Chicago, and DC got in on the utopian 50s vision.

You name your American city or town, and I will find the laws the force sprawling if they are online (not all towns have their zoning codes online). I can discuss at length the various enforcement mechanisms.

mrcsparker• 10 years ago

Houston is a lot closer to what everyone seems to claim that they want: it is pretty easy to live close to work with small local businesses that service the local community. The heat keeps the city from being walkable.

People from other cities tend to complain about the local of zoning. Zoned cities usually seem very organized and lack the funky house-business-house layout that Houston has. I prefer the lack of zoning, but it isn't for everyone.

ef44• 10 years ago

Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up.

Yes, but people are making their decision based on out-of-date facts. Because in the United States in 2016, mortality risk goes down as population density goes up, and city kids are statistically safer.

The #1 killer of children in US is car accidents. Guess who gets in dramatically less car accidents? City kids who don't need to ride in cars so much.

The #2 killer of children in the US is guns, and child gun deaths are higher outside the cities, on average. People often don't believe this, but it should be obvious when you pause and consider where American gun culture is centered. It's not in the big cities.

Suicide and substance abuse rates are also lower in the cities. This may be caused by the many small towns with major meth and opioid epidemics pulling down the statistics.

(All of this depends on comparing apples-to-apples: being poor makes a bigger difference than the urban vs rural split, so you need to consider people at the same socioeconomic level.)

brightball4• 10 years ago

Ummm...guns are nowhere near the #2 killer of children in the US. Where did you even find get a stat like that? I'm looking and can't find anything that even resembles it anywhere.

Here are the top 3 by age group: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001915.htm

maxsilver2• 10 years ago

Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up.

And because it's the only thing affordable. Which does not get mentioned enough.

I would love to put my family in a walkable urban environment. But I don't have a $500k+ housing budget, so anything even remotely urban is completely out of the question, unless it's in the heart of some gangland territory somewhere.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

It does get a lot of mention. If the overwhelming majority of housing development in the US is of the suburban sprawl type, it stands to reason that the few pockets of non-dilapidated dense urbanism will be expensive.

Amusingly, this is often cited as evidence of suburbia's unique capacity to provide "affordable housing". Scarce things are unaffordable. Who knew!

antisthenes2• 10 years ago

The entirety of Europe and many countries with colder climates, where suburbia would be unsustainable due to heating costs manage to raise children in safe environments just fine.

Unless you're citing studies that explicitly show suburbia results in better outcomes for children than being raised in urban environments ceteris paribus, it seems like the only argument you're producing here is your own lack of perspective and being unable to venture outside of personal anecdotal experience.

Suburbs are extremely exclusionary (to the point of being outright xenophobic), inefficient, and in most cases outright ugly, populated by cheap, run of the mill outdated construction from the pre 1977 era, when people burned tons of oil to heat the cardboard boxes that are most of the American 'burbs.

wmoxam• 10 years ago

many countries with colder climates, where suburbia would be unsustainable due to heating costs

Which countries are these?

CameronBanga• 10 years ago

I'm trying to find words to describe my distain for this article, but I can't think of anything that isn't seen as a direct attack on the author, which isn't my goal.

Basically America is bad because we had space for cars when they were invented?

There are plenty of places in America where you can get by without a car. I live in "suburbia". A small city of 30,000 in Indiana called Valparaiso. We have a vibrant downtown and where you can live, shop, eat, go to shows, etc. We have public transportation with a local bus line and also bus service into Chicago.

I think the author is just finding excuses for being unhappy.

jacobolus3• 10 years ago

According to Wikipedia, Valparaiso Indiana was a regional transportation hub in the mid 19th century. I suspect it has considerably different city plan than more recent “suburbs”.

Try comparing an online map satellite view of Valparaiso to some new housing development from >1990, and you’ll observe dramatic differences.

TheRealDunkirk• 10 years ago

Eh, I doubt it. Around the core -- maybe -- but Valpo (and Merrillville) are bedroom communities for Gary and Chicago. That's WHY there's a commuter train into Chicago. I expect it's brimming with white-dominated, cookie-cutter neighborhoods, exactly as described by the article.

arkades3• 10 years ago

Basically America is bad because we had space for cars when they were invented?

I think you did an admirable job of expressing my source of dissatisfaction with the article.

That, and the author interjecting his personal preferences as architectural dogma - his passage about "No Street Enclosure" was very much of "I grew up in the tight spaces of old European cities, therefore preferring the tight spaces of old European cities is a psychological default universal in humankind".

I actually find it amusing that he thinks "parking in the rear" is some sort of architectural grand achievement, rather than the historical reality: it was something that emerged from streets strewn with mud and horse shit, allowing people to emerge from carriages on a clean, usually paved, surface. It was a practical solution to a problem that doesn't exist today.

Additionally, he seems to think the resultant alleys are "safe" (and, I don't know, maybe they are - I really don't know, and won't speculate), but in every European and Euro-style city where I've seen such "parking and garden in the back", the walls are all 10' high and topped with home-made barbed wire (usually shards of glass). It doesn't seem like the natives believe too firmly in the safety of these sorts of hidden-from-the-public-eye spaces.

Beyond that, there's plenty of false dichotomies.

Many of his other points are valid. They all just blend together in this general mash of "American cities suck because they're not like European cities; European cities are the epitome of human psychology and architecture."

Damn, Europe can be fucking beautiful. Just achingly beautiful (oh, so much of London). At other times, you can walk through street after street of 10' gates, marred only by graffiti and the occasional heavily-barred window (thinking of you here, huge swaths of Spain and Portugal). Then again, I can say the same of suburbia (see almost any part of Staten Island, New York developed pre-2000 or so if you want to see fantastic suburbs).

_delirium3• 10 years ago

I think he's also looking at European cities with quite rose-colored glasses. There are nice European cites, and (perhaps more to the point) nice areas of European cities. I lived in central Copenhagen for years, and I really liked it! But they're far from universal, and European development models also produce vast swathes of neighborhoods and housing that suck. In different ways than American suburbia, but still not somewhere you'd want to live, given the choice.

