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> 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
by maxsilver 10y 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.
- abalashov 10y agoIt 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!
- jandrese 10y agoYes, but it is annoying to get these mildly scolding articles about how I'm a terrible person for living in a suburb, when the only places in the city I could afford on my budget are classified as ghettos. They don't even have good transit access because the crushing poverty in that part of the city allowed the transit to crumble.
- abalashov 10y agoIf anyone deserves a scolding, it's governments for their insane 50s-60s zoning laws and perverse incentives offered to developers of sprawl, and whoever else is responsible for the fact that suburbia is the only option you've got.