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My skepticism of suburbs has mostly been about how the long distance and personal car dependence they create tends to isolate people and households. Build a su

• modoc 12y ago
  Your vision of a suburb has very little to do with the reality of my suburban existence. It's like someone from the country talking about the horribly dangerous ugly city with its filthy air, roving gangs shooting strangers, and huge rats running in the streets. I'm not saying suburbs are perfect, but you've basically thrown up a stack of strawmen here.
  • pnathan 12y ago
    IME of suburbia, the grandparent's comment is spot-on. I live in a city, and it's kind of ugly, kind of dangerous in many places, there are random shootings of strangers. The air, thankfully, is good. The rats in the streets would be kind of awesome! :)
  • lliwta 12y ago
    I generally agree, except that the not being able to get around without a car bit is really True in my experience. edit: It's easy to know your neighbors in suburbia if you're outgoing, and things vary from street to street. But there generally is way less interaction than if you were to have a neighborhood pub at the end of your street, or side-to-side porches everyone lounges on during summer nights. It tends to be that you know the neighbors you get along with and ignore everyone else. In city environments, it's more like you interact with everyone because, well, no choice.
    • vecinu 12y ago
      So what's the attraction towards interacting with everyone? That I might find out one of my neighbours is a kidnapper? I don't like to talk to everyone I meet or even be in a city for too long as it overstimulates my senses. It is the same reason why I don't like large crowds and prefer living in the suburbs.
      • lliwta 12y ago
        > That I might find out one of my neighbours is a kidnapper? The far more likely scenario is that you find you have some common background, and waste an evening relating stories that you would probably never dredge up again otherwise. The world really is a surprisingly tiny place. > I don't like to talk to everyone I meet or even be in a city for too long as it overstimulates my senses. It takes all kinds :-)
    • ufmace 12y ago
      This is a better description of what I was talking about. IMHO, suburbia certainly doesn't make it impossible to know your neighbors, but it kinda subtly discourages it, while more tightly-packed cities subtly encourage it. The super-outgoing will always know their neighbors, and the super-quiet never will. A little proximity and shared interests/spaces tends to help those in the middle along some.
  • chrisweekly 12y ago
    Couldn't agree more, modoc. Also, while prediction is a dangerous game, I foresee the combination of increased investment in public transit, and the advent of affordable driverless cars, adding up to helping suburbs remain a terrific place to grow up. As my hometown (Arlington, MA) was in the 70's and 80's, and as my new adopted town (Duxbury MA) is today. Related tangent: IMHO quality of life is less about urban/suburban(/rural), than it is about neighborhoods. I posted about this topic earlier this year: http://www.chrisweekly.org/2014/01/22/neighborhoods-matter-heres-how-to-make-yours-better/ http://www.chrisweekly.org/2014/01/22/neighborhoods-matter-h...
    • buerkle 12y ago
      Driverless cars and public transit will not fix the problem of having to spend an enormous amount of money on infrastructure caused by a lack of density.
      • katbyte 12y ago
        or energy moving vehicals & people such great distances
    • dublinben 12y ago
      The problem with nice suburbs (Arlington and Duxbury both qualify) is that they're inherently exclusive. They are racially homogeneous, have median incomes at least 25-50% higher than average, and have nothing to offer young adults. I'm incredibly thankful for my privileged upbringing in a similar suburban community, but none of my peers could leave fast enough.
      • chrisweekly 12y ago
        Yeah, the racial homogeneity is the biggest downside in my experience. It's the one thing I really don't like about Duxbury. Wish there were a good solution. I find the other problems more ambiguous, though. High median income is almost axiomatic: people with means will choose the nicest places to live. That doesn't bother me much at all. It correlates strongly with lower crime and a stronger focus on education. And maybe "nothing to offer young adults" is actually a feature. I think young adults as a rule should leave their hometowns, travel the world, explore and experiment and do brave and foolish things, learn from their mistakes and get some perspective. I'm not sure any one [kind of] place can be great for families with young children, and for young adults, and be economically and culturally diverse. Absent the option of such a utopia, as the father of two young girls I'm always -- and unapologetically -- going to optimize for proximity to other families with kids, safely walkable/bikeable streets, and excellent schools. Respectfully, Chris
  • ObviousScience 12y ago
    I don't like to usually "me too", but the grand parent comment very accurately described my experience of suburbs as well. We jokingly referred to it as "the suburban cultural wasteland", because you had to walk 2-3 miles to find anything that wasn't more houses, a grocery store with corporate specialty stores attached (Starbucks coffee, various automotive places, etc), or a school. Most of what you could find in that radius was a mall, which was just a bigger version of the grocery store thing or various pieces of civil infrastructure (parks, community center, etc). You had to go 4-5 miles to find anything that was even slightly not cookie-cutter, which put it at a fairly impossible distance to walk routinely. I'm contrasting this with the city I now live in that the suburbs were around, and I'm pretty sure I could hit an oddball business with a baseball from my window.