Example of the European equivalent of suburbia, which I'd argue is overall a less nice place to live than American suburbia: the more affordable London suburbs, or even worse, the more affordable Paris suburbs. They aren't vibrant, quaint, walkable cities, but just huge expanses of low-quality commuter housing, with bad commutes. Realistically for many people, the European equivalent to a lower-middle-class Houston suburban house with freeway commute isn't a nice apartment in a vibrant city center, but a small, somewhat shabby terrace house way out near Luton with a 75-minute bus+rail+tube commute into London. Compared to that version of Europe, the Houston suburbs don't look all that bad.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

very much of "I grew up in the tight spaces of old European cities, therefore preferring the tight spaces of old European cities is a psychological default universal in humankind".

Except I grew up mostly in suburban northern Indiana, suburban Houston, and suburban northeast Georgia. :-)

nikdaheratik• 10 years ago

I disagree with pretty much every conclusion made by the author, and yet agree that there is some truth there as well.

The bottom line is that all of this suburban sprawl is a result of the extra land available in the U.S. combined with the automobile and combined with the growing middle class. The lack of municipal support for public transport is the other biggy. You can't build dense if everyone has to have a car to get around, and if the best you can do is a mediocre bus service that caters to the old and poor, you're not going to choose to build dense.

t may not have been the best idea long term, but the choice for developers at the time wasn't "build a nice Euro model town square" vs. "Build a sprawling suburban mess". It was "build in this empty field" or "pay alot more money to tear down these old buildings and put up apartments to replace them". And the biggest money to be made wasn't in building up.

The only good news is that mostly people have gotten to the point where they're not willing to travel any further out, and so more new development is happening by building up instead.

aquadrop• 10 years ago

I sometimes do short virtual walks around the globe on google street view (to clear mind) and your town is probably the best small town I saw (not in rich areas at least), Chicago area is probably the place I'd want to live in, if I was in USA :)

criddell5• 10 years ago

I'm guessing Google street view doesn't do a lot of photography between November and March.

stepvhen• 10 years ago

Howdy neighbor, I'm in the suburbs of Indianapolis, and I am much more sympathetic to the article. I think living just outside 465 is more akin to the author's suburbia than Valprasio or Plainfield or Evansville.

ZenoArrow4• 10 years ago

"I live in "suburbia". A small city of 30,000 in Indiana called Valparaiso. We have a vibrant downtown and where you can live, shop, eat, go to shows, etc. We have public transportation with a local bus line and also bus service into Chicago."

Then you don't live in the type of suburbia the author was referring to. A small city with a variety of activities close by and decent public transportation is a million miles from the type of monotonous residential sprawl the author is referring to.

TulliusCicero10• 10 years ago

Basically America is bad because we had space for cars when they were invented?

American suburbs are bad for all the reasons listed. They force people to drive, making people fat. Ironically, they make traffic terrible at the same time, especially traffic into the nearby principal city. They kill child independence by making it impossible for kids to get around without adults driving them somewhere. They strongly economically segregate people so that people don't mix much with different demographic groups. And they're usually economically unsustainable, because they don't generate enough tax revenue to support their own infrastructure (something which isn't apparent until decades after initial construction, and thus easy to miss): http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

abalashov32• 10 years ago

I can't think of anything that isn't seen as a direct attack on the author

Don't worry, I'm not offended! :-)

tptacek12• 10 years ago

I think this article is poorly descriptive of most of the older and most popular Chicago suburbs, but very well describes the Chicago "exurbs" and the Atlanta sprawl suburbs. So to me, it's not that the author is wrong, so much as semantically imprecise with the word "suburb".

abalashov32• 10 years ago

FWIW, I spent my elementary school years in South Bend. Certainly, by comparison to the type of development I was taking aim at, typical in the Sun Belt, the older industrial cities of the Midwest are, on average, a lot more dense and livable.

55555• 10 years ago

Unless this is the speaker of a very similar TED Talk, this guy borrowed tons of soundbites in the process of writing this article.

Edit: just finished reading it. He has plagarized 10+ 'jokes', and most of his content was heavily 'inspired', from this excellent TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub... . Very very uncool.

themgt2• 10 years ago

Agreed, I noticed that too. I was hoping he'd just subconsciously lifted some phrases, but the amount of the overall similar content/structure and the specificity of phrases do really kinda push it to the level of plagiarism.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

Hi, author here!

I am very familiar with Kunstler's talk and do cite it from time to time, but it's hard for me to see the basis for the notion that I ripped it off. Kunstler is hardly the only one to make New Urbanist architectural talking points or to formulate them in the way that he does, notwithstanding his rather specific sense of humour.

That said, I just rewatched Kunstler's talk (for the first time in maybe a year or two?), and I can certainly see why you say what you do, though I don't agree that it rises to the level of plagiarism; I sat there and made my formulations quite originally. It's probably a case of subconscious diffusion, as you suggest. I added a citation for his talk to the bottom of the post to reflect the discernible overlap.

That said, you really need to look at some other critical literature in this sphere. If you do, you might be led to accuse Kunstler of plagiarism! :-)

cjrjdjcjnf• 10 years ago

So how's that war on suburban sprawl going in San Francisco? Oh right...

colmvp• 10 years ago

I've split my life living downtown (SF, NYC, London, Melbourne, TO) and in the suburbs.

Outside my house the only thing I hear is the wind tossing about with the trees. Can't hear my neighbors or traffic or people on the street. Contrast that to when I lived in areas where the bars or homeless/mentally unstable individuals would keep me up all night.

And I love all the space. Yes, it's a double edge sword. But I have lot more space for my hobbies such as bike ownership/maintenance, musical instruments, photography studio... I can sit in my backyard and just meditate or play music. When I lived downtown, I had to rent space or just forego certain things.

Lastly, I like how there's less population density. Downtown, good luck if you want a seat at the nearby cafe. Whereas my local cafe which has ample parking also has ample open seats.

I'm not trying to say surburbia > urban living. They just have very real differences that suit different people and life stages.

TulliusCicero10• 10 years ago

It's amazing all the people posting comments here who completely missed the point of the article.

The author is NOT saying that suburbs are bad. The author is saying that American suburbs are bad. There is a difference, and that difference is the entire point of the article.

