7 ms·

A planet of suburbs

54 points by Turukawa 12y ago

mikerichards 12y ago
The article talked a lot about the leftist/statist hatred of suburbs, but never gave the real reason why. Suburbs aren't dense enough and humans are the scourge of the planet.
- prostoalex 12y ago
  It's overall a greater tax on society resources to maintain suburbs than dense urban housing. Just the total mileage of roads, waterways, gas pipes that need to be built out and maintained pretty much forever. That's just the tax money. From the personal perspective a mandate of car ownership (and until recently oil purchases) is ridding consumer of disposable income that could be spent somewhere else.
  - zo1 12y ago
    But it is their willing choice to live that way. And they pay taxes, just like the rest of society. Remember, we're all equal under the law, so they say. Next thing you'll be telling people "No, you can't have only one person per apartment/room, you have to share with at least 3 people in bunkbeds. One person per home/room is 'too great a tax on society's resourced to maintain'.". Yes, that's a slippery slope. But one that points out the futility of arguments such as yours. Namely, that you've drawn an arbitrary line where you find convenient. And along with it, you've conveniently neglected to acknowledge that other people would have drawn that line further, or closer.
    - prawn 12y ago
      Are the taxes proportional to that mode of living and the costs of servicing it?
      - zo1 12y ago
        I'm not sure... Probably not directly (if you could even quantify it). However, lemme ask you this: Do sick people pay more taxes because they use more healthcare? I hope not. But, now that I think about it. I think they do, especially if it's represented by a usage tax. Say fuel levies, or property taxes.
        eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        > I'm not sure... Probably not directly (if you could even quantify it). However, lemme ask you this: Do sick people pay more taxes because they use more healthcare? I hope not. A) Sick people are not making a deliberate lifestyle choice. B) Public healthcare is something provided by public decision-making and majority vote. Therefore, frankly, if the public decides it yields greater public benefit to pour taxes taken from urban areas into improving urban areas rather than into subsidizing the suburban minority of the population, that is our democratic right. It's also important to note the actual population shift taking place: it used to be in the USA that most people lived in either rural areas, outer suburbs, or inner suburbs, with the center cities containing only a minority of the population and lacking a plurality of economic productivity. Everything was genuinely more spread out. Nowadays, things have developed away from the post-WW2 pattern and back towards the pattern of the Industrial Revolution: heavy urbanization of the population and the economy. Most people now live in either the core cities or the inner suburbs, and so does most of the economic value-creation. Which means that there's an entirely legitimate reason why urban issues are back on the agenda! Now, the stick up our asses we city-dwelling types have got, is that thanks to various aspects of the districting systems, our vote counts for less than that of a rural-dweller in deciding what to do with our own damn tax money.
        zo1 12y ago
        >"A) Sick people are not making a deliberate lifestyle choice." Most likely that is the case, yes. But you can't know for sure, as there are many actual life-style choices out there that negatively or positively impact health, and as a consequence, individuals' level of healthcare need. >"B) Public healthcare is something provided by public decision-making and majority vote." And we've also, by majority vote, decided that people should live where they please. And by majority vote, we've elected and chosen representatives that represent that. Let's not argue democracy here by claiming that healthcare is somehow more "democratic" or more "democratically chosen" than housing and urban-planning. >"Therefore, frankly, if the public decides it yields greater public benefit to pour taxes taken from urban areas into improving urban areas rather than into subsidizing the suburban minority of the population, that is our democratic right." Isn't that why we're discussing this? The public already chose and/or allowed people to live freely and in areas they choose. Not only that, but they've given tacit permission (by virtue of democratic vote) to representatives and government officials to plan the way they have, and that includes suburbia. >"Nowadays, things have developed away from the post-WW2 pattern and back towards the pattern of the Industrial Revolution: heavy urbanization of the population and the economy. Most people now live in either the core cities or the inner suburbs, and so does most of the economic value-creation." I don't see how this has any relevance or bearing on where people are allowed to live. Just because you deem it most efficient to optimize "economic value-creation" by packing people into as small a space as possible (seemingly against their will as they're picking suburban living now), doesn't make it the right way, or the moral way. >"Now, the stick up our asses we city-dwelling types have got, is that thanks to various aspects of the districting systems, our vote counts for less than that of a rural-dweller in deciding what to do with our own damn tax money." That's unfortunate. You should really get that fixed up. But let me get something a little clear, as I'm not 100% aware of the voting issues in America. Are you saying that individuals that live in suburban areas are part of a separate district? And their vote counts more than yours? That honestly doesn't sound very "democratic" to me.
