12 ms·

Why on earth is the picture of a busy truck stop type place? Most suburban neighborhoods have low traffic and plenty of places to ride your bike. Often have poo

• BetaDeltaAlpha 3y ago
  It's not just a truck stop. Breezwood, PA is a meme at this point used to malign suburbs.
  • gosub100 3y ago
    How funny, because when you look at it from the map, there's proably < 100 housing units within a ~3 mile radius. Of course there's not a bike path and roundabouts! It's the ideal place for a stroad: a pit-stop off the interstate with almost no housing nearby, with a cold the climate half the year.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • Symbiote 3y ago
      That place is awful. If a truck driver stops for the night, but fancies a meal from the other side of the road there's no sidewalk, and no crossing. Just lots of "no pedestrians" signs. How do you get from the Tesla Supercharger to McDonald's?
      • mcpackieh 3y ago
        Nobody intended Breezewood to be the way it is, it's the result of a bureaucratic jam between the state and the federal government decades ago. It hasn't been fixed since then because it's profitable the way it is. Virtually nobody actually lives there so there's no local pressure to change it. It is in no way representative of other communities in the region.
  • neogodless 3y ago
    Yup - instantly recognized. (I've also been there.) Can get some idea of it if you go to Street View and "zoom in" with the mouse wheel. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9993331,-78.2406551,3a,15y,91.33h,89.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sLhKp1i_zUBAfaQiB9FoKXQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9993331,-78.2406551,3a,15y,9...
    • brailsafe 3y ago
      Instantly recognized is an interesting characterization for a place that has no distinct visual characteristics at all (which I think was your point). Although I tend to agree with most urbanist arguments, many people limit their animosity to critiques of the physical land use patterns, but stop short of being so critical towards the emptying of unique cultural capital a place might otherwise have if it weren't filled with only the blandest low-risk franchise investments like Starbucks, Dairy Queen, etc... In Canada, most towns look 95% alike to this the one you linked, with the exception of a few franchises that don't cross the border. That means I can drop a street view pin in any "neighborhood" that was built in the last decade (often including many mixed-use or more contemporary building types), and more than likely find one giant super grocery, an Orange theory fitness, a Freshii, a Subway, a gas station, a bank, a Tim Hortons, a Starbucks, and at least one mega fucking big parking lot. I rent a car when I want one for road trips, but after driving through innumerable small towns and cities, it's a sad feeling to visit and just know that... there's literally no good local offerings here, not anymore.
  • mcpackieh 3y ago
    It's an absurd meme perpetuated by the ignorant. I've been through Breezewood countless times, I grew up less than a hour away. If you drive just a minute or two away from Breezewood you'll be in the beautiful rolling hills of Pennsylvnaia. Gorgeous countryside, a great place to raise kids. This is 3 minutes outside of Breezewood. This is what urban propagandist dudebros would have you believe is suburban hell: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0062641,-78.230818,3a,75y,356.89h,77.06t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sNXL97A7zCvHOm8qr1JcHNQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DNXL97A7zCvHOm8qr1JcHNQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D31.13242%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0062641,-78.230818,3a,75y,35... Breezewood isn't even a suburb, less than two hundred people actually live there. It's essentially a rest stop, a bizarro artifact of some esoteric interaction between I-70 and the turnpike. Any other small town in the area is completely different.
    • ComposedPattern 3y ago
      Uhh... ok. If you drive a few minutes past the horrifying automotive blight you arrive at... a shoulderless road going through an empty field. It's not a suburb, but it demonstrates the problem with car-centric development and sprawl. I grew up in a similar area a couple hours away, and it was a terrible place to be a kid. Yeah, I had some fun exploring the woods by my house until I got old enough to be bored by it, but that cost was that I never got to see other kids or go anywhere without having to bother my parents to arrange something and drive me somewhere. I always figured that suburban kids got to play with other kids all the time, but the impression I get is that this doesn't really happen. Suburbs are still car islands, and a kid has to be pretty lucky to have other kids their age they get along with in their general vicinity.
      • mcpackieh 3y ago
        That "horrifying automotive blight" is less than one square kilometer and virtually nobody lives there. If you don't like it (few people do) then don't live there. The rest of Bedford Country has thousands of other square kilometers for you to live in, with numerous small towns that aren't interstate rest stops. Go streetview in Bedford PA, where about 3000 people live vs Breezewood's <200. It's a modest community, the people there aren't rich but they have nice yards, sidewalks all over the place, and few cars on any of the roads. Teach your kids to look both ways before crossing a street and they'll be fine. Only somebody who's hopelessly neurotic would worry about their kids walking to their friend's house in Bedford. > kids don't like growing up in the country Most do, but if you think yours won't then go live in a small town or a city. Citing Breezewood as a problem with American society is simply idiotic. It's a tiny aberration that doesn't effect you or anybody else except for the handful of weirdos who choose to live there.
