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I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway o

I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions whizzing past at speeds that will maim or kill you. There are a few places you can go from here. There are a few parks, where you can have some green space, along with the sound of the steel contraptions. There are other strips of concrete throughout the city between the contraptions' domain and the buildings. There are places you can pay to be allowed to occupy for a time. There are places you are paid to be for some number of hours each day. And there's the public library if you can reach it. If you're responsible for just you and have access to a ready stream of money, you can cobble together an okay existence from this. You escape into intellectual pursuits in your small housing box. You spend lots of hours at the place you are paid to be. You visit your friends' small housing boxes. You spend some money to have somewhere else to go from time to time. If you have small children, this changes. Intellectual pursuits? They can't read yet, so your only option is parking them in front of videos. It hurts to see their faces go slack and their motions grow spastic. You spend time taking them to visit their friends in other boxes and meeting their friends at the park. You breathe a sigh of relief when they enter school, since now they have a place to be analogous to the place you are paid to be. You can't let them outside to play on the narrow strips of concrete. One false move and some yahoo in a steel contraption has killed them. If you want families in the city, bulldoze the major urban cores and replace them with low rise cohousing communities. Cars are parked on the edge. Everyone lives in spaces that face onto communal spaces. Community centers become focal points in each block, along with lots of other public space, indoors and out, instead of turning it all over to commercial interests. Short of that, if you want to raise a family and you have the means, you buy your own place that has its own small park and inside space to play. Everyone is cut off and must own the same amenities because of the tyranny of commercial space and cars over the ground level of the city.

