I write a lot, albeit intermittently, about architecture and related topics like urban planning and the built environment in general. And it is endlessly fascinating how so many Americans can create for themselves ghastly, fundamentally unlovable living spaces and then wonder why nobody – themselves included – loves them.
Try to love a McMansion, or even a smaller-scale new construction suburban Box o' Siding house. Try to love a subdivision. Try to love a strip mall, especially one surrounded by fifteen more. Try to love a six-lane divided street with no sidewalks and Fall of Saigon traffic.
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You won't. You won't because you can't. Tens of millions of Americans have moved to the suburbs since the end of the Second World War, and the design of new suburbs and the living spaces that fill them are not only a symptom of the malaise of "What's wrong with this country?
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" but also a cause of it. A Boomer who grew up in the 1950s in a 900 square foot brick home eight feet away from a similar home on either side and in 2016 lives in a 2500 square foot empty beige pastiche of gaudy anti-architecture on a big lot can ask without the slightest hint of self awareness or irony, "I wish things were more like they were in the good ol' days."
We complain that people don't know their neighbors anymore, which is a choice. When people move to the suburbs, the physical manifestation of the psychological impulse to withdraw and escape, it makes perfect sense that they don't know their neighbors. Their neighbors are probably just like them – misanthropes who want nothing more than to hole up in four cheaply built walls and shut out the scary world without. Add in an acre or two of lawn and a tall "privacy" fence and what do you expect? Of course you don't know your neighbors. That's the whole point of the lifestyle you chose for yourself.
I hear people make this complaint often and I never pass the opportunity to point out that I know my neighbors, which is pretty amazing considering 1) I have bad social skills, 2) They speak about 10 words of English and I speak about 10 of Polish, and 3) I'm kind of an asshole. But I know them because we live in the same building and arm's length from another building. We know each other because we have not chosen to live in an environment constructed to prevent us from having to know each other.
To live in the Midwest or New England is to be close at all times to urban decay and the depressing skeletons of places that obviously used to be very nice places; places people older than me are remembering fondly (and not without reason) when they pine for the way things used to be. The new, sterile, antisocial spaces they've built for themselves pale in comparison. They are by design shoddy replicas of a real urban setting, an authentic small town, or something resembling a community in which people interact with one another. But the places they once loved and are now depressing relics didn't get that way by accident. They fell apart because the people who now bemoan their loss chose to ran away rather than live near immigrants or black people. Maybe this is why they're so angry. What's the line? "That's what really hurts: you did it to yourself"?
There's a reason people under 40 want to live in urban areas and even those who can afford suburban living rarely choose it. We believe our parents when they say that life doesn't feel like it used to in this country, that something feels wrong, that something undefinable is missing. Unlike them, however, we haven't watched the Local News at Nine and Fox News to the point that we're terrified at the very thought of living in something other than self-imposed isolation, segregated from Scary Non-White People and without the lawns and parking lots and cathedral ceilings that they insist are going to make them happy someday.
It isn't rocket science. Create for yourself a home, a neighborhood, a town, a state, a country that is ugly, impersonal, cynical, and unlovable and you will not love it.
To hear people who want to Make America Great Again bemoan everything wrong with the country as they experience it is to watch someone who has locked themselves in a closet for three decades complain that they're bored and lonely. When you construct a life for yourself behind a panoply of physical and psychological barriers it shouldn't come as a surprise that people seem different than they used to back when you had to talk to and interact with them.
mago says:
Um, as an architecture prof once pointed out, space is the greatest luxury.
Most humans (and animals) live on top of, below and beside one another with all attendant noise and chaos.
Living separated by 100 foot setbacks in single family dwellings is incomprehensible to most. Forget about McMansions.
And the anomie continues.
Sorry if I missed the main thrust here.
Poultine says:
One of the main things that keeps me away from my home town is its steadfast refusal to acknowledge mixed use buildings in their zoning code (well, that and I live in a thriving metropolis that pays me three times what I'd be making there). Over the last 20 years since I've left, I've watched old brick inner-city buildings torn down and replaced by plaza-style Walgreens and other, miscellaneous Genetics tripe.
