8 ms·

I think the root cause is further up the chain of casuality. People need cars because they live in the suburbs, they live in the suburbs because they have chil

I think the root cause is further up the chain of casuality. People need cars because they live in the suburbs, they live in the suburbs because they have children, they want to raise children in more square footage than the urban housing stock offers. Notable exception being Tokyo Ironically, if you look NYC in the 1910s, kids used to play baseball in the street because it wasn't yet overrun by cars, suddenly not enough space for kids, so move to the suburbs, which means more and more cars...

dv_dt 3y ago
Sure, but I'm not sure that's at the root either. Suburbs exist in part due to subsidy decisions on automotive infrastructure. And they're in a stress point in the return-to-office work remote debate now, because even with subsidies on highway infrastructure the commutes to get back to city centers are a major time waste. Offsetting 2-3 hours of family life with commute time is a major quality of life negative.
zardo 3y ago
And suburbs are not built around public transit anymore, those old enough to have been have mostly shut it down. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
- willio58 3y ago
  I live on a street that used to have a streetcar line on it! Now it's just a stroad and traffic monstrosity but I sometimes daydream of hopping on the streetcar and going to meet up with friends downtown.
  - mdgrech23 3y ago
    I'm in the suburbs but like you an older one and more densely packed. I'm maybe a mile from a major highway that goes to the city center. It's dead straight and major thoroughfare. If they dedicated one line to rail, none of that mixed BS, and had stops say every mile into the city my god it would be amazing.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Are you sure it is more densely packed? Where I live the streetcar suburbs are slightly less dense than modern suburbs. In the 1950s lot sizes went up, but they have mostly come down again. (streetcar suburbs were built assuming you would get some food from your garden. 1950's suburbs were built by/for people who remembered the depression and wanted a large lot for a garden - or that is my theory.
      - throwaheyy 3y ago
        Streetcar suburbs are not 1950s suburbs, they are 1900s-1930s suburbs. 1950s suburbs are car suburbs.
        bluGill 3y ago
        Right, we have all 3, and they have different forms. 1950s is the least dense.
kikokikokiko 3y ago
"Notable exception being Tokyo" The fact that the japanese in general have no children at all makes this notable exception not be one at all. Humans are not meant to live on top of one another. To me the correlation between fertility and urbanization is a clear sign that living on the burbs is a plus for quality of life and the perpetuation of the human race. Cars are just a necessary tool for being a human in 2023.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  Heavily disagree with that humans aren’t meant to live on top of each other. We are a tribal species. We all slept together in caves, huddled under the same furs, building housing that expands to fit all our elderly and our young under the same roof. But we were also meant to roam, our toddlers literally run nonstop. We’re not built to yield to concrete paths bearing metal beasts. The issue is that our children cannot play tag wherever they please out in the open, under the watchful eye of a community to make sure Bob doesn’t pull Sally’s pigtails again. The community cannot keep an eye out for SUVs whose sightlines seemed design to hit children.
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  Living in sky scrapers sucks and is not enjoyable. Same with living in suburbia. The sweet spot is densely packed urban areas that are built on the human scale.
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    Different strokes for different folks. I enjoy living in suburbia very much and densely packed urban areas give me nightmares.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    living in skyscrapers is no different than living in any apartment building, except the larger number of apartments with nice views. what modern skyscapers are doing wrong is putting in only large-footprint high-end retail (like department stores) on the street level, or nothing at all. A zoning change to require small retail stalls at the street level would go a long way to making cities more livable. And all those people living upstairs generate a lot of foot traffic to help all sorts of businesses thrive. (what I'm talking about overall is what makes midtown NY so unpleasant compared to other NYC neighborhoods)
anon291 3y ago
People want suburbia because crime is often lower. Why won't we accept this reality. I don't understand why so called progressives don't just face this issue head on. Increasing incarceration rates makes cities safer. It's true that some small number of people will be jailed. It's also true that more people would move to cities. And before someone throws out some nonsense politics. I live in the inner city (less than a mile to downtown) in a west coast major city. I can count several neighbors on my block, people who've lived here decades, who are leaving due to crime / rampant drug use.
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  I'm in an east coast city. I've visited big west coast cities numerous times. I feel our problems are very different. You have policies that support the homeless and people with drug addictions so people facing those challenges flock to cities like yours from all over the country. The nations problems are then dumped on places like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. It's not fair and it's not right. We need better federal safety nets to prevent people from getting into these positions to begin with and if they do safety nets that allow them to stay in their hometown.
- topaz0 3y ago
  Incarceration rates in this country are sky-high compared to others with lower crime. Crime rates were decreasing well before incarceration boomed, too. The evidence is incredibly clear that incarceration is not an effective anti-crime measure, to anyone willing to look.
  - anon291 3y ago
    Obviously lower incarceration correlates with lower crime. When crime is low you need to lock fewer people up. I would suggest people making this claim learn about the difference between correlation and causality. And then look at El Salvador. It is incredibly clear that increased incarceration lowers crime.
mdgrech23 3y ago
You're leaving how a key part, at least in America which is racism. Whites ran to the suburbs to escape particular groups and quite frankly still do albeit now it's more in the form of urban sprawl.
- lovepronmostly 3y ago
  This is BS. People go to suburbs because they want a nice house, not because they are trying to run away from race. I grew up in a mix-race suburb. I loved my houses and my friends houses. We had great times on our cul-de-sac since it didn't allow through traffic it was safe to play in the street. We loved our backyard pool. We loved our garage that had a radial saw and a large tool desk. We loved our large 30x20ft family room where we had large slumber parties and large family parties. It requires zero racism to want a house in the suburbs.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
    No need to be personally defensive. What the other comment says is entirely true. There was a mass migration, particularly during the civil rights movement. Here's just one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#/media/File:Gary,_Indiana_racial_demographics.webp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#/media/File:Gary,... Plenty of other data shows the same thing. Racism is very much a part of what built suburban america in the large even if it doesn't apply to you or your family personally.
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    Historically, suburbs absolutely were motivated by racism - it's called "white flight". Today, it usually isn't about racism, it's mostly just continuing status-quo trends without question. But it's important to not put the initial motivation of those trends up on a pedestal.
ahoy 3y ago
"suburbs" dont have to be the unwalkable disasters that we've made them. Brooklyn Heights was "america's first suburb." People moved there from Manhattan seeking everything you just mentioned.
nradov 3y ago
Public school quality and levels of crime (or at least perception of crime) are also huge factors driving parents of small children out of dense cities and into suburbs. Somehow most city governments have been taken over by progressive idealogues who are intent on pushing their luxury beliefs regardless of the negative impact on education or middle-class quality of life. This is how we end up with schools run for the benefit of teacher's unions rather than students, fentanyl dealers in the neighborhood parks, homeless tents on the sidewalks, and organized shoplifting rings excused as reparations for the oppressed. If we want to give people the option of living without cars then let's start by fixing our cities.
andrepd 3y ago
You've got it backwards. There are suburbs because car infrastructure subsidises many of the costs of that choice. Suburbs are a postwar, post-interstate phenomenon.
aidenn0 3y ago
> I think the root cause is further up the chain of casuality. People need cars because they live in the suburbs, they live in the suburbs because they have children, they want to raise children in more square footage than the urban housing stock offers. Modern suburbs were created by central policy in many ways; the FHA wouldn't underwrite loans for properties with small lots or in mixed-use areas.