vidanay 7y ago
And eliminate US style separate zoning. European mixed use zoning is much more "social" allowing shorter commutes to work and shorter trips to retail.
- sanderjd 7y ago
  I think the places your parent comment was characterizing are the ones with mixed use zoning. Think Manhattan, shops on the first floor, office and housing space above. All of the parent's points stand.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  I prefer to call it "respecting people's property rights", "mixed use" and "European style zoning" are too vague leave way too much room for curtailment of freedom which when they run their course bring us basically back to the status quo.
  - kspacewalk 7y ago
    Every bylaw and city planning initiative "curtails freedom" for the sake of engineering a better, more efficient community and better quality of life. The issue with (in particular) single family residential zoning isn't that it limits what land owners can do with the land - in the city, this is unavoidable and very much desirable. It's that it artificially incentivizes inefficient, unhealthy and socially disconnected car-centric suburbia.
  - projektfu 7y ago
    I'm not sure what it can mean to respect people's property rights with respect to residential-only zoning. A zoning decision is not written into the original deed and can be changed with an exception by the zoning board or a general change in the city/county code. However, the residential-only zoning makes it difficult for one person to use their property as they see fit, for example, building a duplex or rentable apartment onto their house, or opening a small store or tiny school.
kccqzy 7y ago
> replace them with low rise cohousing communities I agree with almost everything you say but this. Why low rise? With high rises, we can use less space for housing and we would have more space for parks, libraries, and greenery.
- Izkata 7y ago
  Probably one of two things, one of which I believe is a mistaken correlation: * High-rises block more of the sky, making it not seems as worthwhile to go outside. * Mental detachment from the local area. The second one is what I've only in the past year or so realized myself. I used to live on the 3rd floor of a 3-floor building, and my apartment had a front and back entrance. The front entrance went to inside stairs out to the front of the building, but the back entrance when straight outside to a wooden porch, then had wooden steps down to ground level. Where I am now, only on the 5th floor of 24, there's only one entrance, to a hallway where I take the elevator to go down and outside. At my old place, I regularly went outside to do whatever on a whim. Nowadays, it's a really rare thing. And while there is a low-rise/high-rise correlation, I think it's the patio and the stairs, vs the hallway and the elevator that actually caused it. Having so much more distance between inside and outside creates an emotional distance where you don't even think about the outside, let alone decide whether or not to bother. I've yet to live in one, but I'm thinking if the high-rises have balconies, it would create the same effect as that patio did for me.
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- madhadron 7y ago
  When I saw low rise, I mean about four stories, maybe up to six. The height of Copenhagen, say. It produces a much more humane built environment and much less interior hellscape.
esoterica 7y ago
You might dislike cities, but please don’t narcissistically project your personal preferences into everyone else and claim that they are unpleasant for everyone.
tcbawo 7y ago
In the large city where I live, green spaces and parks are flourishing. There are many cultural amenities for children (zoos, museums, libraries). There is also a large ecosystem of for-profit child care/play spaces. Cars are everywhere, but bike sharing, bike lanes, and public transportation are also available. I'm not sure that the city is an unfriendly a place for small children. The biggest problem with all of this is cost in dollars and supervision time. I'm sure with the right priorities, those problems could be solved also. Suburban sprawl isn't inevitable.
- sanderjd 7y ago
  Yeah I was thinking this as I read the parent comment. Everything they said is true, but it's also true that there is a lot for kids to do in those places. The comment about plopping kids in front of screens applies more so to the suburbs than to downtown! What are kids supposed to do in their neighborhood? Letting kids wander and play outside is seen as basically criminal, and there's nothing else to do.
  - mrep 7y ago
    > Letting kids wander and play outside is seen as basically criminal, and there's nothing else to do. Not where I grew up and at least there is space to play sports. My friends and I used to play basketball, american football, and ultimate frisbee all the time growing up. Now I live downtown and the parks I walk past never have any free space.
iron0013 7y ago
Your description doesn't really sound like any actual city that I know of, although it sounds a little like how someone who's never been to New York City might describe it. Do you have a particular city in mind? Because "car-centric and pedestrian hostile" sounds more like most suburbs than most urban areas.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  I've lived in several cities including Boston and DC (and the urban cities that surround them both). It sounds like every wealthy city I've ever lived in or been to and sounds nothing like the 2nd tier cities that I've been to and now live in. When a city is wealthy it gets like the top level comment described. I don't know what it is but it's related to money. You can see this by comparing the wealther boroughs of NYC to the poorer ones or comparing the wealthier suburbs of Boston to the poorer ones. The poorer ones are more "alive" for lack of a better term. The car stuff really doesn't bother me. It's just a function of the dominant means of transit when that city was built out.
  - marnett 7y ago
    Consumer capitalism can not replace culture. I think that’s what your remarks about different bouroughs feeling alive was getting at.
  - asdff 7y ago
    I don't agree with the dystopian view in the OP, but I will say that I notice far fewer people outside in wealthier areas where I live than in poorer areas. I attribute it to most low income jobs not really being bound to the 9-5, so people might be out and about at all hours, especially now that school is out for the summer. It makes these areas feel warmer and closer knit vs. some of the sterile luxury apartments I've seen.
- madhadron 7y ago
  I lived in Manhattan, so I'm pretty clear on my description. And it's true, the suburbs are hostile, too. You just use your lot and single family home to try to reconstitute a usable environment.
finolex1 7y ago
It doesn't have to be low rise housing. Look at Singapore for an example of how high density, high-rise housing can coexist with plentiful public spaces.
- aeneasmackenzie 7y ago
  Singapore's fertility rates are at the "rock thrown off a cliff" level.
  - qwerty9876 7y ago
    It's not an environmental problem, it's a cultural problem. People just don't want to have children anymore, fertility rates have dropped a lot post-2012(smartphones and social media)
    - aeneasmackenzie 7y ago
      There are subgroups with above-replacement total fertility. Some people don't want to continue existing, but not everyone.
golemiprague 7y ago
This sounds like a very American view of things, most of the world has different city structure and different suburbs structure.
knolax 7y ago
Literally everything you said also applies to the suburbs though.
magduf 7y ago
You don't need "low rise cohousing communities" to have families in cities. Japanese cities are extremely dense, yet people raise families there just fine. On my trip to Japan, I was really struck by how many children I saw in the middles of cities (moreso in some districts than others, of course), whereas I never see children in downtown American cities. Of course, Japanese cities don't have enormous parking lots, everyone driving cars, etc. They have taxis of course, and some cars (not a lot really, given the population), and work vehicles, but not the huge amount of vehicle traffic we have. And of course, there's tons of trains and buses, so it's really cheap and easy to get around by public transit. On top of that, there's bicycles: tons of people get around by bicycle, and the traffic level and speeds are low enough to make this very safe, plus there's no culture there of being aggressive towards cyclists or pedestrians the way America has.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  The birth rate has completely nosedived in Japan aswel, its only 60% of the USA's
  - aikinai 7y ago
    Don’t have stats on me right now but I think it’s right in line with non-immigrant Americans’ birth rate. America (just as most developed nations) only props up their birth rate though immigration.
- topmonk 7y ago
  Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, well below replacement rates. Their society is also consists almost entirely of Japanese that all share the same culture. It would be very hard to emulate what they do and even so, no real guarantee that it would change anything.
  - scythe 7y ago
    Japan does have a low birthrate, but it also has a rising birthrate. Since 2005 Japan has seen a long general trend of increasing birthrates since the ‘60s. This turnaround coincides with efforts to make housing cheaper and cities more kid-friendly. They’ve gone from 1.26 to 1.44. It’s not a complete reversal, but the fact that Japan’s rising birth rate has defied regional and global trends and persists despite continued urbanization and secularization shows they might be on to something.
novok 7y ago
I don't see how much different this is from suburbia, but with even more car intermediated isolation from other people? I hated suburbia as a child, since you were stuck in the house and needed your parents to get you to anywhere. With rural areas the isolation is even larger if your on a farm that is miles away from any other human beings. You have a nearby forest to explore, but that isn't exclusive to rural areas. I think what your complaining about is culture, and you're conflating it with the form of housing. It's how you can't let kids go out and find other kids to play with in the local neighborhood like you could in the 70s or earlier because it's illegal and enforced quickly. You can do that in a city (see berlin: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/travel/berlin-family-holidays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/travel/berlin-family-holi... ), suburbia or a village but it's all dependent on culture and law.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  I think the pros/cons shift very quickly once the children get into their teenage years. when they are young and there are other children in the neighborhood, it is much easier for the parent to relax and let them go play together in the cul-de-sac. rough deal for the kid though if they don't manage to make friends on their street. when they get older, they develop more specific personalities/interests and they are likely to go to a larger school and make friends that live further away. when I was a kid, I lived basically right on the border between the city and the suburbs. all my friends lived just a little too far away to walk/bike to their houses, and the streets were busy enough that I doubt my parents would have let me anyway. any plans I made had to be convenient for my parents, and they tended to be pretty busy. this is just my opinion, but I think "real life" doesn't really begin until you can move around the world on your own. for me, this wasn't until I got my license near the end of high school (which represents its own danger; teenagers are terrible drivers). I suspect my friends who grew up in the city, taking public transit to hang out with each other, had much richer teenage years than I did, maybe even safer.
