I'm sitting here watching "The End of Suburbia" as I'm perusing DU and enjoying my morning java.....

[marmar]

..... and one of the narrators of the film, discussing subdivisions, says, "Do you notice that they're always named after the very thing they've destroyed?"

..... and I thought about it....he's absolutely right. They've always got names like "Forest Hills" or "Country Farms" or "Maple Orchards" or "Pine Ridge" even though they've cleared away most of the trees and all of the "farms" to create them.

And I completely agree with the premise of the movie: Suburbs were among the worst ideas in the history of worst ideas.

[vadawg]

1. i counter with the abortions that are high rise apartment buildings

just like living in a glorified factory farm.... :)

[whathehell]

4. "abortions"?

I see them more as bloody castrations.;-)

[vadawg]

5. lol nearly pished myself there at the imagery....

[whathehell]

6. Yup...that's kinda the idea

to let you know how women can feel about guys flinging about "abortion" as a substitute for "ugh".

[vadawg]

7. well abortion is used to connotate a fuck up, but i get your point

and take it on board, still the castration imagery was very good.

[whathehell]

15. I appreciate that. n/t

[Extend a Hand]

2. It really was an eye opening movie

I coerced all our kids to watch it. My step-daughter's comment was "Thanks for destroying all my hopes and dreams."

[Toucano]

18. Tell her "...there'll be new dream, maybe better dreams, and plenty..."

We can learn to live another way.

[lonestarnot]

3. They love to flaunt their bullshit accomplishments, mission accomplished shit and get away with it.

[TwilightGardener]

8. Some of the nicest city neighborhoods were once suburbs--streetcar-line

suburbs and Craftsman-era bungalow neighborhoods.

[marmar]

9. Yes, before the advent of auto suburbs and plastic subdivisions.

[TwilightGardener]

10. I agree that the sprawl-'burbs since the 50's suck. Grew up in one of those!

Silly street names, no sidewalks, can't walk to school or the store or post office. Just a little patch of nowhere, with lots of displaced deer.

[marmar]

12. True.....I lived in a vast, sprawling suburban apartment complex....and every now and then....

..... a deer would go darting across the complex, scaring the pants of the people on the putting green in the middle of the complex.

Poetic justice.

[imdjh]

13. But there is a huge difference, an operative difference.

Most of those former suburbs, or suburban landscapes (because many were already inside city limits) are now on the grid of city streets, or always were.

One of the most destructive aspects of suburban nonplanning is that these subdivisions are almost universally dead end. This is what generates the enormous traffic jams, because by being off grid, traffic cannot spread out and go around problems like it does on an unobstructed grid.

Here in St Pete, we almost never have traffic jams. We have what we call a rush hour, and we have slow downs, but we don't have street level traffic jams, because if there is a wreck at 22nd ave S and 16TH st. , even those unfamiliar with the area can confidently take the path of least resistance around the problem.

[TwilightGardener]

14. Yep, the Tampa/St. Pete example is a good one--

I don't remember any traffic issues in St. Pete when we used to drive around there--Tampa is another story. And Tampa burbs, like Brandon and Wesley Chapel--unattractive, isolated, and usually there is just one main way in and one main way out (highway or expressway).

[imdjh]

11. In 1978, Richard Cohen of the WAPO said, "Today's suburbs are tomorrow's ghettoes."

He was referring to the mushrooming "townhouse" neighborhoods of the DC suburbs. I am inclined to believe he was correct. Needless to say, people who just paid $250,000 for a suburban rowhouse often disagree with Richard and me.


nitpicky of the day: a townhouse is actually a freestanding structure, a rowhouse is what people commonly refer to as a townhouse. Townhouse was co-opted by developers in the 1960's because rowhouse had become associated with urban poverty.

[SnohoDem]

16. I'm almost positive that John D. MacDonald

wrote essentially the same line back in the 1970s or 80s. I loved it when I read it.

And it's true. Fifteen years ago I watched them destroy a nice small forest behind my home and put in a place called 'The Cedars'. I guess it was named for the four or five cedars they left standing.

[ipaint]

17. Suburbs and the elimination of mixed use zoning.

Take away the car and most living in modern suburbs are marooned. Nothing life sustaining (food, jobs) is within walking or biking distance.

[imdjh]

19. And improving the close in will further isolate the farther out.

Look at any city which has an "artery" which leads away from the city through what used to be countryside to what is now the outer suburbs. If you make those arteries safe for streetcars, electrics, bicycles, and put adequate redundant buslines on them, you will make the trip to the outer suburbs even worse.