Thread: American Suburbs & Why I Don't Like Them

Gotta pay for that free health care somehow.

There will be some movement more centered areas, I think. In addition to gas prices, other factors are involved. Comments and opinions?

Suburbia R.I.P.

Mar 11, 2009

Does the downturn spell the beginning of the end for suburbia? Some experts say yesterday's cul-de-sac is tomorrow's ghost town.

The downturn has accomplished what a generation of designers and planners could not: it has turned back the tide of suburban sprawl. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis many new subdivisions are left half built and more established suburbs face abandonment. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes. In Cleveland alone, one of every 13 houses is now vacant, according to an article published Sunday in The New York Times magazine..................


There is also speculation that subdivision homes could be dismantled and sold for scrap now that a mini-industry for repurposed lumber and other materials has evolved over the last few years. Around the periphery of these discussions is the specter of the suburb as a ghost town patrolled by squatters and looters, as if Mad Max had come to the cul-de-sac.

If the suburb is a big loser in mortgage crisis episode, then who is the winner? Not surprisingly, the New Urbanists, a group of planners, developers and architects devoted to building walkable towns based on traditional designs, have interpreted the downturn as vindication of their plans for mixed-use communities where people can stroll from their homes to schools and restaurants...

more
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/mich...l/suburbia-rip
__________________

Like them or not, housing really fueled the economy. To fill their McMansions up people needed to buy a lot of appliances and furniture. Big ticket retail and places like Home Depot are really suffering Since the housing slump there is no demand for this stuff anymore. One of the reasons why unemployment remains stuck above 8%.

The trend is continuing and it's a long term patter: Good, I say:

The End of the Suburbs | TIME.com



LIFE & STYLE
The End of the Suburbs

The country is resettling along more urbanized lines, and the American Dream is moving with it

By Leigh Gallagher @leighgallagherJuly 31, 2013

A major change is underway in where and how we are choosing to live. In 2011, for the first time in nearly a hundred years, the rate of urban population growth outpaced suburban growth, reversing a trend that held steady for every decade since the invention of the automobile.

In several metropolitan areas, building activity that was once concentrated in the suburban fringe has now shifted to what planners call the “urban core,” while demand for large single-family homes that characterize our modern suburbs is dwindling. This isn’t just a result of the recession. Rather, the housing crisis of recent years has concealed something deeper and more profound happening to what we have come to know as American suburbia. Simply speaking, more and more Americans don’t want to live there anymore.


The American suburb used to evoke a certain way of life, one of tranquil, tree-lined streets, soccer leagues and center hall colonials. Today’s suburb is more likely to evoke endless sprawl, a punishing commute, and McMansions. In the pre-automobile era, suburban residents had to walk once they disembarked from the train, so houses needed to be located within a reasonable distance to the station and homes were built close together.

Shopkeepers set up storefronts around the station where pedestrian traffic was likely to be highest. The result was a village center with a grid shaped street pattern that emerged organically around the day-to-day needs and walking patterns of the people who lived there. Urban planners describe these neighborhoods, which you can still see in older suburbs, as having “vibrancy” or “experiential richness” because, without even trying, their design promoted activity, foot traffic, commerce and socializing. As sociologist Lewis Mumford wrote, “As long as the railroad stop and walking distances controlled suburban growth, the suburb had form.”

Then came World War Two, and the subsequent housing shortage. The Federal Housing Administration had already begun insuring long-term mortgage loans made by private lenders, and the GI Bill provided low-interest, zero-down-payment loans to millions of veterans. The widespread adoption of the car by the middle class untethered developers from the constraints of public transportation and they began to push further out geographically. Meanwhile, single-use zoning laws that carved land into buckets for residential, commercial and industrial use instead of having a single downtown core altered the look, feel and overall DNA of our modern suburbs. From then on, residential communities were built around a different model entirely, one that abandoned the urban grid pattern in favor of a circular, asymmetrical system made of curving subdivisions, looping streets and cul-de-sacs.

