3 ms·

As a Dutchman, I'll never understand the American idea that "suburban feel" has to mean "fully detached houses". I mean, I live in a country where nearly all su

As a Dutchman, I'll never understand the American idea that "suburban feel" has to mean "fully detached houses". I mean, I live in a country where nearly all suburbs and small towns consist of mostly connected houses - duplexes, triplexes, hexadecaplexes (pardon if my Latin fails me here), and so on. The big downside to such housing (I live in the middle of a chain of 20-odd connected houses) is that gardens are small-ish and close to the neighbours'. If they barbecue, you're sitting in the smoke. But hey, this isn't Texas, people only grill every so often. At the same time, the benefits are enormous: because suburban density is higher, everything is biking distance, even in bigger cities. You need a car for less, which means that there's less cars, so streets are safer. The local suburban shopping areas are well equipped and nearby (biking distance and often walking distance). In my suburb, there's a few "shopping areas", i.e. street corners with a supermarket and a bunch of other shops (drugstore, kebab parlor, clothes maybe, etc). These shopping areas are not even a kilometer apart from one another. If you live halfway two then you can walk 500m either direction and have sufficient facilities for your daily needs. These shops can stay in business because the suburb is relatively densely populated. If we had detached housing everywhere, the shops would need to be bigger (to make it worth driving to), and thus further away (cheaper rent), and thus need big tarmac parking lots, making it harder in turn to visit multiple shops in a row, etc. It's just a nasty downward spiral. I'm really glad the Dutch housing culture developed this way. I mean even small towns in cheap areas are built this way, even if the ground prices would mean detached houses are affordable for most. People just want to live close to facilities. Connected housing is the best backyard-included way to accomplish that.

