24 ms·

I've been wondering how related these feelings of distance and isolation in the middle of society are to how the area is designed. I had always known for a lon

• zamnos 4y ago
  This is a bit of an unconventional POV, but I don't consider large areas of suburban sprawl to be cities but just really big towns. This covers Houston, swaths of Atlanta, lots of Southern California. There are lots of people living there compared to rural areas, to be sure, but without the density to support usable public transportation (once-an-hour buses don't count), it's really not a city at all. It's endless suburban sprawl, and many people do appreciate that. Just don't call it a city when it's really not.
  • dopidopHN 4y ago
    I don’t think it’s unconventional, it’s just a definition of suburbs. Worse of both world in my book. Unless you want to raise your kid in isolation.
    • wincy 4y ago
      How? My eight year old daughter gets to roam free and has seven or eight different kids she plays with on a weekly basis. A few of them daily. We’re not worried about her getting carried off because the area is super safe. We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house. It’s also very diverse, her friends parents are from Ukraine, India, Jordan, Vietnam, China, and those are just the people I’ve met. The American suburbs are an excellent place to raise children.
      • Tade0 4y ago
        I've found that it's more about the person than the area. My friend is an urban activist and he always complained that his childhood neighbourhood wasn't conducive to meeting people. Recently I learned that we actually grew up just a few bus stops from each other. For me it was never an issue to hop into a bus/subway train and reach my friends - usually unannounced.
        • bombcar 4y ago
          Some people want to be forced to socialize - others find ways to socialize with those around them. And others only want to socialize with copies of themselves.
        • dTal 4y ago
          Easy to meet people, and easy to hop on public transport to visit existing friends, are two very distinct things. How did you meet these people who were not within walking distance?
          • Tade0 4y ago
            School mostly - my family moved to the other side of the district when I was in 6th grade, but I already had an urban card and the right to go out whenever I pleased as long as was back by 7pm, so we stayed in touch, even though I went to a different middle school where in turn I met more people living closer to my new neighbourhood. The only people my age in this new neighbourhood were bullies and/or juvenile delinquents, so I didn't make any friends there. My closest circle currently is my class nerd group from middle school with one additional guy from a high school the two of those went together. The urban activist friend I met through another guy from this bunch, who introduced me into some extracurricular activities in his school which I could attend. I also have college friends who, like me, didn't move cities to go there. One of them is actually a guy who my primary school friends met in their middle school and who went to my high school, but we only got to know each other better in college. We were all spread out over this 1.7mln city, but that was no problem since everyone had phones.
  • SllX 4y ago
    Sure, that’s a defensible argument on the merits against the colloquial usage of the word city as applied to some of these places but you’re running up against the fact that the term “city” has been eroded to near meaninglessness in North America. New England has counties and townships and cities, California and Texas only have counties and cities. Even a place that calls itself a town is still a city as far as their laws go, so advocating your position is going to run up against practical issues with people about why you’re saying their city isn’t a city. We already have terms for this, and it’s called the suburbs.
    • TylerE 4y ago
      And a few places like Virginia, you have Cities and Counties, and you can only be in one or the other. Sort of a Vatican City/Italy situation, except the same country.
      • ryeights 4y ago
        I like the idea. Simplified governance
      • SllX 4y ago
        I omitted it for simplicity, but San Francisco is basically that: a consolidated City and County, the only one in the State. I mean in legal effect it washes out to a charter county that is also called a city, we have a Board of Supervisors and a Mayor but no city council, and we employ both a Police Department and a Sheriffs Department. Texan cities though, some of those cross into three counties.
      • midoridensha 4y ago
        Even worse, some of those "cities" only have about 3000 people in them.
  • abalashov 4y ago
    I don't think it's that unconventional. I'm a published critic of American-style automobile sprawl, and I've argued that 90% of what notionally passes for a metro area in Middle America should be reclassified as a rural area in the eyes of most reasonable people from elsewhere in the world.
    • theshrike79 4y ago
      If you can't walk to a corner store, you're not living in a "metro area" in my opinion.
