5 ms·

turn of the century suburbs truly are goldilocks neighborhoods.

by trgn 2y ago

KerrAvon 2y ago
genuinely curious which century you mean?
- cheschire 2y ago
  This is a depressingly good question. I hadn't ever considered we'd be far enough into this one to refer back to the 90's and early aughts as "turn of the century"
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    That's why I use the French term "fin-de-siècle" which is well understood by educated English speakers and yet always refers to the end of the 19th century without additional qualifications.
    - moate 2y ago
      Define “educated” and cite the survey showing how well understood it is among “English speakers” (British English? Commonwealth Nations Generally? N.A. English Speakers? Non-native/ESL?) I use “fortnightly” to mean “in 2 weeks” because bi-weekly is ambiguous, and while the game is hugely popular I still assume at least 1 person on any email chain with me reads that and is thinking “the fuck does he talk like a Victorian English Dandy for?”
    - November_Echo 2y ago
      > the French term "fin-de-siècle" which is well understood by educated English speakers This may not be as well understood as you believe. I am an educated English speaker, who has many educated English speaking friends and family, I have never heard this phrase.
    - tempfile 2y ago
      I agree with the other commenters that this is obscure. I coincidentally heard the term for the first time about 3 days ago (in the context of "socialism by fin-de-siècle" - the expectation that communism was inevitable among the left wing at that time.
  - lukas099 2y ago
    Turn of the millennium?
- jacobr1 2y ago
  I'm sure he meant the early 1900s. I've usually heard these called "streetcar suburbs" for obvious reasons. They tend to have a good mix of urban and suburban vibes. Unlike the car-focused developments after the war, these neighborhoods are super walkable with local retail or other spots just a stroll away, or a short streetcar hop. The design is all about pedestrians, with narrow streets, plenty of sidewalks, and often tree-lined avenues. The houses, seem to have been more often built by skilled craftsmen, and have unique architectural details, unlike the cookie-cutter homes you see in later post-war suburbs.
  - vineyardmike 2y ago
    This is all true (if only we could go back in time!) but don’t let selection bias ruin reality. Most homes were crappy, only the ones built by skilled craftsmen survived. This was also the era that spawned protections against tenements.
    - chefandy 2y ago
      Crappy? I'm not so sure about that. I've lived at maybe 15 Southern New England addresses in my life and the three built after 1920 were the cheapest quality. And it's not like they were one in a dozen, or even 1 in 3: from cheap triple deckers to mansions, the area I live is packed full of buildings from that era. The knob and tube electricity has mostly been replaced, but most places I've lived still had gas lamp pipe nipples sticking out of the walls in the common hallways. The entire area is jam packed with buildings from that era.
      - itsoktocry 2y ago
        >were the cheapest quality In what sense? I think people conflate "big brick building" with "quality". Sure, it's nice, as is some of the labour-intensive finishing work from that era. But nearly every bit of a modern house is "higher quality" than a home built 100+ ago, thanks mostly to the building code. (please don't link me some story of a shoddy builder)
        2y ago
- trgn 2y ago
  Sorry, yes, 19th to 20th century. Neighborhoods with the Full House house basically.
hintymad 2y ago
Unfortunately the US demolished such urban structures to make space for cars and parking spaces. We now get a small downtown with clusters of skyscrapers, and then endless urban sprawl. It definitely made the cities of the US ugly, especially when compared to the European cities.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  They still exist in the northeast megalopolis where space to build postwar sprawl was limited.
  - kolbusa 2y ago
    I am visiting Boston and I cannot stop wondering why SF is not like that. The city feels so much more livable almost everywhere I went. I'm sure there are shady parts, but every time I need to go to SF for some reason I get really depressed.
    - vineyardmike 2y ago
      Respectfully, you’re almost certainly going to the wrong parts. My source is that I grew up inside Boston and now reside inside SF. Boston is amazing, and I love it. But SF is too. For similar reasons. SF is a city of neighborhoods. If you’re going to downtown, or any of the business centers, you’re not getting the good parts. The enjoyable nice parts of SF are all residential. Because of the hills, each residential neighborhood (a valley) has its own unique commercial street full of shops and restaurants, surrounded by beautiful old townhomes, and as you go up the hills you get vistas and nice homes. The city quality is inversely correlated with office space. Boston has similar historic driving forces - instead of hills, it used to be a city of (now infilled) peninsulas. You get wonderful old homes in Boston, and lots of streets full of shops. Instead of tech money (which Boston also has) it was overrun first by the education industry, which anchors many neighborhoods today.
      - MikeTheGreat 2y ago
        could you expand on what you mean by "the education industry"? I was picturing an army of teachers, but I don't normally think of teachers as folks who earn enough to be compared to tech money :)
galdosdi 2y ago
Yes they are. We don't have enough of them and should make more. Literally all of Philadelphia (and its suburbs going quite far out) resembles this, thanks to rowhouses which allow true single family you-own-your-own-land-with-your-own-(tiny)-yard housing while still hitting enough density to get economies of scale and insanely great walkability. It would be paradise on earth if the public schools were good. Queens is like this too (except I have no idea about public school quality there, and it's probably hard to afford these days -- but balanced by access to the Manhattan job market) Governments need to accept that winner-take-all massive metro areas are the way of the future and just adjust zoning and incentives to flood the zone with transportation and housing (which help substitute for and encourage each other anyway), otherwise you're stuck choosing between affordable housing and access to education and jobs. Concentrating more jobs nearby creates more than the sum of their parts because workers are often more productive in industry clusters.

turn of the century suburbs truly are goldilocks neighborhoods.

by trgn 2y ago

turn of the century suburbs truly are goldilocks neighborhoods.

