5 ms·

I live in a 20s streetcar suburb and I know my neighbors because we all hang out on our front lawns and all eat at the same restaurants in walking distance. My

I live in a 20s streetcar suburb and I know my neighbors because we all hang out on our front lawns and all eat at the same restaurants in walking distance. My friends who live in modern suburbs don't know their neighbors. People complain their kids don't leave the house... Where would the kids even go? We need to end the tyranny of the non grid suburb..suburbs should be on grids. Most things should be within walking distance so children can be more independent. Then it's like really easy to know your neighbor. I mean how could you not? You see them everytime you walk your kids to the park, everytime you're at the community pool, everytime you shop. I grew up in a 50s suburb and even that was a world's away from what my kids get Sometimes we've already solved our problems if only we're willing to look to the past.

azinman2 3y ago
Where are you walking to in a suburb? Everything is driving distance.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Older suburbs are slightly different, I live in one from the late 1920s and it’s actually pretty walkable. It’s mostly single family houses but there are corner stores, restaurants, a grocery, barber, etc. They’re called streetcar suburbs because they were originally developed by real estate speculators who would build a streetcar line and then sell the land to developers at a profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
  - azinman2 3y ago
    Sounds more like a town/city than a suburb to me.
    - NegativeLatency 3y ago
      It’s sub-urban, it was developed as one of the earlier sub-urban expansions of the city. Lots of suburbs predate the Levittown style of suburb we associate with suburbs today but that doesn’t change what it is and how it came to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
    - anon291 3y ago
      Well... That's what suburbs used to mean. It was a 'sub'-urban area. These days people use suburb synonymously with high density rural without agriculture, which is not the historic meaning.
  - wenc 3y ago
    TIL. Most of those streetcar suburbs on that list that I'm familiar with are actually pretty dense. They would have been considered neighborhoods in a big city (analogous to say Lincoln Park in Chicago).
    - anon291 3y ago
      Well that's what the suburban book of the 50s and onward should have been about. That was the original meaning of suburb. But yes... Over time, cities tend to grow out. It's easier when the grid is laid out correctly. Imagine a new housing development ever becoming like one of those neighborhoods ... They can't without being demolished. The entire infrastructure is wrong.
- anon291 3y ago
  My suburb is on a grid and I'm two blocks from a main street with restaurants and bars, and now my city's light rail connects to it too so I'm like 15 minutes from downtown. Most modern people would probably consider this a city itself, but it was developed as a suburb and hasn't changed much in structure since then. These days people live in 'people prisons' with nothing that any person actually wants anywhere near them. It's actually really easy to build a suburb like the one I live in. You take a farm, you build a grid of streets. Some streets are bigger. These naturally turn into commercial corridors. You then sell land to people to build homes and stick a frequent service bus line to the city center. Build some parks every few blocks. Eventually restaurants, bars, cafes, gyms, barbers, stores , etc move in and you have a nice suburb to live in. This is not rocket science. I have no idea why people get so confused on this one. God forbid one suggest this and you'll have everyone from the pearl clutching conservatives to the equity obsessed progressives all punditsplaining to you why this won't work.
- cafard 3y ago
  My earliest memories are of Parma, Ohio, just outside Cleveland. We were within three blocks of a grocery store, a bakery, a library, school, a five-and-dime. Even in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado, a block west of Lakewood, one could walk to stores and a library. A mall was something of a hike (one or one and a half miles), but the sight of teenage pedestrians didn't scare anyone
mindwok 3y ago
Well said. Personally, I find modern suburbs to be dystopian. They are full of cookie cutter houses with zero creativity or self expression of the owner, and built with the cheapest materials possible. Their only purpose is to be the dark prison you go back to from your job so you can sit inside and watch TikTok until you fall asleep. Then you wake up, drive to work or sit inside and work remotely, then do it all over again. On top of that, zoning laws usually mean there's no businesses or community spaces where you might gather to eat or hang out with the people who live around you.
- anon291 3y ago
  > Then you wake up, drive to work or sit inside and work remotely, then do it all over again. The mass preponderance of work from home is going to cause major social issues. Most Americans have very little family and social ties, so this just makes things worse. The COVID lockdowns were a huge mistake and have greatly damaged the social fabric of the country
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    This is gonna upset people on this site but you are 100% right. We already lost the third space, now we are losing the second one as well. The average person in 20 years might never leave home. Remote education, remote work, home deliveries for food and anything you need. It’ll be an epidemic of Agoraphobia.
    - NegativeLatency 3y ago
      Yeah it’s a bit troubling. My hope is that it causes us to look at what we can do to make our cities more encouraging to social interaction. Fill in the missing middle housing, make them more human centric, etc. It’s going to take at least a generation for that to happen though.
      - Gigachad 3y ago
        I wish that would happen, but honestly I see it all getting progressively worse. Offices cost lots of money so there is a pressure to reduce them. Universities are getting rid of in person lectures and classes to replace them with cheaper standardized online content. Social media, VR, and gaming is becoming increasingly engaging. And the cost of going out and doing things in person is becoming increasingly prohibitive. Local governments are becoming increasingly poor and unable to sustain unnecessary facilities like libraries and free hang out spaces. I don't think this is a problem the free market can solve since sense of community and socialization doesn't generate revenue efficiently. We need to start using tax money to build more free public spaces and public transport to get people connected.
pokepim 3y ago
[dead]
fragmede 3y ago
well, the kids were having fun wrong, so we banned skateboarding, or hanging out at the park or the mall (remember malls?) because it was dangerous, so don't do that, or that, or that, which leaves just being at home, because everything else is wrong.
- proxyon 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - nradov 3y ago