(MORE: Viewpoint: Air-Conditioning Will Be the End of Us)

But in solving one problem—the severe postwar housing shortage—we unwittingly created some others: isolated, single-class communities. A lack of cultural amenities. Miles and miles of chain stores and Ruby Tuesdays. These are the negative qualities so often highlighted in popular culture, in TV shows like Desperate Housewives, Weeds and Suburgatory, to name just a few. In 2011, the indie rock band Arcade Fire took home a Grammy for The Suburbs, an entire album dedicated to teen angst and isolation inspired by band members’ Win and William Butler’s upbringing in Houston’s master-planned community The Woodlands. Although many still love and defend the suburbs, they have also become the constant target of angst by the likes of Kate Taylor, a stay-at-home mom who lives in a suburb of Charlotte and uses the Twitter name @culdesacked. “If the only invites I get from you are at-home direct sales ‘parties,’ please lose my number, then choke yourself. #suburbs.”

There is still a tremendous amount of appeal in suburban life: space, a yard of one’s own, less-crowded schools. I don’t have anything against the suburbs personally—although I currently live in Manhattan’s West Village, I had a pretty idyllic childhood growing up in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb twelve miles west of Philadelphia. We are a nation that values privacy and individualism down to our very core, and the suburbs give us that. But somewhere between leafy neighborhoods built around lively railroad villages and the shiny new subdivisions in cornfields on the way to Iowa that bill themselves as suburbs of Chicago, we took our wish for privacy too far. The suburbs overshot their mandate.

Many older suburbs are still going strong, and real estate developers are beginning to build new suburban neighborhoods that are mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly, a movement loosely known as New Urbanism. Even though almost no one walks everywhere in these new communities, residents can drive a mile or two instead of ten or twenty, own one car instead of two. “We are moving from location, location, location in terms of the most important factor to access, access, access,” says Shyam Kannan, formerly a principal at real estate consultancy Robert Charles Lesser and now managing director of planning at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA.)


As the country resettles along more urbanized lines, some suggest the future may look more like a patchwork of nodes—mini urban areas all over the country connected to one another with a range of public transit options. It’s not unlike the dense settlements of the Northeast already, where city-suburbs like Stamford, Greenwich, West Hartford and others exist in relatively close proximity. “The differences between cities and suburbs are diminishing,” says Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program director Bruce Katz, noting that cities and suburbs are also becoming more alike racially, ethically, and socio-economically.

Whatever things look like in ten years—or twenty, or fifty, or more—there’s one thing everyone agrees on: there will be more options. The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two or more children, and a car.

But there is no single American Dream anymore; there are multiple American Dreams, and multiple American Dreamers. The good news is that the entrepreneurs, academics, planners, home builders and thinkers who plan and build the places we live in are hard at work trying to find space for all of them.

Adapted from The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving by Leigh Gallagher, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Copyright (c) Leigh Gallagher, 2013.

Multiple American dreams.

Wow. Previously 300 million+ people had exactly the same dream?

What a pile of utter shite.

Return to double cabbage status required.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Multiple American dreams.

Wow. Previously 300 million+ people had exactly the same dream?

What a pile of utter shite.

Return to double cabbage status required.

I never believed in the misnomer and farcical term referred to as the "American Dream."

The AD was created by John Truslow Adams, a poet in 1931. Truslow wrote a paragraph noting the "American Dream" was about being and individual and pursuing happiness.

Somehow - and perhaps by design - it morphed into taking out a 30 year mortgage loan.

Originally Posted by Humbert

Like them or not, housing really fueled the economy. To fill their McMansions up people needed to buy a lot of appliances and furniture. Big ticket retail and places like Home Depot are really suffering Since the housing slump there is no demand for this stuff anymore. One of the reasons why unemployment remains stuck above 8%.

8 years later we have the man at the helm to steer America out of the slump. Trump

In addition to all the negatives about suburbia mentioned in the OP, an important one that didn't get mentioned is the anger, resentment, hatred and violence that's a hallmark of the poor neighborhoods like South L.A. Bringing businesses and entertainment facilities to the 'hood along with "user-friendly" and inexpensive housing could have a huge impact.

Originally Posted by Sumbitch

In addition to all the negatives about suburbia mentioned in the OP, an important one that didn't get mentioned is the anger, resentment, hatred and violence that's a hallmark of the poor neighborhoods like South L.A. Bringing businesses and entertainment facilities to the 'hood along with "user-friendly" and inexpensive housing could have a huge impact.

I cannot comment on those LA areas, although I did live in LA in the late 90s. I worked close to those areas but lived in Hollywood.

While I lived in DC, there was only one way to bring in businesses and entertainment to the District of Columbia, in the South East where I lived (I lived on the far western edge).