KerrAvon 2y ago

genuinely curious which century you mean?

cheschire 2y ago
This is a depressingly good question. I hadn't ever considered we'd be far enough into this one to refer back to the 90's and early aughts as "turn of the century"
- kccqzy 2y ago
  That's why I use the French term "fin-de-siècle" which is well understood by educated English speakers and yet always refers to the end of the 19th century without additional qualifications.
  - moate 2y ago
    Define “educated” and cite the survey showing how well understood it is among “English speakers” (British English? Commonwealth Nations Generally? N.A. English Speakers? Non-native/ESL?) I use “fortnightly” to mean “in 2 weeks” because bi-weekly is ambiguous, and while the game is hugely popular I still assume at least 1 person on any email chain with me reads that and is thinking “the fuck does he talk like a Victorian English Dandy for?”
  - November_Echo 2y ago
    > the French term "fin-de-siècle" which is well understood by educated English speakers This may not be as well understood as you believe. I am an educated English speaker, who has many educated English speaking friends and family, I have never heard this phrase.
  - tempfile 2y ago
    I agree with the other commenters that this is obscure. I coincidentally heard the term for the first time about 3 days ago (in the context of "socialism by fin-de-siècle" - the expectation that communism was inevitable among the left wing at that time.
- lukas099 2y ago
  Turn of the millennium?
jacobr1 2y ago
I'm sure he meant the early 1900s. I've usually heard these called "streetcar suburbs" for obvious reasons. They tend to have a good mix of urban and suburban vibes. Unlike the car-focused developments after the war, these neighborhoods are super walkable with local retail or other spots just a stroll away, or a short streetcar hop. The design is all about pedestrians, with narrow streets, plenty of sidewalks, and often tree-lined avenues. The houses, seem to have been more often built by skilled craftsmen, and have unique architectural details, unlike the cookie-cutter homes you see in later post-war suburbs.
- vineyardmike 2y ago
  This is all true (if only we could go back in time!) but don’t let selection bias ruin reality. Most homes were crappy, only the ones built by skilled craftsmen survived. This was also the era that spawned protections against tenements.
  - chefandy 2y ago
    Crappy? I'm not so sure about that. I've lived at maybe 15 Southern New England addresses in my life and the three built after 1920 were the cheapest quality. And it's not like they were one in a dozen, or even 1 in 3: from cheap triple deckers to mansions, the area I live is packed full of buildings from that era. The knob and tube electricity has mostly been replaced, but most places I've lived still had gas lamp pipe nipples sticking out of the walls in the common hallways. The entire area is jam packed with buildings from that era.
    - itsoktocry 2y ago
      >were the cheapest quality In what sense? I think people conflate "big brick building" with "quality". Sure, it's nice, as is some of the labour-intensive finishing work from that era. But nearly every bit of a modern house is "higher quality" than a home built 100+ ago, thanks mostly to the building code. (please don't link me some story of a shoddy builder)
      - 2y ago
trgn 2y ago
Sorry, yes, 19th to 20th century. Neighborhoods with the Full House house basically.

hintymad 2y ago

Unfortunately the US demolished such urban structures to make space for cars and parking spaces. We now get a small downtown with clusters of skyscrapers, and then endless urban sprawl. It definitely made the cities of the US ugly, especially when compared to the European cities.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
They still exist in the northeast megalopolis where space to build postwar sprawl was limited.
- kolbusa 2y ago
  I am visiting Boston and I cannot stop wondering why SF is not like that. The city feels so much more livable almost everywhere I went. I'm sure there are shady parts, but every time I need to go to SF for some reason I get really depressed.
  - vineyardmike 2y ago
    Respectfully, you’re almost certainly going to the wrong parts. My source is that I grew up inside Boston and now reside inside SF. Boston is amazing, and I love it. But SF is too. For similar reasons. SF is a city of neighborhoods. If you’re going to downtown, or any of the business centers, you’re not getting the good parts. The enjoyable nice parts of SF are all residential. Because of the hills, each residential neighborhood (a valley) has its own unique commercial street full of shops and restaurants, surrounded by beautiful old townhomes, and as you go up the hills you get vistas and nice homes. The city quality is inversely correlated with office space. Boston has similar historic driving forces - instead of hills, it used to be a city of (now infilled) peninsulas. You get wonderful old homes in Boston, and lots of streets full of shops. Instead of tech money (which Boston also has) it was overrun first by the education industry, which anchors many neighborhoods today.
    - MikeTheGreat 2y ago
      could you expand on what you mean by "the education industry"? I was picturing an army of teachers, but I don't normally think of teachers as folks who earn enough to be compared to tech money :)

galdosdi 2y ago

Yes they are. We don't have enough of them and should make more. Literally all of Philadelphia (and its suburbs going quite far out) resembles this, thanks to rowhouses which allow true single family you-own-your-own-land-with-your-own-(tiny)-yard housing while still hitting enough density to get economies of scale and insanely great walkability. It would be paradise on earth if the public schools were good. Queens is like this too (except I have no idea about public school quality there, and it's probably hard to afford these days -- but balanced by access to the Manhattan job market) Governments need to accept that winner-take-all massive metro areas are the way of the future and just adjust zoning and incentives to flood the zone with transportation and housing (which help substitute for and encourage each other anyway), otherwise you're stuck choosing between affordable housing and access to education and jobs. Concentrating more jobs nearby creates more than the sum of their parts because workers are often more productive in industry clusters.