Suburban sprawl sucks.

I apologize early for this rant. I started this discussion on another car forum, but I'm interested in hearing the GRM take on things (GRM tends to have a bit more of a mature attitude....about some things, anyway).

So yeah, lets talk suburban sprawl.

I'm both fascinated and frustrated with this phenomenon here in America. Having lived in urban, suburban, and rural areas for extended periods of time, I've come to recognize some of the advantages and disadvantages of both. I love the space I had in small-town Vermont (literally no stoplight in town), and I honestly enjoyed driving my car everyday (and discovering the joys of autocross!). Now that I'm in a major city, I make use of public transit, but mostly ride my bike to and from work. I miss driving, but only the fun parts, like winding up my little 2-liter on the on-ramps, or hooning around the dirt roads in VT. But the simplicity of walking a half mile or less to a store instead of driving 10 miles to a parking lot and then walking 100 yards to a store, is nice. Dare I say....the way it should be?

Lately, especially here in NYC, there is a rumbling debate about traffic congestion, to the point where the city is actually getting sued for putting in bike lanes because they supposedly increase traffic congestion. It's a hot topic, to say the least, and it's just one part of a larger infrastructure/city planning/transportation engineering conundrum that's apparent in nearly every region of the country, from big cities to smaller towns.

My home town of Binghmaton, NY, for example, is a depressing expanse of poorly planned strip-mall roads lined with big-box stores that force you to drive away from the city center, and then from one "plaza" to the next instead of encouraging walking. It's crippling if you can't get your license at 17, because it's very hard to go anywhere without a car when everything is 20 miles away.

I came across this lecture a few weeks ago, and thought I would share. It's was given by architect Andrés Duany back in 2005, but given the pace at which our infrastructure advances, it's still every bit as relevant today as it was then, and even 20 years before then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwd4Lq0Xvgc

It's broken up into nine 9-minute segments on YouTube, but if you've ever been stuck in traffic, I'm sure you'll watch all of them. Here's the first:

Here's another (shorter) TED Talk given by another "New Urbanist", James Kunstler (a friend of Duany, I believe). An entertaining and interesting 20 minutes: www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html Kunstler also has a podcast, and I've been listening to all the back-episodes while I'm at work.

As a car and motorsport enthusiast I don't want to get rid of cars, but it's obvious to me that we've let them dictate our entire way of life, to a fault. I'd love to ultimately live in a world with more public and human-powered transportation, and less joyless appliance-mobile commuter traffic, but still have enough oil left over to power Miatas on the weekends.

Anyone else out there torn between a love of cars and a growing disdain for our vehicle-based (and pedestrian-averse) infrastructure?

Yes. I always loved driving in Wisconsin. "traffic" meant there were like 5 cars on the road. Here in Boston (not even the worst city) things are much different. I don't like driving here, so I take the train whenever I can, and put up with it when I absolutely need to drive. At least the trains are fairly capable of getting me places. There are probobly more drivers than needed, though. I used to bike, too, but the drivers here are too oblivious to their surroundings and I'd rather not become a hood ornament. I do find I get progressively happier as I drive north, away from the city, though... Too bad I can't leave yet.

Well. Not too long ago I was commuting by car 17 miles each way, drive time varied between 40 and 90 minutes daily. Lots of lights, and traffic worse in the afternoon. 28 mpg tops in my subcompact.

I got moved to a different office, and not long after got engaged and bought a house in a very rural area, relative to where I was raised. Now I commute 45 miles each way, commute is a consistent hour and I'm hitting up to 38 mpg due to a reasonably consistent speed. Yes, I spend more in gas, but the commute is infinitely more enjoyable.

If biking and walking to where you need to go works for you, more power to ya. I would rather be out in the sticks myself and have to drive at 15 minutes to get places.

And not places a mile away. Every time I drive back north to the busy burbs to visit family I am more and more glad I moved away from it all.

Yep. And I've got it pretty good in Portland, OR, which is relatively speaking very bike friendly for a city.

In terms of getting around, I miss Eugene, OR. About 110,000 people when I lived there. Easy to ride, easy to drive, not bad to walk if you're thusly inclined (I'm not patient enough). Just not a big enough place to find all the resources of a larger city.

I've managed to put my time commuting to the suburbs in my past, and I hope it stays there. Half hour to 45 minutes to work in the morning, and 45 to an hour fifteen home. I did get lucky in that there was an alternative route that was a pleasant drive, and only took as long as the freeway on a bad day. Given that half the days were bad, I decided to just take the long way home most of the time and not gamble on maybe saving a little time.

Don't get me started on the lunch options when working in the suburbs...

failboat wrote: Yes, I spend more in gas, but the commute is infinitely more enjoyable. I would rather be out in the sticks myself and have to drive at 15 minutes to get places. And not places a mile away. Every time I drive back north to the busy burbs to visit family I am more and more glad I moved away from it all.

I'm with you. I'd much rather commute a long ways just so I can go home to be AWAY from the city. They aren't for me. I just couldn't convince my future SWMBO and our parents that it's a good idea, even though rent would be cheaper, it would be a safer area, i wouldn't go crazy and run my van off a bridge at full speed....