      • OJFord 4y ago
        In the UK you would barely even have neighbours if that were the case, it would be properly rural, US 'suburban sprawl' needs a different word IMO, it's a housing estate basically (though that implies social housing) but a spectacularly isolated/car-assuming one.
        • alwayslikethis 4y ago
          Yeah. In other countries, suburbs are essentially just less dense parts of the town, but still has most of what makes a town a town. Suburban US is not much different from desolate rural areas minus the farms.
          • marcus0x62 4y ago
            I grew up in a rural area and currently live in a suburb… They are worlds apart in terms of: * Proximity to (non-farm) work * Available public/private schools * Municipal amenities like parks and libraries * Basic retail services - groceries, clothing stores, etc. * Social activities/clubs In short, other than needing a car to get around both places, they don’t have much in common at all.
          • LeanderK 4y ago
            I would say suburbs are smaller communities next to a major city. Most inhabitants usually work in the city, and the suburb is clustered around a center with the town-hall, activities like an ice-cream shop, and a mass-transit connection to the city center. They also have an easy connection to a major road/highway taking you to the city. The connection to the city is easy and commuting expected. The suburb is similar to a town in a sense that it is self-sufficient with a school, pharmacy and one, two restaurants, but with few cultural activities due to the competition from the city. Inhabitants spend most of their time in the suburb and children grow up there, but due to easy access to the city people living in the suburb often go into the city to shop, go into a cinema, meet friends or into a museum/theatre. The symbiosis with the city differentiate the suburb to an adjacent smaller town.
  • hibikir 4y ago
    If anything, you are being too nice to US suburbs: It's perfectly possible to have towns that are much denser than any US suburb. My Spanish home town has about 100K inhabitants: You'd not call that a city anywhere in the US. And yet, It's basically a circle with a one mile radius: Yes, just one mile. In that situation, one can walk everywhere, and public transportation is limited to the elderly, people carrying heavy things, and the impatient that live in the outskirts of town. As a pre-teen, I could go to any of my friend's houses to do tabletop roleplaying all by myself. If my mother needed a break from parenting, she had three different siblings living within a quarter mile. When your average building is 6 stories tall, and your typical street is 30 feet wide building to building, a quarter mile circle holds a lot of families! In comparison, my neighbor from across the street in the US suburbs is 60 feet away, door to door, and a quarter mile circle won't get me to 300 front doors, total.
    • Gigachad 4y ago
      I think people don't realise how dense an area can be without needing highrises. Even just townhouses which are still "single family" buildings on their own land are roughly 4x denser than detached houses.
      • alwayslikethis 4y ago
        Single family homes often also have lawns and yards, which is mostly unused space
        • Slava_Propanei 4y ago
          [dead]
    • vkou 4y ago
      > When your average building is 6 stories tall, and your typical street is 30 feet wide building to building, a quarter mile circle holds a lot of families! Someone walking through a six-story downtown is, by such a measurement, traveling faster than a car traveling at ~90 mph through suburbia. (Of course, a car can't travel that quickly through suburbia.)
  • kennyloginz 4y ago
    This sounds really weird to me. Where I’m from, suburbs try to distinct themselves from the city by using arbitrary landmarks, like railroads. When they gain this distinction, they are able to separate even more using taxes and schooling to create a deeper division. From my point of view, including these suburbs into the city is practically better than the trend of segregation.
    • john_the_writer 4y ago
      I tend to disagree here. The isolation reduced travel between, which could in turn cause those burbs, to build their own stores and libraries. My closest gym is 8km away. My closest corner store is about 5km. I have a McDonalds at the 1km mark, but that's about it. I def don't want my kids riding their bikes along the strode to the "corner" store. Now. for playing. We have a 60km road, and a river. I can tell my kids to stay inside those and know that most cars traveling in there are local, so driving a bit slower. I wish we had a community center/library around here. I'd love to meet my neighbours.
  • alwayslikethis 4y ago
    Towns are not really different than cities, they are just smaller. In a town you will still be able to walk to places.
