this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Suburbs should not exist. I get Urban, i get rural, but there is absolutely nothing justifying suburban.
I mean if you get urban and rural, what's there not to get about the suburbs? It's the best and worst of both. More open lands and less congestion but also rush hour sucks and people suck at driving. It's far to go get something, but car rides with buddies is its own fun.
It's not the best of both though, it just the worst of both.
The best of both are small towns along railways, with a dense core with some amenities surrounded by decreasing density until it quickly becomes pure countryside, and thanks to the station it's easy to get to and from the big city.
And if you only want rural surroundings you can have train halts basically in the middle of nowhere, there's a couple like that in my region and it's absolutely delightful.
Oh my fuck that sounds so cool. I think youre right. Trains, as always, are key.
So do you put a population limit on small towns? How do you think major Metropolitan areas got started? They didn't just appear one day, they grew over time from small port and station towns...
huh? why would suburbs magically be exempt from that idea?
Yes, places grow, this is why it's important to apply good urban planning and use as much high density housing as possible, otherwise you get the miserable car-dependent sprawl we see in america and much of the rest of the world.
By centering around transit stops you get rid of the need for all the parking and roads that takes a ton of space (which lets urban areas be smaller while containing the same amount of living space), and by having many small towns with high density centers spread out like this you maximize how many people can live close to the countryside.
This is a perfect description of the Netherlands
and surprise surprise the netherlands is really nice
My point is that what you described is basically a city with suburbs on a reduced scale. If a town is nice and successful, you're gonna have people that want to move there, so your options are to build outward, upward, or not at all. It sounds like you'd prefer towns build upward rather than outward, which is obviously valid, but it's a matter of preference. People who don't mind living in an apartment will move into the city center, people who value space over commute will move to the suburbs.
Where I think things get turned around (in the states anyway), is the lack of community-run programs and local business owners. Community gardens, neighborhood solar cells, locally owned farms, grocers, and corner stores are all things I'd like to see way more of in suburban areas.
Not the best. The best of rural is nature wildness and independence. The ability to wander off into your backyard and shoot something and not get an eyebrow raised. The ability to pick a direction, and start walking, and not turn around until your water gets low, then go home, and not meet another person unless you choose to. The option to just dig a big ass hole or marvel at the intricacy of the ecology. Maybe have a few dozen semi feral cats, so nobody xan quite say you are ir arent the creepy cat lady. The best of rural is room to experiment and play, to be entirely food independent, etc. And oh my god it can get so quiet! Its nice. Peaceful, if a little rough. And if something goes horribly globally wrong? Might not even be your problem.
Suburbs have... A little privacy indoors, I guess? Room for a small garden, if your house is old, maybe some fruit trees? A garage to play with if you don't drive, which is a major sacrifice?
The best of urban us art culture and people at your fingertips, connectedness and depth. Walking two blocks into an entirely different world, hopping on the train/bus to a dozen art museums and twice as many different cuisines and so many options. Knowing that there are friends for you nearby, if you just find them. Enemies too, probably. Its collaboration and history and the intense humanness of the designed world around you, and oh my god the architecture. At its best, which I admit is rare, its the very very almost imperceptibly low grade version of the thrill of collaboration all the time. And if something goes horribly globally wrong, at least you know youre not alone. Its pretty cool. I'm a fan.
Suburbs have none of this. They pretend at the restaurants, but they're all chain shit, homogenized to pointlessness.
Suburbs are garbage. Youre as dependent on long ass supply chains as an urban core, but you're all tiny little ratter dogs pretending to be wolves on the tundra, so you don't acknowledge or embrace it. You get all the isolation with none of the solitude. It takes almost as long to get anywhere, but you can't just chill on your farm or go forage in the woods, so you need to go.
Suburbs ate garbage poison and ecologically unsustainable. One can argue modern cities are unsustainable too, but there's room for doubt on that one; there are economies of scale to take advantage of.