Seriously, did you even read it?

djrogers2• 10 years ago

Some of us LIKE American suburbs. The author is stating as an objective fact something which is entirely subjective in nature - a sadly common mistake among the overly cynical.

bklimt3• 10 years ago

Why are you assuming that none of us defending suburbs are American? There's a reason so many people like to live in them.

ricardobeat2• 10 years ago

To put the sibling comment more lightly, your idea of "living in the city" is very narrow. Most of the world lives in densely populated areas but do not have bars and drunk people in their doorsteps. The article does try to address this.

manachar• 10 years ago

Suburbia, with all their HOAs and such are the physical manifestation of the cultural preferences of a large majority of Americans.

The following quote perfect illustrates the goals:

"The idea, of course, is that the peaceful slumber of the suburbanite should not be interrupted by the noise generated by the transaction of commerce or any other public-sphere human activities"

Most Americans want to have an estate where they aim to live independently and completely unaffected by their neighbors. They don't want to hear them, see them, or ever have to directly interact with them unless desired.

This can be often rationalized as safer because if other people are physically less likely to interact in any fashion they are less likely to cause harm. It can also be rationalized as better financial sense as these "ticky-tacky" boxes are designed to be bland and therefore have mass appeal. HOAs especially help this as they prevent your neighbor's choices from impacting your resale value.

As long as Americans continue to value trying to live a life as separate and as unaffected as possible you will have something very much like Suburbia

Most who rail against suburbs (like me), do so because we have a different set of values and beliefs about community. For those who like suburbs it's about trying to build a personal community that you opt in to be part of.

This idea that community or your social network is something each gets to determine for themselves is seen in a lot of political debates. This fuels charter schools, school vouchers, zoning laws, etc. It's interesting because it cuts across political boundaries.

cowsandmilk3• 10 years ago

Suburbia, with all their HOAs and such are the physical manifestation of the cultural preferences of a large majority of Americans.

My numbers put the number of Americans in HOAs in the suburbs at ~16%. Suburbs without HOAs ~37%. So, a small majority of Americans live in suburbs and a much smaller number live in a suburb with an HOA. More Americans live in urban areas (~26%) than in a suburb with an HOA.

As to preferences, my anecdotal experiences have been that I know people who moved to suburbs out of necessity due to cost, but I have never met someone, other than the homeless and those in subsidized housing, living in an urban area due to cost instead of personal choice.

ChicagoDave• 10 years ago

I'd agree about the negative impact of suburbia for completely different reasons. The culture created by it has the nature of a bubble where its occupants don't ever interact with anyone "different". Clothes, jobs, mannerisms, jokes, religions, activities, food...are all the same.

This dulls people's sense of empathy in a considerable and damaging way. Instead of being able to think critically and with empathy, suburbia drives people to view all of their sameness as a "good thing".

We need to break these bubbles, redraw our towns and cities with integrated services, focused on walking, biking, and as little driving internally as possible. You car for should be intra-city travel. Not for going around a fence to the grocery store that's 1000ft away.

criddell5• 10 years ago

We need to break these bubbles, redraw our towns and cities with integrated services, focused on walking, biking, and as little driving internally as possible. You car for should be intra-city travel.

How about you live the way you want to live and let me live how I want to live?

I choose living in the suburbs because that's where I'm happiest right now. When I was younger, I loved the energy and action of the city. In my mid-40's, I love the peace and community of my suburb although I suspect once self-driving cars are within reach, I'm going to move even further away from the city.

eropple• 10 years ago

How about you live the way you want to live and let me live how I want to live?

If the price of living where you want to live factored in the significant externalities of it, you might have a point. But suburban and exurban areas in the United States largely don't pay their way with regards to most governmental services (and have a significantly higher ecological footprint, also not accounted for).

bedhead• 10 years ago

It's the single largest thing that gets lost in this whole discussion: the idea of preference.

coned884• 10 years ago

It's well shown that diversity hurts civic life in communities. All at the same time being a great thing for businesses. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...

Sorry but forced integration is not going to make things better. There's a reason even diverse cities like NYC are still pretty segregated by neighborhood.

atemerev• 10 years ago

As a European who likes cars and enjoys driving, during my visit to America I have found all these planning choices charming and convenient. Except the need of daily commuting, of course. It reduces the joy of driving to dull routine. Why remote working is so unpopular, I don't know.

phd514• 10 years ago

I used to live on the UES of Manhattan and now live in flyover country on a half-acre wooded lot in a house that is 6x larger than my studio apartment and yet costs less -- the extra space is quite useful for kids and a work-from-home office. There are pros and cons to both arrangements and I certainly miss some things that NYC had to offer, but articles like this exaggerate the advantages of city living. Other comments have pointed out some of them, so I'll point out just one item -- the geographic proximity of rich and poor in cities is way overblown. There may have been poor people living within a couple hundred yards of luxury apartments in NYC, but that doesn't mean there was any interaction between them. NYC is very stratified by socioeconomic status and living geographically close to people in other socioeconomic classes does not change that at all.

grecy• 10 years ago

the predominant suburban design of the US of the worst features of life here, viewed from the perspective of a European immigrant like me,

Really? As an immigrant, I always though the worst features of life in the US are the 10x higher murder rate, millions of desperate people with no health care, etc. and the crushing debt placed onto young people looking to educate themselves.

I would change those things long before changing urban planning.

devdas• 10 years ago

Quite a bit of the crime rate comes from suburban development, and the highway system.

chillaxtian• 10 years ago

how so?

michaelbuddy• 10 years ago

Yes of course. Suburbs and highways cause rape. Nice try.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

And I've written about those, too. :-) But while it doesn't have the same rhetorical gravitas, everyday quality of life is surprisingly important to one's experience of a place.

carsongross• 10 years ago

If you would like this rant in book form, throwing in some well-deserved broadsides at architects, I highly recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-La...

I would also add the radical individualists of the 60s who made the cities unlivable for families.

lordnacho• 10 years ago

As someone who grew up in Europe, I've been to visit friends and relatives in the US quite often.

Quite often I think what this guy writes.

Between the two coasts, there is a homogeneity of architecture that is quite amazing for a European to watch. In Europe, it's quite noticeable where you are, and everywhere has enough character that you can remember it. In the US, stuff looks like SimCity.

