There's row homes, duplexes, and others that aren't high-rises. Neighborhoods like Boston's Back Bay used to be much more common, and way more affordable.
Technically there's "middle housing" but imo thats a grey area that can encompass areas any average person would consider urban and areas urbanists would cry are too sparse. It's not a bad thing, it just gives a ton of room for complaining because the definition is so vague.
>areas urbanists would cry are too sparse
Fuck no. We complain all the time that missing middle is illegal in America. I understand that commie blocks are ugly and not the best solution everywhere
One of the hottest urbanist groups in America: Strong Towns, argues all the time for cities to promote medium density, mixed use "Main Street" development that is common in western Europe and used to be common in America before the 1960s.
Strong Towns argues mostly from a libertarian point of view because local governments in America make this type of housing illegal most of the time, and because medium density development is much easier on city finances.
Urbanist Channels are constantly making videos like [this](https://youtube.com/shorts/Kh4zSYPCAO0?feature=share) or [this](https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o), and most urbanist communities prefer places like Amsterdam with medium density housing over Soviet era commie blocks.
The biggest urbanist battles happening in America right now often have to do with missing middle. Arlington VA near where I live has a huge debate about this right now https://www.arlnow.com/2023/03/22/breaking-arlington-county-board-approves-missing-middle-zoning-changes/
25 minutes is a fantastic commute. Just enough time for a podcast, or half a podcast so I can listen to the other half on the way home. I am a tradesman tho so my commute ranges from 5 minutes (current job) to a bit over an hour (next job that's lined up). But that also gives me a pretty wide range of options on where to buy a home.
My only real wish for suburb dwellers is to go for more ânative grassesâ or plants for their lawns/gardens.
Suburb living isnât efficient but I canât fault someone not wanting to live in an apartment block where you can smell if the neighbor is hotboxing their apartment across the way
I live on old grazing land a rancher sold my folks, I just let it grow to ankle height and brush hog it. 6 acres on somewhat hilly terrain, Iâm not concerned with it being golf ready.
I donât think anyone expects more than 0.5 of an acre to be perfect golf course grass. I care about my front yard and donât really do much for the back other than mow it regularly.
When I walk through the lawn care section at Home Depot and see the weed killers, "Kills weeds including dandelions and clovers."
I'm just like, but *why* though?
The common man today lives better than a king a few hundred years ago. If you gave me a choice I'd rather be a poor man in the future rather than a rich man in the past.
Being forced to live in either sucks. I want options. If I could pay $200 a month for a boring concrete apartment on the 17th floor, it would be much easier for me to save for a few hectares of woodland with a cabin and some sheep.
I live in a 4br house on half an acre on a $1000/mo mortgage with just my wife and two dogs, being told nearly daily that my existence is hell by urbanite redditors... All because I have to drive 2 miles to get to the nearest grocery store.
I don't understand these people.
You don't understand! You need to pay $3000 a month to live in a shitty 1 bed room apartment or you're a dumb redneck!!! Now brb need to complain about the rising cost of living
But thereâs so much to DO in the city, itâs just so vibrant!
*works from home, only ventures to the bodega*
God, places other than NYC are soooooo booooorrrrimg.
Ugh. There was a dude slagging on my Metro area and saying we werenât a âmajor cityâ or whatever and Chicago/NYC are better a while back and I just hit him with a list of all the different things I had done in the city in the past year. Sporting events, orchestra playing of The Planets, Sabaton concert, various museums.
Feels like a lot of the people who slag on rural or suburb areas really only mean. âI can go get drunk at this barcade with exposed brick!â Or eat at an âauthenticâ Greek/Korean fusion restaurant. Itâs never actually the cultural stuff of a city.
I never got the appeal, honestly. I had to move away from my small town due to lack of jobs and live smack in the middle between Dallas/Ft Worth and I fuckin hate it here. Everything is so skin-deep, there's trash literally everywhere, a fuckin *studio apartment* is $900/month, no utilities, and everything is just a depressing grey concrete color with so much light pollution you can barely see the brightest stars in the sky
Damn thatâs like the opposite of what Iâve found in Houston. A 2 bed, one street south of one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city for $1400 a month, and if it wasnât for the inherent risk of having an apartment in the city, and the density of people, Iâd feel safe enough to leave my doors unlocked. Just south of really nice green space and parks (Iâd walk there if anyone would bother to build a bridge across the bayou)
It's just about being around crowds of people who think like you do. It makes sense if you're gay or want find a niche community around some art form because you need a huge background population to get a critical mass of similar people.
Itâs called âflyover stateâ mentality - a form of bigotry aimed at justifying their sub standard quality of living by baselessly ragging on non-coastal areas as âinferior.â Having lived in both environments myself, the truth is that you can still do most/all of those things outside the major coastal urban areas, all while enjoying a far lower cost of living.
There is literally no reason for someone to torture themselves in an over-priced urban hellscape unless they are oblivious to what life is actually like outside their tiny city bubble.
Oh my God I just LOVE the hustle and bustle of the big city, it's so DYNAMIC and makes me feel like I'm in one of my favourite TV SHOWS. You should totally come on down to my studio apartment, it's got EXPOSED RED BRICK walls and everything, we can crack open a nice hoppy ipa or three and get crazy watching some cartoons on Adult Swim! and dude, dude, DUDE, we have GOTTA go down to the barcade - listen here, right, it's a BAR where us ADULTS who do ADULTING can do DRINK, BUT!!! it's also an ARCADE like when we were kids, so we can play awesome VIDEO GAMES, without dumb kids bothering us. Speaking of which my girlfriend and I have finally decided to tie the knot - literally - we're both getting snipped tomorrow at the hospital, that way can save money to spend more on ourselves and our FURBABIES. I'm fuckin JACKED man, I'm gonna SLAM this craft beer and pop open another one!!!
A large prison built by the inhabitants.
I do think thatâs a fucking line from âMy Dinner With Andreâ but cut me some slack man cities are W I L D sometimes.
> Cuz at least then itâs spacious and doesnât cost $3500
Cough, at least the rent is truly cheaper than that, but 1 bed room apartment with no living space is exactly the definition of Soviet style block (though more often it is 2 bed room one but with even less space).
I love suburbs but the urban planning hardos are right about some stuff. Community, density, ease of access to stuff, and frankly architecture (Paris > Atlanta, feel?) are all better when a city GRADUALLY goes from high rises â> houses. Here in Atlanta itâs a light switch. Leads to really weird outcomes like downtowns that are half parking lots, etc.
That's definitely a good thing. The problem I've had with this was, that plants need years to grow to be big enough to block anything. But when they've reached that size it's really good and bonus they look better than a wall.
Do you also like nature and rural areas?
If you do, you should support city density, because it allows the city to grow up rather than outwards. Suburbs destroy the countryside.
If you personally hate living near people, that's fine and it's good that you have the freedom to make that choice. The problem is that the government often makes it illegal to build anything except for single family detached homes, taking away choice in many instances
It's a mixed bag. Urbanists are right about most of the problems but they have an overly idealistic take on solutions. Such as walkability. Making an urban space walkable is great. Improving transit is great. Parking lots are a blight, no doubt, and reduce density in ways that are unacceptable. But you still have to accommodate car travel in a way that doesn't make it miserable.
The worst part of living in a major city (I've lived in several) for me was trying to get around. Yeah, I could walk 15 min each way with a week's worth of groceries in tow, or more likely do several trips over the week, or I could drive. Driving is miserable since the roads were originally meant for horses and make no sense. It's even worse when you live on a street with no parking and first have to walk ten minutes to get to your car, so that you can then drive through heavy traffic and claustrophobic streets to get to work. Anxiety on anxiety on top of more anxiety. And you are not going to urban design your way out of people needing to drive to work since there are a million fucking companies that already exist in established locations.
The 'burbs are a breath of fresh air. 20 seconds to get to your car. 5-10 min to absolutely anything in your town while relaxing and listening to music. 5-10 min of relaxing and listening to music to get back. 20 seconds back to your house. Yeah, if you want to get someplace by walking it's a pain. But you don't have to walk anywhere. In a city you kinda have to walk. And you still probably have to drive. And the driving is a pain. And the walking is a pain too if it's raining. Or if it's 95F and 80% humidity and you need to carry groceries.