    - prostoalex 12y ago
      http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative-case-against-the-suburbs/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative...
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      > Yes, that's a slippery slope. But one that points out the futility of arguments such as yours. Namely, that you've drawn an arbitrary line where you find convenient. And along with it, you've conveniently neglected to acknowledge that other people would have drawn that line further, or closer. There'a quite a bit of distance between "you're drawing arbitrary lines" and "you have been free-riding due to use not properly including previously externalized costs, which will now be properly accounted for". The suburbs are predicated on cheap land and petroleum. If you're able to continue the suburbs model while the price of both increase, more power to you. I'd rather have my tax dollars finance public transit vs limited use suburban roads though, thanks. Its mostly a moot point though; the majority of people around the world continue to move into cities: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=people%20moving%20to%20cities https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=people%20moving%20t...
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  If humans are the scourge of the planet then it's difficult to see why population density is of value. There must be something else at play. Density simply improves the availability of goods and services. Some of the more snide ( myself included ) might accuse those "liberals" of simply preferring a wider variety of restaurants - sort of the Anthony Bourdain school of liberalism :) Suburbs are a compromise with positional land rents ala Ricardo/Henry George. People who want to make more humans will probably always head there. While I can more or less understand the distaste for automobiles, I doubt they're going anywhere. And it might even be possible to have suburbs as an artifact of public transport - Bourdain did a show on The Bronx, which according to his show ends at a relatively rural setting. I get more than enough "culture" through my cable wire in the form of cable TV and Internet. That includes Anthony Bourdain :) As a practitioner of live music since Carter was president, pardon my cynicism w.r.t. "culture".
  - hsitz 12y ago
    "If humans are the scourge of the planet then it's difficult to see why population density is of value. . . . Density simply improves the availability of goods and services." I don't follow. Density does not merely improve _availability_ of goods and services. It improves the efficiency of providing those goods and services (besides other efficiencies). So to me it seems that density is of value, and that applies whether or not humans are the scourge of the planet. Using resources efficiently = Good. Wasting resources = Bad. On another note, I would add that getting all your culture from the internet and tv is probably not the best thing. The cocoon of your car separates you from having to experience street/neighborhood culture firsthand. Not a good thing in my book. Far easier to detach yourself from people you see on tv than people you walk by on the street.
    - ArkyBeagle 12y ago
      Two weeks later... Density does not necessarily improve efficiency. It makes for a wider variety of ...restaurants. I might have agreed with "efficiency" before the logistics revolution of the last thirty years. If there had been actual efficiency then there would never have been suburbs in the first place. Suburbs were a (perhaps cheap) trick of finance, but ... there they are. Suburbs are a triumph of land rents avoidance. I have plenty of exposure to "street" culture. It's hugely overrated. The term "tinpot" comes to mind - remember "Billie Joe Must Die"? That's an extreme case, but... You used to be able to go into the Five Spot and hear Ornette Coleman, or catch Buddy Emmons jamming at one of the downtown Nashville bars. Not so much any more. Converting that to mass market is the real test. I did a hugely unscientific and completely informal test when I was living in a downtown space - "Why do you like it here?" When we culled the things they said they liked ( museums, theater, live music ) but didn't actually do, it came down to ... bars. Or restaurants, once you don't want to be seen as a reprobate any more. (Cable) TV is a much better resource than it's given credit for ( BookTv is great ) - but you have to be picky. The internet? Mixed at best. Books are the best, but they don't make 'em like they used to.
- BrainInAJar 12y ago
  as a libertarian, I hate suburbs because the only reason they exist is massive subsidies. If suburbanites had to pay for the highways leading to their suburbs, nobody but the richest could afford them, instead I have to pay because you want a yard.
  - kasey_junk 12y ago
    Not to get into a political thread, but last time I looked highways are actually one of the most difficult to attribute to subsidies (ie usage taxes pay for most/all/more than the usage of the highways so it is hard to say one way or another where subsidies go).
    - BrainInAJar 12y ago
      usage taxes (gas tax and what have you) emphatically do not even begin to cover the cost of maintenance alone, let alone the land cost, the initial construction cost (billions), etc.
siliconc0w 12y ago
