Cities: are they hurt by "suburban influence" being dirty words?

I've noted (as I am sure have many of you) that those most passionate about an urban city fabric have the most disdain for anything that smacks of suburbia.

Is such thinking warranted or even desirable? I think not.

People in cities don't often realize that today's suburbia is often very urban and very city like and that it has been able to develop worthwhile and attractive commercial and residential developments that can be fully compatible with cities when replicated there.

I find a lot of the dislike that cities have about cars to be absurd. They were not invented by suburbanites and, as a technological advancement, they were going to be an integral part of cities whether some people didn't want them to be, or not.

A lot of the way people in cities criticize suburbs is based on snobery and the desire to think that sububranites just don't get it, that city life is the ultimate, and that suburbia has no ideas to offer (despite the fact that, for them, city life is far less gritty and far more sanitized than when cities were truly "real"). I find that absurd. Just as Britain's former colonies in America greatly influence Great Britain today, why would anyone think that suburbia wouldn't influence the very cities that spawned it? And why would urbanities think embracing concepts of architecture from suburbia isn't part of the continual change and development of histories on their march through history? Why is it that "sububan style development" automatically becomes buzz words for something totally undesirable, regardless of how it is developed?

American cities were not frozen in time in the 1950's when the real push to suburbia began. It is totally unrealistic, and frankly condesending, to think that suburbs can't influence cities or that suburbs may actually have some answers to metropolitan living that cities can learn from.

I think the problems with suburbian life (in the north american sence, in Paris you can live in a suburb, but in a tiny apartment, without a car, and having shops etc just down the street) is first ecological, sprawl at first is awfully negative for the environment, and using the car whenever you have to move is not positive either.

then concerning the way of life, here in Europe people tend to live in citie-centres much more then in North america, but that's only a personnal choice

I personally favor living the city life, but I don't have anything against a person that wishes to live in the suburbs. IMO be it bland or not, I think suburbia adds some sort of character to cities.

And as much as we'd all like it to go away, suburbs are going to be around for a long time wether we like it or not, and there isn't very much we can do about it unfortunately.

Suburbs are getting more urban. But you could also say that the "city" is simply expanding to include areas outside the city limits. Personally, when I say "suburban" I'm not talking about truly-urban areas regardless of where they're located.

I don't mind everything that's associated with suburbia. For example, "newness" is inhenrent in any construction and is therefore ok. Although I like unique, locally-based stores, I'm ok with chains having some market share in my city.

What I do mind, and what Seattle's zoning and property values don't allow as much of anymore, is crap like drive-throughs and surface parking. And I hate wide roads. And houses with garages in front.

Are you talking about a "suburb" or sprawl? Because all suburbs aren't neccesarily sprawl.

Let me clairify my original post (as I put so much in there that it may have been confusing):

my issue here is not how the city feels about the suburbs; it is how the city views what it considers to be its own suburbanization.

So I'm really looking at issues like:

• trying to down play the importance of the automoible (associating it with a non-walkable suburban life style)

• fighting even high quality strip malls as being a suburban invassion

• same with big box retailers

• referring to various forms of architecture as being too suburban

My feeling is that the type of people who truly drink in the urban lifestyle would like to have freeze-framed the cities from any post 1950 suburban influence (an idiotic concept, since cities evolve and they borrow ideas not only from other cities, but from other environments as well), while ironically have created sanitized, almost Disneyesque cities that are a far cry from the grit and sense of reality of the 1950 city.

It is amazing how places like Manhattan, Chicago, and San Francisco contain people who adore the urban lifestyle, deplore suburbia and wish to avoid its influence on their cities, and yet live in theme park cities, removed from the poor (and the little middle class that is left), cities that are more trendy then they are economically diverse, cities where tourism increasingly accounts for bigger and bigger chunks of the economy, cities without real neighborhoods where children go to school.

In a sense, some of our major cities have turned themselves into santatized fantasylands, totally plastic in its own way....and then have the gall to say "we don't want suburban type of developments here; they destroy the fabric of the city. HELLO, yuppies: you've done a damned good job of destroying it all on your own. When warehouses can only become loft condos, how real are the real cities you so guardedly support.