To be direct but honest: we knew then that we needed Asian, middle-easterners, gays, white, and Jews, and in general 20 and 30-somethings to move in and the blacks to move out. Not all blacks, but most.

That did start happening, very slowly. Call it "gentrification" or what have you.

Then, the Washington National baseball stadium was built (about a 13 minute walk from my townhouse), restaurants, bars, and apartments / condo followed and were and are being built.

Even white folk are moving into Anacostia now and for better or worse - it's the new housing and apartment investing area.

This is how I see it also.

Does anyone agree or disagree?

Why even driving through suburbia is soul crushing

"Many of us know, on some level, that we live in a dystopian nightmare."

WRITTEN BY
Alex Balashov
Founder, Evariste Systems
June 10, 2016

I’ve written some in the past about how the predominant suburban design in the US is among the worst features of life here—viewed from the perspective of a European immigrant like me, at any rate.

Far from posing a mere logistical or aesthetic problem, it shapes–or perhaps more accurately, it circumscribes–our experience of life and our social relationships in insidious ways. The destruction of the pedestrian public realm is not merely an economic or ecological absurdity; it has real deleterious effects. For just one small example of many: life in a subdivision cul-de-sac keeps children from exploring and becoming conversant with the wider world around them, because it tethers their social lives and activities to their busy parents’ willingness to drive them somewhere. There’s literally nowhere for them to go. The spontaneity of childhood in the courtyard, on the street, or in the square gives way to the managed, curated, prearranged “play-date.” Small wonder that kids retreat within the four walls of their house and lead increasingly electronic lives. (The virtues of a private backyard are easily exaggerated; it’s vacuous and isolated, and kids quickly outgrow it.)
However, it’s been difficult to elucidate in specific physical terms what it is about suburbia that makes it so hostile to humanity. To someone with no training in architecture, it’s often experienced as a great, non-articulated existential malaise, like depression. You know it sucks, but it’s hard to say exactly why. The same holds true in reverse; North Americans who have not travelled abroad extensively and don’t have a clear basis for comparison can be tongue-tied when asked to explain what exactly makes a non-sprawl city street “charming” or “cozy.”

It’s telling that we have no widespread cultural vernacular for why classical urban settlements, which draw on millennia of intellectual background and corpuses of architectural knowledge, are pleasant. It’s because Americans took that inheritance and unceremoniously discarded it, consonantly with the rise of the mass-produced automobile. It irks me that many of us know, on some level, that we live in a dystopian nightmare but can’t say what makes it a dystopian nightmare.

That’s how I came to spend a fair amount of time recently thinking about and researching what exactly makes suburbia suburbia. I don’t mean the abstract reasons why it sucks; I’ve pontificated on that plenty. I mean the physicality. For example, I live in Atlanta, a suburban mega-agglomeration that sucks in the same general way as cities like Los Angeles, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, and Phoenix. When someone asks me where I’m from, and I roll my eyes and diffidently groan, “Atlanta…” Why? It’s worth asking what specifically makes Atlanta “[groan] Atlanta.”

If one hopes to avoid broad vagueries like “Designed for cars, not humans,” and instead to get specific, then there’s no single linchpin attribute that makes suburbia what it is. It’s an interdependent constellation of misanthropic zoning rules, building codes, and planning guidelines. My aim is to list as many of these as I’ve discovered and been able to formulate.

1. Single-use zoning

American zoning law (in all but its oldest cities) forecloses on the possibility of mixed-use development. This means traditional design patterns like shops and offices on the first floor with apartments above are impossible. Residences are constructed in special areas zoned for residential construction, while shopping and work take place in altogether different areas zoned for commercial development.

The idea, of course, is that the peaceful slumber of the suburbanite should not be interrupted by the noise generated by the transaction of commerce or any other public-sphere human activities. The result is that running any errand or attending to any need, no matter how small, requires getting in one’s car and driving somewhere else, in many cases several miles or more.

Since separation of commercial and residential zones by vast tracts built at automobile scale (rather than human scale) removes the possibility of accessing useful destinations on foot, it removes any practical motive for walking. Without consequential destinations that are part of normal human activity, by and large, the only people who walk on suburban streets do so for exercise. And the only reason they would do that is because their automobile-powered daily existence does not otherwise compel much movement.

2. Hierarchical traffic distribution

The chief complaint of most residents of suburban sprawl is traffic. The most obvious cause is, of course, that everything requires driving, but there are more subtle reasons, too.