sethhochberg 7y ago
Bulldozing entire blocks of cities and replacing the mixed developments that were there with towers surrounded by isolated green space was attempted in the US during the middle of the century, under the guise of being "urban renewal". These projects were broadly considered failures, creating isolated communities with the net effect of displacing many more people in the "bulldoze" phase than they could attract in the "rebuild" phase. Many of these projects ended up as low-income public housing, developed huge crime problems in their isolation, and eventually got bulldozed themselves, in turn. There is some interesting historical reading here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4ef3/28b64fdb97357674725324ccc7380d8220ca.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4ef3/28b64fdb97357674725324... The modern twist on the concept is to focus on preservation instead of total replacement, trying to enhance the environment that attracted people to the diverse urban area in the first place rather than outright replacing it with centrally-planned alternatives. There are also large efforts to redevelop totally unused land (with projects like the Docklands in London or Hudson Yards in NYC) - but rarely in isolation, the goal is usually to incorporate the space into the rest of the city's fabric. I completely agree with your points about cars, though - most American cities devote far too much space to them, especially storage of empty ones. We'd do well to shift our streetscape priorities to people, especially in dense mixed-use areas, which I think would be a big step towards the communal spaces you envision.
- madhadron 7y ago
  Where did I ask for towers surrounded by isolated green space? Please look into what cohousing, as developed in Scandanavia, actually looks like.
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jacobolus 7y ago
Have you tried being a kid or raising a kid in the city? This description does not match my experience or my general impressions of other people’s experiences at all. Indeed, car-intermediated everything and complete dependence on parents is a much better description of suburban life for children than city life. I grew up in one of the most pleasant and active suburbs in the US, in a little college town, and it was still incredibly child-hostile. The city is IMO much friendlier to children. In the city people can and do walk all over, with longer trips made by transit. There are more small shops of all kinds, more coffeeshops, more live music, more social clubs, more classes, more playgrounds, more museums, and in general more regular human contact of all kinds. Kids can be independent at a younger age, and can pursue a wider range of interests with community infrastructure and support. > you have small children, this changes. Intellectual pursuits? They can't read yet, so your only option is parking them in front of videos. I have one 3-year-old kid and one 5-month-old kid in San Francisco. Neither of them watches significant amounts of videos (occasionally we watch kids’ movies or old Mr. Rogers episodes together). The other kids we meet at the playground don’t seem to do excessive amounts of video watching. Kids absolutely can do “intellectual pursuits”, but at their own level. First and foremost they play with all manner of physical objects – blocks, other construction toys, folded paper, empty cardboard boxes and yogurt containers, balls, sand, clay, water, their own bodies, ... Then kids love having stories told to them or books read to them. They love singing, using random household objects as percussion instruments, playing rhyming games, recognizing and naming objects, learning new words, counting random stuff, drawing with chalk and crayons, .... They love helping with household chores (not the most helpful at first, but they try), watching people do physical work of all kinds, play-acting all sorts of grown-up activities, ... By far the biggest problem for small kids here in SF is the high cost of housing and childcare and the distance from grandparents. Many families we know have moved away to find places with cheaper housing (e.g. they were previously living in a rent-controlled 1 bedroom apartment and decided they wanted a 2-bedroom place, but couldn’t afford to pay current market rent for it) or more help with childcare. > One false move and some yahoo in a steel contraption has killed them. It would be great to ban cars from more streets, and get the remaining cars down to 15–20 miles/hour. This is not really a city problem per se; our whole society is built around cars, and suburbs are generally worse than cities at putting pedestrians in harm’s way.
jinushaun 7y ago
I’m raising a child in NYC right now. What is this dystopia you are describing? It’s the opposite of my personal experience. NYC is such a kid friendly place to raise kids: Museums, zoos, aquariums, free events for kids, concerts just for babies, parks, swimming pools, little league, soccer league, skate parks, etc… we have it all. I can’t fathom how people raise kids in the suburbs. They must be so bored… You have a very narrow definition of the infrastructure required to raise kids. People have been raising families in cities long before suburbs were invented.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  > They must be so bored… Your preconceived notions of what suburban living is like are just as inaccurate as the perceptions of city life of the person you responded to.
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  - joebadmo 7y ago
    I grew up in suburbs, and couldn't go anywhere without a car, so I was very bored and watched a lot of television (though I read a lot of books, too). Currently raising two kids in an urban center, and I'm excited for them to have way more opportunities than I had.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      We raised our daughter from 0-5 in big cities, and there is definitely a huge appeal to that. But on the flip side, kids don’t need to “go anywhere.” They just need other kids around. When I grew up, we just roamed the neighborhood causing trouble. That element is missing in most cities today. You can’t just count on having a mess of kids on your block. Parents are the minority, so they have to more consciously get together and schedule activities with other parents.
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
vkou 7y ago
> I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. > Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions whizzing past at speeds that will maim or kill you. > There are a few places you can go from here. There are a few parks, where you can have some green space, along with the sound of the steel contraptions. There are other strips of concrete throughout the city between the contraptions' domain and the buildings. There are places you can pay to be allowed to occupy for a time. There are places you are paid to be for some number of hours each day. And there's the public library if you can reach it. You've actually described the typical suburb. Step outside your door into a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, and a shortly cut lawn, that you, at great expense of time, and money are allowed to maintain and inhabit (As long as you maintain it to the asinine, often environmentally-harmful expectations of your HOA/Municipality). Beyond that is a frequently sidewalk-less asphalt road, with two ton steel contraptions that are either stationary, or moving at speeds that will maim you. There is nowhere you can go without getting into a car. (Corollary: Your neighbour will be driving home from the bar, every other Friday, drunk as a skunk.) The nearest park is a mile away. You have some green space you can look at, but its all owned by other people, and if you spend too long gawking at a stranger's yard, somebody might call the cops. [1] If you drive far enough, you may find dreary places where you can pay to be allowed to occupy for a time, called stripmalls. A few may even contain a library. [1] Because only a criminal or a lunatic would be walking around in a suburb.
- CompanionCuuube 7y ago
  GP: > Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. You: > Step outside your door into a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, and a shortly cut lawn So they're the same in that they're different?
jseliger 7y ago
From a couple weeks ago: https://www.city-journal.org/decline-of-family-loneliness-epidemic https://www.city-journal.org/decline-of-family-loneliness-ep... And https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20116699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20116699.
drewcon 7y ago
Jesus. Literally went through this philosophical moment and just moved my young family out of the city. Pretty spot on.
tathougies 7y ago
So my moms parents had three children and my dads five. So not huge families but large. They grew up in a city in a third world country and frankly their childhood was a lot more dangerous than your imagined paranoia. Also your ideas of children are way off. We have a seven month old and we read to her, take her to the library, go to space talks, etc. Actually we do a lot more intellectual stuff now. My wife has taken some online courses ans weve started re learning french. Parents who put their kids in front of the TV are lazy. Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in. All the other dangers you mentioned are way overstated I do not understand this paranoia that has gripped the American public. The way people act would have you believe things are worse today than in the past when all actual data (anf observation) say the contrary
- dpeck 7y ago
  | Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in. Minus the used needles and other debris that litter many of them. It’s a sad state that that’s the best place people with drug problems can go, but it seems they don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s just not where I want to bring my kid to hangout.
  - flukus 7y ago
    Needle disposal boxes and injecting clinics are pretty good at cleaning that up. Not to mention modern needles that kids can't accidentally prick themselves on make it a much lesser issue than decades ago. Not to mention having a lot of other responsible adults around keeping an eye out for stuff like this.
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    Singapore solved this problem, and we should probably follow their example > Singapore's top diplomat in the UK, Michael Teo, defended Singapore's harsh drug laws by pointing to the country's lower rates for drug use. "8.2% of the UK population are cannabis abusers; in Singapore, it is 0.005%. For ecstasy, the figures are 1.8% for the UK and 0.003% for Singapore; and for opiates—such as heroin, opium, and morphine - 0.9% for the UK and 0.005% for Singapore," claimed Teo. "We do not have traffickers pushing drugs openly in the streets, nor do we need to run needle exchange centers." https://www.tripsavvy.com/drug-laws-in-singapore-1629780 https://www.tripsavvy.com/drug-laws-in-singapore-1629780
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clay_the_ripper 7y ago
I currently live in SF and could not imagine having kids here. I’m sure some people do, and have a great time. But it’s not a life that I would want, nor would I want for my kids. This narrative captures pretty accurately why I would not want to raise kids in this city. Now, some other city? Maybe. Probably in Europe. US cities though are just hard places to be. Hard people. Aggressive homelessness. Dirty. Unfriendly. Generally just unpleasant places to be. I would want my kids to grow up with more community and green space and also not have them walk through human feces on the way to school.