The themeparking of North American cities/suburbs is a disturbing trend in and of itself. A trend that tries to bring the "order," "security," and "safety" of suburbia to burnt out urban cores in the hopes that the city will be safe for the middle class.

Themeparking is just another form of suburban values invading the unpredictability of the city.

Automobiles are the core of suburban living. No one can convince me that a suburbanite can live productively using alternative forms of transportaion. I agree that the suburb did not beget the automobile, but the automobile made suburban sprawl feasable.

The invasion of box stores, plazas, and large chains sickens me. They destroy the character of urban spaces, and put small merchants out of business.

I try my best to do most of my shopping at small businesses, even if I have to pay more for it. Hell, it takes me a longer time to get to a giant "lifestyle center" than to pick up chicken, veggies, and bread around the corner. Granted, I'm lucky I live in a neghbourhood where storefront delis, bakeries, fruits and vegetable stands, and other independently owned businesses still flourish.

Finally, not all urbanites buy into the disneyfied version of the city. Granted, if you want to live in a loft, that option is available. There are others who would rather buy a victorian in a shit neighbourhood, fix it up, and raise a family there.

As long as suburbs aren't too spread out meaning you have to drive everywhere then Ithik they are fine. It's nice to have your own garden and house, but in addition its good to be able to walk to a "highstreet" or other area of shops/pubs/hairdressers etc, and for the area to be dense enough to warrent a reasonable level of publiic transport such as busses or trains.

Buster, you raise some excellent points here. But truthfully, there was no way that cities were going to ignore what was happening out there in suburbia; that's a pretty large and infuencial piece of real estate.

I wonder if it's suburbanization that we are decrying or the larger changes in society that have played out in the way that our cities and suburbs have grown and development.

What I'm saying is that while suburbia was relatively small prior to WWII, it, too, like our cities was "more real" during that era.

Is there a chance that we blame suburbia for other forces in play in an evolving America? I have no answer for that one.

i live in a fairly suburban type area (its really a town thats been swallowed up by a citys sprawl) that feels pretty urban. suburbs in the uk are not as sterile or car dependant as american suburbs seem to be, but i dislike all the new suburbs that spring up everywhere. they all look the same and feel the same, with no individual character, and that adds up to making the country a little bit less interesting. the worst are those places where people dont even know their neighbours. how crap is that?! the design and layout of suburbs is partly responsible for this. suburbs are increasingly being built with the car in mind, which is also a bad thing.

cars and why i dont like them:

1. environmental concerns - this is obvious and i shouldnt need to point it out. anyone who disregards this factor is an utter fool.
2. if people go everywhere in cars, they spend more time on their own. no mingling with others on the bus on your way into town, or walking to the corner shop. cars are antisocial. they also require more roads to be built in cities, cutting through areas where previously people might have walked through, or mingled and been social. cars contribute heavily to the lack of community in many places.

"I'm lucky I live in a neghbourhood where storefront delis, bakeries, fruits and vegetable stands, and other independently owned businesses still flourish."


Uh...aren't we a couple of Parkdalians?

I really don't think "we" have to worry too much about suburban influence ruining our little nabe. Parkdale is about as anti-suburban as any place could get...every income level, every ethnicity, every sanity level living cheek by jowl in a walkable streetcar neighbourhood.

And how ironic, that Parkdale was the suburbs a hundred years ago LOL.

Maybe we should not worry so much about the word "suburb", just build suburbs the way they used to?





KGB

Maybe we should not worry so much about the word "suburb", just build suburbs the way they used to?





KGB

good point fella!

the suburban influence on city is undeniable. I don't love it, in fact its kind of scary. The depenedancy on the automobile and dictatorial isolationist zoning are things that were thoroughbred in suburbia. The isolation factor (mentioned in a previous post) is perhaps the scariest part/trait of suburbia. I currently live in Miami, the birthplace and home of the brainchilds for new urbanism, IMO a horrifically nostalgic approach that's counter-intuitive for urbanism and suburbanism (But that could be a whole other thread).