Swizec 7y ago
One of the things I miss most about Europe is how even small tiny villages full of detached housing tend to cluster together so everything is walking distance. Keeps the good arable land free for agriculture. Here's an example from google: https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcache.desktopnexus.com%2Fthumbseg%2F1595%2F1595790-bigthumbnail.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Farchitecture.desktopnexus.com%2Fwallpaper%2F1595790%2F&docid=kXnw_HS-5NTw7M&tbnid=KK_viuLTjnGqhM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwiQx5nQlJPjAhXSXc0KHQKZATEQMwioASggMCA..i&w=450&h=337&bih=947&biw=1523&q=european%20village&ved=0ahUKEwiQx5nQlJPjAhXSXc0KHQKZATEQMwioASggMCA&iact=mrc&uact=8 https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcache.des... I guess this didn't happen in most of USA because agriculture was already industrialized by the time suburbia was invented. Not to mention the automobile. So everything is spraaaaawling. Even American cities tend to sprawl out endlessly if they can (think LA). It's quite a shame. SF, NYC, and a handful of others seem like the only places you can live in this country without driving everywhere all the time :/
- majewsky 7y ago
  > so everything is walking distance Depends on what you mean by "everything". Sure, every house in that village is within walking distance. But villages of this size typically don't have any amenities. Back in the good ol' days, there used to be at least some businesses in the villages themselves, but nowadays you have to commute to the next town to reach any supermarkets and amenities (where "town" is anything above about 5,000 inhabitants). Source: Live in Germany, in a big city. Have relatives living in villages like the picture shows.
dalbasal 7y ago
The difference goes back to the origin. "Suburbs" in the US sense were largely about two things originally: a "country lifestyle" and cars. The whole idea was to escape urban density and mimic spacious country living where a home can go back to being "a castle," without all the interdependence that density brings. Sites were big and country-like. Cars were at the heart of the whole idea, as the enabler. Suburbs were designed for cars. The idea was that cars freed designers (like FLW) from needing to worry about walkability. I think to find a Dutch equivalent, you probably need to look to more rural areas, like the old cattle farming villages near Groningen. Those villages and surrounding countryside are more like a 1950s designed suburb than a "suburb" of Rotterdam. What you are describing is a good model, and it suites what more people want today. It just isn't closely related to the suburbs that exist I. The US, Australia and other places that expanded with those models in the 50s & 60s.
- Svip 7y ago
  Doesn't it also have something to do with the fact that the US has so much more land compared to the amount of people who live there (population density) in comparison to Europe? Basically, we don't have a lot of land in Europe. And given ancient rights, not a lot of land was readily available to simply sprawl suburbia onto. Not that your factors don't matter, but I think there are additional factors for why it never took off in Europe. Lest we forget, Europeans were also very excited about the car in the 1950s/60s/70s. Several bigger cities in Europe tore down central parts to make way for cars. Stockholm comes to mind. Which is a damn shame.
  - dalbasal 7y ago
    It does, for sure... especially in the Netherlands. Part of the way these practicalities played a role was/is via design philosophies. I just think we should keep in mind that in large part, the US-like suburb system works as it was designed to. It was intentionally designed to enable a certain, the car-centric lifestyle enables spaciousness/sprawl. It's not an unintended consequence. Tastes have shifted (especially among architects and such) and it is now seen as "sprawl necessitates cars" rather than "cars enable spaciousness." Walkability is seen as a value and sprawl is seen as a barrier to it. When these designs were made, spaciousness was seen as a value and cars were seen as an enabler of it. A lot of the issues we see now are (a) problems of scale. What happens when a city already has 1m suburban homes. (b) changing values/tastes.
ardacinar 7y ago
> hexadecaplexes (pardon if my Latin fails me here) decahexaplexes, I think.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  I spent five minutes googling for this to no avail. I really want to know this. If you're right, then why do I do my taxes in hexadecimal and not in decaheximal? Does anyone know what "(Latin numeral)-ex" is called? I'm not even sure what term to search for :-) Also is it even Latin? Greek, maybe? A mix?
  - chronial 7y ago
    They are called cardinal prefixes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeral_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeral_prefix According to that page, both hexadeca- and decahexa- are valid. I think hexadeca- is more common. You gave on example, another is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUPAC_numerical_multiplier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUPAC_numerical_multiplier.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
ashildr 7y ago
Biking is for liberals and not needing a car is socialism...
- skrebbel 7y ago
  I know you're trying to do the kind of non-witty sarcasm that usually just yields endless downvotes on HN, but you're onto something that I hadn't considered. I don't associate cars with anything, culturally. They're just a thing I use, like the dishwasher. But if there's a deep cultural idea that "car = freedom" then a residential area built around cars makes a lot more sense.
  - jdormit 7y ago
    This is absolutely part of the American cultural bedrock. The gap-year road-trip, the teenager's first car, every single fast and furious movie... A really good recent example of this sort of meme is the movie Baby Driver. American culture equates driving with freedom, youth, and good times. Getting a car is a rite of passage in a lot of US communities.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  needing a car is socialism... It's about time the political left reclaimed that word.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > Biking is for liberals and not needing a car is socialism... Regulating that to drive a car, you need a driver's license is dictatorship. Building cities so that you need a car is enslaving the public to the car industry.
latch 7y ago
You can take this further. Having lived both styles you mention, plus the ultra dense, I (tongue-in-cheek) don't understand how a Dutchman's idea of "suburban feel" has to means "connected houses". In a metropolis, almost everything is a few minutes walk away...and lots of it. Not a "kebab parlor" for eating, but hundreds of different restaurants (from every culture at every price point). Not a few "shopping areas" but first class shopping malls. These shopping malls aren't even _500m apart_ from each other, but directly connected. Public transport is great and cheap. This variety and, in many cases, extreme multiculturalism, exists because of dense population. If there's on downside it's likely that some of these cities appear to be poorly planned: little green space and a lot of pollution. But not all (anecdotally, the ones worth living seem to have relatively few cars, but maybe that's a correlation).
t34543 7y ago
Single family detached homes are meant for isolation. Living next to people sucks. Having your own home was a luxury. I’m extremely sensitive to sound and absolutely cannot share any walls with anyone.

Swizec 7y ago

One of the things I miss most about Europe is how even small tiny villages full of detached housing tend to cluster together so everything is walking distance. Keeps the good arable land free for agriculture. Here's an example from google: https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcache.desktopnexus.com%2Fthumbseg%2F1595%2F1595790-bigthumbnail.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Farchitecture.desktopnexus.com%2Fwallpaper%2F1595790%2F&docid=kXnw_HS-5NTw7M&tbnid=KK_viuLTjnGqhM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwiQx5nQlJPjAhXSXc0KHQKZATEQMwioASggMCA..i&w=450&h=337&bih=947&biw=1523&q=european%20village&ved=0ahUKEwiQx5nQlJPjAhXSXc0KHQKZATEQMwioASggMCA&iact=mrc&uact=8 https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcache.des... I guess this didn't happen in most of USA because agriculture was already industrialized by the time suburbia was invented. Not to mention the automobile. So everything is spraaaaawling. Even American cities tend to sprawl out endlessly if they can (think LA). It's quite a shame. SF, NYC, and a handful of others seem like the only places you can live in this country without driving everywhere all the time :/

majewsky 7y ago
> so everything is walking distance Depends on what you mean by "everything". Sure, every house in that village is within walking distance. But villages of this size typically don't have any amenities. Back in the good ol' days, there used to be at least some businesses in the villages themselves, but nowadays you have to commute to the next town to reach any supermarkets and amenities (where "town" is anything above about 5,000 inhabitants). Source: Live in Germany, in a big city. Have relatives living in villages like the picture shows.

