Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop.
I'm a bit concerned that the advent of the self driving car could take us backward to more car oriented development and suburbia.
I love suburbia. Living in a city is stressful and crowded. I'd like to live in a rural environment, but then I'd have to drive a very long way to get to work, stores, and entertainment. Living in a quiet suburb gives me the best of both worlds. It's only a 10 minute drive to the downtown library, good restaurants, and other fun stuff. Since I picked a job that's located near my suburb, my commute is also short and avoids highways. And I don't have to fight city traffic or interact with lots of surrounding people in my everyday life.
Sure, I can't walk to ten different restaurants and an art museum, but that's pretty low on my list of wants.
I'd argue that for most, living in a suburb is in fact the worst of both worlds. You are neither rural nor city. You have none of the benefits and many of the drawbacks.
For me my decision to live in the city is one of safety (driving cars is dangerous) and time. When I lived in the burbs I spent something like 30-40 full days a year sitting in my car. That's 10% of each year in my car. That's just not a trade I'm willing to make anymore.
My suburban neighborhood growing up did not have sidewalks; not sure if that was unusual. Overall it's my impression that urban areas are much more walkable/bikeable than suburban ones. At the very least, it's difficult to leave or enter individual subdivisions in the suburbs on foot (by design).
Try going to the grocery store in the suburbs on a bike. Sidewalks are great for walking your dog. But in the suburbs, you are trapped to your car.
You can't walk, take the bus, or ride a bike anywhere. Not only because it's 10 miles away, but because there simply is no safe way to get there without a car.
If you're young and reasonably fit, you can pretty much get anywhere. But most people would never consider riding on high speed roads or where there isn't a bike lane.
Sidewalks have been a feature of every city center neighborhood I've lived in (and I've lived in many). Cities can be safer in that I rarely drive and there are visible and predictable pedestrian street crossing everywhere. While pedestrians do get run over, it's at a far less frequent rate than car-on-car accidents happen.
You're doing it right by living close to your work. Suburbs work well when they're really just small complete cities. Nothing wrong with that.
What I was thinking when I when I wrote "I'm not sure anyone loves suburbia" was that I'm not sure anyone loves that big suburban commute to the city. If that's eliminated, or mitigated by excellent transit connections (ie. pre-automobile street car suburbs), then a lot of negatives go away.
One of the chief advantages of suburban life is cost. I don't like suburbia, but I deal with it because I'm not rich enough to live close to work. Sure, I have the additional cost of maintaining and fueling a vehicle[1], and the stress of a 2+ hour commute each way, but that's far outweighed by housing being 3X cheaper, and the decent public schools (I don't have to pay for private schooling for the kid).
1: which is, really, not THAT much more in terms of cost per mile than using public transportation
> One of the chief advantages of suburban life is cost.
And that's entirely a function of bad city design. When I lived in New York, I lived in a Westchester suburb satellite city over 20 miles away from the city. I had a 35 minute commute by train right to Manhattan. There are tons of such suburbs in Westchester, because they have train lines running through the whole area.
Meanwhile, my parents live in D.C. suburbs that are similarly priced, half the distance out of the city, but where the commuting options are a 1-1.5+ hour drive. In Westchester you've got a little downtown and can walk to shops and restaurants. In the D.C. suburbs you have to drive 20 minutes just to get to the drug store.
Indeed, prewar Westchester is one of the few suburbs that isn't an utter abomination, both architecturally and land-use-planning wise. I think that's because they built them before the current bad ideas were in vogue.
And governance. The additional cost of trying to live in a city (Detroit, Baltimore, ...) that is poorly governed is quite high. Most suburbs haven't had the time to become as poorly governed as the cities, so associated costs tend to be lower.
Metro Vancouver recently did a study comparing affordability combining both housing and transportation costs. Once transportation was considered, Vancouver City proper dropped to one of the 3 most affordable Metro Vancouver cities, whereas outlying suburbs rose to least affordable. The gap in transportation costs between the cheapest and most expensive areas was several thousand dollars a year, possibly as high as $12k a year.
Might depend on the particular metro area. The cost difference between where I live, in the bumblefuck outer suburbs of the Bay Area, vs. a comparable (yet smaller) place closer to most usual tech businesses (either in SF or the Peninsula), is about $3-4K monthly. I've got cost/mile and cost/month records for my car(s) going back 15 years, including purchase price, insurance, fuel, and all maintenance, and it's not even close to $3K/month.
Exactly. It's similar in the Tri-State Area of the Mid-South. Most people in middle class to rich live in the suburbs. Reduces crime, headaches, property costs, etc with only a bit of commute on good Interstates and highways. I paid $550 a month plus $100 utilities for a good, 2-bedroom house that was 20 minutes away from city jobs or fun with 30-40 min away from downtown. Not a bad trade.
I'll second that. The mtn biking trails start at the end of my street and I can bike to town on them. Kayaking is a 1 minute drive. My office is 10 minutes away. I saw a raccoon in my neighbors driveway yesterday and deer in my backyard last fall. It's not a bad life...
The key word in your statement is "drive". I don't want to drive. I want to walk/bike. Driving means I have to get gas, I have to deal with traffic, and I have to find a place to park. I don't want to do any of that.