The endless cul-de-sacs, winding loops, and seas of parking lot in suburbia empty into larger “collector roads,” often constraining traffic in a given neighborhood to a single preordained path.

Traditional neighborhoods and cities are designed in a dense grid and/or interconnected web of streets, so there are many alternative paths between two points.

3. Set-backs from the street and parking ratios

Local building ordinances—ones that contribute to suburban sprawl—don’t allow buildings to directly abut the curb. That means one cannot simply enter a building from the street. Instead, the building is set back from the curb, requiring one to traverse a parking lot to reach it.

In the case of larger shopping centers, this means the building is set back several hundred feet, separated from the street by a large sea of parking. This is because suburban building ordinances require a generous proportion of parking spaces in relation to the surface area of the building. So, the larger the building, the more parking it must have, and, seemingly, it must be in front, not behind the building (more on that later).

4. Proximity does not mean pedestrian accessibility

On the other hand, it is not so uncommon in suburbia to live very close to a nearby shopping center. I’ve had lots of suburban friends tell me, “Actually, the grocery store is 1,000 ft from me. Very convenient.” Indeed, when we lived in an apartment complex in the Perimeter Mall area in Dunwoody, the nearby Walmart shopping strip was within spitting distance. I could almost see the store entrance from my bedroom window.

But, perversely, that doesn’t mean I could walk to the store, as a normal person from virtually anywhere else on the planet might conclude from that statement. In its fanatical quest to eviscerate the pedestrian realm and make cars exclusive first-class objects, suburbia manages to make far even that which is conceptually close. Building ordinances generally require some sort of “divider” between these adjacent land parcels, like a ditch, a chain-link fence, or a concrete wall or noise barrier. In our case, that means I had to walk out of the apartment complex, go around the divider, and then cross several hundred feet of parking lot to go to the store.

It goes without saying that most normal people would choose to drive the distance. And that’s the idea.

5. Economic segregation by building type

It does not bear repeating here that one of the things that makes interesting places interesting is variety. However, one more subtle effect of the enforced homogeneity of suburban residential neighborhoods is economic segregation.

In older and more traditional neighborhoods, multiple types of buildings of varying sizes coexist closely. Yes, it is a universal premise of building regulation and planning that they must be united by some sort of overarching organizing aesthetic principle and geometrically agree in some way or another, but that doesn’t mean they all have to be approximately one type or size. As a result, it’s quite possible for poor, middle class, and rich people to live side-by-side in one neighborhood, with the difference being that the rich people’s houses or apartments are merely bigger.
Local building ordinances in suburbia aggressively disallow this, and integrating more affordable housing is the fastest way to tank property values within the logic of the suburban system. That’s why every new subdivision contains only a handful of approximately similar house types, and the residents are all in a similar income bracket.

Suburban building codes also commonly disallow affordable housing hacks available in older neighborhoods, such as above-garage apartments (sometimes known as granny flats). It is no mean feat to get approval for a small secondary edifice in one’s backyard–something the size of a toolshed, but habitable. Contrary to the individualist-libertarian ideology underpinning widespread suburban attitudes, even use of the space behind one’s walls, within the private sphere, is highly constrained and regulated.

6. No street enclosure and definition

The geometry of streets and sidewalks is a critical topic. Generally speaking, the reason settled streets in older neighborhoods and European cities feel “cozy” and “charming” is because they provide a feeling of enclosure, which humans want because it gives them with a coherent sense of place, like rooms in a house.
I’m not a sociobiologist and cannot say exactly why this is, but would speculate that it caters to people’s primal need for shelter and clear directional orientation. Whatever the case, it’s an established fact that people gravitate toward places that have clear borders and relatively comprehensive enclosures; it’s a kind of axiom for the discipline of architecture. People feel vulnerable and uncomfortable in open areas with ill-defined margins.

That’s the difference between standing on Saint-Germain:

Creating that enclosure and definition cannot happen if buildings are sparse and set back from the street. It also requires a certain broadly rectangular building geometry, with more right angles and less campy avant garde twists (more on that later). Suburban streets are notable for the degree to which they don’t provide a sense of place. Their curved, winding trajectory also robs one of a sense of cardinal direction–that’s why it’s so easy to get lost in suburbia. I am much more likely to need GPS aid in navigating through a subdivision than through a downtown.
Pleasant, walkable streets have other important features, such as protection of the pedestrian sphere from automobile traffic. This delineation is provided by architectural buffers such as trees, high curbs, and street-parked automobiles themselves. All of these things can arrest a car about to plough into a crowd.
Another thing that takes away from the feeling of place and enclosure is large curb radii. You’ll notice that in dense cities and older neighborhoods, sidewalks adhere to the street at right angles, providing a minimal crossing distance for the pedestrian. However, suburban curbs are optimized for cars, allowing them to maintain some speed while turning right—and easily mow down anyone who is misled by the formal presence of a crosswalk into believing that they’re actually meant to walk there.