    Skateboarding is not a crime.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Pretty much all outdoor hobbies for kids have become heavily discouraged, banned, or made inconvenient. If you let your kids go outside and ride a bike, there’s a pretty good chance they will be obliterated by an SUV. Can’t walk anywhere because everything has sprawled out too far, can’t visit friends because they live too far. Pretty much the only thing kids can do independently is play video games or watch TikTok. If they are lucky, their parents have enough time to drive them around to sports clubs twice a week. When I was in school, my nearest friend lived about 7km away with no public transport access. So the only time I ever visited friends houses was occasionally for birthdays. Otherwise we would just play online games. Wasn't until I moved out of my parents suburban house to a city apartment that I was able to start actually socializing with people in person. Being able to just walk to events or take a train anywhere was life changing.
  - nojustNo 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - em-bee 3y ago
      you are not helping
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
seltzered_ 3y ago
I would actually consider dense urban cul-de-sacs (or just quieter streets with less road noise in general) for knowing neighbors well. My issue with grids is there's generally an arterial street where apartments are crammed and nobody knows each other due to road noise. References: - sebastian hunger anecdote on cul de sacs: https://youtu.be/E9K43cXZg2Q?si=4Z5WgE4izKM5A0SF https://youtu.be/E9K43cXZg2Q?si=4Z5WgE4izKM5A0SF - don appleyard's livable streets: https://vimeo.com/16399180 https://vimeo.com/16399180 Can't find it but recall seeing a map someone made of a city in southeast Asia (Thailand or vietnam) illustrating how theres lots of cul-de-sacs
- anon291 3y ago
  There's less road noise in my streetcar suburb two miles from downtown than my parents home in the actual suburbs. The 'arterial' street here is four lanes compared to the six lane giant stroads of the modern suburb my parents live in. Cities aren't noisy... Cars are. Walkers and bikers make no noise. Apartments are great for knowing neighbors and we have lovely apartment buildings and condos that would be perfect for old couples or young ones. I truly don't understand the logic here. If you want streets with less traffic just build narrower streets. We're lucky that our streets were built before cars (still have the horse rings on the sidewalk)... No one speeds. How could you? We do have some 'cul de sacs' that are passable by walkers and bikes but not cars. These have their place but a walkable grid is an absolute requirement for sanity in my opinion.
  - tafda 3y ago
    “Walkable” and “grid” are orthogonal concerns. London and Tokyo are two examples of very walkable non-grids, which I prefer to American grid-based city planning — the random connections fuel serendipity. I think the problem in modern suburbs is really fortress-like unconnected developments, which also appear in urban form as overscaled block+ monoliths. The Metreon in San Francisco is a good example, or the ugly “italianate” Geoff Palmer apartment blocks around downtown Los Angeles.
__lbracket__ 3y ago
[flagged]
- nojustNo 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - __lbracket__ 3y ago
    Neither do they care for you. Only difference is you talk to them about the weather and I dont.
    - nojustNo 3y ago
      [dead]
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  This is not gonna be a popular post, but there's some truth here. It's much easier to be connected to your neighbors if they go to the same church, share the same holidays, have the same social expectations and pastimes A mono culture implies cohesion and connectedness. Multi culture is by it's very nature less cohesive and connected This is not to say I hate my neighbors. I just have little in common with them other than a shared lawn
  - anon291 3y ago
    I'm a conservative living in a very liberal streetcar suburb. I have substantial disagreements with my neighbors politically (one is a trans activist... And I'm a Latin mass attending Catholic). You don't need huge shared cultural experiences. Just an agreement to not antagonize each other and a willingness to partake in shared experiences like block parties, or drinks. Why is everyone looking for some deep connection with everyone else? It's okay to just be good acquaintances and neighbors. Not everyone is going to be the person to whom you spill your inner most thoughts. And for when I want to be around like minded people, I just... Walk to my church. There are more church options in cities anyway.. there's just more people. Again, as a Latin mass attending Catholic, I have two solid options within walking distance in my ultra liberal west coast city. Whereas my own more conservative suburb growing up had... None. You'd have to drive hours for that. At the end of the day a lot of this comes down to people being unwilling to even be around people unlike them.
Nursie 3y ago
> Most things should be within walking distance so children can be more independent. But 15 minute cities are a trap designed to prevent you from ever leaving! They're gonna take away your car and make you eat bugs! Obviously not something I believe, but it is mind-boggling to me that this obvious attempt to improve lives by trying to influence urban planners to make more things walkable and convenient, could be dressed up by reactionary weirdos as an attack on their liberty. Because it seems like such a no-brainer - have stuff (where stuff includes shops, places of work, schools, facilities etc) within easy reach. There are so many places (here in Australia too) where the housing suburbs of the larger cities are such a deadzone for simple services and facilities, that you have to get in the car to even pick up a coffee and a muffin of a morning.
- anon291 3y ago
  I mean as a very socially conservative person, I find the conservative opposition to fifteen minute cities extremely baffling. I'm a unicorn. I often disagree with city dwellers politically, but I just cannot move to a prison suburb to be around people who agrees with me. What's even the point of living in a place with people who see eye to eye on social issues if I never actually see them?? But yeah the depression I had moving back home (briefly) after living abroad for a while really threw me over the edge in terms of knowing where I wanted to live. The car dependence alone is ... Terrifying if you think about it. What happens if your car doesn't start?
  - orwin 3y ago
    Nitpick, from what i've read from you in this thread, you're a societal conservative. You might be a social conservative (most american are, i think the left of the left of the democrat party isn't, but even then, its clearly a huge minority), but clearly, your position on suburbia and meeting people not from your circle isn't (which is fine, you can be social conservative and still think social mixity is good for conserving the social strucure/status quo). Liberals are often a lot more socially conservative than they say they are, and hide social issues their economic policies create by being progressive on societal issue, but even then they push their narrative. First and second wave feminism was about emancipation. Third and fourth wave feminism is about this "empowerment", which is fine, i guess, but really does not move the needle socially.
natmaka 3y ago
Leopold Kohr summed it up: 'Whenever something is wrong, something is too big'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#The_Breakdown_of_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#The_Breakdown_of_...

