Our Next Dystopia Is the Suburbs (metro, suburban, Detroit, schools)
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Yawn. Another riff on the same Brookings Institute report, combined with some alarmism about the bridge in Washington State. Said bridge collapsed not due to neglect as the article implies, but because it was hit by a truck. It's labeled "functionally obsolete", but not because anything was wrong with it: if it were built new today, it would still be "functionally obsolete". It was also "fracture critical", which means a failure of a single structure element could collapse it. That's what happened.
It's a common practice in journalism, including blogs, to use eye-catching hyperbole as a means of getting people to read the article. "Dystopia" is such a use, a gross exaggeration.
Rational discussion is favored by rational and objective use of language. I would agree certain neighborhoods in Detroit have become dystopias - street after street of abandoned and decaying housing, unsafe at perhaps any time of day or night. But suburbia in general? Hello?
With the tax base urban areas have if the burbs go they are in even worse problems.The trend is for burbs to incorporate to stop the annexing by nearby urban areas. Urban areas losing urban renewal funding at levels of the past makes the picture even worse as we see what slight cuts has done.
It doesn't have to be run down. I think of a dystopia as one where people are overly reliant on technology and machines, while they are alienated from each other. Neighbors rarely talk or socialize with each other, and people are totally dependent on their cars to get around (technology). That seems to describe life in the suburbs in many ways. Not that life in ultra-dense mega-cities is much better.
I don't think so. I think that resent college grads and young couples may gravitate towards urban life for obvious reasons.
Once children enter the picture, and good schools are a necessity, I see many of these Hipster parents moving to the suburbs, small towns or ex-urbs.
The reality of summers in a city are not wonderful for a family with children. Unless the family has the money for a summer house, reality begins to set in.
I see people avoiding cooky cutter houses and Mc Mansions, but plenty of late 20-30 something parents seem to be restoring older homes in quaint small towns and suburbs. Places with good schools and yards.
a dark forecast for the future of american suburbia
Meh, like others already said this article is laced with hyperbolic crap that's not really in line with reality. The amount of nonsensical "suburbia is dead" articles coming out nowadays just because more folks live in or closer to urban cores all seem to have the same writing style and the same similar detachment from reality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cisco kid
It doesn't have to be run down. I think of ha dystopia as one where people are overly reliant on technology and machines, while they are alienated from each other. Neighbors rarely talk or socialize with each other, and people are totally dependent on their cars to get around (technology). That seems to describe life in the suburbs in many ways. Not that life in ultra-dense mega-cities is much better.
lol yeah people in the suburbs are sooo alienated from each other. They never even look at each other and purposefully avoid other human life, including their own families at all costs! That, and of course we all now that nobody in any degree of higher density urban areas rely heavily on machines and technology and they all love to walk merrily everywhere, all the time...rain or shine! Genius theory you got there
Secondly, I agree there's just too much hyperbole in this article. For example: suburbanites are now worse off than city dwellers Poverty may be increasing in the burbs, but I believe the poverty levels are still higher in the cities, and from what I've read, there's more abject poverty in the cities than in the burbs.
The cost of buying a house is also plummeting in the suburbs
I don't think the cost was ever "plummeting" and now it's going back up.
Transportation is a lot more expensive in the suburbs than it is in cities. People need to cover greater distances, public transportation is a lot more difficult to manage, and it's all very reliant on cars. If you don't own a car in the suburbs, you're screwed.
This old canard! All I can say is, "bull puckey"!
Meanwhile, the affluent of the current generation are flocking to cities, and they're taking their tax revenues with them.
Not all of them; not by a longshot.
Once children enter the picture, and good schools are a necessity, I see many of these Hipster parents moving to the suburbs, small towns or ex-urbs.
The reality of summers in a city are not wonderful for a family with children. Unless the family has the money for a summer house, reality begins to set in.
I see people avoiding cooky cutter houses and Mc Mansions, but plenty of late 20-30 something parents seem to be restoring older homes in quaint small towns and suburbs. Places with good schools and yards.
I'm not really sure what you mean by this, especially that second paragraph.
I lived in a very close-in streetcar suburb with good schools in a large metro area when my daughter was born. I loved where we lived and would move back there in a heartbeat if we ended up back in that metro. When she was still a baby we moved to a house in a city in another part of the country.
I don't see how our lives would be different if we were still in the suburbs, except that we'd have much longer commutes and less time at home. Which is the whole reason we live where we do; we didn't look at any residences outside walking distance from the job we relocated for. The kiddo can play in the yard (it's small, but we hate yardwork so we'd have a small or no yard no matter where we lived) or outside in our neighborhood with her neighbors and friends. We can go to the pool; we have lots of museums close by and use them a lot; we go kayaking or biking. If we want to go for ice cream or to the playground we can walk. The library's central enough for us that we can go three times a week if we want, and sometimes do. Things are good.
I see why people choose suburban/exurban life, and I'd never try to persuade anyone not to. People generally know what's best for them when they balance everything out. For us, I'll take urban all the way.
I see the suburbs as our dystopic present. They don't have to decay to be places of human misery - they're achieved this with remarkable completeness.
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