I often ask, how did you guys (my cousins/friends) ever grow up here? When I was a kid, there were football courts within walking distance. There were larger grass fields in town that you could easily cycle to. If you met another kid, you could take the bus, train or bike to hang out, and when you hung out, you could move from place to place. Like ride out to a theme park north of Copenhagen and then to the beach nearby, then to town centre for some fast food and cinema. You could do that. When you're hanging around at home and get hungry, you can go to a convenience store. Without driving.

When I look at a place like Boulder or Kenosha, I wonder how on Earth the kids get around. Distances seem to be vast, and I didn't see a train line (they must have them though?). I saw some buses, but not many. They looked like they would take a while to get you anywhere, because I was driving and it took ages. Also, at least in Colorado, there's vast areas that seem to have nothing but prairie dogs. At least you have the mountains there.

I recall American classmates talking about hanging out at the mall. This was always a curious thing for me, but when you go there it makes sense. Malls are the only places that have a variety of offerings, within walking distance of the next thing. You have to walk through a ridiculously sized car park, which I guess means land is cheap. A multi-storey parking house would make more sense otherwise. These huge car parks also mean that your drive to anywhere is dominated by car parks, because even commercial zones that aren't huge malls are kinda like malls anyway, just with a few shops next to each other.

And about those shops... the proliferation of chains contributed enormously to the SimCity feel of the country. You can go anywhere and find the same brand of everything. I haven't travelled much in the interior, but I got the impression that pretty much everywhere that wasn't coastal was built in the same way. Same low-rise, big car park in front, wide streets, no life.

Another issue with malls is they're a big landlord. Their incentives are not towards having a bunch of independent little shops, each with their own little complaints. It's much easier for them to say "hey {Starbucks/Sonoma-Williams/J Crew/etc}, how about you rent a space in 12 of our malls?". And then a really quite large area will get served with the same stuff.

By contrast, places like NYC, Chicago, DC, and SF seemed somewhat more familiar. Thought SF was a bit weird though, as it needs to look more like NYC. A peninsula is not that different from an island, especially when there's hills. Instead you get low-rise quite centrally. Much has been written here on the political economy of this.

bklimt3• 10 years ago

Chains like Starbucks and McDonald's are popular for a reason. They make products people like. They have optimized for scale and cost. They provide consistent product and service, especially when traveling.

In the medium-sized town where I grew up, we always loved it when a new chain restaurant opened up in our town. They made us feel like we got the same options as the big cities.

ZenoArrow4• 10 years ago

I understand the sentiment, it does feel good to know your town is 'on the map' so to speak, but I do think there's something to be said for supporting local businesses too.

To give an example, I grew up in a small city. We had a McDonalds, a Burger King, etc... but we also had local burger places that made tastier burgers than those from the big chains. I found those local burger places gave me more pride in where I lived than just that we had what lots of other places had.

I guess what I'm saying is that local shops can add more to a sense of place than the ubiquitous chains. Is that something you'd agree with?

fiatmoney4• 10 years ago

Suburbia allows you to ensure that your neighbors are able to afford to buy, rather than rent, a minimum quantity of land & construction (and usually therefore have a large amount of their net worth locked up in the value of that property), that they can afford transportation to and from wherever the nearest commercial center is, tends to limit population flows, and insulates the neighborhood from anyone who doesn't have their own independent transportation.

This selects for a higher quality of neighbor, which has positive externalities (eg, "Good Schools" and low crime rates) that balance the obvious costs. Alternate legal mechanisms for enforcing these constraints have been banned, so we use the zoning code and make a lot of theoretically neutral noise about Property Values.

caoilte• 10 years ago

That's a really long-winded way of saying redlining ;-).

fiatmoney4• 10 years ago

"Redlining" is a specific practice that has been banned for decades.

MisterBastahrd3• 10 years ago

I've yet to read a single article about why surburbia sucks that would be convincing to me as a better alternative than my life growing up in suburbia. If I wanted to play in a field, I went to the field. If I wanted to explore the woods, I went to the woods. Too far to walk? I had a bike, and a skateboard. I didn't have to spend my life walking on pavement from concrete box to concrete box, surrounded by indifferent adults... and just the idea of it sounds positively suffocating to me.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

I didn't have to spend my life walking on pavement from concrete box to concrete box, surrounded by indifferent adults

I agree -- that sounds quite terrible indeed!

qaq• 10 years ago

It's an age thing to an extent, I shared a lot of similar opinions (lived in DC then in European large city from 20 to 37) and now enjoy living in a suburb with my family and kids.

hasenj5• 10 years ago

One thing I can't fathom about cities in North America is this sharp division between residential areas and shopping areas.

I'm by no means a world expert, but the places I've been to (Middle East where I grew up, Japan which I visited a couple of times) don't have this sharp distinction. Sure, there are residential areas and there are shopping areas, but every residential area will have many small shops here and there. You don't need a car to shop for groceries. You can just go down the street and there's likely a small store within 10-15 minutes walking distance that will have most of the things you need.

In North America it seems rather normal to have blocks and blocks of nothing but houses. To buy groceries, you need a car drive (anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes) to get to some plaza (or a mall) with big name stores like Wal-Mart or Target.

This has always bothered me. I think the only exception is the core downtown areas of big cities, but living there has its own downsides. Too expensive, too noisy, can sometimes be somewhat shady.

update• 10 years ago

I live in a newer U.S. city and this couldn't be any further from the truth. e.g. Walmart is < 2 miles away.

hasenj5• 10 years ago

You just happened to be located close to it. It's still designed to accommodate people coming in with their cars. Unless it's a different kind of Walmart, there is usually a huge parking lot, and entry on foot is a bit cumbersome sometimes.

vinceguidry• 10 years ago

Do you walk to this Wal-Mart? I live one mile away from the closest grocery store and I still drive.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

I don't see how that rectifies the essential grievance. A Walmart ~ < 2 miles away is substantially similar to a Walmart 10 miles away for all intents and purposes. And, as I mentioned in my post, even if it were 0.25 mi away, there are all kinds of artifices in suburbia that commonly stop one walking there.

bklimt3• 10 years ago

In every suburb I've lived in, whether in Austin or Pittsburgh or San Jose, there has been a grocery store within walking distance.