One of the more interesting things pointed out to me in studying this kind of thing is that, over time, the interior structure of the house has inverted. Where my grandparent's houses faced the street, with wide porches and living areas immediately behind, modern homes tend to face the back yard. Suburban homes have no interest in sharing anything with each other, aside from the common means of car egress.
But… I live in a city, cheek to jowl with the neighbors (literally 8' on two sides, 6" on the other). Like the vast majority of the earth's population. It's almost like this has proven to be a successful recipe for millennia or something.
wetcasements says:
My decidedly un-scientific opinion re: big suburban and ex-urban housing is that, nine times out of ten, there will be entire rooms of said house, if not entire floors, that are basically storage or just plain empty. It really is just conspicuous consumption. But hey, if waking up at four a.m. every day for a two hour drive into work each day is your thing, have at it.
I will say (as someone with no kids) that there is a lot of pressure to move to "good" neighborhoods with better performing public schools. And that does seem like a genuinely good reason to move, if only because our winner-take-all school systems mean that if you happen to live in a neighborhood with the poors your kid will wind up in an un-heated hellhole for 13 years.
Agreed with Ed as usual, there has to be a better way.
Emerson Dameron says:
Urban planning is where the action is. I've started seeing all of civilization through that prism.
I wonder if a big reason rugged individualists in the 'burbs are so screamingly paranoid is that they sense deep down that no one likes them enough to stand up for them if something bad actually happened.
Now, if DTLA rents would just skyrocket more calmly…
HoosierPoli says:
I know my neighbors too, Ed, but god how I wish I didn't. Being screamed at for politely asking not to be woken up at 3 am is not fun.
US in the EU says:
After generations of glorifying the market and the individual at the direct cost of anything shared, communal, or public, you get a bunch of individuals and little commons.
Just an idea
matt regan says:
As Dr. Johnson said, "If you are tired of London, you are tired of life." Lots of Americans apparently got tired of life.
Katydid says:
@Emerson Dameron; there's a reason why no people like them enough to stand up for them. They're idiots. I tried to catch a few moments on the shady back deck to read a book in peace and quiet this weekend–no dice. Everyone was outside on their decks acting like rude, ignorant morons. Between the drunken screaming morons playing redneck rock at 200 decibels, the drunken screaming morons playing kkkuntry kkkrap "music" at 200 decibels, the drunken screaming morons who were watching the big game on the big screen they dragged out on their back deck at 200 decibels, and the countless people running the leaf blowers for 3 hours straight and the people with the riding lawnmowers on 1/2-acre properties, there was simply no peace to be had. I lived in cities for almost 2 decades; the people were more considerate because they all lived on top of each other all the time.
Anubis Bard says:
Someone must have made the connection between the current cultural fascination with zombies and the fact that our neighbors and fellow citizens feel mostly disconnected from us. The fear that the people around us are – or suddenly could be – mindless hordes of shuffling cannibals seems like a fascinating culmination of our culture's trends toward atomization and social ambivalence.
Major Kong says:
I live in a townhouse, so I do know my neighbors. Fortunately we all get along.
I could own the McMansion on the big lot but I have no desire to for multiple reasons.
I mowed enough lawns when I was a kid. The last thing I want to do is spend my free time mowing grass.
oiojes says:
I don't watch fox news and won't vote for trump.
But I do live in a 110 year old house on two acres. Surrounded on all sides by McMansions. I could, conceivably, live in the urban environment to which I commute. I would lose:
1) The greenhouse I built
2) My fruit trees
3) The garden
4) The woodshop I built.
5) Lots of green and growing things surrounding me
6) Good air.
7) Good water.
I could go on but I won't.
It is true we don't know our neighbors. I don't understand that. Every time someone new moved in we went over and brought brownies and introduced ourselves. Nada. So it goes. I do know the neighbor on one side and the neighbor on the other. I like one and when the other finally sells I'll dance a little jig of grief.
But in spite of that, I like it out here. I like listening to the birds instead of the traffic and the chickens instead of people screaming at each other.