• tropdrop 3y ago
  I read the image as a visualization of why it feels hostile, to a suburban child, to walk to a point of gathering or "third place." For many suburban children, this kind of intersection is fairly representative of the closest points of interest to their home, accessible only by car via highways.
  • loandbehold 3y ago
    You are wrong. It's absolutely not representative. Closet point of interest would be a suburban park/playground.
    • tropdrop 3y ago
      Maybe to a very young child that is an interesting spot, but this kind of intersection certainly was representative of the closest points of interest in the suburb where I spent my middle-school years. In my experience, older children tended to want to congregate at cafes, Einstein Bagels, etc., especially if coming home after school when the parents aren't home and all one wants is a spot for a hanging out with friends over a snack. Also, a park being a gathering place assumes ample tree cover and good weather, missing during most of the the academic year. Meanwhile, at least in the American southwest, a park is unbearably (near 100F) hot in the summer.
      • Brybry 3y ago
        I feel like the weather bit is something people forget about. I live in the southern US and I don't want to go outside most of the year either, because it's miserable. And I don't have hard data on hand to back it up but it certainly seems to me and my dad that it's hotter, and more often, than it was when we were kids.
• lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  In mice !
• loandbehold 3y ago
  This.Most suburban communities build in the last 50 years are pretty nice. Almost no traffic, sidewalks everywhere, safe to ride a bike or walk your dog. If you have businesses in the community it brings traffic and noise. Much nicer to separate residential and commercial.
  • matsemann 3y ago
    So it's safe to walk and ride your bike, but you have nothing close by worth biking or walking to? Sounds counter productive. What do you do, bike in circles? Or my guess: you have to drive everywhere. Hence no autonomy for the kids.
    • loandbehold 3y ago
      That's exactly what I like to do. Cycle around the neighborhood, look at people'e beautiful front yards. But kids can also bike or walk to school or visit their friends in walking/cycling distance.
      • matsemann 3y ago
        "" You can bike around any time you like But you can never leave "" - The Eagles, almost
    • weberer 3y ago
      What suburbs are you talking about? Whenever I see the topic discussed here, people always seem to be referring to some strawman neighborhood surrounded by desert and highway. And maybe that's true out west where land is sparse, but all the suburbs I've known have been places like Abington, PA. Look at it from street view. There's plenty of sidewalks, detached houses, shops and restaurants, big chain stores, small mom and pop stores, and train stations that take you downtown. You can start from anywhere on that map and make it to a supermarket within 20 minutes of walking. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Abington,+PA https://www.google.com/maps/place/Abington,+PA
      • 3y ago
• david-gpu 3y ago
  > Most suburban neighborhoods have low traffic and plenty of places to ride your bike Until you actually try to go anywhere and find that you cant't without riding through an arterial road with heavy dangerous traffic. The quiet suburban roads don't form a network that allows you to go to actual destinations. Here in Toronto they are trying to address that by building (a few) cycle tracks running parallel to these horrible arterial roads, but it's still an awful experience. There are a few quiet greenways without any motor traffic, but they don't help you reach any destination. Neighborhoods that were built before the advent of the car are more amenable to cycling.
  • bluGill 3y ago
    While you can't get very far, you can still get to a park on those streets, which is what OP was talking about. There are generally enough kids in the neighborhood that you can find someone to play with of about your age. Of course the kids need to go outside to meet those other kids (and the other kids need to go out as well), and parents need to let kids out of their sight to go to the park.
    • david-gpu 3y ago
      My kids can't even go to their (suburban) school by bike because they can't get there without riding on a road for part of the way. That's a direct consequence of car-centric urban planning. These low-density car-dependent suburbs provide a very poor experience for everybody outside a car, from children/teens who can't drive yet to people who are trying to get to a destination (work, shop, library, restaurant, etc.) without a car.
    • anon291 3y ago
      > There are generally enough kids in the neighborhood that you can find someone to play with of about your age. Is there? This is actually a problem. In many neighborhoods, especially in the nicest areas where people are richer, there are fewer and fewer kids. Today, there are significantly fewer kids than adults. Just a few decades ago, kids outnumbered adults in many neighborhoods. I mean this really matters. If you have a community of 40 families and twenty kids, there's hardly any kids that can actually play with each other. They're probably too different in age, to have groups of more than 2 or 3, and that's a stretch because if you only have two or three there's a significant chance you may not get along / might not be super-interested.
• Abekkus 3y ago
  Breezewood, PA is basically a flag for american new urbanists to wave at each other, a rallying cry of what not to repeat. Funny, too, because I'd only driven through the place twice but it was still enough of a core memory for me to recognize it right away the first time I'd seen it used in this kind of article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania
• paradox460 3y ago
  At this point that picture is standard operating procedure for the people who endlessly pontificate on the "evils" of suburbs. They always post it, or use it in their YouTube videos, or whatever else. At this point if you see it, you almost always know the content of the argument that will follow, and can just ignore it