4 ms·

And I’m sitting here in my European suburb and considering if we could get rid of our single car. When I still had to go to the office I always bicycled or took

by Ma8ee 5y ago

And I’m sitting here in my European suburb and considering if we could get rid of our single car. When I still had to go to the office I always bicycled or took the bus. There’s a grocery store and pharmacy within 5 minutes walk, but we order most groceries online anyway. The kids daycare is 200 meters away, and when they begin school it will be a 10 minutes walk. The car is useful when we go on holidays the whole family or when I need to buy some lumber. From where I live now it’s hard to fathom why any family would need two, or even three cars. Those suburbs that made that a necessity must be considering utter failures.

hunter-gatherer 5y ago
Most of my experience woth "europe" is Finland as I have lived there a couple years and married a Finn, so I don't dare say "european vs american suburbs" but I do dare say that what constitutes as a "suburb" in Finland is much different than what you can find in the US. Here, we have suburbs that just seemingly go forever, with nothing but houses. Usually when there is a suburb in the US, it is zoned such that it is only homes, and nothing else. It is the worst (imo)
lost_soul 5y ago
In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area. Any supplies or groceries must be transported a significant distance in a pedestrian hostile environment.
- tpm 5y ago
  That would be hell for me. I have never lived more than 1km from a grocery store, even in our village 20 years ago. Most time, including now, about 100-200m.
- jjav 5y ago
  > In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area. Can you name a few examples of suburbs where that is the case? Nothing but houses for 3-5 miles? I've lived in the US east coast and west coast, always in suburban areas, and I've never seen that. It would take an immense neighborhood of houses to cover 5 miles. Do such ones exist? Let alone common enough to be called "typical"? In every suburb I've lived, there has been at least a supermarket less than 3 miles away. In my current suburban house, there are two supermarkets within a 5 minute walking distance.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    They’re wrong on the scale but correct in the essence. 3 miles away, no bike access, that means you’re driving. No shops, restaurants, or anything lives in the suburban housing area. > there are two supermarkets within a 5 minute walking distance That’s very nice and quite rare, especially for newer suburbs. Some of the older ones had a little Main Street or some grandfathered in stores and shops. Prices are extremely high accordingly compared with other suburbs.
    - jjav 5y ago
      > They’re wrong on the scale but correct in the essence. 3 miles away, no bike access, that means you’re driving. No shops, restaurants, or anything lives in the suburban housing area. I'm still curious where all these suburbs are that have nothing but houses for 3 miles or more? Was trying to find some examples and looks like Mesa,AZ is the worst in this sense in the USA: https://www.planetizen.com/node/92835/americas-largest-suburb-flirts-urbanization https://www.planetizen.com/node/92835/americas-largest-subur... Looking at it in google maps it is indeed sprawling with houses. But I couldn't find a spot in the various neighborhoods where one would be more than 3 miles walk away from a supermarket. The worst I came up with was 2 miles to a supermarket. But then I zoomed in and saw a restaurant only 1 mile away. Not a thorough research for sure, just spent a handful of minutes on it. But assuming the article is correct and Mesa is the worst of the sprawl and given I didn't find it easy to find houses more than 3 miles away from (food) businesses, I'm thinking the OP statement that "In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area" is quite an exageration. Am I wrong? Can anyone name a handful of these neighborhoods?
      - lost_soul 5y ago
        Take a look a the I15 corridor north of Escondido in San Diego county. There are neighborhoods there farther than 5 miles from services.
        jjav 5y ago
        I looked at the mountainous (seems like it on maps) region between Escondido and Temecula. That doesn't look like suburbs, although there are a handful of housing developments. But these are not in the outskirts of an urban area like a suburb, these are more rural and not attached to any city. Yes, sure, once you go outside cities into semi-rural or rural regions, it's easy to be way more than 5 miles from shopping.
mountainboy 5y ago
I blame government zoning laws. These prevent entrepreneurs from opening restaurants and markets near to where people live. In a truly entrepreneurial society, anyone can operate a small business open to the public right out of their house. Not so in the US states/counties I've ever been to.
- ericmay 5y ago
  I wish that were the simple fix, but Houston exists. No zoning laws (I think/read) that would prevent better urban planning.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    Houston doesn’t call what they have “zoning”, they just have a bunch of other laws on the books that have basically the same effect. It’s certainly not an urbanist’s paradise.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Zoning laws came to be because of the classic "tragedy of the commons" - enough people were too greedy and built polluting, noisy or traffic-intensive businesses right adjacent to people's homes. Letting "the market" do whatever it wants will only lead to one thing, and that is greedy people scalp up the cheapest land they can find (usually, in quarters where poor people live) and build extremely polluting stuff there. Zoning laws exist to guarantee even the poorest of the poor at least a basic standard of protection - although I do admit that there exist a lot of cases where zoning laws are abused to protect the interest of the elites primarily. Fun fact: Back in early Roman times and for a long time until the 18th century, that also had a public health aspect - burial sites, slaughterhouses and similar businesses were banned from the inner city and, if there was a river, placed on the downstream end so that the risk of pollution was reduced.
  - Ma8ee 5y ago
    And in a car centric society, even a supermarket becomes noisy and polluting since all their customers use heavy machinery (cars) just to get there. I certainly don’t want to live next to a large parking lot.