- 0xBABAD00C 7y ago
  That's more just SF though
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- asveikau 7y ago
  I am not sure what part of town you are in. Can you open google maps and tell me how much "green space" you see? More than I grew up with. Hint, there is a rather large rectangular one on the west side of town. But I have noticed (and been criticized on HN for claiming) that the parenting cultural bubble in SF seems completely unknown to many other subcultures. It is indeed a very good community, though.
  - eitally 7y ago
    Sure, but good luck easily getting to Golden Gate Park if you're, say, coming from Mission Bay. And if you can afford to live in the hillier parts of town the odds are good you probably have decent (albeit small) neighborhood parks. The problem with SF is that the public schools suck, the streets in a lot of the "urban" parts are rife with squalor, and the city is a lot bigger than it looks when you're trying to get from one side to the other. I mean, if you live in the Outer Sunset you may as well be in a "suburb".... I think SF requires a pretty specific mentality for one to intentionally raise children there [for people of such means to be able to choose to stay or go].
empath75 7y ago
I currently am raising two kids in the suburbs and the only reason we are not in the city is that rents are too expensive for a reasonable sized house/apartment.
mattupstate 7y ago
Sounds like the words of someone who didn't grow up in a city, currently/recently lives/lived in one they dislike, and hasn't found happiness somewhere else.
rayiner 7y ago
I mean that’s not really true, right? Here’s a residential neighborhood in Chicago: https://images.app.goo.gl/o9crCx8EYGJcz7NcA https://images.app.goo.gl/o9crCx8EYGJcz7NcA. Another view: https://images.app.goo.gl/2AFgALbMTH3KsxYbA https://images.app.goo.gl/2AFgALbMTH3KsxYbA. Not exactly the hellacape you describe. And homier than many new suburban subdivisions. (None of the suburban neighborhoods I’ve ever lived in have even had sidewalks.) You can get a surprising amount of density from low rise buildings, with narrow tree-lined streets and generous sidewalks.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I thought of replying, thought better of it. But it's true that you can get a lot of density from low rise buildings. My old neighborhood of 100 year old two story town houses is about 18,000 people per square mile. Friends of mine with older kids just let them roll around the city. There's a lot to do. My take on the bad thing about sprawl and suburbs is the amount of time and driving needed to get to not sprawl and suburbs. And when there was 'the city' and 'the suburb' living in 'the suburb' was 'nice'. Now that it's all suburbs and a city jammed with traffic from the suburbs, nothing is that nice.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I don't understand. What would your reply have been? Rayiner posted an image from a high density part of Lakeview, which is an inner urban neighborhood of Chicago, about a mile further from the (significantly larger) commercial core of Chicago than 16th and Mission is from 2nd and Market. I could give you pictures of the same neighborhood with mixed 2-3 flats and single-family homes on streets with total tree canopy and parks at the end, and Lakeview is one of the more urban parts of (residential) Chicago --- go to Avondale or Humboldt Park and and find more parks, more trees, and smaller houses, all in inner ring neighborhoods. What you've described would be the experience of living inside the Loop in Chicago, amidst class A high-rise office space. People do this! But they actively select themselves into it; by far, most people in Chicago live in residential neighborhoods that read as such, are close to the heart of the city, and don't respond at all to your description.
zachsnow 7y ago
This feels like hyperbole. Instead of saying you are wrong objectively, I’ll say instead that my subjective experience of “the city” is in stark contrast to this. Green spaces and the ocean abound. My neighbors are wonderful people. The businesses around me are owned and operated by local people. I can’t walk down the block without running into good folks with smiles on their faces. I try to bring the same energy to my neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine not living here. I think the city and the country and everywhere in between can be a wonderful or terrible place, but I would hesitate to say that any one place is right or wrong for any one person.
- sullyx 7y ago
  Where do you live?
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    My life in Glen Park is quite similar. Recently, I've taken to running to BART for a warm up before I take it to the Equinox and one of the first times I did, a neighbour stopped to ask me if I was in a hurry and if he could give me a lift. I accepted, obviously, and we chatted. Honestly, most of SF is rather friendly and nice. I like it. First moved here 6 years ago.
  - zachsnow 7y ago
    CA, USA. To be fair it’s not like everyone is smiling all the time! But I genuinely feel that my neighborhood is a great community mostly consisting of interesting and friendly people.
ajross 7y ago
I'm sorry, but... have you actually lived in a city? Actually spent time in a public park? Dined at an urban restaurant? Actually been (???!?) unable to reach a public library? This sounds just crazy to me. Literally everything you do in the suburbs, absent long hikes and home gardening, is more conveniently available in an urban center. You don't have to like it, but... that list of complaints just reads as nonsense to anyone actually living in these places.
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- pattrn 7y ago
  This mirrors my sentiment prior to moving to Boston. It turned out to be the opposite. It took more time to get to most places in the city than it took to get to equivalent places when I lived in New Hampshire. You name it: grocery stores, restaurants, pubs, cafes, shopping, parks, markets, etc. My wife and I moved back to NH after a year due to our quality of life dropping so drastically. Two of my childhood friends recently moved back from San Diego and Los Angeles for exactly the same reason. Now I can get to all of the aforementioned places via car in under 5 minutes. There's Uber and Lyft for when I want to go to a bar. DoorDash serves more than 50 local restaurants. Traffic adds at most 5 minutes to any drive, and only during a small window around 5pm. The city offers convenience in theory, but from my admittedly anecdotal experience it doesn't hold up in practice. And I'm not sure that matters. At the end of the day, it's just a preference.
  - ajross 7y ago
    > Now I can get to [grocery stores, restaurants, pubs, cafes, shopping, parks, markets, etc.] via car in under 5 minutes I... sorry, I don't believe that. I've never seen a suburb anywhere with ALL that stuff within the 1.5 mile radius you postulate. Sure, you get some of it locally. We have restaurants within 5 minutes, but the place we want to go tonight is 11 minutes away. There's a park next to the local school, sure, but the kids want to go swimming at the place with the good slide and it's 22 minutes away. And FWIW: I literally grew up in urban Boston, and live in west coast suburbs now.
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
Barcelona's super blocks seem the model for this
closeparen 7y ago
I don't know how to capture the hostility of suburbia any more perfectly than a walk down the El Camino in Sunnyvale. Try this on street view for a few blocks. Imagine yourself on the sidewalk. This is the world that the "urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places to be" consensus has given us. Maybe the cities this was built in response to really were some kind of unimaginable horror. But I'm pretty sure the cure is worse than the disease. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3655957,-122.0294912,3a,75y,335.01h,92.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQChOLWpYc6t6aaAhcMU-_w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3655957,-122.0294912,3a,75y,...
- kccqzy 7y ago
  Try a walk down University Ave in Palo Alto. That is the kind of place we mean.
  - closeparen 7y ago
    A lot of older suburbs have a main street like this, including the one I grew up in. They're grandfathered from before the zoning code, not allowed anywhere else in the municipality, and sometimes illegal to replicate even on the same lots [0]. Sunnyvale is what's allowed to exist at scale and to grow all across America. [0] http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/ http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/
- bsder 7y ago
  And what does that area have an hyperabundance of? Parking spaces and road lanes. You can choose to optimize for car throughput or not. Or you can choose to make your spaces look like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3082077,-71.3535296,3a,75y,262.78h,89.12t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1spl2_FMQL6CbFPiLM5EJRvA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Dpl2_FMQL6CbFPiLM5EJRvA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dsearch.TACTILE.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D229.76057%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3082077,-71.3535296,3a,75y,2... Your call.
  - closeparen 7y ago
Fomite 7y ago
When I lived in an urban core... I stepped out of my door into a hallway of doors, greeted by the scent of several different ethnic foods being cooked, and usually the sound of one or more families. I take an elevator down the stairs to the lobby, nod at the guy manning the desk who was interested in what I ordered yesterday (it was heavy - he thought car parts, was a rack-mount UPS). I step out into a U shaped walkway, lined with bushes, with a cherry tree in the middle before merging onto the sidewalk. Fifteen minutes away in one direction is a zoo that was free. Full of kids learning new things about amazing wildlife. Five minutes in the other direction is a hiking trail, onto another hiking trail.
rimliu 7y ago
90% of everything is the attitude.
plaidfuji 7y ago
Thom Yorke browses Hacker News? #blessed
fatnoah 7y ago
>I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. I'm sure such places exist, but I've lived in a city (Boston) for many years and this description doesn't apply to the areas I've lived. Somewhat ironically, the places in Boston that are closest to your description are the ones where they bulldozed large swaths and tried to remake things in a more people friendly way.
sershe 7y ago
It's actually completely opposite from my experience. The kids on the low-rise neighborhoods and burbs are stuck in the house unless there's a parent present whose full time job to haul them around. My nephews are growing up in the burbs, and they can barely walk to a gas station without the risk of being hit by a fast moving vehicle, and cannot reach even e.g. a park without driving. Sure, they can play baseball in the backyard. How exciting is that? I grew up in a major city... I was walking to play soccer on my own starting perhaps at 7yo (short walk to a field on streets with tons of foot traffic and hence slow cars), went to school on my own since around the same time, took the subway by myself starting perhaps at around 10; around the same time (very short, and safe walk), or a little later when I could be trusted with money I could go buy bread or whatever, all by myself. A friend of mine transferred to a specialized middle/high school around 8th grade and took a subway for 40 minutes every day to get there, by himself; if one of my nephews in the low-rise neighborhood wants to do that, that will throw his parents' day in complete disarray.

