5 ms·

Just curious, what did you and your wife find unpleasant about growing up in the suburbs? I grew up in a suburb and loved it very much.

by keehun 11y ago

pnathan 11y ago
We were dependant on our parents to do anything or go anywhere that was more than a few blocks away. No infrastructure for biking existed worth talking about. Sidewalks were sketchy; no one expected pedestrians. Visiting friends was hard, and depended on parental coordination. Any sort of outing was a Big Deal; kids had to be wrapped up and put in the car, then we all had to trundle off somewhere, then the reverse had to be put into motion. A transit system in a dense urban area makes these issues go away. Slightly location dependant - there were no museums of quality[0] within hundreds of miles; same for zoos, libraries[1], symphonies, operas, plays, etc. Density drives tax base and demand; any reasonable urban area has all of the above. Suburbs, as a common rule of thumb, strive for conformity and blandness. This has held true since the white flight era in the US[2]. So you wind up with really crappy aesthetics, and uninteresting options for engagement. A very common result is the alienated suburban teenager bored out of their skull. We were, to greater and lesser degrees. Now, as adults, we both recognize several serious problems with the suburb/exurb system in the US. 1. It's not sustainable economically. You have a huge infrastructure system on a low density population; hard choices start coming out to play because of the cost of maintenance, which generally was capitalized by developers, but the opex is borne by the government; local politics in the US has evidently generally shifted to anti-tax Republican demographics; with fewer people supporting the burden, issues come out to play. So the net result is life is getting worse there. 2. It's not environmentally sustainable. Efficiency rises significantly as you start densifying the region; new services become possible at critical masses - one of the big ones is transit. This drives pollution down, decreases oil use, etc, etc. 3. It promotes closed-mindedness; without having to deal with the breadth of humanity, you don't have to cope with all of the reality involved, leading to really terrible policy decisions. Forcing contact with The Other and humanizing them tends to work out better in the long run. Referencing current politics: https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/687997269258407937 https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/687997269258407937 . NYC's great strength is having to deal with other people. Anyway, if you take some time to look carefully at the "new urbanist" movement, these themes are repeated over and over again. It's not democrat, republican, libertarian, or green; but it recognizes many of the issues those viewpoints present. I'm not ashamed to say that I'd rather live in Manhattan, NYC than in any arbitrary suburb I know of (Now, if I could afford that in a residence I could raise kids in... :( ). [0] Local History Museum is what was available. [1] Less of a problem as a young child, much more of a problem as a teen. [2] Note that "urban" is often an appellation on something meaning "black people". I wouldn't actually call suburbs racist by design, but I would invite quiet contemplation of race and environment in the US.
ACow_Adonis 11y ago
Not American (aus), and not op, but I grew up and moved between semi-rural, suburban, and now am in a city. Now, the human being is a pretty adaptable creature that normalises what they experience every day, so a lot of these are things I only noticed after moving from environment to environment. I think I got just as much additional activity time in the rural setting as I did growing up in suburbia, because trips to playground or ovals or swimming pools or tennis courts all involved car trips. Ditto shopping, movies, etc. Of course, now I'm an adult, I know commute times need to be added as a downside. Where the suburbs turned into "hell on earth" was during the teen years, when you're struggling for independence/stimulation, but you're stuck in the teenage equivalent of solitary confinement. The internet came just in time for me. As I've said before, it all just seemed normal then, but as I moved around, I learnt that there were places in the world you could walk to the supermarket/movies/library. Where buses came more than once every 2 hours and didn't involve a half hour wait to get what was notionally a few km's down the road. Where your friends actually lived close enough for you to visit. And those facilities where you had to get into the car? Well now they are just down the road too and you can walk, or catch the sub-15 minute public transport straight there. We're definitely going to give the urban child thing a go if we have children. Though part of that will necessarily mean a change of attitude. We no longer want a 4 bedroom house with a backyard for kids, primarily because large parts of what we would of tried to have gained by having such space can instead be outsourced to community facilities instead.
matwood 11y ago
After reading many replies it sounds like many people lived in horrible places, not just that they were suburbs. I live in what would be considered suburb now and would have loved to be here as a kid. A river with docks is only a block or so away. There are multiple fields and parks. There are tennis courts and a pool. Sidewalks also blanket the whole neighborhood which you can follow up to the closest grocery store. If I wanted to go to the city I have to drive, that is a downside. But, when I was working from home full time I was debating on getting a golf cart and seeing how long I would go without driving my car.
- akgerber 11y ago
  America has been building suburbs for 100 years so there's a lot of variation— I grew up in a walkable streetcar suburb of Milwaukee that was right next to the city and looked like many urban neighborhoods, with narrow streets and sidewalks and a decent mix of multifamily housing. Most people still drove for transportation, but it wasn't nearly as mandatory as in many post-1970 suburbs.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  As the other poster said, there's a lot of variation in "suburbs" in America. I recently lived a township in northern NJ, which effectively was a "suburb" in the NYC metro area. There was a convenience store just down the street (a 1-minute walk away), a high school right next door, a small river and a park a few minutes away, a "downtown" area less than 10 minutes' walk away, etc. A bug stop at the end of my little street took me to Manhattan in less than 60 minutes. If I wanted to go to other nearby towns, however, I needed a car because the buses were too slow, though a fair number of (poorer) people did use them for that. The houses were really close together and typically quite old; mine was built in 1930. Heating costs were high though because those old houses aren't well-insulated (and that house had been renovated with new windows so it wasn't too horrible, unlike some others). There were lots of sidewalks everywhere, though they tended to be in rough shape in places because of all the salt in the winter; they had to replace them a lot. I also lived in the Phoenix metro area for quite a while. That was totally different. No shopping within walking distance at all, if you were lucky there might be some kind of park near your development, but older neighborhoods usually didn't have that. HOAs were commonplace and horribly run. There were sidewalks everywhere, but they were only good for walking around the neighborhood to get some exercise, not for actually going anywhere. Any place you might want to go required a car, and public transit was really awful. There were buses, but they tended to go to major destinations, and suburban housing developments weren't among them. Honestly, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we had much higher-density housing with mixed commercial/residential areas so it was easy to walk to nearby eateries and convenience stores. The problem is the rent prices are always much too high, and I'd like to see some kind of political action to deal with that. I suspect the culprit is a combination of real estate speculation and insufficient supply caused by zoning laws.