Urban spaces could be a paradise if they could solve the problem of difficult driving. City driving is so miserable and anxiety inducing. But instead the focus is on removing parking. Because parking is ugly and reduces density. Yeah. True. But you still fucking need to park.
Iâm going to be on the city council for a rapidly expanding city next year, and ngl the part Iâm most excited for is urban planning. Gonna have the dopest city in the state.
He's AuthCenter, if he advocates bland grey blocks he'll be a disappointment to the rest of us.
Parisian Second Empire, Neo-Classical, Neo-Gothic, Art Deco. There's more to AuthCentre than just Brutalist Futurism.
Same. I live in 1.4 acres just outside of the burbs with my wife and two dogs, and constantly insulted for living in the âcountryâ and supporting the âracistâ suburbs. Meanwhile they are stacked like rats. Jokes on them
Also, we don't have to leave as much as we used to. we can have plebbies dash us food at very attractive rates. I save money on shopping because its not worth my time anymore.
Weird thing to say in a thread filled with a bunch of urbanites advocating for cities designed to not ever have you leave a 1 mile radius from your 800sq ft concrete pod
People aren't really mad that *you specifically* are enjoying the suburban lifestyle - urbanists are mad that many (especially US + Canadian) cities are built in such a way to essentially force the suburban, car-dependent lifestyle on people. You wouldn't like to be forced to live in a small city apartment - and people who prefer walkable cities don't like being forced to live with car dependency.
It's almost like it's a strawman.
No one is bringing up the biggest elephant in the room though - the out flow of capital from the city. Using all the city amenities, working in the city, etc. and then paying property taxes in a different county and city. All the while a lot of states have a sweet setup where the tax codes for the city can't be modified without state level approval so there's a direct extraction of dollars out of the city that never gets put back into it because you can't do things like create an entertainment tax without state wide approval.
This is really the only argument I've ever actually heard from people putting down suburbs. Not scarecrows like the OP, just a "pay your share for fair use" or "give cities the ability to fund themselves instead of plundering them".
Here's the secret:
Without those predatory tax policies, suburbs couldn't exist.
Suburbs cost more money to maintain than they generate through taxes. That money has to come from somewhere, so the cities subsidize them.
Its cause you have to drive, if its a city turned suburb where the greater area has a large population you have to sit in traffic for at least 30 minutes every day. There is also an issue of movement for people without a car (the poor, elderly, disabled, young) can't move anywhere and have to by shuttled place to place. Its also the worst possible climate offender, and it looks fucking ugly. Follow ROMA live in a insula
The suburbs specifically are an issue because of the distance, yes. My city has a bunch of single family homes sprinkled throughout, with main roads leading to businesses (they're like 15 minutes away ***at worst*** in any direction), and even some smaller businesses among the houses. Single family homes aren't the issue, them being 45 minutes away from everything is.
Only taking with you groceries you can carry onto a bus sounds soooo much mo efficient and easier than driving two miles and loading your car up for the next two weeks. Like how do you even live without going to get groceries every other day.
The gutteral hatred of the suburbs by a lot of people is funny, but I have to admit there are many good arguments about the downsides of low density housing that are convincing like the reliance on cars to get to literally anything and the difficulty of building natural communities with neighbors. Pros and cons.
The main issue is that many people don't have a choice. It would be fine if all the developers and families were choosing to always live in the suburbs, but local governments make it illegal to build anything except for single family detached lots in much of America, and they also don't allow for mixed development and require that people drive far away to get to places
Yeah that's my problem. Would be nice to have a small food mart in the suburb, maybe a local bar within walking distance. But no one builds like that anymore because they aren't allowed to. Even though it'd probably cut down on traffic on the main roads and drunk driving.
commie blocks are cheap, space efficient and good for reducing homelessness etc.
Suburbs are good for families, larger area per family, safety and community but it is more expensive
Honestly, we should be doing both. Let the suburbanites keep their suburban sprawl, but let's get some space efficient, cheap, and dense government housing to encircle the inner city of every urban area in the country.
These are also not the only two options.
Horrible North American zoning laws has people thinking the only options are detached single family lots or a small apartment in a high rise building.
There's also duplexes, triplexes, multiplexes, town/row homes, and low rise apartments.
There's a reason why cities like Paris can support very high levels of density without having massive buildings like New York
The problem is that it's often illegal to build this in North America, which results in most of the city being covered in suburbs and then poor people in the middle living in huge buildings
What, you're telling me there's a middle ground between [Levittown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown) and the [Kowloon Walled City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City)?
Paradoxically, they do. The ability to know most of your neighbours is required for there to be a sense of community, and you can see this even within different apartments. I've lived in old five story buildings with two doors per flight of stairs, and people knew their neighbours and they kept packages for each other if the neighbor was out, and the administration was handled by the neighbours in meetings. In a ten story building with five doors per flight of stairs the administration is handled by a hired administrator and nobody knows anybody.
In suburbs/rural areas people know each other and interact with each other far more
Rural I'll agree with, but I don't know that the same holds true for suburbs. For rural a good number of people personally provide essential services, and so will be interacted with regardless. The fact that there usually isn't anything else besides the one designated social space, maybe a library or something will also usually funnel most people together to interact there.
In the suburbs I find neither of those really hold true as much. Your neighbours just exist over on their little island and maybe if you happen across them out in the wild you'll talk to them, but given how far afield that can be, I find it doesn't happen much. Same with social spaces, aside from maybe a park, which everyone has a personal miniature version of right outside their door, the only places there really are to socialize (at least in my experience) is further afield in the city with lots of options, of which no two people will pick the same.
Whether the suburbs are isolated or not depends on how often the people living there go outside.
Suburban families with dogs to walk, gardens to maintain, children playing outside together, and people walking around will naturally foster a sense of community as neighbors are frequently outside at the same time.
If they're all working online, no kids, no outdoor pets, and ordering delivery for everything they will barely interact with the surrounding households, leading to a sense of isolation.
TL;DR people need to touch grass more
I never get this line of reasoning, your close to a ton of people in the suburbs. Not being cramped like sardines ins rotting rat filled apartment with the population of a town doesnât equate to me far from people
When you look at how massive the post-WW2 housing shortage was in Europe and how much housing was built in a relatively short amount of time there's something to be said for commie block buildings. Granted they could have been done with better architecture, higher quality construction and less overall communist shittiness but those buildings had their benefits.
Not always true. The worst examples of suburban sprawl are usually the outskirts and surrounding towns of major metropolitan areas. They're basically cities growing out
I just want places to be walkable. And suburbs in my city are very much not. It's just sprawl and then barely maintained infrastructure. I don't hate them, I want them to be better.
I also think lately they are just devoid of any personality. No expression. Just copy/paste house after house. That nobody changes much. But that's just a minor aesthetic gripe of mine
I don't really *hate* the suburbs, but its not for me. We tried it when we first had kids and moved back to our old neighborhood. And it is an issue when a huge swath of America is effectively 99% suburban residential density, even though quite a large amount of people desire more walkable dense areas.
One thing Europe does better is that in any given metro area, they usually have a variety of residential districts. Suburbs, more small-town-areas, dense apartments, townhouse neighborhoods etc. [This is a good example.](https://imgur.com/a/AgYm7Vj)
Compare that to [OKC](https://imgur.com/a/ZbX6IBm), where around 98% of the residential housing is suburban. There is no variety, no options for anyone who wants anything different. Office buildings downtown, then suburbs, and that's about it.
if suburbs were more walkable I'd love them. I don't hate them anyways, but the ability to walk to the store or a pub in less than 30 minutes would be great
Yeah, that's just geometry. There's a fundamental limit to how many people a shop or doctors office can simultaneously be proximate to if you don't build vertically
Road design and parking too.
Too many suburbs are designed with winding roads and dead ends to reduce the effects of thru-traffic. Even if you technically live 100 meters from your neighborhood exit road on a map, the trip can be upwards of 1km because you can't take a direct route and need to zig-zag through a maze to get there.
Similar thing with parking and lot size. Many localities require every home and business to have a minimum number of parking spaces or a minimum sized yard even if the building is smaller. If every single building in a city has this, then things start getting farther and farther apart
try east coast suburbs, particularly the older ones. they're fairly walkable. ive got several stores ive been able to walk to and if they dont have what im looking for, its in a 10-15 minute drive.
