3 ms·

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-e

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
Worth mentioning that the meandering streets that annoy people in the suburbs are a classic Christopher Alexander architecture goal. Minimizing cross-town high-speed car traffic is intended to make areas more walkable, shifting the balance from automobiles to humans. Obviously, suburbs categorically fail to accomplish the strategic goal behind creating windy streets; it's almost impossible to live in one without a car. Suburban city planners probably were not inspired by Alexander. But they are safer places for kids to play in the streets than Chicago blocks, where residents often lobby for speed bumps to deal with speeding cars. Suburbs bad. Windy streets? Maybe not so much.

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

Worth mentioning that the meandering streets that annoy people in the suburbs are a classic Christopher Alexander architecture goal. Minimizing cross-town high-speed car traffic is intended to make areas more walkable, shifting the balance from automobiles to humans. Obviously, suburbs categorically fail to accomplish the strategic goal behind creating windy streets; it's almost impossible to live in one without a car. Suburban city planners probably were not inspired by Alexander. But they are safer places for kids to play in the streets than Chicago blocks, where residents often lobby for speed bumps to deal with speeding cars. Suburbs bad. Windy streets? Maybe not so much.