Philippa says:
"When people move to the suburbs," "the lifestyle you chose for yourself."
That's not a very sound assumption, you know. The suburbs aren't created anew by deliberate choice of each resident. Much of the country's housing stock, especially in some areas, is the sort of suburban residential planning you describe, so that's where a lot of people grow up and live their whole lives. They're not moving there or making a deliberate lifestyle choice.
I agree with you about the residential architecture (shudder) and poor planning, but cities aren't nirvana either. You can get ugliness and poor planning there too, so why is it now practically compulsory for everyone to sing the praises of cities in and of themselves? Some cities suck – poor transit, poor schools, police violence, even parochial attitudes (lookin' at you, Philly).
As for calling suburbanites misanthropes in comparison with city dwellers, well. I can only assume you were being funny.
Anyway, laying the blame for suburbs on individual choices about interaction with other people is a bit of a cart-horse problem. Suburbs are the product of a lot of things, like land prices and transportation funding and work patterns. Strip malls are ugly, but they're what you get in a capitalist economy with a government that funds roads instead of other things. (@US in the EU made the same point more concisely above)
RosiesDad says:
When I was younger (20's), I lived in NYC. Great place to be a young person. My wife and I met there and left when we headed to grad school. We love going back but the congestion, the difficulty moving around (auto traffic, waiting on mass transit, etc.) becomes aggravating very quickly.
We moved our 23 year old daughter–recent college grad–to Brooklyn yesterday. We get why she wants to be there. There are work opportunities she wouldn't have at home, it's vibrant, there's a great night life, there's the theater, etc, etc. But after 8 hours of moving her in and getting her bedroom assembled (love/hate relationship with IKEA), we were glad to head home.
We live in a nice suburban development. We know many of our neighbors and the folks who live in our development are for the most part friendly. We like our neighbors and socialize with them on occasion. And although we have empty rooms, I enjoy the space and I enjoy the green around me. It's my happy place.
We have several friends who moved back into the city (Philly) when they became empty nesters. They like living there. We like driving into town to spend time with them. But would I like living in confined space, dealing with traffic congestion, parking issues, etc? I don't think so. My wife and I both have good jobs out here in the burbs (I own my own business, my wife is a primary care physician) and so there is nothing pulling us into town.
So I hear what you're saying but I am not calling the realtor any time soon. I like where I live and I'm not going anywhere for a while.
verbal says:
Could just be "grass-is-greener"ism. When you live in the city you want the space. You want to let the dog or the kids out to play in the yard. You want to be able to host a dinner party that runs late without waking the neighbors, and without having to turn your bedroom into a dining room. You want your neighbors to be able to have a party without keeping you up. You don't want to smell their garbage or their cat's litterbox. You want to be able to repair your roof or re-organize your basement without having to get buy-in from everyone else in the building.
And then when you get to the suburbs, you miss all that.
Safety Man! says:
@ oiojes
Exactly. If, for some god-forsaken reason, you are ever in DC I will gladly buy you a beer or several and pick your brain about your set-up.
A few apartments ago I bought my new neighbors a pie as a welcoming gift, they thought it was weird as hell. Ditto when more a recent neighbors' mother broke her ankle and I offered to get dinner for them. When I was a wee lad whenever someone had an illness or death in the family they would get showered with casseroles and other easily prepared food so they wouldn't have to cook. Tl;dr Ed, the problem is a bit deeper than just people being assholes, people have forgotten how to be neighbors, period.
Kris says:
@mago
I'm curious, why did you start your reply with "Um?"
I've been seeing that a lot lately and am trying to understand it- is it an attempt at being polite in saying the other person is a moron and wrong? Childish sarcasm?
GunstarGreen says:
"Those who can afford suburban living"?
I'm entirely ignorant of the situation in other parts of the country, but here in the ATL and its surrounding metro areas, living inside the perimeter ("ITP" as all the hip cats around here say) is strictly the province of the well-to-do heirs and heiresses of significant wealth. Even outside of the perimeter, I was paying almost twice per month in rent for a tiny little one-bed apartment than I'm now paying for a mortgage on a modest, 3-bed bath-and-a-half home. Granted, it's not in a typical mass-produced-and-gated subdivision, but it's pretty suburban — and FAR cheaper than anything even remotely close to being inside the city proper.