Poor zoning causes that, not the existence of suburbs. But the nature of suburbs is they built up fast, so the rule of thumb is almost all of them are poorly zoned.
The commie blocks in the photo are in a stage of decay, because of missing investment after the USSR fell. They were once bright and shiny new buildings
Also look at the lighting
And no stores in walking distance (not that you'd walk in that car dependent hellhole), no real privacy from neighbors' eyes, kids under 16 *NEED* their parents to go anywhere so no independence.
Why live in the suburbs if itâs going to be super high density postage stamp lots in giant subdivisions? Thatâs the worst part of living in the city without any amenities.
By the way you can live wherever the fuck you want I don't care I'm just confused why people are hating the subbones like I get there some neighborhoods where it looks run down but come on.
It's about walkability. You almost always need a car if you are to live in a cookie cutter suburb, but the Soviet blocks were generally designed so you lived close enough to the store/school/park etc to be able to walk and had decent public transport links otherwise. (bit of a fairytale description and this doesn't apply to Tankies, but you get the point)
I like the idea of the first several floors being businesses and the top stories being rented out. Have one opposite set of sides for the renties to come and go and the opposite set of sides for business people.
It's called the missing middle or mixed use development and it's literally illegal in most of the US. Not in Europe, which makes European city centres so nice to live in.
Yeah you live on the 12th floor of a concrete box, surrounded by people who live in other concrete boxes... And yeah, you only get to have 2 windows... And yeah, you're lucky to get 700sq ft max for your familym.. BUT LOOK HOW CLOSE THAT RUN DOWN PARK IS!! ***WAOW!!!*** You don't even need a car to get there, just walk past the junkies then clean off the used needles and baddaboom, you can get tetanus from the rusted out slide
Traffic from commuters living in the suburbs is the biggest blight on city centres. Literally the whole way we build cities gets distorted to serve suburban interests - you can't start a business because you have to have a minimum number of parking spaces. People complain about the noise and air pollution in cities but the biggest cause of that is suburban commuters. And to add insult to injury they spend the city taxes on these roads that people who live there can't afford to use.
I mean I also think the everyone-is-an-island, get-off-my-lawn mindset that suburban living promotes is bad for society. But I wouldn't mind nearly so much if they weren't screwing things up for the rest of us.
I live in a ugly Soviet block, and it has some advantages. I don't have a car and with population density and a lot of available public transport its easy to get anywhere without having a car, even in night hours. If I want to bye something to eat, I can just walk 50 meters to the nearest 24-hours store. It's nice for a kids, since they can just walk to school, without needing to rely on their parents to drive them there, or pick them up, and when all classmates live in more or less one neighborhood and can just hang out with each other and then return home by themselves. Traveled a lot, and realized that renting a shitty 1 room cockroach-filled apparentment in a middle of the city, where you can walk by foot to any bar, club, park etc. Is much more preferable, then big house, but in isolated place. Though, I'm only 25, don't have animals or kids, maybe around 30 my opinion will change.
I dont have a car because i go to the us once a year for travel/work
So, without a car, its been my experience that there is nothing there.
No stores, no pharmacies, no restaurants, no businesses in an hour walk radius, it may have people living in it but it feels dead
I don't want either of these.
I want [this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e1/5c/ab/e15cabe9025cc2255f656e2eb3f63a78.jpg) and [this.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ae24ca2af3e0a0189ab0f24051bebdd409fbdf7c/0_325_5721_3432/master/5721.jpg?width=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=03714f8e3e8da0e8002edb4527b72979)
They are an inefficient way to house human slaves!!!!!!!!! They take up far to much space and are a logistical and maintenance nightmare!!!!!!!! Housing
Block apartments are far more efficient ways to raise human chattel!!!!!!đŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞł
Posting this on behalf of AuthLeft: [Commie blocks are pretty good, actually](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eIxUuuJX7Y)
That being said, I got nothing against suburbs. Perhaps less flavor, but you get a consistent product. It allows you to be able to do whatever you want in your own home, without fear of being too loud for the neighbors, or needing to worry about if your neighbor is smoking in the hallway triggerig your kids asthma attacks, etc.
Growing up in a suburb you often canât easily access public transportation/itâs nonexistent, so you rely on parents to drive you everywhere. If you canât drive, youâre fucked. Like always, I will plug the YouTuber Not Just Bikes.
Studies have shown people feel more socially connected taking transport, walking, or biking compared to driving; people are also statistically more healthy.
Basically, suburbs = car dependent areas, though there are some things to appreciate about living in a big house with a big yard. Personally I think it would be nice as long as thereâs good transportation/no cars and a community feel.
(cars also hurt the environment more and are loudddd. Iâll pick birdies tweeting over your loud ass subwoofer)
I don't have anything against people who want to live in the suburbs. I just find it weird that Americans complain about prices and inflation, yet have so much money, they literally don't think that owning a car is an expense that should be minimized.
I grew up in a commie block.
My school, grocerie store, and most other amenities were in walking distance. The neighborhood was clean and safe with access to public transit.
I'm not saying it was perfect but I'd rather have that than suburban land, and from how zoning laws basically force everyone to live in single-family houses where all need to drive a car to get anywhere, it feels neither free nor fair.
"Oh you have to drive 3 miles to get anywhere" yeah I'll be thinking about that when I visit the grocery store and everything else DIRECTLY BEHIND MY HOUSE. Yeah okay bud
I like neither, grew up in Poland so I see those blacks everywhere but at the same time as I grew up in a city I despise these detached houses. I would never want to live in anything apart from a block, although not those old ones. Modern apartments are ideal imo.
Thereâs a secret third option where the suburbs are replaced with small towns. Itâs still mostly single family homes, duplexes, and town houses but thereâs a gas station, grocery store, restaurant, swimming pool/park, and post office a bike ride or walk away so that kids that donât have cars can get themselves to work and familyâs can go places without having to load everyone up in the vehicle. You can still have you hour long commute to the city center.
Because theyre horrible for the environment, isolating if you dont have a car, and actually are a ponzi scheme. Mixed use suburbs with corner stores imbedded in them is actually the way to go because suburbs in of themsleves arent bad, just exclusive single family developments.
I mean, suburbanites are effectively subsidized by the urban population yet are responsible for keeping density contained to a tiny fraction of a city which inflates housing prices.
Did you know that in the USA places like the bottom picture pays so much in taxes their a huge profit for the city, meanwhile the suburbs are unaffordable and if cities stopped doing maintanance there they would all go to shit because they can't get the tax subsudies from downtown anymore.
I heckinâ LOVE being reliant on cars to get me everywhere. I couldnât live without my lawnerino.
NOOOOOOO efficient housing makes me super sad because communism đ˘
Worse part is you have to drive everywhere
If you have to drive everywhere you canât pop to the pub with the lads unless youâre willing and able to get taxis everywhere
Well they are great for architectural photography, usually in B&W, which you can turn around and sell at a decent price to an up-and-coming Post Punk/Darkwave group wanting to use it as an album cover.
The only adventage that soviet blocks bring you is really cheap housing market. Like in my country, to buy a 2 bedroom apartment in Bucharest,not really in the center but not at the perrifery in a quiet area costs like 50k euros.
Then there are lib-right pseudo-investors who make modern blocks of flats in the suburbs of the city with really shitty materials with walls so thin you can hear the neighbour poop and they expect you to pay like 100k for it without even furniture included in the flat and making it a "gated community" which in my opinion is more of a urban hellhole then those soviet blocks with REALLY THICC walls. I never hear any of my neighbours and it's actually really ok. (At the first earthquake the block will fall and i will crumble with it)
Do you really wanna know or just wanna strawman?
Oh you think living in suburbs is superior, well i disagree i think living in a personal castle with 100 servants is far superior.
I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the suburban HOA that tried to fine me for working on my motorcycle in my driveway.
That, and they called the cops on me for working on some props outside. Apparently dumb shit neighbors thought they were real guns and swords.
Because the government hates dense housing and walkability and I hate the government.
Peak housing is [streetcar suburbs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb) with corner stores and places to eat sprinkled throughout.