I have lived in smaller cities where that's not the case, but not in the suburbs.

thrownaway2424• 10 years ago

Seriously? Most late-20th century American subdivisions are built on the scale of a section, which is a mile on each side. Each section typically has a strip-mall type car-centered shopping area with a grocery store at one corner. Due to the fractal layout of the dead-end streets and lack of walking facilities it is generally at least a mile from any of the houses to any of the grocers. And that's for th people who are willing to walk down the side of a giant street-cross-freeway without sidewalks.

mattmcknight3• 10 years ago

Walking to the grocery store sounds ridiculous to me. Even when I could see one from my house I never walked there to do the weekly shopping. I typically buy more than I can carry. I guess it depends on whether you have a big family or not...

xxpor• 10 years ago

See, the issue is that you're doing weekly shopping in the first place.

I typically shop on Sunday, which carries me over til Wednesday, then shop on W/Th. I know quite a few people that shop almost every day.

bryanlarsen3• 10 years ago

"weekly shopping".

There's your difference. In those places, you do 5-10 minutes of shopping 7 days a week, instead of 60 minutes of shopping once a week. Those corner grocery stores are tiny, you can be in and out quick.

hasenj5• 10 years ago

No no, it works differently. The concept of weekly shopping is completely alien and baffling to people living there.

This is the way it works:

Your wife/mom/yourself want to cook pasta today, but some ingredient is lacking (say, tomatoes). So you go to the store and get some tomatoes.

On your way you might grab two or three other items, but that's it.

There's no such thing as weekly shopping.

forrestthewoods• 10 years ago

I can't possibly roll my eyes hard enough. But if the author thinks suburbia is bad I'd hate to hear what he'd say about my rural upbringing.

Meanwhile I'd consider an urban upbringing the worst option. Give me rural America for kids any day of the week. Suburbia works in a pinch. But dense urban? Urgh, no thank you.

ZenoArrow4• 10 years ago

I don't think the same criticisms of suburbia apply to rural areas. The main issue I personally have with suburbia can be summed up in one word; boredom. Nothing interesting to see, not much that's interesting to do. Rural life on the other hand is far better, the act of living rurally is engaging, and the sights and sounds of nature are far more interesting than the sights of identikit housing and the muffled sounds of suburbia.

I suspect you may dislike dense urban if you're associating it with places that are run down and without good city planning. Good city planning definitely includes parks and other open spaces, so it's not some monotonous concrete jungle.

Let me put it to you like this, if you lived in Venice, what do you think you would dislike about it?

to3m• 10 years ago

The smell?

My main memories of visiting Venice (20 years ago...) were also: general lack of greenery, not many open spaces, and a pervasive delapidated shabbiness. Also, it's built on marshland. So I'm not sure the good city planning bit applies either ;)

Also, constant churn of tourists... not sure how I'd feel about that as a parent. But if I had one of those grand Venetian apartments I might be OK about living there as an adult. The lack of greenery might end up a bit trying however.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

As far as I can see, suburbia is the worst possible option, since it has neither of the virtues of city living nor the virtues of the countryside, but the downsides of both.

humbleMouse6• 10 years ago

I am surprised to see all of the pro-suburbia comments here. I enjoyed this article and found it lines up with many of my criticisms of suburbia.

The suburbs to me are a soul sucking place that gives me the heebie-jeebies. With that said, my opinion reflects my experience living in Minneapolis. When I visit other cities like Seattle or San Francisco, I am turned off by the ridiculous density and the inability to go to a coffee shop and not wait in a huge line (looking mostly at SF here).

As a white person who went to an inner city highschool where white people were the minority - I notice a huge difference in my world view than people who grew up in suburbs with predominantly white people. The suburbs around Minneapolis absolutely disgust me. I work in the western suburbs of Minneapolis and constantly deal with co-workers saying underhanded racist/classist comments all the time.

matwood3• 10 years ago

I think what you are seeing is that not all suburbs are created equal. I grew up in the burbs and live in the burbs now. Nothing in the article matches up to my experience. I am also on the coast in a smaller city so it is hard to have explicit city and explicit burb.

humbleMouse6• 10 years ago

That is definitely what I am saying. Minneapolis is an interesting place because rent/home prices are actually more in the suburbs than in the cool parts of the city. Furthermore, our highways are structured basically so that there are rings of highways that circle around the city. You can drive for miles on these highways and it is nothing but flat open land with cookie cutter houses and the same shops and strip malls.

We do have some big lakes and I can understand why some people like living on lakefront property with boats and whatnot. However, real estate is so cheap in Minneapolis that it boggles my mind more big companies don't open up shop in the city. Hopefully this is something that will change as time goes on and more people move here.

Touche2• 10 years ago

The cities in the U.S. where you can walk around are pretty much completely unaffordable to all but the extremely wealthy. My wife and I wanted to move to Boston but couldn't find a house in a decent (walking) neighborhood for under 500k. Of course this would be cheap compared to say San Francisco. Chicago might come the closest to being somewhat affordable in the walkable parts, but I haven't checked recently.

humbleMouse6• 10 years ago

Come visit uptown Minneapolis some time. It is a vibrant place with thrift stores, co-ops, and delicious restaurants with fresh food and cheap happy hours. You can rent a studio/1BR for as low as $600. Houses can be had for as low as 100k.

I currently rent a 1br with a huge deck and skyline view of Downtown for $900. I can walk to the co-op and coffee shops, don't need a car for anything except getting to my silly suburban programming job in the winter.

dmoy• 10 years ago

I went from mpls intercity elementary to suburbia middle school, and the contrast was just staggering. My elementary was like 40%-50% black, and then the rest white or Hmong. Suburb was 95++% white.

I'm white/Asian, and some of MY OWN closer friends would make weird comments like "some people in this group are less white" (implying that my brother and I hadn't yet scrubbed ourselves of our intercity accents). Not maliciously saying things like that, but just completely unaware.

But then I grew up and realized that it's like this all across the country. White flight is a real thing, and it's kinda scary.

StevePerkins• 10 years ago

Downvote away... but everything about this thread is disappointing.