vidanay 7y ago

And eliminate US style separate zoning. European mixed use zoning is much more "social" allowing shorter commutes to work and shorter trips to retail.

sanderjd 7y ago
I think the places your parent comment was characterizing are the ones with mixed use zoning. Think Manhattan, shops on the first floor, office and housing space above. All of the parent's points stand.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I prefer to call it "respecting people's property rights", "mixed use" and "European style zoning" are too vague leave way too much room for curtailment of freedom which when they run their course bring us basically back to the status quo.
- kspacewalk 7y ago
  Every bylaw and city planning initiative "curtails freedom" for the sake of engineering a better, more efficient community and better quality of life. The issue with (in particular) single family residential zoning isn't that it limits what land owners can do with the land - in the city, this is unavoidable and very much desirable. It's that it artificially incentivizes inefficient, unhealthy and socially disconnected car-centric suburbia.
- projektfu 7y ago
  I'm not sure what it can mean to respect people's property rights with respect to residential-only zoning. A zoning decision is not written into the original deed and can be changed with an exception by the zoning board or a general change in the city/county code. However, the residential-only zoning makes it difficult for one person to use their property as they see fit, for example, building a duplex or rentable apartment onto their house, or opening a small store or tiny school.

kccqzy 7y ago

> replace them with low rise cohousing communities I agree with almost everything you say but this. Why low rise? With high rises, we can use less space for housing and we would have more space for parks, libraries, and greenery.

Izkata 7y ago
Probably one of two things, one of which I believe is a mistaken correlation: * High-rises block more of the sky, making it not seems as worthwhile to go outside. * Mental detachment from the local area. The second one is what I've only in the past year or so realized myself. I used to live on the 3rd floor of a 3-floor building, and my apartment had a front and back entrance. The front entrance went to inside stairs out to the front of the building, but the back entrance when straight outside to a wooden porch, then had wooden steps down to ground level. Where I am now, only on the 5th floor of 24, there's only one entrance, to a hallway where I take the elevator to go down and outside. At my old place, I regularly went outside to do whatever on a whim. Nowadays, it's a really rare thing. And while there is a low-rise/high-rise correlation, I think it's the patio and the stairs, vs the hallway and the elevator that actually caused it. Having so much more distance between inside and outside creates an emotional distance where you don't even think about the outside, let alone decide whether or not to bother. I've yet to live in one, but I'm thinking if the high-rises have balconies, it would create the same effect as that patio did for me.
- deleted 7y ago
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madhadron 7y ago
When I saw low rise, I mean about four stories, maybe up to six. The height of Copenhagen, say. It produces a much more humane built environment and much less interior hellscape.

esoterica 7y ago

You might dislike cities, but please don’t narcissistically project your personal preferences into everyone else and claim that they are unpleasant for everyone.

tcbawo 7y ago

In the large city where I live, green spaces and parks are flourishing. There are many cultural amenities for children (zoos, museums, libraries). There is also a large ecosystem of for-profit child care/play spaces. Cars are everywhere, but bike sharing, bike lanes, and public transportation are also available. I'm not sure that the city is an unfriendly a place for small children. The biggest problem with all of this is cost in dollars and supervision time. I'm sure with the right priorities, those problems could be solved also. Suburban sprawl isn't inevitable.

sanderjd 7y ago
Yeah I was thinking this as I read the parent comment. Everything they said is true, but it's also true that there is a lot for kids to do in those places. The comment about plopping kids in front of screens applies more so to the suburbs than to downtown! What are kids supposed to do in their neighborhood? Letting kids wander and play outside is seen as basically criminal, and there's nothing else to do.
- mrep 7y ago
  > Letting kids wander and play outside is seen as basically criminal, and there's nothing else to do. Not where I grew up and at least there is space to play sports. My friends and I used to play basketball, american football, and ultimate frisbee all the time growing up. Now I live downtown and the parks I walk past never have any free space.

iron0013 7y ago

Your description doesn't really sound like any actual city that I know of, although it sounds a little like how someone who's never been to New York City might describe it. Do you have a particular city in mind? Because "car-centric and pedestrian hostile" sounds more like most suburbs than most urban areas.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I've lived in several cities including Boston and DC (and the urban cities that surround them both). It sounds like every wealthy city I've ever lived in or been to and sounds nothing like the 2nd tier cities that I've been to and now live in. When a city is wealthy it gets like the top level comment described. I don't know what it is but it's related to money. You can see this by comparing the wealther boroughs of NYC to the poorer ones or comparing the wealthier suburbs of Boston to the poorer ones. The poorer ones are more "alive" for lack of a better term. The car stuff really doesn't bother me. It's just a function of the dominant means of transit when that city was built out.
- marnett 7y ago
  Consumer capitalism can not replace culture. I think that’s what your remarks about different bouroughs feeling alive was getting at.
- asdff 7y ago
  I don't agree with the dystopian view in the OP, but I will say that I notice far fewer people outside in wealthier areas where I live than in poorer areas. I attribute it to most low income jobs not really being bound to the 9-5, so people might be out and about at all hours, especially now that school is out for the summer. It makes these areas feel warmer and closer knit vs. some of the sterile luxury apartments I've seen.
madhadron 7y ago
I lived in Manhattan, so I'm pretty clear on my description. And it's true, the suburbs are hostile, too. You just use your lot and single family home to try to reconstitute a usable environment.

finolex1 7y ago

It doesn't have to be low rise housing. Look at Singapore for an example of how high density, high-rise housing can coexist with plentiful public spaces.

aeneasmackenzie 7y ago
Singapore's fertility rates are at the "rock thrown off a cliff" level.
- qwerty9876 7y ago
  It's not an environmental problem, it's a cultural problem. People just don't want to have children anymore, fertility rates have dropped a lot post-2012(smartphones and social media)
  - aeneasmackenzie 7y ago
    There are subgroups with above-replacement total fertility. Some people don't want to continue existing, but not everyone.

golemiprague 7y ago

This sounds like a very American view of things, most of the world has different city structure and different suburbs structure.

knolax 7y ago

Literally everything you said also applies to the suburbs though.