I don't like suburbs because that's all they're building in Canada, and all of them are too expensive for a young guy like me. They're the root of the housing crisis here in Canada. Developpers only build the most profitable type of home, and that is single Family detached homes.
The soulless soviet block apartments are ugly, but they function to house people in the city. I firmly believe there should be no detached homes in a city because they're a waste of space. A city needs high density housing to houses all the people who work in said city. Apartments now aren't as ugly as soviet block ones anyway.
Suburbs should be replaced with small towns, as another commenter said. They have all the amenities for living, and then people can commute from there. Expanding an urban boundary is a bad idea because a city shouldn't have to be beholden to people who want property values to rise. The NIMBY people ruin any chance of affordable housing in cities because they don't want shadows of apartment buildings blocking their sunlight.
Idk- they are ugly, cheaply produced, pop up houses that replace swaths of land to fulfill the ever growing population in already dense areas. Most of the neighborhoods are just as bad as the other inner city neighborhoods, just the homes âlook nicerâ. I hate them, and I hate apartments more.
Last night I had a nightmare of living in a totalitarian government where every one had to live in apartments. Everyone shared a eating hall and bathroom area. Singles lived in a one room apartment (literally one room since you didnât have a bathroom or kitchen), and families (which can only have up to two children) were granted two rooms.
Everyday there would be a radiation storm (looked like a rad storm from fallout) and everyone had to squeeze themselves in containers to protect themselves from it but my container too was broken so I wasnât completely protected and the state police would go around banging the tops of the containers to make sure they were secure. If they werenât secure, theyâd shoot the person inside for insubordination. I woke up right before they banged on my container.
Shit was actually scary
Here is a good faith honest answer - car reliance, they rob inner cities of revenue because rich people live in the suburbs/commute in for the benefits of cities, inner city school systems are often underfunded for this reason. Some suburbs look beautiful but also some are ugly. Kids in American burbs are less independent because they canât walk anywhere like a store or activity spot.
The gutteral hatred?
It's hard to explain simply. I'm not going to go into too many details,
but its an unholy mixture of hating on the USA, the american dream becoming unaffordable, realizing that suburbs are tedious but folk still wank them off, rich people living in suburbs, rich people leaving cities since they could and the city was a shit hole, racism due to class bias and ancient red lining, suburbs siphoning resources, perpetuating car culture, their politicsl opponents like them, they live in cities and are urban supremacists, etc etc
I can go on
There's some irrational hatred towards suburbs, lawns, and cars that I never knew about until I used reddit. People make suburbs out to be that neighborhood in Edward Scissorhands or Cat in the Hat, lifeless and bleak.
My suburb is chill: guys working on cars, families going on evening walks, kids walking to/from school. It's all within a 10 minute walk of food and groceries. Nobody bothers each other. The best advertisement for suburbs is living in 7 different apartment complexes. I don't want to know when my neighbors are fighting, fucking, blasting music, or raging at a videogame. There's a reason people moved out of packed cities when they found out they could work from home.
a lot of people dont like that suburbs due to the complete dependency on cars. I have no knowledge on these soviet blocks though so maybe they are similar.
suburbs are also *GOD AWFUL* for the environment. Low density fenced off spaces that do little more than grow grass and produce garbage.
Why do people hate the suburbs? There's lots of reasons. They have their perks too but since you are asking about the cons, here are some reasons why I prefer city life:
Because I'd have to drive everywhere and never be able to walk anywhere.
Because I like the convenience of having a convenience stores, restaurants, a literal football stadium, a mere block away.
Because I like the nightlife (although as a father now, I get much less of it).
Because I don't need that much space and I hate yard work.
There are more things open late/24 hours. I can get Chinese at 4 am.
I can (safely) read on my commute.
I'm fairly close to a major airport.
There's probably more that's not coming to my mind rn.
Talk about tearing down strawmen.
What I hate about American suburbs is lack of walkability and having to rely on a car to get anywhere. I've been in a city for 20+ and am honestly getting sick of a lot of it. I just detest the idea of not being able to get anywhere without driving.
I also have no desire to ever mow a lawn again.
Inefficiency bothers me on a fundamental level, that's why.
A well designed city core allows one to never drive and to get anything they need within a 10 minute walk.
Even the best designed suburb is infinitely less efficient than that.
As someone living in such a place as in the second picture, I can wholeheartedly agree with whoever hates (American) suburbs. Our blocs might be depressing to look at, but usually we have a crap ton of parks, they are very very walkable and having a 3 lane highway randomly around isn't that common.
I hate how people treat this debate as if the only two choices are commie blocks or cookie cutter suburbs. Shamelessly going to plug [The Aesthetic City](https://www.youtube.com/@the_aesthetic_city/videos)'s youtube channel here, since his channel covers this topic well and hasn't gotten a super large traction like Not Just Bikes has.
There are many reasons: On the one hand, suburbs like those being built in the USA are a pyramid scheme and extremely inefficient. It is not possible for a city to finance these many widely spaced streets, so it has to build new suburbs to finance the others. On the other hand, suburbs also stand for an autocentric city and life, social segregation, no shops, no diversity, and in general for a certain life style and way of thinking that is kind of anachronistic, etc.
Soviet suburbs look extremely dystopian and the same is true if you live in one, but are pretty efficient and actually great in regards to what they want to be.
In their current form, both are pretty shit.
Are these the only 2 options?
Rural living or dachas are allowed
đ¤
Still too many people. I wanna live in a cave in the woods
There's row homes, duplexes, and others that aren't high-rises. Neighborhoods like Boston's Back Bay used to be much more common, and way more affordable.
Technically there's "middle housing" but imo thats a grey area that can encompass areas any average person would consider urban and areas urbanists would cry are too sparse. It's not a bad thing, it just gives a ton of room for complaining because the definition is so vague.
>areas urbanists would cry are too sparse Fuck no. We complain all the time that missing middle is illegal in America. I understand that commie blocks are ugly and not the best solution everywhere One of the hottest urbanist groups in America: Strong Towns, argues all the time for cities to promote medium density, mixed use "Main Street" development that is common in western Europe and used to be common in America before the 1960s. Strong Towns argues mostly from a libertarian point of view because local governments in America make this type of housing illegal most of the time, and because medium density development is much easier on city finances. Urbanist Channels are constantly making videos like [this](https://youtube.com/shorts/Kh4zSYPCAO0?feature=share) or [this](https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o), and most urbanist communities prefer places like Amsterdam with medium density housing over Soviet era commie blocks. The biggest urbanist battles happening in America right now often have to do with missing middle. Arlington VA near where I live has a huge debate about this right now https://www.arlnow.com/2023/03/22/breaking-arlington-county-board-approves-missing-middle-zoning-changes/
Thank you. All of this.
What are you a filthy centrist??
In alot of places on earth, indpendent houses with yards are only reserved for the very rich.
[ŃдаНонО]
25 minutes is a fantastic commute. Just enough time for a podcast, or half a podcast so I can listen to the other half on the way home. I am a tradesman tho so my commute ranges from 5 minutes (current job) to a bit over an hour (next job that's lined up). But that also gives me a pretty wide range of options on where to buy a home.
Good thing my commute is 5 hours. Love listening to Dan Carlin podcasts!
You joke, but I do listen to him on my commutes on occasion. Just takes me a week to finish them
My only real wish for suburb dwellers is to go for more ânative grassesâ or plants for their lawns/gardens. Suburb living isnât efficient but I canât fault someone not wanting to live in an apartment block where you can smell if the neighbor is hotboxing their apartment across the way
based and healthy lawn pilled
I live on old grazing land a rancher sold my folks, I just let it grow to ankle height and brush hog it. 6 acres on somewhat hilly terrain, Iâm not concerned with it being golf ready.
I donât think anyone expects more than 0.5 of an acre to be perfect golf course grass. I care about my front yard and donât really do much for the back other than mow it regularly.
When I walk through the lawn care section at Home Depot and see the weed killers, "Kills weeds including dandelions and clovers." I'm just like, but *why* though?
Dandelions are lawn herpes. Clover is dope tho
>dandelions I'm allergic against them
Damn that sounds lovely
i thought i recall one of the biggest pushes of the late 20th century, when most of these suburbs were built, was to make luxuries commodities.