There is much about U.S. zoning and housing that I believe is misguided. However, I'll say that the pro-suburbia comments in this thread are actually fairly well-written. Most of the anti-suburbia comments boil down to, "blah blah hellholes blah blah heebie-jeebies blah blah everybody's racist blah blah".

That is more of a Reddit thread than the usual HN. Much of this simply sounds like: (A) single renters under 30, or (B) European immigrants, incredulous that they can't double their own take-home pay while experiencing zero broader social differences.

humbleMouse6• 10 years ago

blah blah blah everyones racist is actually a true statement about the Minneapolis suburbs.

jey• 10 years ago

inability to go to a coffee shop and not wait in a huge line (looking mostly at SF here)

To me that sounds like an extrapolation from only observing high-traffic areas like SoMa, not the neighborhoods most people actually live.

sndean• 10 years ago

I grew in up the northern Virginia suburbs outside of Washington DC where certain bike paths (the Washington and Old Dominion specifically) enabled my friends and I to ride our bikes from farm fields in the west to downtown Arlington/DC in the east.

It would take all day to do, we'd stop along the way at shops for food/drinks, and it was amazing.

Because of that and other experiences, IMO suburbia is made for kids on bikes.

forgotAgain• 10 years ago

tl;dr I don't like the environment I've chosen to live in so that environment sucks.

mruniverse• 10 years ago

It seems like people like Suburbia. A lot of people buy houses and live in Suburbia. Something seems to be right about it.

Maybe we should look at is popularity before saying it sucks. Try to figure out why it's popular. What is going on there? That would be an interesting read.

djrogers2• 10 years ago

Maybe we should look at is popularity before saying it sucks. Try to figure out why it's popular. What is going on there? That would be an interesting read.

From what I've learned reading here today, I like suburbia because I'm one of the closed-minded, bigoted sheep, and the only cure is for me to live in a City.

See how well this works? If everything about suburbia is bad, and reinforces the bad parts of human nature, they don't need to look any deeper...

vasilipupkin4• 10 years ago

Well, America has a difficult racial tension problem. Decades of policy choices mean that inner city public schools can be problematic, so many people are forced to move to the suburbs. They don't necessarily like or dislike suburbs any more than city but they have to move to where decent public schools are

slr555• 10 years ago

Perhaps Mr. Balashov is thinking of the great urban centers of Europe like Moscow. Where it can take 2.5 hours to go 20 blocks and where the mass transit system embraces multi-culturalism and internationalism by only having signs in Cyrillic.

I am sorry that Mr. Balashov has chosen to live in Atlanta, but I suspect he has little knowledge of Omaha. Growing up in such a place is quite idyllic. The creeks, the parks, the forest and the fields encourage children to play sports, have pets, picnic and stare up at the sky from amidst fields of boundless green listening to the sound of insects and birds instead of sirens.

As Oscar Wilde said, "For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical." It is easy to be cynical about suburbs and wax poetic about cities. Well I grew up in Kansas and have lived for 25 years in NYC (Manhattan). Also known as the capital of the world.

I've been to Paris, Moscow, London, Dubai, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Brussels, Prague, Budapest, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, etc. And guess what I still love Kansas and Nebraska.

Loathing suburbia is snobbery and a failure of imagination.

My favorite Tarkovsky film is Nostalghia. The title refers to a very specific feeling that Russians experience when the miss their homeland.

ThePhysicist• 10 years ago

A very interesting read about architectural patterns at various scales -from the home itself to the city and agglomoration- is Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language

It contains lots of good examples on why some spaces are livable and why others are not. The book itself is a bit ideological but most of the described patterns are really great and give you a good understanding of why e.g. rural Italian or French villages have this nice vibe to them.

lunchTime42• 10 years ago

Completely unrelated, but maybe not. If the problm of the suburb traffic inspired the idea of the selfdriving car, so you can be productive while beeing stuck in traffic- why are there no group-commuters, that take a larger vehicle, so everyone can work ond the way, except for one driver, which can cycle?

todd8• 10 years ago

This reminds me of those lists, like the Places Rated Almanac (which might be more sophisticated now than it was years ago), where a list of criteria demonstrates that a particular place (in this case the suburbs) is inferior to other places. One can tick off a set of criteria and come up with a score or this case a blog post demonstrating why a place is better than another.

I currently live is the suburbs of a city that wouldn't score high on these kinds of lists, no balanced seasons--practically no winter and no easy access to winter sports, no major league sports team, bad traffic, no major museums, limited cultural opportunities compared to other big cities, escalating real estate prices. These were actual categories in the Places Rated Almanac that would make my city seem to be undesirable.

The problem with this approach and that of the blog "Why Suburbia Sucks" is that everyone weighs the costs and benefits differently. A more realistic title for the blog might be "Why Suburbia Sucks for Me, Right Now". (Or to better suit it's tone, "Why Suburbia Sucks for Me and Why You Should Feel It Sucks Too.) Is there a more objective or comprehensive way to assess Suburbia (or the quality of life in a particular city)?

The answer is yes, simply watch what people do. I live in Austin, the fastest growing city in the US this year according to Forbes and it has been fast growing for many years. Why would people move here when it is so hot, has no major league sports teams, requires a long trip to go skiing or to the beach, and has bad traffic? People move here for a variety of reasons and they keep moving here faster than they move away. Likewise, the suburbs have an appeal that overcomes their disadvantages for other people. Other posters here have already explained some of the important factors that make people want to live in the suburbs.

My problem with the original blog post is that it seems to express a desire to judge and decide what is best for others. Smart people often feel that if only they had there hands on the steering wheel then the world would be a better place. (Maybe they could make it a better place but maybe not.)

terda123• 10 years ago

I agree. I live in suburbia and I feel like I'm slowly choked out of my humanity. Can't wait to move to a damn city or somewhere with more density. America's suburbia was designed for cars and cars only.

Here's an anecdote. My little brother has after school band practice 30 mins drive away. What does he do after school? He can't walk home, so he has to wait for me to pick him up. He can't go out to a movie with his friends because it would involved several parents taking the time out of work to send his friends there, and pick them up. He can't walk home or ride the subway because it's a freaking sprawl of highways. Bus stations are few and far between, and hugely unreliable. Instead all he knows is the highway that connects the school to home, and relies on my driving instead of his own two legs to get him home. I wonder why Americans are obese, hmm.