    • gnz11 4y ago
      On that note, being able to walk to places would disqualify most, if not all, US suburbs from being towns or cities. Other than the occasional developer created, faux "town centers" (that you laughably need to drive to), they don't even have anything in the way of a downtown or central square.
  • randomdata 4y ago
    > but without the density to support usable public transportation (once-an-hour buses don't count), it's really not a city Transportation is for rural areas. If there is support for transporting people around beyond the capacity of their legs, I'm not sure that is really a city either. The hallmark of a city is the density for having everything you need to live out life right there, never, ever, needing to step into some kind of vehicle. Density but scattering life around over tens of miles or more, requiring travel to live out life, is just rural with nearby neighbours.
  • yawnr 4y ago
    This is an extreme take but IMO New York is the only real American city. Maybe Boston and Chicago. Everything else is a glorified suburb. I wish we had good, small cities in this country, but we just don’t.
    • selimthegrim 4y ago
      New Orleans?
    • pb7 4y ago
      San Francisco?
• rainytuesday 4y ago
  Japan doesn't make sense though, they have an amazing urban environment, yet still seem to have problems with social isolation.
  • ehnto 4y ago
    I think work expectations and schooling play a bigger role in that than the city planning, but it may also be suffering from it's own success in some ways. An abundance of choice can sometimes make commitment difficult, dating apps are one example. It's easy to stay non-commited to a social regulationship when it feels like they are a dime a dozen. I also get the impression that a lot is expected of individuals in their social performances, and so for those who struggle to participate, there isn't as much support.
    • midoridensha 4y ago
      This is exactly it. People are very busy with work, and work too much, and then there's so much choice socially, so they end up making plans for their free time several weeks in advance.
      • mab122 4y ago
        Just wanted to throw this in: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker?country=GBR~DEU~USA~FRA~SWE~AUS~BEL~JPN~POL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-... because recently I was talking to some friends and they were very much under the stereotype that in Japan you work some horrendous amount of hours - that is not true. IIRC data is both self reported and from companies.
        • shortrounddev 4y ago
          The real reason is the same in Japan as it is in Europe and America: even controlling for hours worked, low wages, high cost of living, and other economic costs associated with having a child, women are choosing not the have children because it would require them to end their careers in their prime. It is extremely difficult to have a child and a career at the same time as a woman, and many never return to the workforce. Even women who make good money and can afford to have children decide not to because it would require them to stop working
• rcarr 4y ago
  Here’s another thing no one talks about because it’s taboo: drink driving. Right up until the mid 70s, it was completely socially acceptable to drink and drive. Now I agree that it was probably a good thing that’s it’s been banned, but having to pay for and organise transportation to go to whatever event it is you want to go to adds another substantial layer of friction to socialising. Not to mention the fact that the alcohol itself meant people were probably more sociable. It seems that due to all our technological and cultural change since the 70s we’re living physically healthier and safer lives but at the cost of poorer social and mental health.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    Uber makes things a lot simpler.
    • polygamous_bat 4y ago
      Maybe, but it also adds a (let's say) $20+$20 to your bill at the end of the night. For a lot of Americans that's not exactly cheap.
      • DangitBobby 4y ago
        More like $50 there and $70 back.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
      • whiddershins 4y ago
        Also, you can be banned from Uber. It is rare, but it can happen, and then what.
      • midoridensha 4y ago
        "If you can't afford that price for a ride, plus a $50 tip on top for the hard-working driver, you're a piece of scum and you should just stay home." - typical liberal American "This is the Free Market at work, and if you can't afford it, you're poor and should just stay home. Poor people are subhuman trash." - typical conservative American
• mozman 4y ago
  Parking is never a problem in rural or less dense areas. Downtown and trendy areas tend to be a parking nightmare but you can solve this with money. Valet parking, paid garages, or Uber are all quite convenient but pricey.
  • monksy 4y ago
    > Parking is never a problem in rural or less dense areas. Downtown and trendy areas tend to be a parking nightmare but you can solve this with money. Our current society is highly geared to making the maximum profit as much as possible. Oversights and externalities such as parking and traffic are never considered before a decision is made.