Safety Man! says:
@ GunstarGreen
Ditto that here in DC. Once upon a time I did live up near North Druid Hills and Buford Hwy, inside the beltway but not terribly great. Also shared the house with 4-5 other people, so there's that.
John Danley says:
I left the urban sirens and big city car alarms only to be introduced to the audio assault of untrained dogs owned by rural coal rollers. No matter where you go, hell is other people.
Katydid says:
To agree with the other posters, I'm in the (sort-of) 'burbs for many reasons. My job is a 6-mile commute (about 15 minutes most days) away–if I lived in the city, it would be an hour-plus. The house–a starter tract house–is much cheaper than anything I'd find in the city. The local public schools were okay-ish.
Dial Tone says:
If you want to know what makes a McMansion so and why they're so unpleasing to the eye, @mcmansionhell is on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter.
SeaTea says:
I think a lot of people attribute a racial basis to what is essentially a wealth problem. Many of the things that make neighbors problematic come down to them being poor. Unfortunately, because of systemic racism the odds that "not white" and "poor" will align are very high, so it is easy for people to attribute observed problems to "black" or "hispanic" when they would be equally true of neighborhoods of whites in the same economic situation.
When people say they want to move away from Black or Latino neighborhoods, mostly they are really wanting to move away from the problems caused by poverty, and race has nothing to do with it. They just don't realize that.
MaddiMax says:
The best thing we ever did was buy a house in a city neighborhood before it gentrified. Sure, you sometimes had to tell the hookers to move along, but we were 10 minutes from downtown, near the experimental theater where I worked,and in a mixed-race, mixed-income area. Now 25 years later, I'm in our city's hottest "arts district" in a 4-bedroom century home surrounded by restaurants, theaters, and galleries. And my house cost less than a new car. I love our village, where I recognize fellow activists at the cafe on the corner. Suck it, suburbs! This aging boomer loves her retirement life sans mortgage.
Chicagojon2016 says:
Timely post for me.
Whilst it's surely not a "McMansion" having been built in the 1950's our house is bigger than what we need since it was likely built for a post-war family of 5-6+, was expanded by ~30% and we have currently have 3 living in it.
When we first moved in we walked around the block with our lil' one and everyone was very cordial, but to me it's more of a 'I know who so-and-so is' block/neighborhood more than a place where you'd expect people walking down the block to dinner parties with friends or roving bbq's through the summer.
We tried to initiate a block party this year, but missed the application deadline so instead I'm writing up and printing out flyers for a coffee meet-and-greet and a suggestion for a pot luck lunch. With only 4 days notice we'll see what it garners, but that's my fault and not the blocks'. As a plus, when we were walking around for signatures for the block party we found out another family had the same idea and their townhouse hosted a coffee get together.
Honestly I think much of this just comes down to commuting and modern big-city problems. This isn't a mill town in rural North Carolina where we all work at the same place, shop at the same place, know the same people, read the same news, watch the same TV, and come home to the same block. I get that my life is different than my neighbors even if we do both come home to sit on the couch and watch the same TV program. Thinking back on my youth I knew of quite a lot of the neighbors only because I had paper routes, but I only went in ~4 houses within a block of my house.
We should bring back bridge parties — more sociable interaction and it's good for our brains/fighting Alzheimer's.
Major Kong says:
I guess if money was no object I would like a nice little bungalow in an "inner ring" suburb, the ones that were built back in the days of streetcars.
It's just more money than I care to spend.
Mama says:
I live in Berkeley in a large, old, almost falling down house. I think some people think of Berkeley as a suburb of SF but it is a very urban environment. So I don't know what to call it. I know my neighbors but we aren't pals. Having a relationship that is not a friendship is a good thing when it comes to neighbor issues like the dead tree they need to cut down before it falls on my house.