I watch animes that depict life in Tokyo. There is never a car involved. Kids just walk home after school, walking to a restaurant with their friends if they feel like it, hitting up a local 7-11. They can explore the local park, go to the movie theater, walk home with their friends if its on the same way.

I've stayed in Paris for 2 weeks and could literally walk everywhere. It's amazing how good it feels to see a cool gelato shop in yelp, proceed to take the subway with a bunch of strangers, walk a bit to the gelato shop, buy my gelato, and sit in a nearby coffee shop eating it. And want to check out some comic books? There's a comic book shop around a mile away, let's walk there.

People were not meant to live in suburbia. We are a social creature, we need to belong in a tribe, not a single home separate from the world.

coned884• 10 years ago

On the other hand if he was allowed to walk home your parents would likely be arrested for child abuse.

terda123• 10 years ago

You realize children walk home from school all over the world right? This isn't something new.

crimsonalucard2• 10 years ago

I specifically looked up this podcast to show you guys because i find it relevant to this situation. I believe any parent will find it very interesting.

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/16/377517810/world-with-no-fear

Apocryphon2• 10 years ago

I have to wonder: do any of these pro-suburban commentators live in the Bay Area? And if so, do they live in San Jose, Fremont, or Daly City? Or do they live in San Francisco.

gozur884• 10 years ago

I live in a Bay Area suburb and would not move to SF. Why do you ask?

coned884• 10 years ago

To me as somebody who was raised in NYC and still lives there. American suburbia is just lovely.

I find nyc dead boring and claustrophobic. Yes there nice restaurants in the city but how many times do you want to eat out? How many shows or do you go to? How many of this and that.

That's the conclusion for me. Sure there are restaurants I'd like to visit. I can commute to go eat once. I don't need to live there and once I have eaten at all the good places (which takes a few weeks at most) you're done.

I'd hate for the suburbs to be undone. NYC is really not a pleasant place to live. So many lunatics walking around and people have no concept of space.

notlisted3• 10 years ago

Hear hear! 19 years in NYC. Wife 'forced' me to move to the burbs, but having tasted what life can be like you'd need to drag me back kicking and screaming to ever live there again. I laugh at those we left behind, who sincerely inquire "but don't you miss NYC?". Nope. Not one bit. Meet up in the park (because no back yard)? Join you for dinner at restaurant X (because no dining room)? Ha!

Quality of life has improved tremendously. Family life: more activities together, fewer dinners outside because we had to escape the small confines of our 900 sqft 2Bd apartment. Social life: we actually have enough room to have friends over… and they come. BBQs in the back yard. Potluck dinners with the neighbors and their 3 kids. Friends who stick around, not friends who leave because they can't keep up with the rent increase/job loss. Kids all go to the same school, no need for private schools, no competition for "magnet schools". No tiger parents.

Whenever we feel the need, less and less, we get a hotel room in NYC, go out to dinner in those "hot little joints" (mostly overrated, cronuts anyone?). Pure heaven, a 45min drive from the 'hustle and bustle'. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go mow my lawn and stare at the piliated woodpecker.

fred_is_fred• 10 years ago

The author of this story, who obviously has no kids, is confused as to why a family of 4 might not want to live in an apartment over a bar in downtown. That's my worst nightmare of life. I'll drive, thanks.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

I have a newborn and two young stepkids, and the five of us live in an apartment downtown, but not over a bar. :-)

esoteric_nonces• 10 years ago

I like wide open spaces and I'd live in the forest with no-one around for miles if I had the means and a suitable plot.

Land, or at least a small garden or garage (in order of decreasing usefulness), is incredibly useful for woodworking, mechanical tinkering, painting large objects, basically any sort of real world craft that's not 'micro'.

My social life is less important than the ability for me to sit on that bit of land that's mine and do things that I want to do.

The urban equivalent of that seems to be going to find a specialist to do whatever you want doing. Basically, urban living is capitalism embodied - you can get some fantastic things done, better than you could ever do yourself, but you're trading for it. And you have to take part in the economy too.

andrewfromx• 10 years ago

In case anyone wants to study the 12 points over and over again I wrote them down:

1. Single-use zoning

2. Hierarchical traffic distribution

3. Set-backs from the street & parking ratios

4. Proximity does not mean pedestrian accessibility

5. Economic segregation by building type.

6. No street enclosure and definition

7. Useless, ugly and wasted space

8. Parking-first aesthetics, garage façades, no alleys, no interior yards

9. No street life or visible human activity

10. No public transport

11. Improper interface between city and highway

12. Lack of regional planning vision

makecheck• 10 years ago

The article lists a lot of major issues with suburbs, and I saw them all when I used to live in one.

Something that wasn’t really mentioned is how utterly boring some of the everyday life choices are. And yet, because none of the choices necessarily sucks, people remain “just happy enough” and never really yearn for anything better. I’m sure this setup is great for corporations but it is sad for human beings. Just observe: I mean, every single shopping center seems to have nearly exactly the same chain restaurants and a Starbucks…EVERY ONE! And if by some miracle you do find something different, it is usually a “choice” between Home Depot and Lowe’s or a “choice” between McDonald’s and Wendy’s or something.

Plenty of variety still exists outside of suburbs. The problem is that for people in suburbs, it would mean driving 45 minutes to even reach the alternatives, much less enjoy them regularly. And if you are averaging long drives all the time to/from work or to do anything else, the last thing you feel like you have time for is another long drive to experiment.

I felt it sucking my soul. Long drives expose you to more traffic which leads to anger, etc. Driving wastes a lot of money (cars are expensive even when fuel is not high-priced). And I found myself slowly accumulating garbage to fill a large space. Ultimately I felt that it was a lot more sane to live smaller, in an “expensive” place closer to civilization. While it did cost a lot more per square foot, I saved money after not too long and I definitely felt better. And I have more variety now.

bryanlarsen3• 10 years ago

According to Tyler Cowen, the best food in America is found in suburban strip malls. It's found in ethnic restaurants that are in strip malls because the rent is cheap and there's a pocket of their community in that same area.

pieterhog• 10 years ago

Suburbia kills us ADHD-people. Guess I'm not the only one here who sometimes feels an urgent need to move. And what is more convenient than walking (or biking) to the grocery store, your office, the metro tube, the bar or your friends' house?