7. Useless, ugly, and wasted space

When quizzed about the advantages of suburban life, the most common answer is “space.” But even if you like lots of space, you’d have to agree that the quality depends on what kind of space it is.

Suburban development ordinances are replete with requirements for useless frontages, pointless greenspace between compatible land uses, as well as chain-link fences, concrete barriers, and drainage pits. Space is still inhabited by humans, and has to be articulated to match their specific uses for it. A lot of open space in suburbia lacks that articulation; it’s neither pristine forest nor a particularly usable surface. It’s just kind of there.

The absurdly large width requirements for inner residential streets are a special case of their own. Small, low-density streets don’t need to be so wide that one almost can’t see his opposite neighbor’s house because of the intervening curvature of the Earth, especially given that street parking is generally not done in these places because, evidently, everyone needs their very own [expensively and unnecessarily] paved driveway. The formal reason for large width requirements is generally something comical, like to accommodate a full-size fire engine or other large emergency vehicle in case tragedy should strike. Well, sure, conceivably you might need to land an A380 there, too.

8. Parking-first aesthetics, garage façades, no alleys, no interior yards

It took me some time to consciously realize it, but one of the biggest differences that makes traditional neighborhoods more appealing is that parking typically happens behind the house, reached through an alley. One is not likely to see an alley approved in suburban construction; that’s where robbery happens, right?
Instead, suburban houses are set back to make room for a driveway. Much of the façade of many houses is accounted for by a garage. This telegraphs the impression that the primary function of a house is really, above all else, to provide parking for one’s car.

Considering that suburbia is reputedly sterile and safe, there ought to be many other uses for alleys and common interior courtyards located at the rear of buildings, away from the street. In addition to being the proper place for cars, those are good places to put trash and recycling bins. Instead, the suburban street is surreally dotted with plastic trash cans at least weekly. So much for the pretense of civilization.
What this says is: we have such a dilapidated and depressing public realm, so few memorable places and things worth seeing, that we truly don’t care. This tension also accounts for the kitschy, farcical schizophrenia of the suburban home façade:
from google maps street view

It’s a castle, a veritable homage to colonnades! But wait, there’s more: there’s a front porch–and if you’re a toddler, you can fit on it! Seriously, what is this thing? It looks like it’s trying to be a lot of different things from the annals of written history.
It’s not a house. At best, it’s awkward and unsettled eclecticism, and at worst, it’s a caricature, as Kunstler would say. The form of normal houses much more closely follows their function. The problem is, when there’s nothing else worth looking at, developers are vulnerable to being charged with having built too-“sterile” of suburbs—if they build a merely functional house, the sort of thing that would be thought attractive for its simplicity and cohesion elsewhere on the globe, they have failed. And that’s how we get to the neurotic potpourri of superficial ornamentation above.
The same dialectic is often a driver of the infamous suburban NIMBYism. When the public realm is so depressing and demoralizing, describable mainly in terms of the car traffic it generates, it’s understandable that nobody would want to see more of the same built nearby. It ultimately comes down to the fact that we don’t value our public realm in America, and, no surprise, we’ve not built a public realm worth valuing but instead retreated into escapism in the private one. All escapists, ranging from readers of fantasy literature to video game players to drug addicts, are generally irritated by any effort to somehow disrupt or meddle with the ongoing process of their withdrawal from reality.

9. No street life or visible human activity

Periodically, people will ask me: “Well, if you’re so committed to walking, why not just … do it?” They mean right here, on the highway, next to six lanes of traffic, in 90 °F heat.

Well, in actually-existing psychological reality, people aren’t going to walk where it’s neither comfortable nor interesting to walk. Contrary to popular Republican-type mockery of the notion, “interesting” doesn’t require a hipster paradise of airy-fairy, frou-frou creature comforts like street cafes (though they do uncannily arise in interesting places). “Interesting” just means there’s some intimation of human presence and activity expressed in the architecture and scenery.
There’s nothing about a treeless six-lane highway that conveys this. I’m going to drive, not walk, because to walk would be boring, tedious, uncomfortable, dangerous, and, in a sprawling geography designed at automobile scale, impractically slow.

