3 ms·

> PS. Please don't give me "strongtowns" links claiming that suburbs cost the city more, because it's not actually true. Strongtowns lives in a weird world wher

by piva00 2y ago

> PS. Please don't give me "strongtowns" links claiming that suburbs cost the city more, because it's not actually true. Strongtowns lives in a weird world where only expensive services "count" as providing value to a city How is it not actually true? Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities, they are not factories nor agricultural lands, they are low density housing which require expensive public services like sewers, roads, water pipes, electricity, fire department coverage, policing, while not having enough population density to actually sustain the costs of maintaining the infrastructure.

ars 2y ago
> Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities, they are not factories nor agricultural lands That is simply not true. Suburbs is where all the manufacturing and warehousing is.
- piva00 2y ago
  Some suburbs, not residential suburbs with single family detached homes which is the point of Strong Towns.
  - ars 2y ago
    And according to them what jobs do the people that live there have? Hmm? They are just wrong, but they'll never admit it.
    - piva00 2y ago
      Can you provide data that shows that most people living in the suburbs work in the suburbs themselves? Hmm? If they work in the cities it's just the same argument from Strong Towns, live in higher density housing, with services and shops nearby so their way of living is sustainable and not a drain to the city's coffers to provide infrastructure where it's not sustainable.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        I’m not in a position to look things up right now but around Boston, while a substantial number of people commute into the city, a lot of people work in suburban office parks especially from the less close-in suburbs. I’ve lived in an exurban small town for about 25 years and I only worked downtown for about 18 months. Heck, 15 years or so ago there was essentially no major tech company in the city proper any longer. All the computer companies were out by Routes 128 or 495. ADDED; And my experience over a few decades is that almost no one at those companies lived in the city.
    - namdnay 2y ago
      So? The argument is that these people should live in denser housing, not that they should just disappear :)
- jjav 2y ago
  > Suburbs is where all the manufacturing and warehousing is. Industrial areas are very different from suburbs. The only thing they have in common is both exist outside the city center.
Tade0 2y ago
> Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities They're providing people: https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol21/31/21-31.pdf https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol21/31/21-31.... It appears that all around the world, whatever we do, we just can't coax people to have children in dense city centres. In extreme cases like in South Korea, where Seoul is basically cannibalizing the rest of the country, it leads to a demographic collapse. I think this is a point that is not mentioned often enough.
- piva00 2y ago
  Suburbs here in Stockholm are a very different beast than suburbs in the USA. I live in a suburb of Stockholm and lived in a few others previously, the model for a lot of them is to have a small centre with shops, grocers, healthcare, a mass transit station, sports facilities, culture centres, with dense housing around the station with increasingly less dense housing towards the edges of the suburb: smaller apartment buildings, followed by row houses and villas towards the edges. This is much more sustainable model than American suburbia, to the point I've never required a car to live here. In the USA, Canada, Australia and other extremely car-dependent societies this is not the model for a suburb.

by piva00 2y ago

ars 2y ago

> Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities, they are not factories nor agricultural lands That is simply not true. Suburbs is where all the manufacturing and warehousing is.

piva00 2y ago
Some suburbs, not residential suburbs with single family detached homes which is the point of Strong Towns.
- ars 2y ago
  And according to them what jobs do the people that live there have? Hmm? They are just wrong, but they'll never admit it.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Can you provide data that shows that most people living in the suburbs work in the suburbs themselves? Hmm? If they work in the cities it's just the same argument from Strong Towns, live in higher density housing, with services and shops nearby so their way of living is sustainable and not a drain to the city's coffers to provide infrastructure where it's not sustainable.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I’m not in a position to look things up right now but around Boston, while a substantial number of people commute into the city, a lot of people work in suburban office parks especially from the less close-in suburbs. I’ve lived in an exurban small town for about 25 years and I only worked downtown for about 18 months. Heck, 15 years or so ago there was essentially no major tech company in the city proper any longer. All the computer companies were out by Routes 128 or 495. ADDED; And my experience over a few decades is that almost no one at those companies lived in the city.
  - namdnay 2y ago
    So? The argument is that these people should live in denser housing, not that they should just disappear :)
jjav 2y ago
> Suburbs is where all the manufacturing and warehousing is. Industrial areas are very different from suburbs. The only thing they have in common is both exist outside the city center.

Tade0 2y ago

> Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities They're providing people: https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol21/31/21-31.pdf https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol21/31/21-31.... It appears that all around the world, whatever we do, we just can't coax people to have children in dense city centres. In extreme cases like in South Korea, where Seoul is basically cannibalizing the rest of the country, it leads to a demographic collapse. I think this is a point that is not mentioned often enough.

piva00 2y ago
Suburbs here in Stockholm are a very different beast than suburbs in the USA. I live in a suburb of Stockholm and lived in a few others previously, the model for a lot of them is to have a small centre with shops, grocers, healthcare, a mass transit station, sports facilities, culture centres, with dense housing around the station with increasingly less dense housing towards the edges of the suburb: smaller apartment buildings, followed by row houses and villas towards the edges. This is much more sustainable model than American suburbia, to the point I've never required a car to live here. In the USA, Canada, Australia and other extremely car-dependent societies this is not the model for a suburb.