I think a sweet spot are neighborhoods ~10-15 minutes from city centers. You usually get a nice mix between city benefits and suburban ones. Once you get further than that your total transit time starts to grow compared to the average time you'll spend at your destination (i.e shopping, eating, going to a show, whatever). A good ratio for me is about .25 - i.e if I'm going to spend a total of 30 minutes in transit and I have a reason to stay ~> 2 hours then I'm likely to go. The distance 10-15minutes equates to varies by place and I imagine the transportation options can also move the dial as well.
- kcorbitt 12y ago
  Whether this works or not depends a great deal on the size and geography of the city you're talking about. Where I grew up outside of Seattle, we could get from our very suburban home in Bellevue into downtown Seattle in about 20 minutes, close to your range. Where I live now in London, on the other hand, it takes 45 minutes to get into the center and I would still consider my zone very urban, with few or none of the benefits (space, isolation, safer neighborhoods, etc) that suburbia brings. When I have children, I fully intend to move back into the suburban ring around a mid-sized city where I can regain those benefits without cutting myself off from civilization entirely.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Don't suburbs have a negative connotation outside of the states? I mean, Europe they can at least be peaceful (well, except France), but in Asia its where the poor people live who can't afford an apartment in the city.
  - goodJobWalrus 12y ago
    > with few or none of the benefits (space, isolation, safer neighborhoods, etc) that suburbia brings. isolation is a benefit?
    - ams6110 12y ago
      Some people prefer to live with more than a sheet of drywall between themselves and their neighbors.
martythemaniak 12y ago
Amazing that with so many words, none were devoted to a major objection towards suburbs - the increased costs of servicing lower-density living is usually not bourne by its inhabitants. I may object to a car-centric lifestyle based on my aesthetics but that's not enough to make me actually do something. OTOH, demanding a subsidy and lowering my quality of life so you can enjoy your lifestyle, that's something which will make me vote/support a politician etc. The extent of this subsidy varies greatly from place to place, but that is the primary cause of urban-suburban tension.
- zo1 12y ago
  I'm confused... What subsidy do you speak of exactly? Please, guide me through your reasoning here. You say suburbians are demanding some sort of subsidy? Lowering your quality of life? How? My word, really, you'll definitely have to come up with some backing behind your comments, please. Because blaming people with such direct and specific words such as "demanding/getting subsidy", and "lowering quality of life" simply by virtue of them not choosing to live the way you deem the most "efficient" is quite arrogant. >"I may object to a car-centric lifestyle based on my aesthetics but that's not enough to make me actually do something. OTOH, demanding a subsidy and lowering my quality of life so you can enjoy your lifestyle, that's something which will make me vote/support a politician etc." Way to turn around the blame here. You've taken a purely simple, innocent action such as "choosing to live in a quiet, less-populated area, away from traffic", into some hostile, directed act. You then claim that them doing so is justification for you to actually vote against them or their way of life. I don't see you mentioning what that voting or politician will do to fix this supposed problem, but I can bet you that whatever it is, it's more hostile, directed, and purposeful than what you claim these people did to make you vote that way in the first place.
  - kasey_junk 12y ago
    Not the original commenter but I will outline a couple of specific areas where suburbs are receiving subsidies in excess of the urban centers they surround (at least in the US). I will say up front that it is my impression that suburban living is more subsidized than the urban alternative but I am not a scholar of such things and don't have any proof. 1) It is pretty clearly documented that suburban development is much more environmentally impactful than urban infill development. If nothing else, the non captured externalities of this environmental impact acts as a subsidy to the suburbs. 2) The mortgage interest tax subsidy is non-proportionately paid to suburban home owners than to urban ones. 3) On a per rider, and a per trip basis, suburban mass transit is more subsidized than urban mass transit (you will notice that suburban transit systems always want to use "per mile" statistics.) 4) By nearly every economic statistic you can find, urban centers generate more productivity than suburban ones. All that said, you can definitely find lots of subsidies that are disproportionately paid from suburban areas to urban ones, but even the ones that seem obvious (subsidized food, crime, education, etc) are actually trending towards suburban subsidies.
nickhalfasleep 12y ago
I wonder if the suburbs will see a resurgence when it becomes a haven for those who need a bit more area for agriculture, or more solar to sell or work in micro-manufacturing. Also self-driving cars for travel and package delivery could find a healthy niche.
tokenadult 12y ago