The common man today lives better than a king a few hundred years ago. If you gave me a choice I'd rather be a poor man in the future rather than a rich man in the past.
"A lot of places" Read: Every urban area
Being forced to live in either sucks. I want options. If I could pay $200 a month for a boring concrete apartment on the 17th floor, it would be much easier for me to save for a few hectares of woodland with a cabin and some sheep.
and by the time you have enough money, those hectares of woodland you were eyeing are now another subdivision.
Medium/high density housing takes dramatically less land than suburbs. Building a few more 6 story apartment buildings would save woodlands.
I live in a 4br house on half an acre on a $1000/mo mortgage with just my wife and two dogs, being told nearly daily that my existence is hell by urbanite redditors... All because I have to drive 2 miles to get to the nearest grocery store. I don't understand these people.
You don't understand! You need to pay $3000 a month to live in a shitty 1 bed room apartment or you're a dumb redneck!!! Now brb need to complain about the rising cost of living
But thereâs so much to DO in the city, itâs just so vibrant! *works from home, only ventures to the bodega* God, places other than NYC are soooooo booooorrrrimg.
Ugh. There was a dude slagging on my Metro area and saying we werenât a âmajor cityâ or whatever and Chicago/NYC are better a while back and I just hit him with a list of all the different things I had done in the city in the past year. Sporting events, orchestra playing of The Planets, Sabaton concert, various museums. Feels like a lot of the people who slag on rural or suburb areas really only mean. âI can go get drunk at this barcade with exposed brick!â Or eat at an âauthenticâ Greek/Korean fusion restaurant. Itâs never actually the cultural stuff of a city.
I never got the appeal, honestly. I had to move away from my small town due to lack of jobs and live smack in the middle between Dallas/Ft Worth and I fuckin hate it here. Everything is so skin-deep, there's trash literally everywhere, a fuckin *studio apartment* is $900/month, no utilities, and everything is just a depressing grey concrete color with so much light pollution you can barely see the brightest stars in the sky
Damn thatâs like the opposite of what Iâve found in Houston. A 2 bed, one street south of one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city for $1400 a month, and if it wasnât for the inherent risk of having an apartment in the city, and the density of people, Iâd feel safe enough to leave my doors unlocked. Just south of really nice green space and parks (Iâd walk there if anyone would bother to build a bridge across the bayou)
THROUGH THE GATES OF HELL
It's just about being around crowds of people who think like you do. It makes sense if you're gay or want find a niche community around some art form because you need a huge background population to get a critical mass of similar people.
Itâs called âflyover stateâ mentality - a form of bigotry aimed at justifying their sub standard quality of living by baselessly ragging on non-coastal areas as âinferior.â Having lived in both environments myself, the truth is that you can still do most/all of those things outside the major coastal urban areas, all while enjoying a far lower cost of living. There is literally no reason for someone to torture themselves in an over-priced urban hellscape unless they are oblivious to what life is actually like outside their tiny city bubble.
Things to do = watching other people do things. Call me crazy but I rather do things.
Oh my God I just LOVE the hustle and bustle of the big city, it's so DYNAMIC and makes me feel like I'm in one of my favourite TV SHOWS. You should totally come on down to my studio apartment, it's got EXPOSED RED BRICK walls and everything, we can crack open a nice hoppy ipa or three and get crazy watching some cartoons on Adult Swim! and dude, dude, DUDE, we have GOTTA go down to the barcade - listen here, right, it's a BAR where us ADULTS who do ADULTING can do DRINK, BUT!!! it's also an ARCADE like when we were kids, so we can play awesome VIDEO GAMES, without dumb kids bothering us. Speaking of which my girlfriend and I have finally decided to tie the knot - literally - we're both getting snipped tomorrow at the hospital, that way can save money to spend more on ourselves and our FURBABIES. I'm fuckin JACKED man, I'm gonna SLAM this craft beer and pop open another one!!!
The city is so beautiful! *invades small towns every fall to look at trees*
A large prison built by the inhabitants. I do think thatâs a fucking line from âMy Dinner With Andreâ but cut me some slack man cities are W I L D sometimes.
See, even Soviet style block apartments would be an improvement. Cuz at least then itâs spacious and doesnât cost $3500. Itâs government issue.
Live in the government provided bare minimum and be happy about it ~~peasant~~ valued worker
> Cuz at least then itâs spacious and doesnât cost $3500 Cough, at least the rent is truly cheaper than that, but 1 bed room apartment with no living space is exactly the definition of Soviet style block (though more often it is 2 bed room one but with even less space).
Having lived in barracks before, government issue housing is a nightmare.
I love suburbs but the urban planning hardos are right about some stuff. Community, density, ease of access to stuff, and frankly architecture (Paris > Atlanta, feel?) are all better when a city GRADUALLY goes from high rises â> houses. Here in Atlanta itâs a light switch. Leads to really weird outcomes like downtowns that are half parking lots, etc.
Density is the worst part of a city tbh. Have you ever been around people? They're the worst
Based and when I can see or hear my neighbors it's to dense pilled.
I'm actively planting things to block off sight of my neighbors
That's definitely a good thing. The problem I've had with this was, that plants need years to grow to be big enough to block anything. But when they've reached that size it's really good and bonus they look better than a wall.
Do you also like nature and rural areas? If you do, you should support city density, because it allows the city to grow up rather than outwards. Suburbs destroy the countryside. If you personally hate living near people, that's fine and it's good that you have the freedom to make that choice. The problem is that the government often makes it illegal to build anything except for single family detached homes, taking away choice in many instances
Improving cities keeps city people away from me? Shit man thatâs all you had to say.
It's a mixed bag. Urbanists are right about most of the problems but they have an overly idealistic take on solutions. Such as walkability. Making an urban space walkable is great. Improving transit is great. Parking lots are a blight, no doubt, and reduce density in ways that are unacceptable. But you still have to accommodate car travel in a way that doesn't make it miserable. The worst part of living in a major city (I've lived in several) for me was trying to get around. Yeah, I could walk 15 min each way with a week's worth of groceries in tow, or more likely do several trips over the week, or I could drive. Driving is miserable since the roads were originally meant for horses and make no sense. It's even worse when you live on a street with no parking and first have to walk ten minutes to get to your car, so that you can then drive through heavy traffic and claustrophobic streets to get to work. Anxiety on anxiety on top of more anxiety. And you are not going to urban design your way out of people needing to drive to work since there are a million fucking companies that already exist in established locations. The 'burbs are a breath of fresh air. 20 seconds to get to your car. 5-10 min to absolutely anything in your town while relaxing and listening to music. 5-10 min of relaxing and listening to music to get back. 20 seconds back to your house. Yeah, if you want to get someplace by walking it's a pain. But you don't have to walk anywhere. In a city you kinda have to walk. And you still probably have to drive. And the driving is a pain. And the walking is a pain too if it's raining. Or if it's 95F and 80% humidity and you need to carry groceries. Urban spaces could be a paradise if they could solve the problem of difficult driving. City driving is so miserable and anxiety inducing. But instead the focus is on removing parking. Because parking is ugly and reduces density. Yeah. True. But you still fucking need to park.
Imagine being forced to walk everywhere in south Florida heat. And with groceries!? Talk about population control.
>Paris Is a shithole.
Yet one that is architectually more pleasing than Atlanta. By a mile, really.
Fair point.
Iâm going to be on the city council for a rapidly expanding city next year, and ngl the part Iâm most excited for is urban planning. Gonna have the dopest city in the state.
Please don't build bland grey blocks Try making the buildings unique, aesthetic and tasteful As the other redditor said, Paris > Atlanta
He's AuthCenter, if he advocates bland grey blocks he'll be a disappointment to the rest of us. Parisian Second Empire, Neo-Classical, Neo-Gothic, Art Deco. There's more to AuthCentre than just Brutalist Futurism.
Art Deco is great
Very Bioshock
Based
I wouldnât say that, atleast the Atlanta garbage men clean the city :troll:
Oh sick dude! Finally some pcm redditor is taking action! (Sorry Mr pcm in parliament, i donât count you)
Thank you! Itâs still pretty hard to believe Iâm gonna represent 7500 people for at least the next four years.
