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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

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