dv_dt 3y ago

Sure, but I'm not sure that's at the root either. Suburbs exist in part due to subsidy decisions on automotive infrastructure. And they're in a stress point in the return-to-office work remote debate now, because even with subsidies on highway infrastructure the commutes to get back to city centers are a major time waste. Offsetting 2-3 hours of family life with commute time is a major quality of life negative.

zardo 3y ago

And suburbs are not built around public transit anymore, those old enough to have been have mostly shut it down. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

willio58 3y ago
I live on a street that used to have a streetcar line on it! Now it's just a stroad and traffic monstrosity but I sometimes daydream of hopping on the streetcar and going to meet up with friends downtown.
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  I'm in the suburbs but like you an older one and more densely packed. I'm maybe a mile from a major highway that goes to the city center. It's dead straight and major thoroughfare. If they dedicated one line to rail, none of that mixed BS, and had stops say every mile into the city my god it would be amazing.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Are you sure it is more densely packed? Where I live the streetcar suburbs are slightly less dense than modern suburbs. In the 1950s lot sizes went up, but they have mostly come down again. (streetcar suburbs were built assuming you would get some food from your garden. 1950's suburbs were built by/for people who remembered the depression and wanted a large lot for a garden - or that is my theory.
    - throwaheyy 3y ago
      Streetcar suburbs are not 1950s suburbs, they are 1900s-1930s suburbs. 1950s suburbs are car suburbs.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        Right, we have all 3, and they have different forms. 1950s is the least dense.