    • watwut 12y ago
      Out of curiosity: would a bicycle solve that routine 2-3 and 4-5 miles walking problem?
      • CodeCube 12y ago
        Not with kids involved
        • tekalon 12y ago
          I know a family with two young kids that do not have a car. The use public transportation and try to live near a grocery store. They seem to be more of the exception than anything else. It's not impossible, just difficult.
      • ObviousScience 12y ago
        Yes, my point was mostly that it's much sparser than a city proper in terms of things that have what I'd call culture to them, and that you're required to have some kind of vehicle to navigate it. Of course, I wouldn't have felt comfortable riding a bike on the road there, so it somewhat mitigates how useful a bike actually is.
      • 12y ago
  • pessimizer 12y ago
    Could you be specific? You're being more specific about pointing out exaggerations in your simile than about your subject.
    • modoc 12y ago
      Sure. Yes, I need a car. I love cars/motorcycles. I love driving. I always owned at least one vehicle even when I lived in the city and didn't have to. So this isn't a bad thing for me at all. Having a garage to safely park and work on my vehicles is a huge bonus. I am far less isolated from my neighbors and community than I was when I lived in the city. Living in apartments I had essentially zero contact/communication with my neighbors other than uncomfortable elevator rides. Living in the suburbs I know all my neighbors well. We help each other clear driveways after a big snow. We BBQ together. We watch each others houses when we travel. We talk. I love having a huge lawn. It's not a burden, it's wonderful. I love having a nice hammock, green grass to lay in, a big space for my dog to run around in, a place to put the raised garden beds I built for my wife, etc... I enjoy not having ugly/loud/smelly commercial buildings hemming me in. We have good pedestrian infrastructure. Wide sidewalks that let me run, walk the dog, walk into the town forrest for a hike, or stroll into town for lunch or to grab ice cream with my wife on a hot summers day. There's no high speed traffic, and no irrational fears about kids getting kidnapped. When I have a party, everyone can easily park in my driveway if they also live outside easy public transportation. I can play music and have 20 people over for a bonfire without bothering my neighbors. There's a lot of things I miss about living in the city, likewise there's a lot of things I miss about living in the country. But honestly, right now, my current neighborhood and home are a great spot for me.
      • TheyCalledHimBo 12y ago
        Wow, I'm almost diametrically opposed to your views. That's actually fairly cool. I abhor personal motor vehicles, refused to even get my license at 16 and have managed exceptionally well over the last 7 years. I've put several thousand miles on my bike(s) over the years as my main mode of transportation, though I do also use public transit quite often. Living near SLC, Utah our transit is fair, but stupidly expensive. I grew up in the suburbs, and felt approximately 0 connection to those around me. Living in an apartment building I have conversations with people sitting on their porch/balcony quite often. I don't even particularly enjoy people either. I have no opinion on the lawn to be honest, at the moment there is more than enough land for those who want it to enjoy. I actually enjoy the close proximity of various buildings, which very very rarely can be called loud, ugly, or smelly. I don't live next to a manufacturing plant, so yeah.. Pedestrian infrastructure is necessarily improved due to the greater density of people, but this isn't really an issue that I've found in the suburbs either. If I have a party there is more than enough parking surrounding my apartment building that it really doesn't matter. Granted I can't have a bonfire or blast music, but I've been there/done that and don't miss it. I miss basically nothing about the suburbs. Always felt too hostile, too "fuck you, got mine." Maybe it was the people, maybe just the neighborhood, but I'd kneecap myself before I went back.
  • akgerber 12y ago
    There are a lot of different types of suburbs out there. I grew up in an old streetcar suburb in the Midwest where almost all of the kids walked to school (though most people still drove to work, since many jobs had sprawled out to office parks). I could walk to my job at a grocery store and there was a nice bike trail, and once I realized that biking was a practical form of transportation, in addition to recreation, the narrow side streets on the grid made for great biking even without any specific infrastructure. There are bars, restaurant, and a movie theaters, all within a quick walk. But a lot of newer suburbs make it somewhere between unpleasant and dangerous to walk anywhere.