  • ehnto 4y ago
    You rather not need to park at all, because you walked there. It is hard to imagine if you are used to the car megalopolis but living near everything you need should be the goal of good mixed use cities. Rural towns are a mix because they can't reasonanly support everything a modern life needs, so you still use a car to go between towns or longer distances, and parking is easy so you do small trips too. But your essentials and community are nearby and the parking requirements are just the people in your town. The suburban sprawl model is the worst of both worlds, nothing is nearby, even essentials, so you drive for everything. Because everyone from the burbs has to drive to the same place, parking sucks too. No community, no parking, no goods and services. Just houses and roads, intersected by busy highways.
    • shortrounddev 4y ago
      I've found that suburbs are a lot more sociable and friendly than cities. Its impossible to make friends in a new city, and it seems like none of your neighbors are interested either. You have to be the one to go out of your way to meet new people
• trinovantes 4y ago
  My personal theory is that suburban sprawl killed the "third place" in modern society. If you have to drive to a place to socialize (which probably involve drinking), then you're probably not going. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
  • Zach_the_Lizard 4y ago
    My hypothesis is it's connected to the decline in religion, or, more specifically, the mandatory church on Sunday type of religion, no matter what flavor it took. A built in semi-mandatory third place seems pretty nifty as far as building social relationships goes. I'm an atheist but I do remember building bonds this way in those heady pre-smartphone days. It's a shame the baby is stuck in the bathwater.
    • waboremo 4y ago
      The decline in religion happened after the increase of convenience. Hence the popularity of televised religious content.
      • mcv 4y ago
        My church started streaming services during the Covid lockdowns, but it's really not the same as being there.
    • hoseja 4y ago
      I think it's deliberate because plebs socializing is a destabilizing factor to the state.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      Religious buildings can be third places, but the kind Christian churches that have faded out of American public life fail the “neutral ground” condition: there’s usually strong social and community pressure to make appearances, meaning that individuals can’t come and go as they please. This is in contrast with dominant religions (including Christianity) in other countries.
• habosa 4y ago
  Americans are friendly but when it comes to the decisions that matter (voting and the votes with our wallets) the preference is for the private over the public. People are scared to depend on each other or to be forced to interact with strangers. So we’ll all try to have our own cars and drive on huge suburban streets and put our kids in private schools and build fences around our yards and vote down zoning laws that would promote density. And we’ll wonder why the people in that cute little European town we visited that one time seemed so much happier.
  • rebeccaskinner 4y ago
    I think "scared" is the wrong word for it. People in the US tend to have very low levels of contentiousness, and that in turn makes people want to avoid strangers. The most obvious recent example is the push back against masking. In a high population density urban setting, even a few people who aren't adhering to masking raises the general risk level for people substantially. In less population dense areas it doesn't matter as much, because you're going to encounter fewer people. Another example is noise pollution. One of the primary reasons my spouse and I decided to leave the city for a more suburban area (and one of the reasons we're thinking about moving to an even more rural area) is to escape the constant presence of unnecessarily loud noise. Loud music is the major culprit. Between unbearably loud car stereos and loud neighbors (especially when living in an apartment building), low contentiousness means that even in a moderately dense area it's nearly impossible to find a moment of quiet. It's quite possible that we're in a vicious cycle where low contentiousness causes people to be more isolated and more cynical and that in turn may cause some people to be less considerate of others, but if that's true it's still a systemic problem and at an individual level looking for more isolation is the only reasonable solution.
    • nsm 4y ago
      Do you mean conscientiousness? Low contentiousness is nearly the opposite of what you are going for
      • rebeccaskinner 4y ago
• kodah 4y ago
  > And suburban (and frankly disturbingly high percentages of urban) America IME is a strange cross between in constant proximity of others, and constant suspicion of others When I lived in San Jose I trusted my immediate neighbors but someone on the street was basically a neighborhood watchdog for unkept lawns and cars that were parked too long. The neighborhood was mostly rentals, so landlords were responsible for lawn maintenance but of course these watchdog folks like to take their frustrations out on other renters. Our neighborhood never got together, just immediate neighbors, and people that lived close enough would Uber. In contrast, when I lived in one of the poorer areas of Fort Worth and now living in the more working class area of Portland my trust for my entire street is sky high. We have friends, people help out and look out for each other. We have block parties, if there's disputes people talk it out, etc All three are walkable places, and I live most of my life inside 5 city blocks. I'm not sure what factors make a successful community on a given street, but there are certain people that can make the entire experience miserable through seemingly insignificant actions (to them).