The article reports, "Mr Angel also finds that almost every city is becoming less dense. In 1920 Chicago squeezed 59 people into each hectare of land; now, by his reckoning, it manages just 16. The urbanised area of Mexico City is about half as densely populated as it was in 1940. Beijing’s population density has collapsed from 425 people per hectare in 1970 to just 65 people per hectare, or about the same as Chicago at its most crowded." That's certainly true where I live. The city that defines my metropolitan area had its peak population during my lifetime the year I was born, and has been losing population each year since until quite recently. Now the city is regaining a bit of population, and some of the inner-ring suburbs where I grew up (but not all of them) have embraced "new urbanism" and are as densely populated as they have ever been, but even many of the inner-ring suburbs are losing population, while the metropolitan area continues to grow as the children who grew up in the inner ring now bring up their children in bigger houses on bigger lots even farther away from the city. This is generally happening everywhere as countries reach a certain level of economic development. The story of Taiwan, the other country where I have lived long-term, was leaving the countryside for cities during my childhood, but there too (in a national context of birthrates below replacement, and thus an eventually declining population) the core cities are beginning to empty out as the surrounding suburban cities grow, and housing development is spreading up hillsides and into other areas where there is more space for yards and larger houses for ever-smaller households.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Beijing has a density of 150 people/hectare in built up areas, which is less than Tianjin, Shanghai, or Guangzhou, but still pretty respectable by American standards. Beijing municipality includes a lots of rural land (and suburbs) which brings the density down a lot, but I would hardly call those urban areas.
swatow 12y ago
Suburbs also have specific connotations when it comes to race and class divides. Accurate or not, they are seen as promoting monoculture, relative to cities. I think a lot of discussion of suburbs vs cities, is influenced by these connotations.
michaelochurch 12y ago
Hating "suburbia" is actually a deeply suburban stance. The upper-middle-class, isolationist people who are now crowding into Williamsburg are the same sorts of provincial people that their forebears (the artists who can no longer afford to live there) fled suburbia to escape. That suburbia's biggest haters are (in origin and mindset) quite suburban is actually ironic rather than just sarcastic. All this said, it's somewhat subjective what is a "suburb" versus what is a legitimate (and possibly charming) small town. And while Los Angeles is a large city, it's sprawling and ugly and has no moral high ground over some town adjacent to Philadelphia or Boston that happens to be "suburban" because it has a different city-name on its postal address. All of this said, car culture is objectively bad. Suburbia was supposed to make it possible for middle-class people to save instead of throwing their disposable income away for the benefit of urban landlords, but over time the car (through escalating costs and the catastrophic time loss of traffic) became the new landlord. The clearing and leveling of forests to build tasteless, cookie-cutter houses is also objectively bad. The environment doesn't have a vote, but it should, because I'd rather have a healthy environment than 4600 SF of unneeded housing space for everyone. Suburbia gets such a bad rap in the U.S. because it's done wrong, both in terms of aesthetics and in terms of ecological footprint.
- _dps 12y ago
  I agree broadly, but I feel obliged to stand up and defend Los Angeles here (needless to say, I am biased; I used to live there but do not currently). If you have lived in a big city but have not lived in Los Angeles, it is not reasonable to use your experience to model Los Angeles. It is much more like a loose federation of nearby townships than it is a city like New York City. This is as much a cause is it is an effect of car culture and freeways; the two feed each other and cannot be meaningfully separated into cause and effect as far as I am concerned. There are parts of "LA Metro" that I find charming, and parts that I find terrible. But there is nothing that I would call representative of the whole. Downtown vs Santa Monica vs Redondo vs San Fernando vs Eagle Rock vs Alhambra etc. Treating LA as a monolith is not a useful approximation. (to be clear, I spent a substantial amount of time living in major cities across Europe and the US, including London and San Francisco, so I'm speaking with a moderate amount of diverse experience).
kmontenegro 12y ago
the presentation or site engineering that went into the story is really great! it's wonderful to see data design used to enhance rather than distract from the story. as far as intimation/subtext that suburbs are ultimately good, i disagree BUT i'm really appreciative of how the article is laid out in terms of substantive content. glad it was shared.
jrapdx3 12y ago
The article and discussion make me wonder about Portland, OR where I live. The city and metro area have become more population dense over time. In fact, the population of Portland per se has doubled since the 1970's while its boundaries haven't changed a bit. Cities in Oregon have been constrained by "urban growth boundaries" since 1973, the idea is preventing sprawl and encroachment on farm land. That guarantees population increases will require "infill" and that's exactly what's happening. This is a polar contrast to Phoenix, AZ, which happens to be the place I grew up in. Even as a kid it was easy to observe the immense sprawl associated with the region's inbred suburban culture. The article's commentary about the sharp edges of development in the Phoenix area points ironically to a similar-appearing phenomenon in the Portland area. There are a number of roads a few miles from the center of the city where one side is jam-packed with dense residential construction, and the other traditional farm land stretching to the horizon. It gives another meaning to the phrase, "keeping Portland weird".