by Ma8ee 5y ago

hunter-gatherer 5y ago

Most of my experience woth "europe" is Finland as I have lived there a couple years and married a Finn, so I don't dare say "european vs american suburbs" but I do dare say that what constitutes as a "suburb" in Finland is much different than what you can find in the US. Here, we have suburbs that just seemingly go forever, with nothing but houses. Usually when there is a suburb in the US, it is zoned such that it is only homes, and nothing else. It is the worst (imo)

lost_soul 5y ago

In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area. Any supplies or groceries must be transported a significant distance in a pedestrian hostile environment.

tpm 5y ago
That would be hell for me. I have never lived more than 1km from a grocery store, even in our village 20 years ago. Most time, including now, about 100-200m.
jjav 5y ago
> In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area. Can you name a few examples of suburbs where that is the case? Nothing but houses for 3-5 miles? I've lived in the US east coast and west coast, always in suburban areas, and I've never seen that. It would take an immense neighborhood of houses to cover 5 miles. Do such ones exist? Let alone common enough to be called "typical"? In every suburb I've lived, there has been at least a supermarket less than 3 miles away. In my current suburban house, there are two supermarkets within a 5 minute walking distance.
- ericmay 5y ago
  They’re wrong on the scale but correct in the essence. 3 miles away, no bike access, that means you’re driving. No shops, restaurants, or anything lives in the suburban housing area. > there are two supermarkets within a 5 minute walking distance That’s very nice and quite rare, especially for newer suburbs. Some of the older ones had a little Main Street or some grandfathered in stores and shops. Prices are extremely high accordingly compared with other suburbs.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > They’re wrong on the scale but correct in the essence. 3 miles away, no bike access, that means you’re driving. No shops, restaurants, or anything lives in the suburban housing area. I'm still curious where all these suburbs are that have nothing but houses for 3 miles or more? Was trying to find some examples and looks like Mesa,AZ is the worst in this sense in the USA: https://www.planetizen.com/node/92835/americas-largest-suburb-flirts-urbanization https://www.planetizen.com/node/92835/americas-largest-subur... Looking at it in google maps it is indeed sprawling with houses. But I couldn't find a spot in the various neighborhoods where one would be more than 3 miles walk away from a supermarket. The worst I came up with was 2 miles to a supermarket. But then I zoomed in and saw a restaurant only 1 mile away. Not a thorough research for sure, just spent a handful of minutes on it. But assuming the article is correct and Mesa is the worst of the sprawl and given I didn't find it easy to find houses more than 3 miles away from (food) businesses, I'm thinking the OP statement that "In American suburbs it's typical for there to be nothing but houses within a 3 to 5 mile area" is quite an exageration. Am I wrong? Can anyone name a handful of these neighborhoods?
    - lost_soul 5y ago
      Take a look a the I15 corridor north of Escondido in San Diego county. There are neighborhoods there farther than 5 miles from services.
      - jjav 5y ago
        I looked at the mountainous (seems like it on maps) region between Escondido and Temecula. That doesn't look like suburbs, although there are a handful of housing developments. But these are not in the outskirts of an urban area like a suburb, these are more rural and not attached to any city. Yes, sure, once you go outside cities into semi-rural or rural regions, it's easy to be way more than 5 miles from shopping.

mountainboy 5y ago

I blame government zoning laws. These prevent entrepreneurs from opening restaurants and markets near to where people live. In a truly entrepreneurial society, anyone can operate a small business open to the public right out of their house. Not so in the US states/counties I've ever been to.

ericmay 5y ago
I wish that were the simple fix, but Houston exists. No zoning laws (I think/read) that would prevent better urban planning.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  Houston doesn’t call what they have “zoning”, they just have a bunch of other laws on the books that have basically the same effect. It’s certainly not an urbanist’s paradise.
mschuster91 5y ago
Zoning laws came to be because of the classic "tragedy of the commons" - enough people were too greedy and built polluting, noisy or traffic-intensive businesses right adjacent to people's homes. Letting "the market" do whatever it wants will only lead to one thing, and that is greedy people scalp up the cheapest land they can find (usually, in quarters where poor people live) and build extremely polluting stuff there. Zoning laws exist to guarantee even the poorest of the poor at least a basic standard of protection - although I do admit that there exist a lot of cases where zoning laws are abused to protect the interest of the elites primarily. Fun fact: Back in early Roman times and for a long time until the 18th century, that also had a public health aspect - burial sites, slaughterhouses and similar businesses were banned from the inner city and, if there was a river, placed on the downstream end so that the risk of pollution was reduced.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  And in a car centric society, even a supermarket becomes noisy and polluting since all their customers use heavy machinery (cars) just to get there. I certainly don’t want to live next to a large parking lot.