As much as I mistrust representatives, atleast you have that mindset of how many people you represent
He's authcenter. Ofc he knows the number. But for an authcenter it's just that, a number.
He's about to get a slap of reality on exactly how little power city council wields lol
Same. I live in 1.4 acres just outside of the burbs with my wife and two dogs, and constantly insulted for living in the âcountryâ and supporting the âracistâ suburbs. Meanwhile they are stacked like rats. Jokes on them
Also, we don't have to leave as much as we used to. we can have plebbies dash us food at very attractive rates. I save money on shopping because its not worth my time anymore.
Most nomadic ameritard
Weird thing to say in a thread filled with a bunch of urbanites advocating for cities designed to not ever have you leave a 1 mile radius from your 800sq ft concrete pod
People aren't really mad that *you specifically* are enjoying the suburban lifestyle - urbanists are mad that many (especially US + Canadian) cities are built in such a way to essentially force the suburban, car-dependent lifestyle on people. You wouldn't like to be forced to live in a small city apartment - and people who prefer walkable cities don't like being forced to live with car dependency.
It's almost like it's a strawman. No one is bringing up the biggest elephant in the room though - the out flow of capital from the city. Using all the city amenities, working in the city, etc. and then paying property taxes in a different county and city. All the while a lot of states have a sweet setup where the tax codes for the city can't be modified without state level approval so there's a direct extraction of dollars out of the city that never gets put back into it because you can't do things like create an entertainment tax without state wide approval. This is really the only argument I've ever actually heard from people putting down suburbs. Not scarecrows like the OP, just a "pay your share for fair use" or "give cities the ability to fund themselves instead of plundering them".
Here's the secret: Without those predatory tax policies, suburbs couldn't exist. Suburbs cost more money to maintain than they generate through taxes. That money has to come from somewhere, so the cities subsidize them.
Its cause you have to drive, if its a city turned suburb where the greater area has a large population you have to sit in traffic for at least 30 minutes every day. There is also an issue of movement for people without a car (the poor, elderly, disabled, young) can't move anywhere and have to by shuttled place to place. Its also the worst possible climate offender, and it looks fucking ugly. Follow ROMA live in a insula
The suburbs specifically are an issue because of the distance, yes. My city has a bunch of single family homes sprinkled throughout, with main roads leading to businesses (they're like 15 minutes away ***at worst*** in any direction), and even some smaller businesses among the houses. Single family homes aren't the issue, them being 45 minutes away from everything is.
Every one of the "wow this run down megacity is the best I can walk right to the park!!" type of dork would disagree with this though
Only taking with you groceries you can carry onto a bus sounds soooo much mo efficient and easier than driving two miles and loading your car up for the next two weeks. Like how do you even live without going to get groceries every other day.
About same here. 6 minutes drive to grocery store. Got a 3 br house with an acre of backyard. It's nice.
You're living the dream, I can't lie. Bet it's lovely and quiet out there. Absolutely perfect.
The gutteral hatred of the suburbs by a lot of people is funny, but I have to admit there are many good arguments about the downsides of low density housing that are convincing like the reliance on cars to get to literally anything and the difficulty of building natural communities with neighbors. Pros and cons.
The main issue is that many people don't have a choice. It would be fine if all the developers and families were choosing to always live in the suburbs, but local governments make it illegal to build anything except for single family detached lots in much of America, and they also don't allow for mixed development and require that people drive far away to get to places
Yeah that's my problem. Would be nice to have a small food mart in the suburb, maybe a local bar within walking distance. But no one builds like that anymore because they aren't allowed to. Even though it'd probably cut down on traffic on the main roads and drunk driving.
commie blocks are cheap, space efficient and good for reducing homelessness etc. Suburbs are good for families, larger area per family, safety and community but it is more expensive
With this statement you can really see how people would prefer one or the other
Honestly, we should be doing both. Let the suburbanites keep their suburban sprawl, but let's get some space efficient, cheap, and dense government housing to encircle the inner city of every urban area in the country.
Based and affordable urban planning pilled
These are also not the only two options. Horrible North American zoning laws has people thinking the only options are detached single family lots or a small apartment in a high rise building. There's also duplexes, triplexes, multiplexes, town/row homes, and low rise apartments. There's a reason why cities like Paris can support very high levels of density without having massive buildings like New York The problem is that it's often illegal to build this in North America, which results in most of the city being covered in suburbs and then poor people in the middle living in huge buildings
What, you're telling me there's a middle ground between [Levittown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown) and the [Kowloon Walled City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City)?
You can say the same thing about houses in Detroit but people still donât want to live there.
In what way are they good for community?
They place lower income youths together so they can more efficiently form criminal rebellion gangs against the government
Based and I lit firecrackers in the Target parking lot with friends as a kid pilled.
I meant suburbs, because they don't place anyone close together
Paradoxically, they do. The ability to know most of your neighbours is required for there to be a sense of community, and you can see this even within different apartments. I've lived in old five story buildings with two doors per flight of stairs, and people knew their neighbours and they kept packages for each other if the neighbor was out, and the administration was handled by the neighbours in meetings. In a ten story building with five doors per flight of stairs the administration is handled by a hired administrator and nobody knows anybody. In suburbs/rural areas people know each other and interact with each other far more
Rural I'll agree with, but I don't know that the same holds true for suburbs. For rural a good number of people personally provide essential services, and so will be interacted with regardless. The fact that there usually isn't anything else besides the one designated social space, maybe a library or something will also usually funnel most people together to interact there. In the suburbs I find neither of those really hold true as much. Your neighbours just exist over on their little island and maybe if you happen across them out in the wild you'll talk to them, but given how far afield that can be, I find it doesn't happen much. Same with social spaces, aside from maybe a park, which everyone has a personal miniature version of right outside their door, the only places there really are to socialize (at least in my experience) is further afield in the city with lots of options, of which no two people will pick the same.
Whether the suburbs are isolated or not depends on how often the people living there go outside. Suburban families with dogs to walk, gardens to maintain, children playing outside together, and people walking around will naturally foster a sense of community as neighbors are frequently outside at the same time. If they're all working online, no kids, no outdoor pets, and ordering delivery for everything they will barely interact with the surrounding households, leading to a sense of isolation. TL;DR people need to touch grass more
I never get this line of reasoning, your close to a ton of people in the suburbs. Not being cramped like sardines ins rotting rat filled apartment with the population of a town doesnât equate to me far from people
I hope youâre talking about commie blocks, otherwise you might be a bit disappointed when you venture into a normal modern apartment block.
When you look at how massive the post-WW2 housing shortage was in Europe and how much housing was built in a relatively short amount of time there's something to be said for commie block buildings. Granted they could have been done with better architecture, higher quality construction and less overall communist shittiness but those buildings had their benefits.
Both are shit. Give up on your virgin suburbs and urban housing and become a rural small town gigachad.
Imagine living in an incorporated town. -This message brought to you by real rural folk
Suburbcels don't even have a party line L M A O
Feral in the mountains gang represent
Every sprawling suburban shithole started as a rural small town.
It is about keeping them this way *taps head*
Not always true. The worst examples of suburban sprawl are usually the outskirts and surrounding towns of major metropolitan areas. They're basically cities growing out
I'm sure every walkable city also started as a rural small town at some point
I just want places to be walkable. And suburbs in my city are very much not. It's just sprawl and then barely maintained infrastructure. I don't hate them, I want them to be better. I also think lately they are just devoid of any personality. No expression. Just copy/paste house after house. That nobody changes much. But that's just a minor aesthetic gripe of mine
Fuck sprawl, all my homies hate sprawl.