54 points by Turukawa 12y ago

The article talked a lot about the leftist/statist hatred of suburbs, but never gave the real reason why. Suburbs aren't dense enough and humans are the scourge of the planet.

prostoalex 12y ago
It's overall a greater tax on society resources to maintain suburbs than dense urban housing. Just the total mileage of roads, waterways, gas pipes that need to be built out and maintained pretty much forever. That's just the tax money. From the personal perspective a mandate of car ownership (and until recently oil purchases) is ridding consumer of disposable income that could be spent somewhere else.
- zo1 12y ago
  But it is their willing choice to live that way. And they pay taxes, just like the rest of society. Remember, we're all equal under the law, so they say. Next thing you'll be telling people "No, you can't have only one person per apartment/room, you have to share with at least 3 people in bunkbeds. One person per home/room is 'too great a tax on society's resourced to maintain'.". Yes, that's a slippery slope. But one that points out the futility of arguments such as yours. Namely, that you've drawn an arbitrary line where you find convenient. And along with it, you've conveniently neglected to acknowledge that other people would have drawn that line further, or closer.
  - prawn 12y ago
    Are the taxes proportional to that mode of living and the costs of servicing it?
    - zo1 12y ago
      I'm not sure... Probably not directly (if you could even quantify it). However, lemme ask you this: Do sick people pay more taxes because they use more healthcare? I hope not. But, now that I think about it. I think they do, especially if it's represented by a usage tax. Say fuel levies, or property taxes.
      - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        > I'm not sure... Probably not directly (if you could even quantify it). However, lemme ask you this: Do sick people pay more taxes because they use more healthcare? I hope not. A) Sick people are not making a deliberate lifestyle choice. B) Public healthcare is something provided by public decision-making and majority vote. Therefore, frankly, if the public decides it yields greater public benefit to pour taxes taken from urban areas into improving urban areas rather than into subsidizing the suburban minority of the population, that is our democratic right. It's also important to note the actual population shift taking place: it used to be in the USA that most people lived in either rural areas, outer suburbs, or inner suburbs, with the center cities containing only a minority of the population and lacking a plurality of economic productivity. Everything was genuinely more spread out. Nowadays, things have developed away from the post-WW2 pattern and back towards the pattern of the Industrial Revolution: heavy urbanization of the population and the economy. Most people now live in either the core cities or the inner suburbs, and so does most of the economic value-creation. Which means that there's an entirely legitimate reason why urban issues are back on the agenda! Now, the stick up our asses we city-dwelling types have got, is that thanks to various aspects of the districting systems, our vote counts for less than that of a rural-dweller in deciding what to do with our own damn tax money.
        zo1 12y ago
        >"A) Sick people are not making a deliberate lifestyle choice." Most likely that is the case, yes. But you can't know for sure, as there are many actual life-style choices out there that negatively or positively impact health, and as a consequence, individuals' level of healthcare need. >"B) Public healthcare is something provided by public decision-making and majority vote." And we've also, by majority vote, decided that people should live where they please. And by majority vote, we've elected and chosen representatives that represent that. Let's not argue democracy here by claiming that healthcare is somehow more "democratic" or more "democratically chosen" than housing and urban-planning. >"Therefore, frankly, if the public decides it yields greater public benefit to pour taxes taken from urban areas into improving urban areas rather than into subsidizing the suburban minority of the population, that is our democratic right." Isn't that why we're discussing this? The public already chose and/or allowed people to live freely and in areas they choose. Not only that, but they've given tacit permission (by virtue of democratic vote) to representatives and government officials to plan the way they have, and that includes suburbia. >"Nowadays, things have developed away from the post-WW2 pattern and back towards the pattern of the Industrial Revolution: heavy urbanization of the population and the economy. Most people now live in either the core cities or the inner suburbs, and so does most of the economic value-creation." I don't see how this has any relevance or bearing on where people are allowed to live. Just because you deem it most efficient to optimize "economic value-creation" by packing people into as small a space as possible (seemingly against their will as they're picking suburban living now), doesn't make it the right way, or the moral way. >"Now, the stick up our asses we city-dwelling types have got, is that thanks to various aspects of the districting systems, our vote counts for less than that of a rural-dweller in deciding what to do with our own damn tax money." That's unfortunate. You should really get that fixed up. But let me get something a little clear, as I'm not 100% aware of the voting issues in America. Are you saying that individuals that live in suburban areas are part of a separate district? And their vote counts more than yours? That honestly doesn't sound very "democratic" to me.