People here are so introverted (bubbled) its unnerving. Even in the new 'urban' areas the suburban influence allows them to go from office to car to elevator to condo to bed and back again without ever seeing someone. Some towers now offer multiple elevator lobbies to break down the quantity of riders and privatize the experience.

In suburbia I miss the crowds, mixed-use diversity, variety, and unexpected moments, sidewalks that are big enough to walk on - and those are some things that suburbia seems to discourage. Suburbia offers too much control and predictability.

but it can be done right look at some of Europe's examples they are much more considerate/efficient than American prototypes.

Are automobiles disruptive to cities and metropolitan areas? Or course. If you look at how much time all of us spend in grid-lock traffic today and realize that exponentially it will get nothing but worse tomorrow, you can see how detrimental cars can be to the urban framework.

Both cities (and other parts of society) don't operate on "should's". It is important to note that cities we find delightfully walkable and definitively urban that came of age before the age of the car didn't get that way through conscious choice. If the car had been there when those cities had developed, they would look vastly different today.[B]

In that light, the other thing that separates NY, Chgo, Bos, Phil, SF from cities like Hou, Atl, LA, Phx, Dal is when those cities came of age.

We don't freeze frame our citie.[B]

Our personal lives and journies and so are the lives of cities. And all of our cities will look and feel vastly differnt a half century from now than they do today....just like they did half a century ago.

In that sense, our cities are not being "suburbanized" by dependence on cars, by strip malls, by "suburban style development". They are merely evolving with the technology and the ideas that are open to them.

Henry Ford is responsible for the car; suburbia is not. It was invented. It became popular. It was going to be used.....for better or for worse. And the factors that made it used in cities were not made on what is right or what is wrong, but on forces that no individual or city can control.

Well, that's for the US, many cities around the world developed after the booming of the car, and still became urban, but at the times of Henry Ford, the environment was not the issue, now it is, and we better change our mentalities or things are going to get really bad.

Henry Ford is responsible for the car; suburbia is not. It was invented. It became popular. It was going to be used.....for better or for worse. And the factors that made it used in cities were not made on what is right or what is wrong, but on forces that no individual or city can control.

Yes Ford invented them, but in the US, especially the west coast there was a much more manipulative scheme going then people want to believe or remember. General motors in the 30s founded the Urban City Mobile Transit group that was a front for removing streetcars and trolleys for buses and highways. they were actaully dismantled for their activity and GM eventually went to court twice for their 'conspiracy' to eliminate transit and introduce cars and buses. I will add this lengthy, but noteworthy series of qoutes from James Howard Kunstler in his book the geography of nowhere

"In 1932, General Motors formed the United Cities Mobile Transit (UCMT) corporation to create a market for its products by taking over streetcar lines in small cities, and converting the lines to buses. UCMT was dissolved in 1935 after the American Transit Association censured it for trying to dismantle Portland, Oregon's, electric trolley lines. ...... The same year the mammoth company joined with the Omnibus Corporation... in a scheme to replacce New york City's electric trolley system with buses. The conversion of Manhattan was largely accomplished in an eighteen-month period...In 1936 ....General Motors...Standard Oil of California... and Firsetone Tire and Rubber formed a company called National City Lines. Two years later, National City Lines spun off an affiliate called Pacific City Lines and proceeded to buy and dismantle streetcar systems in San Jose, Stockton and Fresno, California. In 1943 American City Llines (NCL affiliate) converted trolleys to buses in 19 more cities including Pacific Electric's 'Big Red' trolley line in Los Angeles.

A federal grand jury indicted GM for criminal conspiracy in the Los Angeles case in 1949. By 1950 General Motors had converted more than 100 electric streetcar lines to gasoline-powered buses. This sordid tale of greed was finally aired in a 1974 investigation by the Senate's Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly chaired by Senator Philip A. Hart. But by that time it was ancient history and the damage could not be undone.