MAX34 says:
@gunstarr and @safetyman
I will have to disagree. I worked as a urban/transportation planner in ATL from 2000-2014, certainly not living on a "heir" salary. I lived in Inman Park in the back apt of an old house for $650/mo in 2000. When I moved in 2014 I was paying $1200 for 1000sf loft in Edgewood, just south of the Candler park marta. In between I bought a condo in E.ATL and a house in Kirkwood. All under 200k. These neighborhoods are all within a few miles of everything you'd want to do in the city, and most jobs. Long story short: ITP is affordable for a single person making average to above average income (40-60k in ATL). The difference is you'll have to be comfy maybe being a minority on your street, if you're white. Most folks say that ATL proper is unaffordable because they confine their search to very small expensive geography. Best neighbors I've ever had were the first black couple to move on that street in Kirkwood, back in the 60s before white flight. We all had plenty of space and a yard and fence, and everyone watched out for each other.
Brian M says:
My profession is enabling and permitting this kind of stuff. No wonder I buy lottery tickets every week and am counting the months until when the pension is enough to scrape by.
TakomaMark says:
I live in the DC area (inner ring Maryland suburb of said so inside the beltway). The lots are smallish so houses are closer together. I know a couple of my neighbors, a little. We moved here from a 1 bedroom condo in a large apartment-block type building in Cleveland Park. There, I knew a couple of my neighbors. a little. Maybe I'm just totally anti-social but part of me thinks people are just less neighborly these days – it's not a function of the urban vs. suburban environment. I grew up in a city but every housing lot for several blocks in any direction was basically suburb-like – single family, free standing houses, not on huge lots but on lots comparable to the neighborhood I live in now. We knew just about every family on our block back then though. Not so much anymore. It's not because I moved to a more suburb-like area. Something has changed in peoples' attitudes and they're not as interested in meeting their neighbors. It could be technology – back when I was a kid we had 4 TV channels that came in on the rabbit ears, no internet, no streaming content, no video games…maybe we interacted with our neighbors more merely to stave off boredom.
There are lots of studies showing that people are jointing organizations much less frequently than in the past (do you know anyone who is a member at an Elks Club type lodge, Oddfellows, Freemasons, etc.? I don't, and it used to be that lots of people joined those and other similar organizations.)
Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco has a clever bit that kind of summarizes the attitude – he describes what happened when the doorbell rang 20 years ago compared to what happens these days. Back then you were excited to have a visitor. These days the prevailing attitude is generally "keep quiet and hope he goes away."
Kaleberg says:
For some interesting discussion of the various economic and legal forces behind this kind of development, I'll recommend the site Shotgun Granola. A recent post pointed out that revenues are based on the value of the land and buildings, but expenses are based on area, so many regions have less well off, higher density neighborhoods subsidizing better off, lower density neighborhoods.
When I was a kid I knew all of the neighbors on our floor, but we only socialized with one or two other couples in the building of 66 apartments. Sure, we knew a lot of people by sight in the building and across the street, but most of them were strangers. When I moved out to the suburbs we knew our neighbors by sight, but socialized with our friends. Now, we live in a rural county seat and know our neighbors by sight, but, again, we socialize with our friends.
While there might be friends near by, neighbors were never automatically friends. I rather doubt that they ever were. Perhaps this is an artifact of the post-war baby boom parent generation facing the housing shortage and all moving into new buildings and developments en masse. They were all of a similar age, had similar incomes, were likely starting families and had all gotten through the shared experience of the war years together. If you read books about the post-war suburbs like The Organization Man, you do find neighbors socializing. If you read fiction from the last few hundred years, this seems to be relatively uncommon.
mothra says:
Well, I live in a stand-alone house in the middle of the city and I only know a few of my neighbors. Used to know everyone on the block. But now, people move in and do not communicate. Don't want to, either. Some will wave as I bike past, but most just pretend I am some stranger. It's kind of odd, really and I don't know why things have changed, but they have. However my boyfriend, who lives 2 miles away in a similar neighborhood, knows ALL of his neighbors. Guess it's just pot luck, really.