Just curious, what did you and your wife find unpleasant about growing up in the suburbs? I grew up in a suburb and loved it very much.

by keehun 11y ago

Just curious, what did you and your wife find unpleasant about growing up in the suburbs? I grew up in a suburb and loved it very much.

pnathan 11y ago

We were dependant on our parents to do anything or go anywhere that was more than a few blocks away. No infrastructure for biking existed worth talking about. Sidewalks were sketchy; no one expected pedestrians. Visiting friends was hard, and depended on parental coordination. Any sort of outing was a Big Deal; kids had to be wrapped up and put in the car, then we all had to trundle off somewhere, then the reverse had to be put into motion. A transit system in a dense urban area makes these issues go away. Slightly location dependant - there were no museums of quality[0] within hundreds of miles; same for zoos, libraries[1], symphonies, operas, plays, etc. Density drives tax base and demand; any reasonable urban area has all of the above. Suburbs, as a common rule of thumb, strive for conformity and blandness. This has held true since the white flight era in the US[2]. So you wind up with really crappy aesthetics, and uninteresting options for engagement. A very common result is the alienated suburban teenager bored out of their skull. We were, to greater and lesser degrees. Now, as adults, we both recognize several serious problems with the suburb/exurb system in the US. 1. It's not sustainable economically. You have a huge infrastructure system on a low density population; hard choices start coming out to play because of the cost of maintenance, which generally was capitalized by developers, but the opex is borne by the government; local politics in the US has evidently generally shifted to anti-tax Republican demographics; with fewer people supporting the burden, issues come out to play. So the net result is life is getting worse there. 2. It's not environmentally sustainable. Efficiency rises significantly as you start densifying the region; new services become possible at critical masses - one of the big ones is transit. This drives pollution down, decreases oil use, etc, etc. 3. It promotes closed-mindedness; without having to deal with the breadth of humanity, you don't have to cope with all of the reality involved, leading to really terrible policy decisions. Forcing contact with The Other and humanizing them tends to work out better in the long run. Referencing current politics: https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/687997269258407937 https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/687997269258407937 . NYC's great strength is having to deal with other people. Anyway, if you take some time to look carefully at the "new urbanist" movement, these themes are repeated over and over again. It's not democrat, republican, libertarian, or green; but it recognizes many of the issues those viewpoints present. I'm not ashamed to say that I'd rather live in Manhattan, NYC than in any arbitrary suburb I know of (Now, if I could afford that in a residence I could raise kids in... :( ). [0] Local History Museum is what was available. [1] Less of a problem as a young child, much more of a problem as a teen. [2] Note that "urban" is often an appellation on something meaning "black people". I wouldn't actually call suburbs racist by design, but I would invite quiet contemplation of race and environment in the US.