General Motors' ultimate goal was to replace public transportation with private transportation, meaning the car, and in this they triumphed. By the time the Hart subcommittee held its hearings, only the lowert orders of society rode city buses. Everybody else was out on the freeway."

Well yea, as usual, it's not the abstract concept of "suburbia" we have to fear, but the greed of "big business", and more importantly, the politicians that back them. As the story above proves, it's so blatent, yet they still get away with it. And it's widespread, and has been going on for a very long time.

And you can't really blame it on the car either, as suburban sprawl didn't become a huge problem until after the 2nd world war....cars had been around a long time (even before Henry Ford).

Any negatives of the suburban lifestyle is really just a by-product of a positive thing...widespread affluance...most people were simply poor or working class prior to WW2.

The trick to keeping any negative effects out of the urban inner-cities, is to keep control of the inner-cities. If control of "metro" areas is widespread, then the majority of people are going to be suburban...not urban. This is why strong city municipal governments need to stay in place...as soon as you let the suburbanites make the decisions (or the politicians who represent them), then the smaller inner-city needs will be overshadowed by the bigger suburbs....as in running highways through inner-cities, ruining good neighbourhoods...or concentrating on funds to enhance commuter transit and not inner-city mass transit.






KGB

"I'm lucky I live in a neghbourhood where storefront delis, bakeries, fruits and vegetable stands, and other independently owned businesses still flourish."


Uh...aren't we a couple of Parkdalians?

I really don't think "we" have to worry too much about suburban influence ruining our little nabe. Parkdale is about as anti-suburban as any place could get...every income level, every ethnicity, every sanity level living cheek by jowl in a walkable streetcar neighbourhood.

And how ironic, that Parkdale was the suburbs a hundred years ago LOL.

Maybe we should not worry so much about the word "suburb", just build suburbs the way they used to?





KGB

I'm not worried. . .yet. The encroaching supermarkets on the fringes of Parkdale are a bit disturbing. But all is well in the core.

The old streetcar suburbs are some of the finest examples of urban living and new urbanists have taken note. I'm all for suburban developments built along these lines.

Just put an end to auto-centric sprawl!

There are a number of problems with suburbia in greater Melbourne.

Many levels of governments in this country see both the home on a quarter-acre block, and the construction of a freeway to get those people into the Central Business District as realistic solutions to our expanding population. You can drive at 100kmh for an hour and a half on the south-eastern freeway of Melbourne and see nothing but suburbia. These cars feed into the CBD every morning and create havoc for the next twelve hours, as people drive around in circles trying to park their precious auto, clogging the air and making noise.

Governments refuse, with the electorate's mandate, to spend money on public transport, and people refuse to use the delapidated systems that are currently offered. Most morons would prefer to sit in their cars in traffic, in their safe little bubbles, listening to commercial radio, wasting their fuel and lives away.

Meanwhile, their giant identical cardboard homes out on the fringes of the city suck precious water into their green, green lawns, and down their paved driveways, out of the cul-de-sacs and off into stormwater drains.

Unlike in much of North America, Australia does not have a lush environment to support this human excess. It doesn't rain much, and when it does, most of the runoff is lost.

My biggest concern about suburbia is not an issue of snobbery, but of how big cities in fragile environments like Australia can continue to expand without any consideration for the limits of the land.

In 1943 American City Llines (NCL affiliate) converted trolleys to buses in 19 more cities including Pacific Electric's 'Big Red' trolley line in Los Angeles.

Wasn't the movie that had the dismantling of LA's initial rapid transit as its theme Who Shot Roger Rabbit?

I believe it was the theme and the plan of the villian (name ?) scary how real that was in terms of marketing 'happy highways' etc.

I have been through a suburb for a visit for about a month in the US, in Florida, and the suburb feel felt very artifical, the houses looked unreal and the suburban cities dont have this urban feel, thanks to suburban lifestyle, farms, small businesses, the enviorment, and more are being dsetroyed. Why cant people live in regular cities?