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I think San Francisco (and California in general) has the best suburbs in USA, with diversity and identity among the houses, as well as multiple suburbs central areas. Typical example:
Ariete sounds like a bitter, miserable troll. The better question is what is it like to live in the empty, frozen tundra that is Finland -- a country that I've seen described as a place where everyone dreams of living somewhere else.
Well, the gallant Finns gave us the beauty of Sibelius' works, and stood up to Stalin pretty nicely (for a while) back in 1940, so they have apparently gotten a few things right.
But Finland, clearly one of the relative handful of fully-tested democracies, got the undeserved distinction of being considered as siding with the Axis powers back in World War II, according to some historians. Global politics makes for strange bedfellows -- and strange footnotes.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 03-15-2015 at 09:35 PM..
I think San Francisco (and California in general) has the best suburbs in USA, with diversity and identity among the houses, as well as multiple suburbs central areas. Typical example:
You usually see that either in housing developments (I.e., a developer buys a bunch of land and builds houses and streets on it) or in suburbs that are way further out from the city and pretty low-density. The streets are wide enough that people figure it isn't necessary, so kids ride their bikes and people walk about on the edge of the road.
I'm sure someone is going to make some comment about people in the 'burbs not walking because HURR HURR FAT AMERICANS LOLOL but no, its just that it isn't really necessary. they also often build the roads at a width so that if later, the residents or city deem it necessary, they can be added.
The Midwest actually has plenty of older suburbs and satellite towns that have become more incorporated into the larger metro areas that have their own feel. Do the metros also have the more recent planned subdivision neighborhoods? Yes, but everywhere in the country has them. If you honestly think they don't exist on the West Coast, then you're only kidding yourself.
I can't speak for all of them but I'll speak for my area.
In the neighborhoods downtown, there are sidewalks. This is because there is a lot of through traffic so people really can't walk on the streets so they need sidewalks.
But in the neighborhood I live in now, there are no sidewalks. That's because there is very little traffic through the neighborhood. Basically the only people driving here are those who live here or the people visiting them. The streets are very wide, so people walk on the streets.
And people do walk a lot - not going to the store (though the grocery store is about a ten minute walk from my house), but just walking with their neighbors or dogs or family/kids/significant other. We have a little "library hut" right across the street from my house in a common park area, and people are always stopping there to exchange books. We also have a lot of bike riders as well as kids on a wide variety of things with wheels - skateboards, scooters, etc.
There's no need for sidewalks though because the very light traffic consists only of local residents driving very slowly through to their homes.
It looks very boring, certainly, and I wouldn't want to live there. But each to their own. If the were more local shops and amenities it wouldn't be so bad, and I don't mean big Costco's or Wal-Marts, but little local roads with shops, a few restaurants, maybe a bar. Just something to do, that doesn't involve driving.
Personally I'd rather live in the Finnish commie blocks. I just dislike suburbia, and I don't desire a huge house with a huge garden. Too much maintenance anyway.
Finnish commie blocks for me all the way.
We are talking about a totally different concept of a European city, where it's built block by block, vs "downtown" ( where everyone works) and "suburbia" where everyone drives to sleep ( American version.)
When city is built block by block, you'll find within the same block a mix of apartment buildings, shops and offices, daycares and playgrounds for children surrounded by buildings, usually with trees and grass. ( This way you can watch them from the window, without driving them to "gym" in order to socialize and exercise.)
On another hand, when you see a suburbia American way that was presented here, I can already hear the jingling of counted money. Let's sit down and figure out how much the bank can make on mortgages of each and every of these identical houses, let's count how much cars we can sell that people now can't get by without, how many "gyms" we can build in vicinity with "exercise machines," how many "Taco Bells\McDonalds we'll open at a driving distance and the rest of the "production line."
As anything else in the US, this "suburban concept" serves first of all the interest of banks and corporations, while pretending to serve the "consumer."
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