kikokikokiko 3y ago

"Notable exception being Tokyo" The fact that the japanese in general have no children at all makes this notable exception not be one at all. Humans are not meant to live on top of one another. To me the correlation between fertility and urbanization is a clear sign that living on the burbs is a plus for quality of life and the perpetuation of the human race. Cars are just a necessary tool for being a human in 2023.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
Heavily disagree with that humans aren’t meant to live on top of each other. We are a tribal species. We all slept together in caves, huddled under the same furs, building housing that expands to fit all our elderly and our young under the same roof. But we were also meant to roam, our toddlers literally run nonstop. We’re not built to yield to concrete paths bearing metal beasts. The issue is that our children cannot play tag wherever they please out in the open, under the watchful eye of a community to make sure Bob doesn’t pull Sally’s pigtails again. The community cannot keep an eye out for SUVs whose sightlines seemed design to hit children.
mdgrech23 3y ago
Living in sky scrapers sucks and is not enjoyable. Same with living in suburbia. The sweet spot is densely packed urban areas that are built on the human scale.
- lotsoweiners 3y ago
  Different strokes for different folks. I enjoy living in suburbia very much and densely packed urban areas give me nightmares.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  living in skyscrapers is no different than living in any apartment building, except the larger number of apartments with nice views. what modern skyscapers are doing wrong is putting in only large-footprint high-end retail (like department stores) on the street level, or nothing at all. A zoning change to require small retail stalls at the street level would go a long way to making cities more livable. And all those people living upstairs generate a lot of foot traffic to help all sorts of businesses thrive. (what I'm talking about overall is what makes midtown NY so unpleasant compared to other NYC neighborhoods)

anon291 3y ago

People want suburbia because crime is often lower. Why won't we accept this reality. I don't understand why so called progressives don't just face this issue head on. Increasing incarceration rates makes cities safer. It's true that some small number of people will be jailed. It's also true that more people would move to cities. And before someone throws out some nonsense politics. I live in the inner city (less than a mile to downtown) in a west coast major city. I can count several neighbors on my block, people who've lived here decades, who are leaving due to crime / rampant drug use.

mdgrech23 3y ago
I'm in an east coast city. I've visited big west coast cities numerous times. I feel our problems are very different. You have policies that support the homeless and people with drug addictions so people facing those challenges flock to cities like yours from all over the country. The nations problems are then dumped on places like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. It's not fair and it's not right. We need better federal safety nets to prevent people from getting into these positions to begin with and if they do safety nets that allow them to stay in their hometown.
topaz0 3y ago
Incarceration rates in this country are sky-high compared to others with lower crime. Crime rates were decreasing well before incarceration boomed, too. The evidence is incredibly clear that incarceration is not an effective anti-crime measure, to anyone willing to look.
- anon291 3y ago
  Obviously lower incarceration correlates with lower crime. When crime is low you need to lock fewer people up. I would suggest people making this claim learn about the difference between correlation and causality. And then look at El Salvador. It is incredibly clear that increased incarceration lowers crime.

mdgrech23 3y ago

You're leaving how a key part, at least in America which is racism. Whites ran to the suburbs to escape particular groups and quite frankly still do albeit now it's more in the form of urban sprawl.

lovepronmostly 3y ago
This is BS. People go to suburbs because they want a nice house, not because they are trying to run away from race. I grew up in a mix-race suburb. I loved my houses and my friends houses. We had great times on our cul-de-sac since it didn't allow through traffic it was safe to play in the street. We loved our backyard pool. We loved our garage that had a radial saw and a large tool desk. We loved our large 30x20ft family room where we had large slumber parties and large family parties. It requires zero racism to want a house in the suburbs.
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
  No need to be personally defensive. What the other comment says is entirely true. There was a mass migration, particularly during the civil rights movement. Here's just one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#/media/File:Gary,_Indiana_racial_demographics.webp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#/media/File:Gary,... Plenty of other data shows the same thing. Racism is very much a part of what built suburban america in the large even if it doesn't apply to you or your family personally.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  Historically, suburbs absolutely were motivated by racism - it's called "white flight". Today, it usually isn't about racism, it's mostly just continuing status-quo trends without question. But it's important to not put the initial motivation of those trends up on a pedestal.

ahoy 3y ago

"suburbs" dont have to be the unwalkable disasters that we've made them. Brooklyn Heights was "america's first suburb." People moved there from Manhattan seeking everything you just mentioned.

nradov 3y ago

Public school quality and levels of crime (or at least perception of crime) are also huge factors driving parents of small children out of dense cities and into suburbs. Somehow most city governments have been taken over by progressive idealogues who are intent on pushing their luxury beliefs regardless of the negative impact on education or middle-class quality of life. This is how we end up with schools run for the benefit of teacher's unions rather than students, fentanyl dealers in the neighborhood parks, homeless tents on the sidewalks, and organized shoplifting rings excused as reparations for the oppressed. If we want to give people the option of living without cars then let's start by fixing our cities.

andrepd 3y ago

You've got it backwards. There are suburbs because car infrastructure subsidises many of the costs of that choice. Suburbs are a postwar, post-interstate phenomenon.

aidenn0 3y ago

> I think the root cause is further up the chain of casuality. People need cars because they live in the suburbs, they live in the suburbs because they have children, they want to raise children in more square footage than the urban housing stock offers. Modern suburbs were created by central policy in many ways; the FHA wouldn't underwrite loans for properties with small lots or in mixed-use areas.