  - prostoalex 12y ago
    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative-case-against-the-suburbs/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative...
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > Yes, that's a slippery slope. But one that points out the futility of arguments such as yours. Namely, that you've drawn an arbitrary line where you find convenient. And along with it, you've conveniently neglected to acknowledge that other people would have drawn that line further, or closer. There'a quite a bit of distance between "you're drawing arbitrary lines" and "you have been free-riding due to use not properly including previously externalized costs, which will now be properly accounted for". The suburbs are predicated on cheap land and petroleum. If you're able to continue the suburbs model while the price of both increase, more power to you. I'd rather have my tax dollars finance public transit vs limited use suburban roads though, thanks. Its mostly a moot point though; the majority of people around the world continue to move into cities: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=people%20moving%20to%20cities https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=people%20moving%20t...
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
If humans are the scourge of the planet then it's difficult to see why population density is of value. There must be something else at play. Density simply improves the availability of goods and services. Some of the more snide ( myself included ) might accuse those "liberals" of simply preferring a wider variety of restaurants - sort of the Anthony Bourdain school of liberalism :) Suburbs are a compromise with positional land rents ala Ricardo/Henry George. People who want to make more humans will probably always head there. While I can more or less understand the distaste for automobiles, I doubt they're going anywhere. And it might even be possible to have suburbs as an artifact of public transport - Bourdain did a show on The Bronx, which according to his show ends at a relatively rural setting. I get more than enough "culture" through my cable wire in the form of cable TV and Internet. That includes Anthony Bourdain :) As a practitioner of live music since Carter was president, pardon my cynicism w.r.t. "culture".
- hsitz 12y ago
  "If humans are the scourge of the planet then it's difficult to see why population density is of value. . . . Density simply improves the availability of goods and services." I don't follow. Density does not merely improve _availability_ of goods and services. It improves the efficiency of providing those goods and services (besides other efficiencies). So to me it seems that density is of value, and that applies whether or not humans are the scourge of the planet. Using resources efficiently = Good. Wasting resources = Bad. On another note, I would add that getting all your culture from the internet and tv is probably not the best thing. The cocoon of your car separates you from having to experience street/neighborhood culture firsthand. Not a good thing in my book. Far easier to detach yourself from people you see on tv than people you walk by on the street.
  - ArkyBeagle 12y ago
    Two weeks later... Density does not necessarily improve efficiency. It makes for a wider variety of ...restaurants. I might have agreed with "efficiency" before the logistics revolution of the last thirty years. If there had been actual efficiency then there would never have been suburbs in the first place. Suburbs were a (perhaps cheap) trick of finance, but ... there they are. Suburbs are a triumph of land rents avoidance. I have plenty of exposure to "street" culture. It's hugely overrated. The term "tinpot" comes to mind - remember "Billie Joe Must Die"? That's an extreme case, but... You used to be able to go into the Five Spot and hear Ornette Coleman, or catch Buddy Emmons jamming at one of the downtown Nashville bars. Not so much any more. Converting that to mass market is the real test. I did a hugely unscientific and completely informal test when I was living in a downtown space - "Why do you like it here?" When we culled the things they said they liked ( museums, theater, live music ) but didn't actually do, it came down to ... bars. Or restaurants, once you don't want to be seen as a reprobate any more. (Cable) TV is a much better resource than it's given credit for ( BookTv is great ) - but you have to be picky. The internet? Mixed at best. Books are the best, but they don't make 'em like they used to.
BrainInAJar 12y ago
as a libertarian, I hate suburbs because the only reason they exist is massive subsidies. If suburbanites had to pay for the highways leading to their suburbs, nobody but the richest could afford them, instead I have to pay because you want a yard.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  Not to get into a political thread, but last time I looked highways are actually one of the most difficult to attribute to subsidies (ie usage taxes pay for most/all/more than the usage of the highways so it is hard to say one way or another where subsidies go).
  - BrainInAJar 12y ago
    usage taxes (gas tax and what have you) emphatically do not even begin to cover the cost of maintenance alone, let alone the land cost, the initial construction cost (billions), etc.