10. No public transport

Aside from its superior efficiency and ecological footprint, the primary value of public transport is not in being able to commune with the armpits of your fellow man, but in being able to spend your time in some way other than chained to one’s steering wheel cursing the traffic. You can read a book, catch up on e-mail, or just close your eyes for a while.

In suburban sprawl, you’re doomed to spend vast amounts of time at the wheel—time you cannot do much else with, and which you won’t get back. The nature of low-density automobile sprawl cities is that everything is insanely far away from everything else, so no matter what you do, you’re doomed to driving vast distances to see most friends, to commute to work, and so on.

Clearly, it bears mention at this point that self-driving cars could address the chained-to-the-steering-wheel factor. But it remains to be seen to what extent they can shift the larger paradigm. I can envisage self-driving cars doing very little to change the overall blight (and environmental costs) of suburbia, or I could see them evolving more rationally into a kind of semi-personalized public transit. It’s a phenomenon that has the theoretical potential to either greatly further our atomization into the pathetically sybaritic techno-pods of a WALL-E type world, or to turn into a moderately pleasant band-aid.

Whatever the case, they don’t solve the more fundamental problem of our vicious contempt for the idea of a public realm.

11. Improper interface between city and highway

In most places in the world, one will find that high-speed highways run between cities, not through them. You’ll also find that intercity highways don’t have a lot of commercial development along them, allowing unadulterated views of the countryside.

In places like Atlanta, interstate highways are something like main thoroughfares. Three of them converge downtown, along with numerous other high-speed roadways.

The effect is to induce lots of derivative traffic within the city. Freeways breed on-ramps and car-centric development along the corridor. At the same time, the city, especially its most important historic parts, is partitioned by an ugly exoskeleton.

12. Lack of regional planning vision

Turning back to Atlanta: Decades of unbridled free-for-all building in Atlanta have led to a widely dissonant, fragmented patchwork that cannot deliver a coherent thesis for future development in the city.

Some individual neighborhoods in Atlanta, like Midtown (where I live), have made great strides over time to become walkable and present viable in-city living options. The problem is, as soon as you need to leave such a neighborhood, you still have to get in your car.

The same problem can even play out on the block level. I’ve been to some downtowns of suburban sprawl cities and found them to have a number of blocks or sectors that are actually quite pedestrian-friendly, well-designed, and interesting. The problem is, these blocks are like a chessboard; they’re not contiguous! Want to go more than 500 ft? Better start the car.

The point is, Metro Atlanta covers nine counties and untold municipalities, incorporated and not. With all the resources and initiative in the world, there’s nothing the City of Atlanta can fundamentally do to alter the reality of life in 95% of Metro Atlanta. I haven’t seen anything inhabitable constructed in America through a laissez-faire approach to building across such a patchwork. Charge has to be taken at the regional level.

As far as I can tell, the same holds true almost everywhere, since everything in the US that is—gallingly—called a “city” consists of fragments scattered across unconscionable stretches of freeway. I have a special place in my heart for Dallas-Ft. Worth, much of which should be reclassified as a rural area outright if one is to judge by density. But the need for a regional approach to development priorities and transportation probably applies almost everywhere, including places like St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Omaha.

This post originally appeared at Likewise A Blog. This post draws in part upon the work of James Howard Kunstler, including his widely disseminated TED talk, as well as upon the data and ideas in the well-known New Urbanist title Suburban Nation by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck.

https://qz.com/698928/why-suburbia-sucks/

Has anyone addressed the plight of the elderly still living in the 'burbs? Some will eventually not be able to drive and then what do they do? No community, no transport, no...?

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

Has anyone addressed the plight of the elderly still living in the 'burbs? Some will eventually not be able to drive and then what do they do? No community, no transport, no...?

That is a very valid point, Neal.

This is a well-done short presentation by James Kunstler on TED Talk:

Welcome to Generica:

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

Has anyone addressed the plight of the elderly still living in the 'burbs? Some will eventually not be able to drive and then what do they do? No community, no transport, no...?

Assisted living apartments are becoming quite a business. Many of these complexes are located out toward the burbs, to keep costs down. Communal services of various kinds can be included, including some level of shuttle bus service.