magduf 7y ago

You don't need "low rise cohousing communities" to have families in cities. Japanese cities are extremely dense, yet people raise families there just fine. On my trip to Japan, I was really struck by how many children I saw in the middles of cities (moreso in some districts than others, of course), whereas I never see children in downtown American cities. Of course, Japanese cities don't have enormous parking lots, everyone driving cars, etc. They have taxis of course, and some cars (not a lot really, given the population), and work vehicles, but not the huge amount of vehicle traffic we have. And of course, there's tons of trains and buses, so it's really cheap and easy to get around by public transit. On top of that, there's bicycles: tons of people get around by bicycle, and the traffic level and speeds are low enough to make this very safe, plus there's no culture there of being aggressive towards cyclists or pedestrians the way America has.

throwaway2048 7y ago
The birth rate has completely nosedived in Japan aswel, its only 60% of the USA's
- aikinai 7y ago
  Don’t have stats on me right now but I think it’s right in line with non-immigrant Americans’ birth rate. America (just as most developed nations) only props up their birth rate though immigration.
topmonk 7y ago
Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, well below replacement rates. Their society is also consists almost entirely of Japanese that all share the same culture. It would be very hard to emulate what they do and even so, no real guarantee that it would change anything.
- scythe 7y ago
  Japan does have a low birthrate, but it also has a rising birthrate. Since 2005 Japan has seen a long general trend of increasing birthrates since the ‘60s. This turnaround coincides with efforts to make housing cheaper and cities more kid-friendly. They’ve gone from 1.26 to 1.44. It’s not a complete reversal, but the fact that Japan’s rising birth rate has defied regional and global trends and persists despite continued urbanization and secularization shows they might be on to something.

novok 7y ago

I don't see how much different this is from suburbia, but with even more car intermediated isolation from other people? I hated suburbia as a child, since you were stuck in the house and needed your parents to get you to anywhere. With rural areas the isolation is even larger if your on a farm that is miles away from any other human beings. You have a nearby forest to explore, but that isn't exclusive to rural areas. I think what your complaining about is culture, and you're conflating it with the form of housing. It's how you can't let kids go out and find other kids to play with in the local neighborhood like you could in the 70s or earlier because it's illegal and enforced quickly. You can do that in a city (see berlin: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/travel/berlin-family-holidays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/travel/berlin-family-holi... ), suburbia or a village but it's all dependent on culture and law.

leetcrew 7y ago
I think the pros/cons shift very quickly once the children get into their teenage years. when they are young and there are other children in the neighborhood, it is much easier for the parent to relax and let them go play together in the cul-de-sac. rough deal for the kid though if they don't manage to make friends on their street. when they get older, they develop more specific personalities/interests and they are likely to go to a larger school and make friends that live further away. when I was a kid, I lived basically right on the border between the city and the suburbs. all my friends lived just a little too far away to walk/bike to their houses, and the streets were busy enough that I doubt my parents would have let me anyway. any plans I made had to be convenient for my parents, and they tended to be pretty busy. this is just my opinion, but I think "real life" doesn't really begin until you can move around the world on your own. for me, this wasn't until I got my license near the end of high school (which represents its own danger; teenagers are terrible drivers). I suspect my friends who grew up in the city, taking public transit to hang out with each other, had much richer teenage years than I did, maybe even safer.

sethhochberg 7y ago

Bulldozing entire blocks of cities and replacing the mixed developments that were there with towers surrounded by isolated green space was attempted in the US during the middle of the century, under the guise of being "urban renewal". These projects were broadly considered failures, creating isolated communities with the net effect of displacing many more people in the "bulldoze" phase than they could attract in the "rebuild" phase. Many of these projects ended up as low-income public housing, developed huge crime problems in their isolation, and eventually got bulldozed themselves, in turn. There is some interesting historical reading here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4ef3/28b64fdb97357674725324ccc7380d8220ca.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4ef3/28b64fdb97357674725324... The modern twist on the concept is to focus on preservation instead of total replacement, trying to enhance the environment that attracted people to the diverse urban area in the first place rather than outright replacing it with centrally-planned alternatives. There are also large efforts to redevelop totally unused land (with projects like the Docklands in London or Hudson Yards in NYC) - but rarely in isolation, the goal is usually to incorporate the space into the rest of the city's fabric. I completely agree with your points about cars, though - most American cities devote far too much space to them, especially storage of empty ones. We'd do well to shift our streetscape priorities to people, especially in dense mixed-use areas, which I think would be a big step towards the communal spaces you envision.

madhadron 7y ago
Where did I ask for towers surrounded by isolated green space? Please look into what cohousing, as developed in Scandanavia, actually looks like.
- deleted 7y ago
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jacobolus 7y ago

Have you tried being a kid or raising a kid in the city? This description does not match my experience or my general impressions of other people’s experiences at all. Indeed, car-intermediated everything and complete dependence on parents is a much better description of suburban life for children than city life. I grew up in one of the most pleasant and active suburbs in the US, in a little college town, and it was still incredibly child-hostile. The city is IMO much friendlier to children. In the city people can and do walk all over, with longer trips made by transit. There are more small shops of all kinds, more coffeeshops, more live music, more social clubs, more classes, more playgrounds, more museums, and in general more regular human contact of all kinds. Kids can be independent at a younger age, and can pursue a wider range of interests with community infrastructure and support. > you have small children, this changes. Intellectual pursuits? They can't read yet, so your only option is parking them in front of videos. I have one 3-year-old kid and one 5-month-old kid in San Francisco. Neither of them watches significant amounts of videos (occasionally we watch kids’ movies or old Mr. Rogers episodes together). The other kids we meet at the playground don’t seem to do excessive amounts of video watching. Kids absolutely can do “intellectual pursuits”, but at their own level. First and foremost they play with all manner of physical objects – blocks, other construction toys, folded paper, empty cardboard boxes and yogurt containers, balls, sand, clay, water, their own bodies, ... Then kids love having stories told to them or books read to them. They love singing, using random household objects as percussion instruments, playing rhyming games, recognizing and naming objects, learning new words, counting random stuff, drawing with chalk and crayons, .... They love helping with household chores (not the most helpful at first, but they try), watching people do physical work of all kinds, play-acting all sorts of grown-up activities, ... By far the biggest problem for small kids here in SF is the high cost of housing and childcare and the distance from grandparents. Many families we know have moved away to find places with cheaper housing (e.g. they were previously living in a rent-controlled 1 bedroom apartment and decided they wanted a 2-bedroom place, but couldn’t afford to pay current market rent for it) or more help with childcare. > One false move and some yahoo in a steel contraption has killed them. It would be great to ban cars from more streets, and get the remaining cars down to 15–20 miles/hour. This is not really a city problem per se; our whole society is built around cars, and suburbs are generally worse than cities at putting pedestrians in harm’s way.

jinushaun 7y ago

I’m raising a child in NYC right now. What is this dystopia you are describing? It’s the opposite of my personal experience. NYC is such a kid friendly place to raise kids: Museums, zoos, aquariums, free events for kids, concerts just for babies, parks, swimming pools, little league, soccer league, skate parks, etc… we have it all. I can’t fathom how people raise kids in the suburbs. They must be so bored… You have a very narrow definition of the infrastructure required to raise kids. People have been raising families in cities long before suburbs were invented.