azinman2 3y ago

Where are you walking to in a suburb? Everything is driving distance.

NegativeLatency 3y ago
Older suburbs are slightly different, I live in one from the late 1920s and it’s actually pretty walkable. It’s mostly single family houses but there are corner stores, restaurants, a grocery, barber, etc. They’re called streetcar suburbs because they were originally developed by real estate speculators who would build a streetcar line and then sell the land to developers at a profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
- azinman2 3y ago
  Sounds more like a town/city than a suburb to me.
  - NegativeLatency 3y ago
    It’s sub-urban, it was developed as one of the earlier sub-urban expansions of the city. Lots of suburbs predate the Levittown style of suburb we associate with suburbs today but that doesn’t change what it is and how it came to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
  - anon291 3y ago
    Well... That's what suburbs used to mean. It was a 'sub'-urban area. These days people use suburb synonymously with high density rural without agriculture, which is not the historic meaning.
- wenc 3y ago
  TIL. Most of those streetcar suburbs on that list that I'm familiar with are actually pretty dense. They would have been considered neighborhoods in a big city (analogous to say Lincoln Park in Chicago).
  - anon291 3y ago
    Well that's what the suburban book of the 50s and onward should have been about. That was the original meaning of suburb. But yes... Over time, cities tend to grow out. It's easier when the grid is laid out correctly. Imagine a new housing development ever becoming like one of those neighborhoods ... They can't without being demolished. The entire infrastructure is wrong.
anon291 3y ago
My suburb is on a grid and I'm two blocks from a main street with restaurants and bars, and now my city's light rail connects to it too so I'm like 15 minutes from downtown. Most modern people would probably consider this a city itself, but it was developed as a suburb and hasn't changed much in structure since then. These days people live in 'people prisons' with nothing that any person actually wants anywhere near them. It's actually really easy to build a suburb like the one I live in. You take a farm, you build a grid of streets. Some streets are bigger. These naturally turn into commercial corridors. You then sell land to people to build homes and stick a frequent service bus line to the city center. Build some parks every few blocks. Eventually restaurants, bars, cafes, gyms, barbers, stores , etc move in and you have a nice suburb to live in. This is not rocket science. I have no idea why people get so confused on this one. God forbid one suggest this and you'll have everyone from the pearl clutching conservatives to the equity obsessed progressives all punditsplaining to you why this won't work.
cafard 3y ago
My earliest memories are of Parma, Ohio, just outside Cleveland. We were within three blocks of a grocery store, a bakery, a library, school, a five-and-dime. Even in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado, a block west of Lakewood, one could walk to stores and a library. A mall was something of a hike (one or one and a half miles), but the sight of teenage pedestrians didn't scare anyone