siliconc0w 12y ago

I think a sweet spot are neighborhoods ~10-15 minutes from city centers. You usually get a nice mix between city benefits and suburban ones. Once you get further than that your total transit time starts to grow compared to the average time you'll spend at your destination (i.e shopping, eating, going to a show, whatever). A good ratio for me is about .25 - i.e if I'm going to spend a total of 30 minutes in transit and I have a reason to stay ~> 2 hours then I'm likely to go. The distance 10-15minutes equates to varies by place and I imagine the transportation options can also move the dial as well.

kcorbitt 12y ago
Whether this works or not depends a great deal on the size and geography of the city you're talking about. Where I grew up outside of Seattle, we could get from our very suburban home in Bellevue into downtown Seattle in about 20 minutes, close to your range. Where I live now in London, on the other hand, it takes 45 minutes to get into the center and I would still consider my zone very urban, with few or none of the benefits (space, isolation, safer neighborhoods, etc) that suburbia brings. When I have children, I fully intend to move back into the suburban ring around a mid-sized city where I can regain those benefits without cutting myself off from civilization entirely.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Don't suburbs have a negative connotation outside of the states? I mean, Europe they can at least be peaceful (well, except France), but in Asia its where the poor people live who can't afford an apartment in the city.
- goodJobWalrus 12y ago
  > with few or none of the benefits (space, isolation, safer neighborhoods, etc) that suburbia brings. isolation is a benefit?
  - ams6110 12y ago
    Some people prefer to live with more than a sheet of drywall between themselves and their neighbors.

martythemaniak 12y ago

Amazing that with so many words, none were devoted to a major objection towards suburbs - the increased costs of servicing lower-density living is usually not bourne by its inhabitants. I may object to a car-centric lifestyle based on my aesthetics but that's not enough to make me actually do something. OTOH, demanding a subsidy and lowering my quality of life so you can enjoy your lifestyle, that's something which will make me vote/support a politician etc. The extent of this subsidy varies greatly from place to place, but that is the primary cause of urban-suburban tension.

zo1 12y ago
I'm confused... What subsidy do you speak of exactly? Please, guide me through your reasoning here. You say suburbians are demanding some sort of subsidy? Lowering your quality of life? How? My word, really, you'll definitely have to come up with some backing behind your comments, please. Because blaming people with such direct and specific words such as "demanding/getting subsidy", and "lowering quality of life" simply by virtue of them not choosing to live the way you deem the most "efficient" is quite arrogant. >"I may object to a car-centric lifestyle based on my aesthetics but that's not enough to make me actually do something. OTOH, demanding a subsidy and lowering my quality of life so you can enjoy your lifestyle, that's something which will make me vote/support a politician etc." Way to turn around the blame here. You've taken a purely simple, innocent action such as "choosing to live in a quiet, less-populated area, away from traffic", into some hostile, directed act. You then claim that them doing so is justification for you to actually vote against them or their way of life. I don't see you mentioning what that voting or politician will do to fix this supposed problem, but I can bet you that whatever it is, it's more hostile, directed, and purposeful than what you claim these people did to make you vote that way in the first place.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  Not the original commenter but I will outline a couple of specific areas where suburbs are receiving subsidies in excess of the urban centers they surround (at least in the US). I will say up front that it is my impression that suburban living is more subsidized than the urban alternative but I am not a scholar of such things and don't have any proof. 1) It is pretty clearly documented that suburban development is much more environmentally impactful than urban infill development. If nothing else, the non captured externalities of this environmental impact acts as a subsidy to the suburbs. 2) The mortgage interest tax subsidy is non-proportionately paid to suburban home owners than to urban ones. 3) On a per rider, and a per trip basis, suburban mass transit is more subsidized than urban mass transit (you will notice that suburban transit systems always want to use "per mile" statistics.) 4) By nearly every economic statistic you can find, urban centers generate more productivity than suburban ones. All that said, you can definitely find lots of subsidies that are disproportionately paid from suburban areas to urban ones, but even the ones that seem obvious (subsidized food, crime, education, etc) are actually trending towards suburban subsidies.

nickhalfasleep 12y ago

I wonder if the suburbs will see a resurgence when it becomes a haven for those who need a bit more area for agriculture, or more solar to sell or work in micro-manufacturing. Also self-driving cars for travel and package delivery could find a healthy niche.