  • selimthegrim 4y ago
    Curious about where in Portland this is - St. John’s?
    • kodah 4y ago
      Good guess. I live in SouthEast, near Gresham and Powell Butte Park.
• libraryatnight 4y ago
  Cars are awful. I was fantasizing about an e-bike after reading a thread on HN, but in Phoenix, I'd die for sure. I do not feel safe around other cars in my car much less a bike. I really wish the US weren't so all in on cars. It's only getting worse with the oversized death-machine trucks saturating the roads. My in-laws are blind as bats and drive something that should require a commercial license.
  • pastage 4y ago
    Getting around on an electric bike will prolong your life. I bike on good infrastructure and it makes all the difference, you see kids bicycle 7km to soccer practice. Two months every year I go to an area such as you describe and while it feels dangerous it really isn't that bad. The stress can be bad if you let it, but as long as you accept it and try to see everything nice that happens you are ok. Try it out.
    • mcv 4y ago
      > Getting around on an electric bike will prolong your life. Not if you get killed by a car. That's his point. Bikes are great, but much more so in a society that recognises the benefits of bikes than in a society that sees than as alien and as targets. It does help when more people start to bike. There is safety in numbers, not to mention more understanding and recognition. Netherland has the advantage that we've never really gotten rid of our bikes; as soon as cars were about to take over in the 1960s, people started to fight back. People here have been fighting for bikes and against cars for more than 50 years. In the US, that fight doesn't even have remotely the kind of momentum that it had in Netherland 50 years ago, so there's quite a lot of distance to catch up there.
    • HDThoreaun 4y ago
      Have you been to phoenix? Ebikes are not an option.
    • mrguyorama 4y ago
      E-bikes are as "dangerous" to your health as motorcycles. It's a non-negligible risk, even if often worth it.
• timwaagh 4y ago
  Not just bikes makes it feel like the solution to everything is to be like the Netherlands. In that sense it's a fraud. To some extent yes you should be more like us and offload some of that traffic onto a bike path. To the extent that works and is efficient. But... I have lived here all my life. It is not a solution to anything else. It turns out, bikes do not talk to each other very much either.
  • Moldoteck 4y ago
    But after arriving at destination, people can talk, no? You also dont get bothered with parking and everything is much closer, so less time in traffic, so much less thinking about how to get to destination and more about how nice it will be spending time with friends. But imo trains are better, even less thinking about commute. Living in Zurich for a bit was eye-opening. I took a breakfast with my friends in train, like in restaurant, when we went to mountains. And trains were fast and frequent, like one in 15-30min towards our destination
    • mantas 4y ago
      You still need people to talk and time slot to meet. Same scheduling issues. I used to live in downtown of my 600k city. Moved back to outskirts of the same city. Driving is the smallest issue to meet. Reading those discussions from afar, it feels like Americans are using urban sprawl as a scapegoat. While it's a problem everywhere else too. Even if you take away urban sprawl and driving, the problem will be there.
      • Moldoteck 4y ago
        Well, idk, in my case it was really the transport. In the past I've lived in same area with my friends and we occasionally went to shop, walk together. In covid, I've moved in the opposite part of the city, with bus it'll take me 30 mins to arrive to them, with car, maybe 15-20, but taxi is expensive and I don't own a car+ the hassle to find parking. As result we met only on special occasions like bday or at some specific places in between but it's also not that frequent.
• deleted 4y ago
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• uoaei 4y ago
  The folks at Strong Towns tackle this and related issues from many directions. They've changed how I experience the built environments around me.
