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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
> 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/
> "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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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".
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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).
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":
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.
[+] [-] increment_i|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] throwawaybookst|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JPKab|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] maxsilver|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rpedela|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] colmvp|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|10 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] humbleMouse|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] StevePerkins|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] matwood|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Touche|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jey|10 years ago|reply
To me that sounds like an extrapolation from only observing high-traffic areas like SoMa, not the neighborhoods most people actually live.
[+] [-] dmoy|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] CameronBanga|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] arkades|10 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|10 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] ZenoArrow|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jacobolus|10 years ago|reply
Try comparing an online map satellite view of Valparaiso to some new housing development from >1990, and you’ll observe dramatic differences.
[+] [-] aquadrop|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stepvhen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abalashov|10 years ago|reply
Don't worry, I'm not offended! :-)
[+] [-] abalashov|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manachar|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cowsandmilk|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] 55555|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] slr555|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mattdeboard|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] fiatmoney|10 years ago|reply
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|reply
[+] [-] phd514|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|10 years ago|reply
I can't stand those "charming" dense, oppressive cities.
[+] [-] terda12|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] coned88|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChicagoDave|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] criddell|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] coned88|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] grecy|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] MisterBastahrd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abalashov|10 years ago|reply
I agree -- that sounds quite terrible indeed!
[+] [-] jcoffland|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mooreds|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KB1JWQ|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|10 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] andrewfromx|10 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] ThePhysicist|10 years ago|reply
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.