    • pnathan 12y ago
      As a remark: Seattle has adopted a "mini-downtown" approach with desirable neighborhoods (that I hope gets copied elsewhere). Each neighborhood that starts seeing some density growth/interest has? will get pushed toward? having sort of a mini-city-center so that the neighborhood can kind of operate semi-independently within the city-umbrella. Kind of a federal/province approach within a city. I really appreciate it. I think that if a suburban town took this approach and drove towards growth in this fashion, it would be very pleasant to live. Also - most post 1990s suburb growth doesn't use grids, so it becomes grievously difficult to easily walk/bike between areas, since it's never a straight line to achieve your goal. /long live the grid design
      • superuser2 12y ago
        Chicago does this. We're a city of neighborhoods. The Loop is the main tourist destination, sure, but few people actually live there. We live in neighborhoods. Some have houses with (small) lots, some have apartments, some have both. There's a nice sprinkling of parks, and most neighborhoods have amenities like a few independent restaurants, maybe some chain restaurants, coffee shops, bars, CVS, and a grocery store or two. Things you might even find in a larger/denser suburb. The difference is that you can usually walk <15 minutes to a train that comes every <15 minutes to take you downtown. Unlike Manhattan, buses are best for most short-haul trips while the rail system is best for longer rides (we don't do the "trains go north-south, buses go east-west" thing.) Public transit is often slower than driving, even with traffic, but you can enjoy the time if you bring your smartphone and/or a book.
  • aniro 12y ago
    I live in a suburb of Philadelphia. I find the original description absurdly accurate. I don't drive/have a car and it is crippling.
    • Crito 12y ago
      It depends on the suburb. I could see myself living in someplace like Manayunk without car, but I suppose that is sort of pushing the meaning of "suburb". Some of the towns along the Main Line seem fairly livable without a car (For a time I did the opposite, living in Philadelphia and working in Radnor), but that doesn't seem ideal. Some of the other towns along the Main Line are definitely as he describes.
      • aniro 12y ago
        I whole-heartedly agree that it is highly dependent upon the burb. Something as simple as a grocer and a hardware store in a town center can make a world of difference. Transportation alternates are also highly variable and make a huge difference.
  • potatolicious 12y ago
    I dunno, I grew up in the suburbs and ufmace summed it up pretty well. My neighborhood wasn't explicitly gated, but the meandering streets with a million dead-ends may as well have been a wrought iron gate. It's pretty obvious to everyone that the nonsensical street layout was designed to keep everyone but residents out. Every house had huge lawns, and because the houses were all built as part of the same subdivision development, they were all roughly the same age. This created a lot of keeping up with the Joneses, where one neighbor getting a new roof meant a cascade of people getting new roofs. One house got a paint job and suddenly the whole damn fuckin' street is painting houses. Getting anywhere without a car is nigh impossible. The neighborhood, despite being upscale, lacked sidewalks (I guess they never thought anyone would need 'em, the residents ain't poor after all), and once you leave the neighborhood you face a 5-lane arterial where the unofficial speed limit is 50mph and drivers have no conception of pedestrians. The sidewalks are wide enough for one person - if you're unlucky enough to meet someone coming the other direction you get to do a silly dance around each other so nobody has to step into 50mph traffic. Crossing this street is also nigh impossible until well after I moved out of that place. There are pedestrian crosswalks painted in, but good luck getting any of the drivers to stop for you. Thankfully as of a few years ago they installed a real honest to God traffic signal. Small victories. Anyways, long rant, but ufmace's "nightmare" suburb does exist. I grew up in one.
    • 3pt14159 12y ago
      Actually, the road design was made to minimize driving times. By having a system of cul-de-sacs and crescents minimize the number of intersections that require all way stop. It also minimizes the amount of pavement you need to use. The solution (other than making things way more dense) is to make walking / biking paths at the end of cul-de-sacs to connect the suburbs for pedestrians, while still maintaining the advantages on non-grid street layout.
    • lttlrck 12y ago
      In a neighborhoods with similarly aged houses the roofs are going to need replacing pretty much in unison aren't they?
    • tptacek 12y ago
  • HarryHirsch 12y ago
    Just a random statistic: in 2013 there were 216 homicides in Houston and 188 traffic deaths. It's easy to move away from crime, but in exurban America you cannot not have a car.
  • ufmace 12y ago
    Reading it again, it does come off a bit more ranty than I usually like to be. But it does accurately represent the feel I get from the suburbs I have lived in. I can't say that they're all like that, and it sounds like you have one where most of the bad parts aren't there, and the others are things I dislike that you enjoy.
• altcognito 12y ago
  > and you get a neighborhood where everyone seems actively discouraged from knowing anything about their neighbors This is completely unfair. I can tell you that from living in my suburban home over the past 10 years that over time I have come to know every single person who lives on my street. You have children that play together, that goto school together (and you may serve on the PTO together with those same neighbors), you have trees that you plant, fences that are built together. You see each other at garage sales. If you have an HOA, you likely maintain a common area together (maybe a pool) On the other hand, there are those who complain how "up in everybody's business" the neighbors are. All I can say is that everywhere is different, perspective is everything. I've live in major cities and talked to people who in major cities and "knowing your neighbors" is more reflective of who your neighbors are than it is of the geographical layout. (I also have neighbors who I have little interaction with, and that's just fine)
  • ape4 12y ago
    But goto is considered harmful!