rootusrootus 7y ago
> They must be so bored… Your preconceived notions of what suburban living is like are just as inaccurate as the perceptions of city life of the person you responded to.
- deleted 7y ago
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- joebadmo 7y ago
  I grew up in suburbs, and couldn't go anywhere without a car, so I was very bored and watched a lot of television (though I read a lot of books, too). Currently raising two kids in an urban center, and I'm excited for them to have way more opportunities than I had.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    We raised our daughter from 0-5 in big cities, and there is definitely a huge appeal to that. But on the flip side, kids don’t need to “go anywhere.” They just need other kids around. When I grew up, we just roamed the neighborhood causing trouble. That element is missing in most cities today. You can’t just count on having a mess of kids on your block. Parents are the minority, so they have to more consciously get together and schedule activities with other parents.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago

vkou 7y ago

> I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. > Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions whizzing past at speeds that will maim or kill you. > There are a few places you can go from here. There are a few parks, where you can have some green space, along with the sound of the steel contraptions. There are other strips of concrete throughout the city between the contraptions' domain and the buildings. There are places you can pay to be allowed to occupy for a time. There are places you are paid to be for some number of hours each day. And there's the public library if you can reach it. You've actually described the typical suburb. Step outside your door into a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, and a shortly cut lawn, that you, at great expense of time, and money are allowed to maintain and inhabit (As long as you maintain it to the asinine, often environmentally-harmful expectations of your HOA/Municipality). Beyond that is a frequently sidewalk-less asphalt road, with two ton steel contraptions that are either stationary, or moving at speeds that will maim you. There is nowhere you can go without getting into a car. (Corollary: Your neighbour will be driving home from the bar, every other Friday, drunk as a skunk.) The nearest park is a mile away. You have some green space you can look at, but its all owned by other people, and if you spend too long gawking at a stranger's yard, somebody might call the cops. [1] If you drive far enough, you may find dreary places where you can pay to be allowed to occupy for a time, called stripmalls. A few may even contain a library. [1] Because only a criminal or a lunatic would be walking around in a suburb.

CompanionCuuube 7y ago
GP: > Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. You: > Step outside your door into a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, and a shortly cut lawn So they're the same in that they're different?

jseliger 7y ago

From a couple weeks ago: https://www.city-journal.org/decline-of-family-loneliness-epidemic https://www.city-journal.org/decline-of-family-loneliness-ep... And https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20116699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20116699.

drewcon 7y ago

Jesus. Literally went through this philosophical moment and just moved my young family out of the city. Pretty spot on.

tathougies 7y ago

So my moms parents had three children and my dads five. So not huge families but large. They grew up in a city in a third world country and frankly their childhood was a lot more dangerous than your imagined paranoia. Also your ideas of children are way off. We have a seven month old and we read to her, take her to the library, go to space talks, etc. Actually we do a lot more intellectual stuff now. My wife has taken some online courses ans weve started re learning french. Parents who put their kids in front of the TV are lazy. Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in. All the other dangers you mentioned are way overstated I do not understand this paranoia that has gripped the American public. The way people act would have you believe things are worse today than in the past when all actual data (anf observation) say the contrary

dpeck 7y ago
| Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in. Minus the used needles and other debris that litter many of them. It’s a sad state that that’s the best place people with drug problems can go, but it seems they don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s just not where I want to bring my kid to hangout.
- flukus 7y ago
  Needle disposal boxes and injecting clinics are pretty good at cleaning that up. Not to mention modern needles that kids can't accidentally prick themselves on make it a much lesser issue than decades ago. Not to mention having a lot of other responsible adults around keeping an eye out for stuff like this.
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  Singapore solved this problem, and we should probably follow their example > Singapore's top diplomat in the UK, Michael Teo, defended Singapore's harsh drug laws by pointing to the country's lower rates for drug use. "8.2% of the UK population are cannabis abusers; in Singapore, it is 0.005%. For ecstasy, the figures are 1.8% for the UK and 0.003% for Singapore; and for opiates—such as heroin, opium, and morphine - 0.9% for the UK and 0.005% for Singapore," claimed Teo. "We do not have traffickers pushing drugs openly in the streets, nor do we need to run needle exchange centers." https://www.tripsavvy.com/drug-laws-in-singapore-1629780 https://www.tripsavvy.com/drug-laws-in-singapore-1629780

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clay_the_ripper 7y ago

I currently live in SF and could not imagine having kids here. I’m sure some people do, and have a great time. But it’s not a life that I would want, nor would I want for my kids. This narrative captures pretty accurately why I would not want to raise kids in this city. Now, some other city? Maybe. Probably in Europe. US cities though are just hard places to be. Hard people. Aggressive homelessness. Dirty. Unfriendly. Generally just unpleasant places to be. I would want my kids to grow up with more community and green space and also not have them walk through human feces on the way to school.

0xBABAD00C 7y ago
That's more just SF though
- deleted 7y ago
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asveikau 7y ago
I am not sure what part of town you are in. Can you open google maps and tell me how much "green space" you see? More than I grew up with. Hint, there is a rather large rectangular one on the west side of town. But I have noticed (and been criticized on HN for claiming) that the parenting cultural bubble in SF seems completely unknown to many other subcultures. It is indeed a very good community, though.
- eitally 7y ago
  Sure, but good luck easily getting to Golden Gate Park if you're, say, coming from Mission Bay. And if you can afford to live in the hillier parts of town the odds are good you probably have decent (albeit small) neighborhood parks. The problem with SF is that the public schools suck, the streets in a lot of the "urban" parts are rife with squalor, and the city is a lot bigger than it looks when you're trying to get from one side to the other. I mean, if you live in the Outer Sunset you may as well be in a "suburb".... I think SF requires a pretty specific mentality for one to intentionally raise children there [for people of such means to be able to choose to stay or go].

empath75 7y ago

I currently am raising two kids in the suburbs and the only reason we are not in the city is that rents are too expensive for a reasonable sized house/apartment.

mattupstate 7y ago

Sounds like the words of someone who didn't grow up in a city, currently/recently lives/lived in one they dislike, and hasn't found happiness somewhere else.

rayiner 7y ago

I mean that’s not really true, right? Here’s a residential neighborhood in Chicago: https://images.app.goo.gl/o9crCx8EYGJcz7NcA https://images.app.goo.gl/o9crCx8EYGJcz7NcA. Another view: https://images.app.goo.gl/2AFgALbMTH3KsxYbA https://images.app.goo.gl/2AFgALbMTH3KsxYbA. Not exactly the hellacape you describe. And homier than many new suburban subdivisions. (None of the suburban neighborhoods I’ve ever lived in have even had sidewalks.) You can get a surprising amount of density from low rise buildings, with narrow tree-lined streets and generous sidewalks.