Katydid says:
@TakomaMark and others; to highlight yesterday's G&T and relate it to today's; I think families are just busier now than they were 30 – 40 years ago. When I was a kid, virtually none of the mothers in the neighborhood worked–as opposed to now, when a vast majority of the men work and 75 – 80% (depending on which statistic you believe) of the women work. Moreover, I can't even remember my father ever working super-late or having after-work work assignments/meetings/whatever, whereas they seem to be the norm now.
At the same time, the public schools have collapsed from lack of funding. I didn't have homework until high school; now kids are coming home from kindergarten with 2 hours of it. There's no way a five-year-old can be trusted to put in 2 additional hours of work, so that's more work for the parents to do on top of putting dinner together/grocery shopping/etc. Then there's the ever-present sports–parents who believe junior might qualify for a $20,000 scholarship to college will happily plunk down $30,000/year for a decade or more for year-round sports, special clinics, tournaments, and physical therapy for their sports stars. Someone's got to ferry the kids around.
When all that is said and done, who has time to socialize with the neighbors, who are likely doing the exact same crazy ratrace you are?
sluggo says:
A lot of this disconnect is from women joining the workforce. In the sixties and early seventies my mother used to have coffee in the morning with the different neighbors several times a week. That built strong connections, so when a boulder needed to be dug at of the garden, a neighbor who my dad never met before showed up to help, thanks to my mother's caffeine addiction.
Catherine says:
John Prine was right, as usual when he gave us all the answer to a blissful life in "Spanish Pipedream". I'm old and my memory is clotted with minutes of faculty meetings, but the gist is:
Blow up your tv, tear up your papers, move to the country, build you a home. Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try and find Jesus on your own.
JDM says:
We live in a condo and I wouldn't know any of the neighbors on either side of us or across the hall if I saw them on the street. When we lived in a house we knew our neighbors up and down the block, even the ones I would rather have avoided. YMMV.
Major Kong says:
I can't afford to live in the country.
By the time you buy the tractors, 4-wheelers, motorcycle, fishing boat, camper (not sure why you need a camper, you're already in the country) plus the super-sized pickup truck to haul the who mess around with.
Note that I have fairly accurately described my relatives here.
TakomaMark says:
Yes, Katydid, those are undoubtedly contributing factors. Also, kids rarely play outside unsupervised anymore – a lot of parents probably used to meet because their kids played together. Couple your factors with the fact that populations are becoming more concentrated in larger cities and what that does to commute times and you have a lot less leisure time. My dad's 20 mile commute took about 25 minutes. My 10 mile commute takes an hour – 20 minute walk to the metro station followed by a 40 minute train ride. If I bike to the metro that shaves off 15 minutes but we're still talking more than twice my dad's lost time for commuting. I don't think driving would help because DC traffic is awful and I'd get gouged on parking so my income would take a hit.
TakomaMark says:
I should add that my train ride, according to DC's rapidly failing subway system, should take 22 minutes but usually takes almost twice that time.
Brian says:
Sort of related:
This is not related to urban sprawl or suburban desolation, but I live in a place known for its wilderness and untouched landscapes.
The local people take great pride in telling you, "You should have been here before that got logged." or "Before the road, that was a great place to hike to to go camping."
Of course, capitalism and the government subsidization thereof pounds the development drum so loud that the people who make those statements also call for roads to undeveloped areas for no other reason than largess.
It is a product selfish shortsightedness that leaves them shitting in their bed no matter where they are.
Jim says:
Not to be all "in my day"….but, I think suburbs were more inviting/interesting to live in the 60s and 70s when I was a kid. Obviously not for all and I'm sure it differed depending on what part of the country one lived in. But as others have stated upthread in various ways, today there seems to be less of a community in the suburbs as there was back then. Two-income parents, child-care, video games/internet etc etc etc have left the burbs a somewhat sterile place to grow up in today as a child/young person.
As a single, child-less adult today, I love my condo and relative closeness to the downtown of my small to mid-size city (New Bedford, Ma).
quixote says:
There's a theme in the comments and in my experience: money.