I would guess that has a lot to do with how one defines the term.
I love living outside of the city. I wouldn't have it any other way. When I'm ready to retire, I plan to move even further away from the city.
I grew up in the suburbs. I am raising my children in the suburbs. I detest going into the city. The traffic, the parking, the population density and the crammed nature of city living all irritate me to no end.
Unfortunately, I have to go into the city for work. That is the primary reason why I'm waiting until retirement to move further away.
Within the last 10 years we have had a real problem in the area. The gentrification of certain inner-city areas has made it impossible for the low income residents to remain there, so they've been moving out to the suburbs and bringing a lot of crime with them.
Try as we might to escape the problems of city living that drove us out two generations ago, the city keeps sending its problems our way.
That's the result of a poorly planned city, not intrinsic to cities. If you've been to Europe, or even NYC, you might have experienced the freedom of jumping on a train to downtown and back, with enough exercise to keep you healthy.
Freedom isn't the word that I would associate with being bound by train schedules and routes.
Old cities, like NYC or London were established before the existence of the automobile. It makes sense that they were designed to move large numbers of people without automobiles. I don't live near such a city.
The geography of my area prevents the kind of mass transit system that exists in NYC.
And I can pretty much guarantee you that people in London and New York bitch about their public transportation systems all the time. Maybe people in Singapore don't but they're probably a pretty rare exception. And don't get even think about getting residents of Boston started on the performance of the MBTA and commuter rail last winter--and that's one of the better US public transit systems.
I like cities with good public transit systems but they're not nirvana. And for cities that are just so-so, like SF, the people I know there who don't own cars use Uber, Zipcar, and conventional rentals plenty.
People bitch about public transport all the time because, like the weather, it is an ubiquitous shared experience. It's something that we all experience more or less the same way. This makes it an easy topic to establish social contact on.
Here, yes. I prefer those things over the list of things that I mentioned previously.
I have arranged my work schedule to miss the worst of both inbound and outbound rush hour.
When I'm outside of my regular work hours, on evenings and weekends, there is much more freedom in driving one's self as opposed to waiting for public transportation.
For those of us who are so inclined, public transportation is still an option.
As I mentioned, it doesn't sound like you've been to Europe. In a larger city in Germany for example, trains are running up to every two minutes around town, while long distance trains to other cities are every hour.
I can sympathize, Austin TX is built upon a giant rock of limestone which extremely difficult to develop into. All of our mass transit options that have come up connect to no-where.
As a former tunnel boring engineer, I can attest that mining tunnels through consistent rock is vastly easier than through mixed geologies such as Manhattan island. Also there is less stuff (utilities, metal debris, etc) underground in Austin. There are undoubtedly historical reasons why Austin lacks sane transit but technical difficulties while boring is almost certainly not one of them.
Yeah absolutely I'm critical of suburbia as I see it currently implemented.
There's nothing wrong with the concept of living outside of the city, but the problem is the design and form of development that many suburban cities have taken.
Honest question. Why should low income residents remain in inner cities? If they can afford it, why should they be discouraged from moving to suburbs if suburbs suit them, the same way suburbs suit you?
yeah. lived in a city a long time, but living in a va suburb now is bliss by comparison. trees, peace and quiet. walkable groceries were great, but choice from top grocers within a few minutes by car is even better - wegmans, whole foods, even harris teeters.
not to mention getting anywhere takes like 5-10 minutes.
what do i miss? a great modern restaurant experience, but classic ethnic is great out here - indian, chinese, mexican etc.
factor in better schools for your children for "free" and i can't see a reason to live in a city.
In what VA suburb can you get anywhere in a few minutes by car? In most of Fairfax County you have to drive 10-15 minutes just to get to a drug store. The only exception is the satellite cities (Vienna, Reston, etc). And what's the commute look like for you and your spouse?
The traffic and parking problems are there due to the lack of public transit, which is in part due to the spending of transportation funds on subsidizing you in the suburbs instead of building public transit.
The city in no way subsidizes us. Unless, of course, you mean that because we have the option of not living in the city then they don't get our property tax dollars because we chose to live somewhere else.
I pay taxes to my county and my suburban municipality. The city-proper does virtually nothing for me.
There's also the roads which allow you to get from point A to point B which are subsidizing you, and there's the federal gas subsidy which is also subsidizing your lifestyle.
And if the city proper really did nothing for you, then why would you be working there?
There's also the roads which allow you to get from point A to point B which are subsidizing you
Most of which are maintained by the county, to which I pay taxes.
and there's the federal gas subsidy which is also subsidizing your lifestyle.
From the FEDERAL government, to which I also pay taxes.
Much of the road maintenance is also done by the state government, to which I pay taxes as well.
And if the city proper really did nothing for you, then why would you be working there?
Because decades ago, my employer put offices in the city and it's more expensive to move them than it is to stay put.
Not all of us are working for start-ups. Some of us have employers that predate the interstate highway system.
As telecommuting becomes more of a factor, I will spend less and less time in the city. Hopefully, it'll get to the point where I spend one day here every five years.
This "Cycle of automobile dependency" image shows it pretty well. http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN
Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop.
I'm a bit concerned that the advent of the self driving car could take us backward to more car oriented development and suburbia.