mindwok 3y ago

Well said. Personally, I find modern suburbs to be dystopian. They are full of cookie cutter houses with zero creativity or self expression of the owner, and built with the cheapest materials possible. Their only purpose is to be the dark prison you go back to from your job so you can sit inside and watch TikTok until you fall asleep. Then you wake up, drive to work or sit inside and work remotely, then do it all over again. On top of that, zoning laws usually mean there's no businesses or community spaces where you might gather to eat or hang out with the people who live around you.

anon291 3y ago
> Then you wake up, drive to work or sit inside and work remotely, then do it all over again. The mass preponderance of work from home is going to cause major social issues. Most Americans have very little family and social ties, so this just makes things worse. The COVID lockdowns were a huge mistake and have greatly damaged the social fabric of the country
- Gigachad 3y ago
  This is gonna upset people on this site but you are 100% right. We already lost the third space, now we are losing the second one as well. The average person in 20 years might never leave home. Remote education, remote work, home deliveries for food and anything you need. It’ll be an epidemic of Agoraphobia.
  - NegativeLatency 3y ago
    Yeah it’s a bit troubling. My hope is that it causes us to look at what we can do to make our cities more encouraging to social interaction. Fill in the missing middle housing, make them more human centric, etc. It’s going to take at least a generation for that to happen though.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      I wish that would happen, but honestly I see it all getting progressively worse. Offices cost lots of money so there is a pressure to reduce them. Universities are getting rid of in person lectures and classes to replace them with cheaper standardized online content. Social media, VR, and gaming is becoming increasingly engaging. And the cost of going out and doing things in person is becoming increasingly prohibitive. Local governments are becoming increasingly poor and unable to sustain unnecessary facilities like libraries and free hang out spaces. I don't think this is a problem the free market can solve since sense of community and socialization doesn't generate revenue efficiently. We need to start using tax money to build more free public spaces and public transport to get people connected.

pokepim 3y ago

[dead]

fragmede 3y ago

well, the kids were having fun wrong, so we banned skateboarding, or hanging out at the park or the mall (remember malls?) because it was dangerous, so don't do that, or that, or that, which leaves just being at home, because everything else is wrong.

proxyon 3y ago
[flagged]
- nradov 3y ago
  Skateboarding is not a crime.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Pretty much all outdoor hobbies for kids have become heavily discouraged, banned, or made inconvenient. If you let your kids go outside and ride a bike, there’s a pretty good chance they will be obliterated by an SUV. Can’t walk anywhere because everything has sprawled out too far, can’t visit friends because they live too far. Pretty much the only thing kids can do independently is play video games or watch TikTok. If they are lucky, their parents have enough time to drive them around to sports clubs twice a week. When I was in school, my nearest friend lived about 7km away with no public transport access. So the only time I ever visited friends houses was occasionally for birthdays. Otherwise we would just play online games. Wasn't until I moved out of my parents suburban house to a city apartment that I was able to start actually socializing with people in person. Being able to just walk to events or take a train anywhere was life changing.
- nojustNo 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - em-bee 3y ago
    you are not helping
- Brian_K_White 3y ago

seltzered_ 3y ago

I would actually consider dense urban cul-de-sacs (or just quieter streets with less road noise in general) for knowing neighbors well. My issue with grids is there's generally an arterial street where apartments are crammed and nobody knows each other due to road noise. References: - sebastian hunger anecdote on cul de sacs: https://youtu.be/E9K43cXZg2Q?si=4Z5WgE4izKM5A0SF https://youtu.be/E9K43cXZg2Q?si=4Z5WgE4izKM5A0SF - don appleyard's livable streets: https://vimeo.com/16399180 https://vimeo.com/16399180 Can't find it but recall seeing a map someone made of a city in southeast Asia (Thailand or vietnam) illustrating how theres lots of cul-de-sacs

