4 ms·

BTW, you do know that typical suburb lots are closer to 1/8 than 1/4 acre, right? (Atherton and Greenwich are NOT typical.) > The suburbs encircled the places

by anamax 5y ago

BTW, you do know that typical suburb lots are closer to 1/8 than 1/4 acre, right? (Atherton and Greenwich are NOT typical.) > The suburbs encircled the places worth caring about. How do suburbs keep SF from thriving? Apart from giving people someplace else to go that is. When people leave cities for suburbs, they're saying that they prefer suburbs to cities, that they don't prefer what you assert that they prefer, that those "iconic neighborhoods" don't serve their needs. (Those neighborhoods are just as walkable as before.) > Now we can’t have any more of the places worth caring about because to do so would threaten the historic fast food joints on their peripheries. You're seriously arguing that McDonalds in Daly City doomed SF? It wasn't Long Island that destroyed Penn Station. > London’s role as a center of civilization and culture is more important than its role as an architecture museum. You're ducking the question of what 10M more people would do to London. And you gave up on the "iconic neighborhoods" which were so important just a couple of messages ago.

closeparen 5y ago
>When people leave cities for suburbs, they're saying that they prefer suburbs to cities Indeed, forget iconic. Places whose design is merely not utterly deranged are so rare in North America, yet so desired, that your choices are to be extremely wealthy or else to consume very little of them. You can't get the extra bedrooms to raise kids in reasonably hospitable urban settings because adults wiling to pay $2500/mo outnumber them. People leave for the suburbs because they're cheap. They're cheap because they're abundant. They're abundant because of a comprehensive suite of restrictions and subsidies designed to make them so. Wander down the El Camino Real. An endless ribbon of stroad, fast cars, parking lots, strip malls. A place whose sidewalks are a farce. A place that makes it very clear you are not mean to be outside your car except in the smallest doses. A place no one really likes driving, either. That's a choice. All that mileage could instead have the character of San Francisco's loveliest neighborhoods. Could be a place worth caring about. Could be community and home and identity and leisure. If you allowed it.

by anamax 5y ago

closeparen 5y ago

>When people leave cities for suburbs, they're saying that they prefer suburbs to cities Indeed, forget iconic. Places whose design is merely not utterly deranged are so rare in North America, yet so desired, that your choices are to be extremely wealthy or else to consume very little of them. You can't get the extra bedrooms to raise kids in reasonably hospitable urban settings because adults wiling to pay $2500/mo outnumber them. People leave for the suburbs because they're cheap. They're cheap because they're abundant. They're abundant because of a comprehensive suite of restrictions and subsidies designed to make them so. Wander down the El Camino Real. An endless ribbon of stroad, fast cars, parking lots, strip malls. A place whose sidewalks are a farce. A place that makes it very clear you are not mean to be outside your car except in the smallest doses. A place no one really likes driving, either. That's a choice. All that mileage could instead have the character of San Francisco's loveliest neighborhoods. Could be a place worth caring about. Could be community and home and identity and leisure. If you allowed it.