I grew up in Holland and Spain. No problem to walk or take a bicycle there. I've lived in New York City and it was fine (better then Barcelona for running and bicycle, because of cleaner air). But other US cities are just soooo stretched you that you can not do it on a bicycle. Not to mention that time in sone Canadian suburb when they called the police, for chrissake, because I walked on the pavement. Normal person don't walk, only thieves do,apparently ?

Anyway, aren't suburbs "motion unfriendly" Is this changing nowadays? Now that it's known that being outside, & moving makes many people feel good?

Mendenhall• 10 years ago

Here I am trying to get even further into the rural and country setting with far far less people lol.

I lived city and burbs and for me no comparison, as a kid we would go in the woods outback and make explosives and set them off, try that in the city. Endless bike rides with no adult supervision and wooded areas to disapear too.

No real traffic compared to when I lived in cities, way less ambulances waking me up, gasp yes I like to sleep and dont want to hear the endless drone of humans.

I enjoyed aspects of both city and suburb and completely understand people having preference to either. I just feel this article is very biased by personal preference, the tight closed in spaces he described sound like prison to me but author obviously enjoys. There are very real issues with suburban planning etc, but I find many(not all) who have issue with burbs are people with some sort of political agenda attached to their dislike.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

Hi, author here. Just wanted to respond to a few broad themes I see in the comments:

1. "My neighbourhood isn't like that at all!"

My criticism was directed at the specific type of vacuous sprawl commonly seen in new Sun Belt development. That's a mouthful to put in an article title, so I tried to make the distinction clear in the article by referring repeatedly to "older" and "traditional" neighbourhoods. I suspect this may be why the term "sprawl" came about, i.e. to more accurately capture the sort of thing I'm referring to.

I would be the first to agree that a lot of the more dense suburban neighbourhoods found in the Northeast and around the older industrial cities of America are more livable than what I'm describing. And certainly, not all kids that grow up in suburban neighbourhoods, in cul-de-sacs or otherwise, have a miserable and isolated experience. At the same time, an awful lot of the USA looks like what I described.

By the same token, rural != suburban to my mind, even though some of the same drawbacks are present in rural layouts. As I see it, suburbia is precisely that which offers none of the advantages of either urban living or the countryside, but the downsides of both.

2. "If you don't like suburbs, don't live there. To each his own."

Yes, but 90%+ of the US looks like this, to varying degrees.

There is a widely disseminated idea out there that this is the organic outcome of widespread social preference, a democratic coming-together of the citizenry in a consensus on how they want to live in the land of the free. As evidence, boosters of the phenomenon point to the fact that the majority of new building embodies the paradigm I lambast.

It's just not true, though. In my experience, a large percentage of Americans simply aren't familiar with what the alternatives would look like. More importantly, there is enormous accumulated evidence that sprawl is an engineered policy outcome to some degree. One need not be a kooky conspiracy theorist to see that it's astronomically easier to get additional road-building approved (and subsidised with matching federal funds) and that there are lots of perverse legal and economic incentives for greenfield cookie-cutter subdivision development versus urban infill.

Does that mean that everyone really clamours to live in urban settings deep down inside? Of course not. Some people genuinely like suburbia as I've described it--one can find abundant evidence of that in this discussion thread. However, I do not at all buy into the notion that there is such an overwhelming consensus in favour of that mode of life that almost all inhabited areas of the US are built to suit. For the most part, there just aren't many alternatives; it's amazing what humans can adapt to and put up with. Zoning committees, planners and government agencies have made sprawl an easy inertial default for a variety of historical reasons.

That's how this has turned into a broad quality of life issue that merits broad, nationally scoped criticism. If suburban sprawl were confined to a relative niche of enthusiasts, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

3. "You're comparing ordinary towns with exceptionally beautiful and historic European capitals!"

No, I'm not. My experience has been, however, that on their worst day, profoundly second and third-tier European cities and towns are infinitely more navigable and livable than the vast majority of the US.

4. I would never dispute that European cities bring their own problems and developmental antipatterns.

5. For those who say I don't understand because I'm too young or don't have kids: I'm 30 and have a 4 year-old, a 3 year-old, and a newborn.

tptacek12• 10 years ago

If you like both the content and the tone of this post, you'll probably also like Christopher Alexander's _A Timeless Way Of Building_ and _A Pattern Language_, which has a similar tone and topic, but with a broader sweep.

apenwarr• 10 years ago

For a more nuanced view of this whole topic, I recommend the book The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. https://www.amazon.ca/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/06...

Many of the counterarguments in these comments (especially that smaller cities, or rural areas, are fine even when American suburbs are not) are actually reasonable, and Jacobs covers them in her book.

Since it's from 1961, you might think the insights would be dated, but they're not. She was complaining even as these mistakes were being made, and it's fascinating to read so many of her predictions that we can now say clearly came true.

jimbobimbo2• 10 years ago

Author compares apples and oranges though. The closes thing to a planned communities ("hellholes" as people refer them to in this thread) are so called "sleeper districts" in ex-USSR. Outskirts of towns, full of multi-storied apartment buildings, all looking the same, with a large "univermag" (supermarket) somewhere in the middle.

I used to live in Greater New York area and it's full of little towns like Union, Springfield, Millburn that look and feel very close to the European towns the author likes that much. Even Short Hills - the "sleeper district" of the affluent East coast - looks amazingly good, and it's strictly residential.

The deeper South you go, the more planned neighborhoods are there. But saying that "all US is like that" is a stretch.

abalashov32• 10 years ago

And yet, one did not need a driving licence to leave a "sleeper district", nor were their streets (save for main arteries) built out as pedestrian-hostile highways, and teenagers as well as adults had the same means to access the rest of the city.

jimbobimbo2• 10 years ago

So, essentially, it's just easier to get in and out of the hellhole.

Why Suburbia Sucks

Related Stories