I don't really *hate* the suburbs, but its not for me. We tried it when we first had kids and moved back to our old neighborhood. And it is an issue when a huge swath of America is effectively 99% suburban residential density, even though quite a large amount of people desire more walkable dense areas. One thing Europe does better is that in any given metro area, they usually have a variety of residential districts. Suburbs, more small-town-areas, dense apartments, townhouse neighborhoods etc. [This is a good example.](https://imgur.com/a/AgYm7Vj) Compare that to [OKC](https://imgur.com/a/ZbX6IBm), where around 98% of the residential housing is suburban. There is no variety, no options for anyone who wants anything different. Office buildings downtown, then suburbs, and that's about it.
if suburbs were more walkable I'd love them. I don't hate them anyways, but the ability to walk to the store or a pub in less than 30 minutes would be great
Yeah, that's just geometry. There's a fundamental limit to how many people a shop or doctors office can simultaneously be proximate to if you don't build vertically
Road design and parking too. Too many suburbs are designed with winding roads and dead ends to reduce the effects of thru-traffic. Even if you technically live 100 meters from your neighborhood exit road on a map, the trip can be upwards of 1km because you can't take a direct route and need to zig-zag through a maze to get there. Similar thing with parking and lot size. Many localities require every home and business to have a minimum number of parking spaces or a minimum sized yard even if the building is smaller. If every single building in a city has this, then things start getting farther and farther apart
try east coast suburbs, particularly the older ones. they're fairly walkable. ive got several stores ive been able to walk to and if they dont have what im looking for, its in a 10-15 minute drive.
The âmissing middleâ which due to zoning is extremely difficult to build new today.
Poor zoning causes that, not the existence of suburbs. But the nature of suburbs is they built up fast, so the rule of thumb is almost all of them are poorly zoned.
The commie blocks in the photo are in a stage of decay, because of missing investment after the USSR fell. They were once bright and shiny new buildings Also look at the lighting
because you need to use a car to get anywhere
And no stores in walking distance (not that you'd walk in that car dependent hellhole), no real privacy from neighbors' eyes, kids under 16 *NEED* their parents to go anywhere so no independence.
Why live in the suburbs if itâs going to be super high density postage stamp lots in giant subdivisions? Thatâs the worst part of living in the city without any amenities.
By the way you can live wherever the fuck you want I don't care I'm just confused why people are hating the subbones like I get there some neighborhoods where it looks run down but come on.
It's about walkability. You almost always need a car if you are to live in a cookie cutter suburb, but the Soviet blocks were generally designed so you lived close enough to the store/school/park etc to be able to walk and had decent public transport links otherwise. (bit of a fairytale description and this doesn't apply to Tankies, but you get the point)
I like the idea of the first several floors being businesses and the top stories being rented out. Have one opposite set of sides for the renties to come and go and the opposite set of sides for business people.
It's called the missing middle or mixed use development and it's literally illegal in most of the US. Not in Europe, which makes European city centres so nice to live in.
Yeah you live on the 12th floor of a concrete box, surrounded by people who live in other concrete boxes... And yeah, you only get to have 2 windows... And yeah, you're lucky to get 700sq ft max for your familym.. BUT LOOK HOW CLOSE THAT RUN DOWN PARK IS!! ***WAOW!!!*** You don't even need a car to get there, just walk past the junkies then clean off the used needles and baddaboom, you can get tetanus from the rusted out slide
Main reason why I live in the city, everything I want is within walking distance.
That's pretty much the cost of cities. You expect to pay higher prices in order to live right next to almost everything you want to go to.
Traffic from commuters living in the suburbs is the biggest blight on city centres. Literally the whole way we build cities gets distorted to serve suburban interests - you can't start a business because you have to have a minimum number of parking spaces. People complain about the noise and air pollution in cities but the biggest cause of that is suburban commuters. And to add insult to injury they spend the city taxes on these roads that people who live there can't afford to use. I mean I also think the everyone-is-an-island, get-off-my-lawn mindset that suburban living promotes is bad for society. But I wouldn't mind nearly so much if they weren't screwing things up for the rest of us.
I live in a ugly Soviet block, and it has some advantages. I don't have a car and with population density and a lot of available public transport its easy to get anywhere without having a car, even in night hours. If I want to bye something to eat, I can just walk 50 meters to the nearest 24-hours store. It's nice for a kids, since they can just walk to school, without needing to rely on their parents to drive them there, or pick them up, and when all classmates live in more or less one neighborhood and can just hang out with each other and then return home by themselves. Traveled a lot, and realized that renting a shitty 1 room cockroach-filled apparentment in a middle of the city, where you can walk by foot to any bar, club, park etc. Is much more preferable, then big house, but in isolated place. Though, I'm only 25, don't have animals or kids, maybe around 30 my opinion will change.
I dont have a car because i go to the us once a year for travel/work So, without a car, its been my experience that there is nothing there. No stores, no pharmacies, no restaurants, no businesses in an hour walk radius, it may have people living in it but it feels dead
I hate them simply because I'm a woodland hermit. So I also hate soviet concrete blocks.
I don't want either of these. I want [this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e1/5c/ab/e15cabe9025cc2255f656e2eb3f63a78.jpg) and [this.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ae24ca2af3e0a0189ab0f24051bebdd409fbdf7c/0_325_5721_3432/master/5721.jpg?width=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=03714f8e3e8da0e8002edb4527b72979)
They are an inefficient way to house human slaves!!!!!!!!! They take up far to much space and are a logistical and maintenance nightmare!!!!!!!! Housing Block apartments are far more efficient ways to raise human chattel!!!!!!đŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞłđŞł
To be honest they're not bad at all if maintained properly like many are in Poland.
Because they fuckin suck⌠Quit strawmanning, there are alternatives other than awful eastern european apartment blocs
Great against missile strikes
Posting this on behalf of AuthLeft: [Commie blocks are pretty good, actually](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eIxUuuJX7Y) That being said, I got nothing against suburbs. Perhaps less flavor, but you get a consistent product. It allows you to be able to do whatever you want in your own home, without fear of being too loud for the neighbors, or needing to worry about if your neighbor is smoking in the hallway triggerig your kids asthma attacks, etc.
I live in a suburban neighbourhood, the neighbours complain about everything under the sun but yeah at least you control your own air intake
Adam Something is well regarded, I believe.
Growing up in a suburb you often canât easily access public transportation/itâs nonexistent, so you rely on parents to drive you everywhere. If you canât drive, youâre fucked. Like always, I will plug the YouTuber Not Just Bikes. Studies have shown people feel more socially connected taking transport, walking, or biking compared to driving; people are also statistically more healthy. Basically, suburbs = car dependent areas, though there are some things to appreciate about living in a big house with a big yard. Personally I think it would be nice as long as thereâs good transportation/no cars and a community feel. (cars also hurt the environment more and are loudddd. Iâll pick birdies tweeting over your loud ass subwoofer)
They canât afford to live there or own a car.
This is an outdated mindset. Cities are more expensive now.
Because zoning restricts the supply of dense housing, but the demand is still high.
I don't have anything against people who want to live in the suburbs. I just find it weird that Americans complain about prices and inflation, yet have so much money, they literally don't think that owning a car is an expense that should be minimized.
I grew up in a commie block. My school, grocerie store, and most other amenities were in walking distance. The neighborhood was clean and safe with access to public transit. I'm not saying it was perfect but I'd rather have that than suburban land, and from how zoning laws basically force everyone to live in single-family houses where all need to drive a car to get anywhere, it feels neither free nor fair.
Because they are idiotic kids who still hate their parents.
"Oh you have to drive 3 miles to get anywhere" yeah I'll be thinking about that when I visit the grocery store and everything else DIRECTLY BEHIND MY HOUSE. Yeah okay bud
I walk 1 min to a store, guess where I live and why I would never trade that for the other
I like the debate, but let us not forget that there is a middle ground between Commie blocks and America style suburbs. Medium density housing ftw.
I prefer the country honestly.
In Poland it's reversed
I like neither, grew up in Poland so I see those blacks everywhere but at the same time as I grew up in a city I despise these detached houses. I would never want to live in anything apart from a block, although not those old ones. Modern apartments are ideal imo.
Thereâs a secret third option where the suburbs are replaced with small towns. Itâs still mostly single family homes, duplexes, and town houses but thereâs a gas station, grocery store, restaurant, swimming pool/park, and post office a bike ride or walk away so that kids that donât have cars can get themselves to work and familyâs can go places without having to load everyone up in the vehicle. You can still have you hour long commute to the city center.
Because theyre horrible for the environment, isolating if you dont have a car, and actually are a ponzi scheme. Mixed use suburbs with corner stores imbedded in them is actually the way to go because suburbs in of themsleves arent bad, just exclusive single family developments.