• Yizahi 4y ago
  While I also like "Not Just Bikes" and this idea in general, I must say that urbanists sometimes make this mistake - living right next to a dozen of people next door and a hundred more in the same building doesn't mean that you will talk to them. I've lived in the apartment for all my life and changed it last year. I have no idea who are the people next door to me, I don't know their names and the whole social interaction with them is limited to "have a nice day" once every few weeks when we accidentally meet in the corridor. The other benefits of the higher density living does work though. More small businesses and shops nearby, hobby points of interest in the 15-30 minutes distance on foot or bus/tram, better infrastructure, etc.
  • CaptainDecisive 4y ago
    I lived on 2nd Ave NYC for a while which matched your observations on interacting with neighbours. However there's an interesting urbanist video [1] that suggests that even in a higher density neighbourhood with appartment buildings, the amount of traffic on the road affects both how many friends you have and how much you socialise with neighbours in your building. Ie in a car lite environment, everyone is friendlier. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESgkcFbGiL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESgkcFbGiL8
  • eertami 4y ago
    The benefit isn't so much that you can be friends with your neighbours, but that the density makes all distances shorter and by extension your friends are still much closer. In a suburb many of my friends would be 15+ minutes away by car. In the city I live in now (almost entirely apartments/multi-household buildings), almost all of my friends are within a 15 minute walk. It has been a massive improvement to my social life, mostly due to the ease at which gatherings can spontaneously/easily occur.
    • shortrounddev 4y ago
      It seems vastly harder to make friends in a city, to me. When I lived in the suburbs, it was really simple to make friends. In the city, I dont know anyone. I agree that its nice to live so close to friends, but it seems impossible to MAKE any in the city.
• deleted 4y ago
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• DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  Except large suburbs go back over 70 years and the loss of community is a much more recent thing.
• whiddershins 4y ago
  People are super lonely in NYC.
• flippinburgers 4y ago
  The suburbs suck because people don't have porches anymore. Even if they did people are highly suspicious of one another. It is a lose-lose situation all around.
  • mcv 4y ago
    > people are highly suspicious of one another I think that might perhaps be the biggest issue in the US. There seems to be a massive amount of distrust separating people. And some groups are eagerly amplifying that distrust with their culture war nonsense. There might not be a way out for the US until that issue is solved.
• dlsmith 4y ago
  You might enjoy the book Happy City, by Charles Montgomery.
• shortrounddev 4y ago
  I have found that the suburbs are far friendlier than cities. In the suburbs, I knew a lots of my neighbors, and making friends was very easy. In the city, nobody talks to anybody. City people are just unfriendly or theyre sick of other people or something https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/how-urban-suburban-and-rural-residents-interact-with-their-neighbors/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/how-urb... > Four-in-ten rural residents say they know all or most of their neighbors; the shares are smaller among those living in urban (24%) and suburban (28%) areas.
  • tachudja 4y ago
    Our block is extremely friendly, but this is honestly that all the kids in the block play together and it brings their parents out to socialize while watching the children. Other blocks in the neighborhood don't seem to be outside at all, and the people who socialize seem to come to this block to do it. Much of it is one specific family who is just outside all the time and are friendly and so they catch a lot of people and get them talking.
• pkphilip 4y ago
  Part of the reason is also that people are now more mindful of "private" space and "personal" space than ever before and so they are not used to having people living close enough where they have to interact with them on a regular basis. That was not the case earlier where people who were related lived fairly close to each other. This is particularly true in places like Asia, Africa and parts of Europe even today. Staying close together requires adjustment and also requires people to value the close proximity of others.. This is sadly something which has largely disappeared particularly in North America
• rrradical 4y ago
  I was just going to make a low effort "Cars." comment, but yours captures my answer in a nicer way.
• jeffreyrogers 4y ago
  Eh, it's part of it, but not the whole story. Utah is a pretty close place and it has a lot of sprawl (traffic isn't too bad though). So many things have changed in the last half-century or so that I don't think you can point to any one thing as the cause. Even in a city with a lot of sprawl you likely have a lot more people you are within a 10 minute walk of than someone in a mid-size town is within a 10 minute drive of, it's just hard to meet those people because most people stay within their existing bubbles unless some event shakes up their life (breakup, job change, moving, etc.)