ACow_Adonis 11y ago

Not American (aus), and not op, but I grew up and moved between semi-rural, suburban, and now am in a city. Now, the human being is a pretty adaptable creature that normalises what they experience every day, so a lot of these are things I only noticed after moving from environment to environment. I think I got just as much additional activity time in the rural setting as I did growing up in suburbia, because trips to playground or ovals or swimming pools or tennis courts all involved car trips. Ditto shopping, movies, etc. Of course, now I'm an adult, I know commute times need to be added as a downside. Where the suburbs turned into "hell on earth" was during the teen years, when you're struggling for independence/stimulation, but you're stuck in the teenage equivalent of solitary confinement. The internet came just in time for me. As I've said before, it all just seemed normal then, but as I moved around, I learnt that there were places in the world you could walk to the supermarket/movies/library. Where buses came more than once every 2 hours and didn't involve a half hour wait to get what was notionally a few km's down the road. Where your friends actually lived close enough for you to visit. And those facilities where you had to get into the car? Well now they are just down the road too and you can walk, or catch the sub-15 minute public transport straight there. We're definitely going to give the urban child thing a go if we have children. Though part of that will necessarily mean a change of attitude. We no longer want a 4 bedroom house with a backyard for kids, primarily because large parts of what we would of tried to have gained by having such space can instead be outsourced to community facilities instead.

matwood 11y ago

After reading many replies it sounds like many people lived in horrible places, not just that they were suburbs. I live in what would be considered suburb now and would have loved to be here as a kid. A river with docks is only a block or so away. There are multiple fields and parks. There are tennis courts and a pool. Sidewalks also blanket the whole neighborhood which you can follow up to the closest grocery store. If I wanted to go to the city I have to drive, that is a downside. But, when I was working from home full time I was debating on getting a golf cart and seeing how long I would go without driving my car.

akgerber 11y ago
America has been building suburbs for 100 years so there's a lot of variation— I grew up in a walkable streetcar suburb of Milwaukee that was right next to the city and looked like many urban neighborhoods, with narrow streets and sidewalks and a decent mix of multifamily housing. Most people still drove for transportation, but it wasn't nearly as mandatory as in many post-1970 suburbs.
Grishnakh 11y ago
As the other poster said, there's a lot of variation in "suburbs" in America. I recently lived a township in northern NJ, which effectively was a "suburb" in the NYC metro area. There was a convenience store just down the street (a 1-minute walk away), a high school right next door, a small river and a park a few minutes away, a "downtown" area less than 10 minutes' walk away, etc. A bug stop at the end of my little street took me to Manhattan in less than 60 minutes. If I wanted to go to other nearby towns, however, I needed a car because the buses were too slow, though a fair number of (poorer) people did use them for that. The houses were really close together and typically quite old; mine was built in 1930. Heating costs were high though because those old houses aren't well-insulated (and that house had been renovated with new windows so it wasn't too horrible, unlike some others). There were lots of sidewalks everywhere, though they tended to be in rough shape in places because of all the salt in the winter; they had to replace them a lot. I also lived in the Phoenix metro area for quite a while. That was totally different. No shopping within walking distance at all, if you were lucky there might be some kind of park near your development, but older neighborhoods usually didn't have that. HOAs were commonplace and horribly run. There were sidewalks everywhere, but they were only good for walking around the neighborhood to get some exercise, not for actually going anywhere. Any place you might want to go required a car, and public transit was really awful. There were buses, but they tended to go to major destinations, and suburban housing developments weren't among them. Honestly, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we had much higher-density housing with mixed commercial/residential areas so it was easy to walk to nearby eateries and convenience stores. The problem is the rent prices are always much too high, and I'd like to see some kind of political action to deal with that. I suspect the culprit is a combination of real estate speculation and insufficient supply caused by zoning laws.