anon291 3y ago
There's less road noise in my streetcar suburb two miles from downtown than my parents home in the actual suburbs. The 'arterial' street here is four lanes compared to the six lane giant stroads of the modern suburb my parents live in. Cities aren't noisy... Cars are. Walkers and bikers make no noise. Apartments are great for knowing neighbors and we have lovely apartment buildings and condos that would be perfect for old couples or young ones. I truly don't understand the logic here. If you want streets with less traffic just build narrower streets. We're lucky that our streets were built before cars (still have the horse rings on the sidewalk)... No one speeds. How could you? We do have some 'cul de sacs' that are passable by walkers and bikes but not cars. These have their place but a walkable grid is an absolute requirement for sanity in my opinion.
- tafda 3y ago
  “Walkable” and “grid” are orthogonal concerns. London and Tokyo are two examples of very walkable non-grids, which I prefer to American grid-based city planning — the random connections fuel serendipity. I think the problem in modern suburbs is really fortress-like unconnected developments, which also appear in urban form as overscaled block+ monoliths. The Metreon in San Francisco is a good example, or the ugly “italianate” Geoff Palmer apartment blocks around downtown Los Angeles.

__lbracket__ 3y ago

[flagged]

nojustNo 3y ago
[flagged]
- __lbracket__ 3y ago
  Neither do they care for you. Only difference is you talk to them about the weather and I dont.
  - nojustNo 3y ago
    [dead]
bluefirebrand 3y ago
This is not gonna be a popular post, but there's some truth here. It's much easier to be connected to your neighbors if they go to the same church, share the same holidays, have the same social expectations and pastimes A mono culture implies cohesion and connectedness. Multi culture is by it's very nature less cohesive and connected This is not to say I hate my neighbors. I just have little in common with them other than a shared lawn
- anon291 3y ago
  I'm a conservative living in a very liberal streetcar suburb. I have substantial disagreements with my neighbors politically (one is a trans activist... And I'm a Latin mass attending Catholic). You don't need huge shared cultural experiences. Just an agreement to not antagonize each other and a willingness to partake in shared experiences like block parties, or drinks. Why is everyone looking for some deep connection with everyone else? It's okay to just be good acquaintances and neighbors. Not everyone is going to be the person to whom you spill your inner most thoughts. And for when I want to be around like minded people, I just... Walk to my church. There are more church options in cities anyway.. there's just more people. Again, as a Latin mass attending Catholic, I have two solid options within walking distance in my ultra liberal west coast city. Whereas my own more conservative suburb growing up had... None. You'd have to drive hours for that. At the end of the day a lot of this comes down to people being unwilling to even be around people unlike them.

Nursie 3y ago

> Most things should be within walking distance so children can be more independent. But 15 minute cities are a trap designed to prevent you from ever leaving! They're gonna take away your car and make you eat bugs! Obviously not something I believe, but it is mind-boggling to me that this obvious attempt to improve lives by trying to influence urban planners to make more things walkable and convenient, could be dressed up by reactionary weirdos as an attack on their liberty. Because it seems like such a no-brainer - have stuff (where stuff includes shops, places of work, schools, facilities etc) within easy reach. There are so many places (here in Australia too) where the housing suburbs of the larger cities are such a deadzone for simple services and facilities, that you have to get in the car to even pick up a coffee and a muffin of a morning.

anon291 3y ago
I mean as a very socially conservative person, I find the conservative opposition to fifteen minute cities extremely baffling. I'm a unicorn. I often disagree with city dwellers politically, but I just cannot move to a prison suburb to be around people who agrees with me. What's even the point of living in a place with people who see eye to eye on social issues if I never actually see them?? But yeah the depression I had moving back home (briefly) after living abroad for a while really threw me over the edge in terms of knowing where I wanted to live. The car dependence alone is ... Terrifying if you think about it. What happens if your car doesn't start?
- orwin 3y ago
  Nitpick, from what i've read from you in this thread, you're a societal conservative. You might be a social conservative (most american are, i think the left of the left of the democrat party isn't, but even then, its clearly a huge minority), but clearly, your position on suburbia and meeting people not from your circle isn't (which is fine, you can be social conservative and still think social mixity is good for conserving the social strucure/status quo). Liberals are often a lot more socially conservative than they say they are, and hide social issues their economic policies create by being progressive on societal issue, but even then they push their narrative. First and second wave feminism was about emancipation. Third and fourth wave feminism is about this "empowerment", which is fine, i guess, but really does not move the needle socially.

natmaka 3y ago

Leopold Kohr summed it up: 'Whenever something is wrong, something is too big'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#The_Breakdown_of_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#The_Breakdown_of_...