tokenadult 12y ago

The article reports, "Mr Angel also finds that almost every city is becoming less dense. In 1920 Chicago squeezed 59 people into each hectare of land; now, by his reckoning, it manages just 16. The urbanised area of Mexico City is about half as densely populated as it was in 1940. Beijing’s population density has collapsed from 425 people per hectare in 1970 to just 65 people per hectare, or about the same as Chicago at its most crowded." That's certainly true where I live. The city that defines my metropolitan area had its peak population during my lifetime the year I was born, and has been losing population each year since until quite recently. Now the city is regaining a bit of population, and some of the inner-ring suburbs where I grew up (but not all of them) have embraced "new urbanism" and are as densely populated as they have ever been, but even many of the inner-ring suburbs are losing population, while the metropolitan area continues to grow as the children who grew up in the inner ring now bring up their children in bigger houses on bigger lots even farther away from the city. This is generally happening everywhere as countries reach a certain level of economic development. The story of Taiwan, the other country where I have lived long-term, was leaving the countryside for cities during my childhood, but there too (in a national context of birthrates below replacement, and thus an eventually declining population) the core cities are beginning to empty out as the surrounding suburban cities grow, and housing development is spreading up hillsides and into other areas where there is more space for yards and larger houses for ever-smaller households.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Beijing has a density of 150 people/hectare in built up areas, which is less than Tianjin, Shanghai, or Guangzhou, but still pretty respectable by American standards. Beijing municipality includes a lots of rural land (and suburbs) which brings the density down a lot, but I would hardly call those urban areas.

swatow 12y ago

Suburbs also have specific connotations when it comes to race and class divides. Accurate or not, they are seen as promoting monoculture, relative to cities. I think a lot of discussion of suburbs vs cities, is influenced by these connotations.

michaelochurch 12y ago

Hating "suburbia" is actually a deeply suburban stance. The upper-middle-class, isolationist people who are now crowding into Williamsburg are the same sorts of provincial people that their forebears (the artists who can no longer afford to live there) fled suburbia to escape. That suburbia's biggest haters are (in origin and mindset) quite suburban is actually ironic rather than just sarcastic. All this said, it's somewhat subjective what is a "suburb" versus what is a legitimate (and possibly charming) small town. And while Los Angeles is a large city, it's sprawling and ugly and has no moral high ground over some town adjacent to Philadelphia or Boston that happens to be "suburban" because it has a different city-name on its postal address. All of this said, car culture is objectively bad. Suburbia was supposed to make it possible for middle-class people to save instead of throwing their disposable income away for the benefit of urban landlords, but over time the car (through escalating costs and the catastrophic time loss of traffic) became the new landlord. The clearing and leveling of forests to build tasteless, cookie-cutter houses is also objectively bad. The environment doesn't have a vote, but it should, because I'd rather have a healthy environment than 4600 SF of unneeded housing space for everyone. Suburbia gets such a bad rap in the U.S. because it's done wrong, both in terms of aesthetics and in terms of ecological footprint.

_dps 12y ago
I agree broadly, but I feel obliged to stand up and defend Los Angeles here (needless to say, I am biased; I used to live there but do not currently). If you have lived in a big city but have not lived in Los Angeles, it is not reasonable to use your experience to model Los Angeles. It is much more like a loose federation of nearby townships than it is a city like New York City. This is as much a cause is it is an effect of car culture and freeways; the two feed each other and cannot be meaningfully separated into cause and effect as far as I am concerned. There are parts of "LA Metro" that I find charming, and parts that I find terrible. But there is nothing that I would call representative of the whole. Downtown vs Santa Monica vs Redondo vs San Fernando vs Eagle Rock vs Alhambra etc. Treating LA as a monolith is not a useful approximation. (to be clear, I spent a substantial amount of time living in major cities across Europe and the US, including London and San Francisco, so I'm speaking with a moderate amount of diverse experience).

kmontenegro 12y ago

the presentation or site engineering that went into the story is really great! it's wonderful to see data design used to enhance rather than distract from the story. as far as intimation/subtext that suburbs are ultimately good, i disagree BUT i'm really appreciative of how the article is laid out in terms of substantive content. glad it was shared.

jrapdx3 12y ago

The article and discussion make me wonder about Portland, OR where I live. The city and metro area have become more population dense over time. In fact, the population of Portland per se has doubled since the 1970's while its boundaries haven't changed a bit. Cities in Oregon have been constrained by "urban growth boundaries" since 1973, the idea is preventing sprawl and encroachment on farm land. That guarantees population increases will require "infill" and that's exactly what's happening. This is a polar contrast to Phoenix, AZ, which happens to be the place I grew up in. Even as a kid it was easy to observe the immense sprawl associated with the region's inbred suburban culture. The article's commentary about the sharp edges of development in the Phoenix area points ironically to a similar-appearing phenomenon in the Portland area. There are a number of roads a few miles from the center of the city where one side is jam-packed with dense residential construction, and the other traditional farm land stretching to the horizon. It gives another meaning to the phrase, "keeping Portland weird".