Gibbon1 7y ago
I thought of replying, thought better of it. But it's true that you can get a lot of density from low rise buildings. My old neighborhood of 100 year old two story town houses is about 18,000 people per square mile. Friends of mine with older kids just let them roll around the city. There's a lot to do. My take on the bad thing about sprawl and suburbs is the amount of time and driving needed to get to not sprawl and suburbs. And when there was 'the city' and 'the suburb' living in 'the suburb' was 'nice'. Now that it's all suburbs and a city jammed with traffic from the suburbs, nothing is that nice.
- tptacek 7y ago
  I don't understand. What would your reply have been? Rayiner posted an image from a high density part of Lakeview, which is an inner urban neighborhood of Chicago, about a mile further from the (significantly larger) commercial core of Chicago than 16th and Mission is from 2nd and Market. I could give you pictures of the same neighborhood with mixed 2-3 flats and single-family homes on streets with total tree canopy and parks at the end, and Lakeview is one of the more urban parts of (residential) Chicago --- go to Avondale or Humboldt Park and and find more parks, more trees, and smaller houses, all in inner ring neighborhoods. What you've described would be the experience of living inside the Loop in Chicago, amidst class A high-rise office space. People do this! But they actively select themselves into it; by far, most people in Chicago live in residential neighborhoods that read as such, are close to the heart of the city, and don't respond at all to your description.

zachsnow 7y ago

This feels like hyperbole. Instead of saying you are wrong objectively, I’ll say instead that my subjective experience of “the city” is in stark contrast to this. Green spaces and the ocean abound. My neighbors are wonderful people. The businesses around me are owned and operated by local people. I can’t walk down the block without running into good folks with smiles on their faces. I try to bring the same energy to my neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine not living here. I think the city and the country and everywhere in between can be a wonderful or terrible place, but I would hesitate to say that any one place is right or wrong for any one person.

sullyx 7y ago
Where do you live?
- scarejunba 7y ago
  My life in Glen Park is quite similar. Recently, I've taken to running to BART for a warm up before I take it to the Equinox and one of the first times I did, a neighbour stopped to ask me if I was in a hurry and if he could give me a lift. I accepted, obviously, and we chatted. Honestly, most of SF is rather friendly and nice. I like it. First moved here 6 years ago.
- zachsnow 7y ago
  CA, USA. To be fair it’s not like everyone is smiling all the time! But I genuinely feel that my neighborhood is a great community mostly consisting of interesting and friendly people.

ajross 7y ago

I'm sorry, but... have you actually lived in a city? Actually spent time in a public park? Dined at an urban restaurant? Actually been (???!?) unable to reach a public library? This sounds just crazy to me. Literally everything you do in the suburbs, absent long hikes and home gardening, is more conveniently available in an urban center. You don't have to like it, but... that list of complaints just reads as nonsense to anyone actually living in these places.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pattrn 7y ago
This mirrors my sentiment prior to moving to Boston. It turned out to be the opposite. It took more time to get to most places in the city than it took to get to equivalent places when I lived in New Hampshire. You name it: grocery stores, restaurants, pubs, cafes, shopping, parks, markets, etc. My wife and I moved back to NH after a year due to our quality of life dropping so drastically. Two of my childhood friends recently moved back from San Diego and Los Angeles for exactly the same reason. Now I can get to all of the aforementioned places via car in under 5 minutes. There's Uber and Lyft for when I want to go to a bar. DoorDash serves more than 50 local restaurants. Traffic adds at most 5 minutes to any drive, and only during a small window around 5pm. The city offers convenience in theory, but from my admittedly anecdotal experience it doesn't hold up in practice. And I'm not sure that matters. At the end of the day, it's just a preference.
- ajross 7y ago
  > Now I can get to [grocery stores, restaurants, pubs, cafes, shopping, parks, markets, etc.] via car in under 5 minutes I... sorry, I don't believe that. I've never seen a suburb anywhere with ALL that stuff within the 1.5 mile radius you postulate. Sure, you get some of it locally. We have restaurants within 5 minutes, but the place we want to go tonight is 11 minutes away. There's a park next to the local school, sure, but the kids want to go swimming at the place with the good slide and it's 22 minutes away. And FWIW: I literally grew up in urban Boston, and live in west coast suburbs now.

lifeisstillgood 7y ago

Barcelona's super blocks seem the model for this

closeparen 7y ago

I don't know how to capture the hostility of suburbia any more perfectly than a walk down the El Camino in Sunnyvale. Try this on street view for a few blocks. Imagine yourself on the sidewalk. This is the world that the "urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places to be" consensus has given us. Maybe the cities this was built in response to really were some kind of unimaginable horror. But I'm pretty sure the cure is worse than the disease. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3655957,-122.0294912,3a,75y,335.01h,92.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQChOLWpYc6t6aaAhcMU-_w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3655957,-122.0294912,3a,75y,...

kccqzy 7y ago
Try a walk down University Ave in Palo Alto. That is the kind of place we mean.
- closeparen 7y ago
  A lot of older suburbs have a main street like this, including the one I grew up in. They're grandfathered from before the zoning code, not allowed anywhere else in the municipality, and sometimes illegal to replicate even on the same lots [0]. Sunnyvale is what's allowed to exist at scale and to grow all across America. [0] http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/ http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/
bsder 7y ago
And what does that area have an hyperabundance of? Parking spaces and road lanes. You can choose to optimize for car throughput or not. Or you can choose to make your spaces look like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3082077,-71.3535296,3a,75y,262.78h,89.12t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1spl2_FMQL6CbFPiLM5EJRvA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Dpl2_FMQL6CbFPiLM5EJRvA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dsearch.TACTILE.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D229.76057%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3082077,-71.3535296,3a,75y,2... Your call.
- closeparen 7y ago

Fomite 7y ago

When I lived in an urban core... I stepped out of my door into a hallway of doors, greeted by the scent of several different ethnic foods being cooked, and usually the sound of one or more families. I take an elevator down the stairs to the lobby, nod at the guy manning the desk who was interested in what I ordered yesterday (it was heavy - he thought car parts, was a rack-mount UPS). I step out into a U shaped walkway, lined with bushes, with a cherry tree in the middle before merging onto the sidewalk. Fifteen minutes away in one direction is a zoo that was free. Full of kids learning new things about amazing wildlife. Five minutes in the other direction is a hiking trail, onto another hiking trail.

rimliu 7y ago

90% of everything is the attitude.

plaidfuji 7y ago

Thom Yorke browses Hacker News? #blessed

fatnoah 7y ago

>I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. I'm sure such places exist, but I've lived in a city (Boston) for many years and this description doesn't apply to the areas I've lived. Somewhat ironically, the places in Boston that are closest to your description are the ones where they bulldozed large swaths and tried to remake things in a more people friendly way.

sershe 7y ago

It's actually completely opposite from my experience. The kids on the low-rise neighborhoods and burbs are stuck in the house unless there's a parent present whose full time job to haul them around. My nephews are growing up in the burbs, and they can barely walk to a gas station without the risk of being hit by a fast moving vehicle, and cannot reach even e.g. a park without driving. Sure, they can play baseball in the backyard. How exciting is that? I grew up in a major city... I was walking to play soccer on my own starting perhaps at 7yo (short walk to a field on streets with tons of foot traffic and hence slow cars), went to school on my own since around the same time, took the subway by myself starting perhaps at around 10; around the same time (very short, and safe walk), or a little later when I could be trusted with money I could go buy bread or whatever, all by myself. A friend of mine transferred to a specialized middle/high school around 8th grade and took a subway for 40 minutes every day to get there, by himself; if one of my nephews in the low-rise neighborhood wants to do that, that will throw his parents' day in complete disarray.