dalbasal 7y ago

The difference goes back to the origin. "Suburbs" in the US sense were largely about two things originally: a "country lifestyle" and cars. The whole idea was to escape urban density and mimic spacious country living where a home can go back to being "a castle," without all the interdependence that density brings. Sites were big and country-like. Cars were at the heart of the whole idea, as the enabler. Suburbs were designed for cars. The idea was that cars freed designers (like FLW) from needing to worry about walkability. I think to find a Dutch equivalent, you probably need to look to more rural areas, like the old cattle farming villages near Groningen. Those villages and surrounding countryside are more like a 1950s designed suburb than a "suburb" of Rotterdam. What you are describing is a good model, and it suites what more people want today. It just isn't closely related to the suburbs that exist I. The US, Australia and other places that expanded with those models in the 50s & 60s.

Svip 7y ago
Doesn't it also have something to do with the fact that the US has so much more land compared to the amount of people who live there (population density) in comparison to Europe? Basically, we don't have a lot of land in Europe. And given ancient rights, not a lot of land was readily available to simply sprawl suburbia onto. Not that your factors don't matter, but I think there are additional factors for why it never took off in Europe. Lest we forget, Europeans were also very excited about the car in the 1950s/60s/70s. Several bigger cities in Europe tore down central parts to make way for cars. Stockholm comes to mind. Which is a damn shame.
- dalbasal 7y ago
  It does, for sure... especially in the Netherlands. Part of the way these practicalities played a role was/is via design philosophies. I just think we should keep in mind that in large part, the US-like suburb system works as it was designed to. It was intentionally designed to enable a certain, the car-centric lifestyle enables spaciousness/sprawl. It's not an unintended consequence. Tastes have shifted (especially among architects and such) and it is now seen as "sprawl necessitates cars" rather than "cars enable spaciousness." Walkability is seen as a value and sprawl is seen as a barrier to it. When these designs were made, spaciousness was seen as a value and cars were seen as an enabler of it. A lot of the issues we see now are (a) problems of scale. What happens when a city already has 1m suburban homes. (b) changing values/tastes.

ardacinar 7y ago

> hexadecaplexes (pardon if my Latin fails me here) decahexaplexes, I think.

skrebbel 7y ago
I spent five minutes googling for this to no avail. I really want to know this. If you're right, then why do I do my taxes in hexadecimal and not in decaheximal? Does anyone know what "(Latin numeral)-ex" is called? I'm not even sure what term to search for :-) Also is it even Latin? Greek, maybe? A mix?
- chronial 7y ago
  They are called cardinal prefixes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeral_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeral_prefix According to that page, both hexadeca- and decahexa- are valid. I think hexadeca- is more common. You gave on example, another is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUPAC_numerical_multiplier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUPAC_numerical_multiplier.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

ashildr 7y ago

Biking is for liberals and not needing a car is socialism...

skrebbel 7y ago
I know you're trying to do the kind of non-witty sarcasm that usually just yields endless downvotes on HN, but you're onto something that I hadn't considered. I don't associate cars with anything, culturally. They're just a thing I use, like the dishwasher. But if there's a deep cultural idea that "car = freedom" then a residential area built around cars makes a lot more sense.
- jdormit 7y ago
  This is absolutely part of the American cultural bedrock. The gap-year road-trip, the teenager's first car, every single fast and furious movie... A really good recent example of this sort of meme is the movie Baby Driver. American culture equates driving with freedom, youth, and good times. Getting a car is a rite of passage in a lot of US communities.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
needing a car is socialism... It's about time the political left reclaimed that word.
wolfgke 7y ago
> Biking is for liberals and not needing a car is socialism... Regulating that to drive a car, you need a driver's license is dictatorship. Building cities so that you need a car is enslaving the public to the car industry.

latch 7y ago

You can take this further. Having lived both styles you mention, plus the ultra dense, I (tongue-in-cheek) don't understand how a Dutchman's idea of "suburban feel" has to means "connected houses". In a metropolis, almost everything is a few minutes walk away...and lots of it. Not a "kebab parlor" for eating, but hundreds of different restaurants (from every culture at every price point). Not a few "shopping areas" but first class shopping malls. These shopping malls aren't even _500m apart_ from each other, but directly connected. Public transport is great and cheap. This variety and, in many cases, extreme multiculturalism, exists because of dense population. If there's on downside it's likely that some of these cities appear to be poorly planned: little green space and a lot of pollution. But not all (anecdotally, the ones worth living seem to have relatively few cars, but maybe that's a correlation).

t34543 7y ago

Single family detached homes are meant for isolation. Living next to people sucks. Having your own home was a luxury. I’m extremely sensitive to sound and absolutely cannot share any walls with anyone.