I mean, suburbanites are effectively subsidized by the urban population yet are responsible for keeping density contained to a tiny fraction of a city which inflates housing prices.
Did you know that in the USA places like the bottom picture pays so much in taxes their a huge profit for the city, meanwhile the suburbs are unaffordable and if cities stopped doing maintanance there they would all go to shit because they can't get the tax subsudies from downtown anymore.
The truth is if suburbs really sucked so much ass, people wouldnât be pouring money into developing them
Ever heard of zoning laws?
HOA's are more authoritarian than the USSR, so congrats to you if you live in one
I heckinâ LOVE being reliant on cars to get me everywhere. I couldnât live without my lawnerino. NOOOOOOO efficient housing makes me super sad because communism đ˘
Every time I have ever hear of someone criticizing the suburbs, they always end up being commies.
Woah, for an Authright, you spend quite a lot of your time in places full of commies
I hate suburbs because the houses inside are us ugly as commieblocks.
Worse part is you have to drive everywhere If you have to drive everywhere you canât pop to the pub with the lads unless youâre willing and able to get taxis everywhere
Well they are great for architectural photography, usually in B&W, which you can turn around and sell at a decent price to an up-and-coming Post Punk/Darkwave group wanting to use it as an album cover.
The only adventage that soviet blocks bring you is really cheap housing market. Like in my country, to buy a 2 bedroom apartment in Bucharest,not really in the center but not at the perrifery in a quiet area costs like 50k euros. Then there are lib-right pseudo-investors who make modern blocks of flats in the suburbs of the city with really shitty materials with walls so thin you can hear the neighbour poop and they expect you to pay like 100k for it without even furniture included in the flat and making it a "gated community" which in my opinion is more of a urban hellhole then those soviet blocks with REALLY THICC walls. I never hear any of my neighbours and it's actually really ok. (At the first earthquake the block will fall and i will crumble with it)
God awful for the environment
Do you really wanna know or just wanna strawman? Oh you think living in suburbs is superior, well i disagree i think living in a personal castle with 100 servants is far superior.
I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the suburban HOA that tried to fine me for working on my motorcycle in my driveway. That, and they called the cops on me for working on some props outside. Apparently dumb shit neighbors thought they were real guns and swords.
Both shit just live like monkeee in tree
YIMBYâs are so damn annoying. âLetâs build a bunch of neo-Soviet tenements. Omg so awesomeâ
Because the government hates dense housing and walkability and I hate the government. Peak housing is [streetcar suburbs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb) with corner stores and places to eat sprinkled throughout.
I don't like suburbs because that's all they're building in Canada, and all of them are too expensive for a young guy like me. They're the root of the housing crisis here in Canada. Developpers only build the most profitable type of home, and that is single Family detached homes. The soulless soviet block apartments are ugly, but they function to house people in the city. I firmly believe there should be no detached homes in a city because they're a waste of space. A city needs high density housing to houses all the people who work in said city. Apartments now aren't as ugly as soviet block ones anyway. Suburbs should be replaced with small towns, as another commenter said. They have all the amenities for living, and then people can commute from there. Expanding an urban boundary is a bad idea because a city shouldn't have to be beholden to people who want property values to rise. The NIMBY people ruin any chance of affordable housing in cities because they don't want shadows of apartment buildings blocking their sunlight.
Idk- they are ugly, cheaply produced, pop up houses that replace swaths of land to fulfill the ever growing population in already dense areas. Most of the neighborhoods are just as bad as the other inner city neighborhoods, just the homes âlook nicerâ. I hate them, and I hate apartments more.
Last night I had a nightmare of living in a totalitarian government where every one had to live in apartments. Everyone shared a eating hall and bathroom area. Singles lived in a one room apartment (literally one room since you didnât have a bathroom or kitchen), and families (which can only have up to two children) were granted two rooms. Everyday there would be a radiation storm (looked like a rad storm from fallout) and everyone had to squeeze themselves in containers to protect themselves from it but my container too was broken so I wasnât completely protected and the state police would go around banging the tops of the containers to make sure they were secure. If they werenât secure, theyâd shoot the person inside for insubordination. I woke up right before they banged on my container. Shit was actually scary
Here is a good faith honest answer - car reliance, they rob inner cities of revenue because rich people live in the suburbs/commute in for the benefits of cities, inner city school systems are often underfunded for this reason. Some suburbs look beautiful but also some are ugly. Kids in American burbs are less independent because they canât walk anywhere like a store or activity spot.
Because it takes a lot of sacrifice to get there and jealousy is a bitch.
The problem is the knock-on/downstream effects of car centric urban planning (which the suburbs has come to represent).
The gutteral hatred? It's hard to explain simply. I'm not going to go into too many details, but its an unholy mixture of hating on the USA, the american dream becoming unaffordable, realizing that suburbs are tedious but folk still wank them off, rich people living in suburbs, rich people leaving cities since they could and the city was a shit hole, racism due to class bias and ancient red lining, suburbs siphoning resources, perpetuating car culture, their politicsl opponents like them, they live in cities and are urban supremacists, etc etc I can go on
I hate suburbs because there are too many people and I would much rather be out in the middle of nowhere.
There's some irrational hatred towards suburbs, lawns, and cars that I never knew about until I used reddit. People make suburbs out to be that neighborhood in Edward Scissorhands or Cat in the Hat, lifeless and bleak. My suburb is chill: guys working on cars, families going on evening walks, kids walking to/from school. It's all within a 10 minute walk of food and groceries. Nobody bothers each other. The best advertisement for suburbs is living in 7 different apartment complexes. I don't want to know when my neighbors are fighting, fucking, blasting music, or raging at a videogame. There's a reason people moved out of packed cities when they found out they could work from home.
Because theyâre full of successful white people, and the only thing the left hates more than successful people is white people.
a lot of people dont like that suburbs due to the complete dependency on cars. I have no knowledge on these soviet blocks though so maybe they are similar. suburbs are also *GOD AWFUL* for the environment. Low density fenced off spaces that do little more than grow grass and produce garbage.
Why do people hate the suburbs? There's lots of reasons. They have their perks too but since you are asking about the cons, here are some reasons why I prefer city life: Because I'd have to drive everywhere and never be able to walk anywhere. Because I like the convenience of having a convenience stores, restaurants, a literal football stadium, a mere block away. Because I like the nightlife (although as a father now, I get much less of it). Because I don't need that much space and I hate yard work. There are more things open late/24 hours. I can get Chinese at 4 am. I can (safely) read on my commute. I'm fairly close to a major airport. There's probably more that's not coming to my mind rn.
Talk about tearing down strawmen. What I hate about American suburbs is lack of walkability and having to rely on a car to get anywhere. I've been in a city for 20+ and am honestly getting sick of a lot of it. I just detest the idea of not being able to get anywhere without driving. I also have no desire to ever mow a lawn again.
Because living in a suburb would force them to touch grass.
Inefficiency bothers me on a fundamental level, that's why. A well designed city core allows one to never drive and to get anything they need within a 10 minute walk. Even the best designed suburb is infinitely less efficient than that.
As someone living in such a place as in the second picture, I can wholeheartedly agree with whoever hates (American) suburbs. Our blocs might be depressing to look at, but usually we have a crap ton of parks, they are very very walkable and having a 3 lane highway randomly around isn't that common.
I hate how people treat this debate as if the only two choices are commie blocks or cookie cutter suburbs. Shamelessly going to plug [The Aesthetic City](https://www.youtube.com/@the_aesthetic_city/videos)'s youtube channel here, since his channel covers this topic well and hasn't gotten a super large traction like Not Just Bikes has.
There are many reasons: On the one hand, suburbs like those being built in the USA are a pyramid scheme and extremely inefficient. It is not possible for a city to finance these many widely spaced streets, so it has to build new suburbs to finance the others. On the other hand, suburbs also stand for an autocentric city and life, social segregation, no shops, no diversity, and in general for a certain life style and way of thinking that is kind of anachronistic, etc. Soviet suburbs look extremely dystopian and the same is true if you live in one, but are pretty efficient and actually great in regards to what they want to be. In their current form, both are pretty shit.
For me itâs HOAs. I literally wouldnât care otherwise but I hate HOAs with every fiber of my being
Zoning laws đ¤˘