I was commenting to an architect friend of mine about a very nice house I saw written up somewhere. (A trade publication for steel roofs, IIRC.) His comment? "Yes, but most of that design just oozes money."
When he discussed the things that would make it more wallet-friendly, it only took about five steps to make it start looking like a suburban tract house.
Likewise with desirable urban places — as opposed to undesirable ones, of which there are way more — they ooze money too.
So people go with the wallet-friendly stuff. It's not their fault. It's the fault, I guess, of all of us together for refusing to get on with our lives and refusing to buy or rent anything unless the architects and urban planners have designed it to be cheap, sustainable, and beautiful. We know they can do it. You can see the models at some architectural competitions.
Katydid says:
@TakomaMark; my oldest is in grad school in College Park. You can actually see the Capitol from some of the buildings' windows. There's a Metro stop a half-mile from the campus…and it took me a half-hour to get downtown from that Metro stop. I thought I'd see the Smithsonian on one trip to College Park; it was literally an all-day event. So I feel your pain. The Metro could conceivably been a model system, but nobody wants to fund it apparently, and the developer-turned-mayor cut funding to it as practically his first act.
My father was stationed at Ft. Meade (about halfway between DC and Baltimore) in the 1970s; periodically on a Saturday, he'd say, "Let's go to the museums!" and we'd pile in the car for a 20-minute drive. We'd park–for free!–right alongside the Mall and spend the day seeing the sights. HAHAHAHA, those days are long gone.
Katydid says:
@Sluggo; the downside of women at home with nothing to do is the feuds and pettiness. I remember the caffeeklatches when I was kid, and how the women would all bad-mouth whatever woman wasn't there, then act all friendly to her face when she appeared. The 'burbs are a mind-numbing place to be if you've got nothing productive to do or think about.
Katydid says:
@Jim; at least in the area I live, the older, inner-ring suburbs tended to be clustered around shopping centers and schools and libraries. Starting in the 1980s around here, farms were leveled and subdivisions sprung up, without sidewalks and nowhere near anything walkable. The inhabitants have to get into their cars to get a gallon of milk or send their children to school.
Major Kong says:
The suburbs were a bit more egalitarian when I was growing up in the 70s.
My father was a salesman. My friend's fathers were: a plumber, a doctor, a factory worker, a truck driver, a railroad worker and a United Airlines Vice President.
(those are just the ones I can remember)
We all lived in the same neighborhood. The United VP lived in the big house on the corner lot. The doctor had a bigger house than ours but not by much.
Skepticalist says:
I live in a small western NY city that's kind of an urban suburb. In the 50s and early 60s, it was full of undeveloped but promising areas that were just waiting for white protestant people build brick and white clapboard two bathroom homes. It became the place to live. Don't worry it looks the same today. It's hell I suppose but my growing up in the 50s prepared me for it. It's incredibly cheap to buy homes here. There aren't enough whackos to make it interesting and I can't afford to sell the place.
Pleases don't overdo this period as being full of Dagwood Bumstead neighbors. Families hung out with only a few close ones. They were very polite to others down the block however. By my time in the 1950s, we became closer. Everybody was nice to the guy who fixed our TVs. In 1955 every street had a radio ham that was into it. Quite an icebreaker.
You have to be my age to get any of this.
April says:
China's density requires that people live packed together. In the cities most now live in high-rise apartments which are adequate and modern (and sterile) enough by western standards, but there are still pockets of hutongs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutong where Darwin-only-knows how many people live. In these places a lot of the housing is simply one room and a toilet; people will often cook and wash dishes outside.
I have mostly lived in the modern apartments which are all in complexes behind walls and with guards, and certainly some socializing goes on in the common areas, but not as much as one would expect considering the population of the housing complex. Now I live in a hutong, and I've noticed that there is much greater interaction by residents. I think this is due to 1) most of these people have probably lived in their places for a long time, perhaps all their lives, and 2) their housing units are far too small to stay in if weather permits not doing so.
diana says:
I agree with April, even though I live in New York city. I moved here when it was cheap(er) (there was this moment in the 70's when it was cheap, it was never cheap either before or since) and in NYC the more exclusive you get, the more status-y your co-op, the more your neighbors need/get to know about you.
