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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

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.

ZenoArrow 10y 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.
jacobolus 10y 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 10y 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.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Did you look? Judging from the satellite pictures, it’s a pretty sleepy small town, and there isn’t really anything outside the “core” (except farmland and a few terrible but limited modern-style housing developments). That core is made up of a relatively dense grid of small streets, with lots of trees and lots of small tightly packed houses. There’s fairly easy access to shops and so on, and while a lot of space is spent on parking lots, it isn’t out of control. The design is significantly different from more recent suburbs. Looks pretty boring for anyone between the ages of 10–35, and probably still quite inconvenient for the elderly or disabled, but also reasonably walkable. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4752549,-87.0579275,2374m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4752549,-87.0579275,2374m/da...
  - bbarn 10y ago
    I used to have to work in both these cities when I did field service. Valpo is a little unique, though I suspect part of that is proximity to the beautiful Dunes lakeshore area. Merrilville on the other hand, is a standard, typical suburb. The intersection of I65 and Hwy 30 is suburban shopping central, mixed with large industry buildings.
arkades 10y 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).
- _delirium 10y 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.
aquadrop 10y 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 :)
- criddell 10y ago
  I'm guessing Google street view doesn't do a lot of photography between November and March.
stepvhen 10y 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.
TulliusCicero 10y 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/ http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
abalashov 10y 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! :-)
tptacek 10y 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".
abalashov 10y 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.

ZenoArrow 10y 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.

jacobolus 10y 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 10y 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.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Did you look? Judging from the satellite pictures, it’s a pretty sleepy small town, and there isn’t really anything outside the “core” (except farmland and a few terrible but limited modern-style housing developments). That core is made up of a relatively dense grid of small streets, with lots of trees and lots of small tightly packed houses. There’s fairly easy access to shops and so on, and while a lot of space is spent on parking lots, it isn’t out of control. The design is significantly different from more recent suburbs. Looks pretty boring for anyone between the ages of 10–35, and probably still quite inconvenient for the elderly or disabled, but also reasonably walkable. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4752549,-87.0579275,2374m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4752549,-87.0579275,2374m/da...
- bbarn 10y ago
  I used to have to work in both these cities when I did field service. Valpo is a little unique, though I suspect part of that is proximity to the beautiful Dunes lakeshore area. Merrilville on the other hand, is a standard, typical suburb. The intersection of I65 and Hwy 30 is suburban shopping central, mixed with large industry buildings.

arkades 10y 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).

_delirium 10y 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.

aquadrop 10y 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 :)

criddell 10y ago
I'm guessing Google street view doesn't do a lot of photography between November and March.

stepvhen 10y 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.

TulliusCicero 10y 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/ http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

abalashov 10y 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! :-)

tptacek 10y 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".

abalashov 10y 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.