  • lliwta 12y ago
    For me, this is the biggest difference. When I live in a city, I know my neighbors just because. Running into each other on the bus turns into a beer and a long chat. In Suburbia, you know a lot of your neighbors, but there's almost always some sort of reason or structure. The social network is the same size, but lots of those relationships are somehow not intrinsic (which isn't to devalue them, even comparatively, but imho there is a qualitative difference). The latter works great for family life because there are so many more structural incentives to interact; the former is probably preferable for younger or non-child-raising people.
• deleted 12y ago
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• ctdonath 12y ago
  You can badmouth any living conditions. I like my suburban "not-gated but has just one entrance" for safety, a good-sized easy-maintained lawn for the kids to play in, no ugly/noisy commercial buildings, and a quick EV drive to a vast array of options that I don't want to actually live right next to. Pedestrian infrastructure is pointless as it's faster to drive to what you actually want to go to than to walk to what you don't, kids ARE monitored despite survivor bias, and anyone can get to know neighbors to whatever degree they like. Seems to me this is a whole lot better than living stacked on other people, walking being near-compulsory because simple parking is hideously expensive, and traffic is prolific and unavoidable - an unsafe environment I'd rather get away from. I'd rather be in the country (grew up there), and will likely return.
  • saosebastiao 12y ago
    Its perfectly fine to like that, just as it is perfectly fine to like private jets and caviar. The discussion, at least in this article, is how sustainable it is from a cost perspective. You are talking about liking something that has tax revenues that cover mere fractions of the costs incurred. How much would you like it if your property taxes were 50% higher? 2000% higher?
    • anthony_d 12y ago
      I live in a suburb and my property taxes are about 3 times higher than the nearby city. I wouldn't consider moving. I like the fact that my suburb actually is financially stable, unlike many large cities. Really it sounds like the whole article could be sumarised by saying many suburbs have taxes that are too low. The article's author worked in a town with poor planning; there are plenty of large cities with poor planning. This is really a non-story playing up to many of the prejudices common to HN.
      • lliwta 12y ago
        > could be sumarised by saying many suburbs have taxes that are too low In some areas of Minnesota this could most certainly be the case.
• personZ 12y ago
  As madoc mentioned, sure the strawman you've constructed is a terrible thing. But most suburbs are entirely unlike that. Most aren't gated. Only in very wealthy areas are lawns "huge", and most are minutes with an electric mower. There are sidewalks, and indeed most modern suburbs intermix commercial space such that, at my old suburban house, a giant grocery store was a five minute walk. And where does this "discouraged from knowing about your neighbours" argument keep coming from? In the suburb I knew everyone within several hundred feet of my house. We had street parties, many friendly conversations, and so on. Downtown, in contrast, I knew a couple of people from nodding at them in the lobby. It's interesting to read that many suburbs may also be logistically unsustainable. With working at home patterns, suburbs may just be the most sustainable. Heck, I actually live in a rural location now given that I work in my home office 90%+ of the time. The most Earth-friendly commute you can make is no commute at all.
  • jarek 12y ago
    Working at home has been the next big sustainability thing for about 30 years now. Why does 90+% of working population still congregate together in offices? Why does YCombinator insist on having everyone in one geographical area and meeting in person often?
    • personZ 12y ago
      Working at home has been the next big sustainability thing for about 30 years now. The "people tried before" argument is never convincing. Enormous industry changes have occurred (for instance my home has a rock-solid, 100% reliable, 100/10Mbps internet connection, which is better than many whole office buildings had a few years ago), and work at home practices have been exploding. I once was a unique butterfly. Now I can name dozens of people who operate just like I do. As to YCombinator -- I don't know. I am not a startup under the tutelage of Paul Graham. I don't particularly care or need to heed what his opinions on work practices are.
      • jarek 12y ago
        > The "people tried before" argument is never convincing. Perhaps, but "it'll happen Real Soon Now" isn't either, really. > I once was a unique butterfly. Now I can name dozens of people who operate just like I do. You've grown your network! :)
• Crito 12y ago
  > "a neighborhood where everyone seems actively discouraged from knowing anything about their neighbors." I like the city for exactly the opposite reason. In my experience, it is difficult to both ignore others and be ignored in the suburbs. On the other hand, finding privacy in a city is easy. There are too many people in cities to do the small-town/suburbs "everyone knows everyone, and everyone sticks their noses in everyone's business" thing.