New York City also has rent stabilization, which really does help anchor a neighborhood. People know their lease will get renewed and through the political process they can influence how much it can go up.
But the key thing is walkability. You'll know your neighbors if you're not getting into and out of your house via your garage.
April says:
It is my understanding that there is a "Popsicle test" whereby a city is measured in walkability by if it has a store where a 5 year old can walk from home and buy a Popsicle.
By that definition all of urban China is Popsicle walkable. Of course, what with the nanny state in the US, I guess even if the store was next door, the 5 year old wouldn't be allowed to walk to it.
mago says:
@Kris. Jesus. I don't know why I say what I say or how I say it. It just pops out.
On another note, the postings here provide rich ground for contemplation.
Ibod Catooga says:
I once
Once I pooped
I
once I pooped…in space!@!!!!!!!!!!
TakomaMark says:
I don't know Diana – Cleveland Park in DC is very walkable – it's right on top of a subway stop, and I hardly ever used my car to run errands when I lived there because I could walk to the dry cleaners, grocery store, drug store, and about a dozen different restaurants within a few blocks. I still didn't know many people in my neighborhood. It takes more than just walking everywhere to make it happen.
Yes, Katydid, metro service has gone down hill fast. When I first moved to DC the system ran pretty smoothly and delay announcements were rare. Nowadays I can't remember the last rush hour where there weren't delays on multiple lines. Even when there aren't delays they've announced, there are still delays. Last night I wound up on a train sitting between stations for about 10 minutes, presumably just because the system locked up and there was a train holding at the next platform that couldn't go anywhere because there was a train holding in front of it, etc. Stuff like that happens all the time and is not considered "delays" by the system.
They inflicted major weekend service outages on us for about a year two or so years ago to do maintenance and upgrades and at the end of the process the system's performance got worse. Now, they're repeating that process with operation "safe track" but I'm worried the outcome will be the same…major inconvenience while the work is being done and worsening performance when they finish. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised but its hard to have faith in Metro. I don't know what the problem is but I think lack of funding is far from the only issue. There has to be incompetence and possibly graft going on too IMO.
democommie says:
Up here in Oswego, NY, houses are relatively cheap. I bought mine for $25K, it was a shithole (and remains one, largely). OTOH, I know someone who bought a similar house, on a similar sized lot, about two years before I bought mine. He paid north of $400K for it, pumped about $150K more into it and sold it for over a Mil in a hypersellers market. I think that the guy he sold it to prolly had some issues in 2008.
democommie says:
If you want to get to know the neighbors, btw, get a cute dog that is highly social. My romie, Buddy the Wonder Dog is a serious babe magnet, guys like him, too.
Dean C. Rowan says:
A contrary-ish point of view from a person who *almost* attended architecture school, that is, until I recognized that I don't care about forms of space all that much. (Yet I love architectural history.) I lived in Southern California suburbia for about four decades, and I grew to love (more or less) it. Yes, there is an ugly history to suburbs, but to the extent I could set it aside I enjoyed the … plainness? I knew some of my neighbors, and even stayed in touch with them after leaving for another part of the state, where I now walk somewhat more and bump into my neighbors at least as frequently. Public transportation here is far more accessible than in the LA suburb. Yet I have no greater affection to the current digs, where I've lived for 15 years, than the old. But maybe it all gets back to my not caring about how space and houses and buildings and their attendant views are distributed.
Keith Gargus says:
Years ago, I had a small A/V installation company. I would go to these massive McMansions (4000 sq ft and way up), install their system, almost always in a room the size of a gym, with a couch and a coffee table. Most of them were half empty, none had anything on the walls. At first I assumed they'd just moved in, but soon learned that this was it. Either they were house poor, and couldn't buy furniture, but more likely the house was the trophy. Not to be made into a home, just waiting for the market to do something. It was the most banal existence I could think of. As an adult I have never, nor will I ever live in a suburb.