Some parts of Spain have brilliant handicap assisted living facility.

Fuck the USA!

(Travelling in Spain right now)

^ you can get some sangWEE a

Shopkeepers set up storefronts around the station where pedestrian traffic was likely to be highest. The result was a village center with a grid shaped street pattern that emerged organically around the day-to-day needs and walking patterns of the people who lived there. Urban planners describe these neighborhoods, which you can still see in older suburbs, as having “vibrancy” or “experiential richness” because, without even trying, their design promoted activity, foot traffic, commerce and socializing. As sociologist Lewis Mumford wrote, “As long as the railroad stop and walking distances controlled suburban growth, the suburb had form.”

Pretty much describes my "village" - 15 minute walk, 15 minute train ride, 15 minute walk to the office. The only difference is the village is spread along a valley floor - no problems, there are FOUR railway stations - each about 45 seconds apart.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

Some parts of Spain have brilliant handicap assisted living facility.

Fuck the USA!

(Travelling in Spain right now)

It's not about "F the USA," Earl, it's just that living communities - neighborhoods - can be designed and zoned better.

I remember 20 years ago I was sitting in some mall in a franchise chain....*cough*....bar restaurant and a guy next to us said, "yeah the property values are higher in the houses near the mall, because they are near the mall.

Luckly them.

This was in Fairfax county, VA.

Thank god this sh*t is finally dying.
Don't buy the "positive spin" on the article at the bottom. Bullshit.



Up to 25 percent of U.S. shopping malls may close in the next five years, report says

Makeda Easter
Los Angeles Times

Between 20% and 25% of the nation’s shopping malls will close in the next five years, according to a new report from Credit Suisse that predicts e-commerce will continue to pull shoppers away from bricks-and-mortar retailers.

For many, the Wall Street firm’s finding may come as no surprise. Long-standing retailers are dying off as shoppers’ habits shift online. Credit Suisse expects apparel sales to represent 35% of all e-commerce by 2030, up from 17% today.

Traditional mall anchors, such as Macy’s, J.C. Penney and Sears, have announced numerous store closings in recent months. Clothiers including American Apparel, Bebe and BCBG Max Azria have filed for bankruptcy. The report estimates that around 8,640 stores will close by the end of the year.

Retail industry experts say Credit Suisse may have underestimated the scope of the upheaval.

“It’s more in the 30% range,” Ron Friedman, a retail expert at accounting and advisory firm Marcum said of the share of malls that he predicts will close in the next five years. “There are a lot of malls that know they’re in big trouble.”

By ignoring new shopping centers being built, the research note took an overly simplistic view of the changing landscape of shopping centers, said analyst David Marcotte, senior vice president with Kantar Retail.

“There are still malls being built,” Marcotte said. “Predominantly outlet malls and lifestyle malls.”

The change may not affect all sectors of the mall economy evenly.

Paula Rosenblum, co-founder and retail analyst at RSR Research, believes the report overstates the risks, and says lower-tier shopping centers in particular would bear the brunt of the blow.

“The problem with a lot of these studies ... is they look at what’s dying, they don’t look at what’s being born,” Rosenblum said.

But analysts agreed that to survive and stay relevant, malls need to make serious changes.

“A lot of malls are being redone. We are seeing mixed-use, many more restaurants and service providers, and less clothing stores,” Friedman said. “You’re going to see a future where you’ll be living at the mall.”

“If you have food and entertainment, that gives you a court to build around,” Marcotte said. “Once you get past that you need to create a space that is lifestyle oriented.”

Rosenblum says shopping centers will be driven by the demands of millennials and members of Generation Z behind them, who are more likely to spend money on entertainment rather than just clothing.

Malls, Rosenblum said, “are going to become more of a destination, not just for shopping but for activities and experiences.”

Up to 25 percent of U.S. shopping malls may close in the next five years, report says - Chicago Tribune

Originally Posted by Texpat

There's an area between the city and the country, a sweet spot, that provides the best of both worlds.

Proximity to both.

It provides neither. American suburbs are where life goes to die

Originally Posted by redhaze

Originally Posted by Texpat

There's an area between the city and the country, a sweet spot, that provides the best of both worlds.

Proximity to both.

It provides neither. American suburbs are where life goes to die

I see it the same way.

Concrete cul-de-sacs, strip malls, chain stores, and car dependent.