I agree, especially these days with smartphones and GPS it is much easier and convenient to take public transportation even in the smallish Gainesville. I can always find the nearest bus stop and see a real time map that shows where each bus is on its route. I live about 1/2 a mile from the largest shopping center in town so I can walk to just about any store or restaurant chain you can name. I literally don't need a car, but its nice to be able to take trips out of town, or just because I like to drive.

I'd much rather commute a long ways just so I can go home to be AWAY from the city. They aren't for me.

That's the thing though....I'm worried that our need to "get away from it all" is literally destroying it all. The car has allowed us to live 50 miles away from our jobs, our stores, and our neighbors. "Back in the day" that sort of distance was only possible for the most rugged, self-sufficient homesteaders, growing their own food, and living a good 2-days walk from the nearest town.

If (when?) we run out of cheap energy, how will the suburbs fare? Will we even be able to live there? We're so used to everything being "20 mintues away"....food, Home Depot, supplies.....but I'm suggesting that that way of life is not sustainable. On foot, that 20-minute drive becomes a 1 day walk.

Our transportation system is mind-bogglingly dependent on the private automobile. This is why public transit doesn't work in the majority of the country. We all live by ourselves, away from everyone else, so why send a bus around on a wild goose chase looking for riders? I feel like we're painting ourselves into a corner.

Again, I loved (and miss) the way of life I had in Vermont, but honestly, the city is pretty great, and I'm not murdering our remaining car with high-mile commutes. It just sits there, waiting for autocross, or the occasional trip out of the city. There are smaller cities and towns too. NYC isn't for everyone, that's for sure.

I live in a very congested area, with bad traffic and lot's of obnoxious drivers. But, two things keep me semi happy. My morning/ evening commute is less than 20 feet, and the only traffic I encounter might be my wife bringing my morning coffee. The second thing is that our business is quite portable. We can relocate virtually anywhere with little effect on the business. Need to work a bit harder to bring in more business before we can really consider that option, but it is quite valid. The flip side of all this happiness is when I have to drive into Miami to deliver to a forwarder. Can't have everything.

I used to live in Memphis, Tn. and now live in Jacksonville, Fl. In Memphis, that mind set of developers giving you a home away from everything, definitely rulled. As a result, you get congestion, endless strip malls, and long commutes. There (seems to be?) is no apparent thought given to what happens when the energy gets too expensive for those long commutes or what happens when you get tired of driving 20 minutes to get a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk. In the "inner city", those areas inside the outer beltway, there are a couple of largish shopping malls/grocery stores but even there you are no longer able to walk to a neighborhood grocery store for anything.....tho not to fear, with a WalGreens on every corner, all your needs are catered to.

By contrast, Jacksonville has several neighborhoods that are bursting with shops, I can take a bus and hit nearly all my immediate needs a few minutes from my house or appartment, but it also has "outlying areas". Bus lanes have been in place in Jacksonville for a couple of years, and folks use them...all sorts ride bikes here. In Memphis, folks are fighting to keep bike lanes to a minimum...heck, they are just finally finishing handicap "ramps" at every sidewalk corner in Memphis.

We can have both, but unfortunately, developers have managed to give us just acres and acres of houses....way out in the sticks, with transportation being left up to the new residents.

In the future everyone will telecommute and work from home. The end.

Yes, I had a few years where I was literally 5 mins away from my office. That was nice. And I could still be doing that and pissing my money away on rent.

I probably could have afforded a house closer to work, sure. But chose to buy a less expensive property, further away, with much more land and trees, very well within our financial needs so we weren't house poor. I can't imagine how much our place would have cost if it were in a subdivision near my office. Far out of my reach for sure.

Not only that. It hasn't been brought up that in most cases, significant others don't work in the same area. I must work at least 50 miles away from my wife. One of us would always have to commute.

I live in a small city, and I much prefer it to the suburban landscape that I lived in growing up. I can walk places, and ride my bike. In so many cities, the "downtown" is really just a caricature of what city life is desired to be. There is density, but it is not a neighborhood. Most of them are only active before 6 pm or after 6 pm; a place that people go while they are at work or after they leave work.

Driving in a suburban area can be such a dismal experience.

I'll give a European perspective here, I live in a small town 30 km from Berlin centre (my town really butts up against Berlin, so it's pretty much "light urban" all the way east from here.) I'm close to the historic downtown area and a lot of shops and things. Generally I walk to get my groceries, walk to go out for dinner, walk to the hardware store... you get the idea. If I want to go into Berlin proper, I almost never drive unless I've bought something heavy off Kijiji and need to cart it home. Usually it's a 30 minute train trip plus some subway manouvering to get where I want. Easy.

I used to drive to work most days, but that was only 4 km. I could always take public transit if I wanted to, and I frequently did for one reason or another (and over the whole winter too.) Now that I'm unemployed, the only time I generally use my car is if I head west, away from the city.

I quite like this arrangement. Ten years ago I'd have said I'd hate it, but I don't. I can reserve driving for when I feel like it and it's always a pleasurable experience, no daily grind through hours of gridlock. And if I don't feel like getting my car out it stays in its spot and I can do whatever I need to anyway.

The thing about European cities, the contrast of which I find strikingly awkward in North America, is that there is no huge separation between where people live and where businesses operate. I live in a fairly built-up area, and there is a bakery and a farmers' market where I get all my veggies literally around the corner. Even in areas which are more like American suburbs (we do have them) there is usually at least a convenience shop or small food market nestled in, and generally a couple pubs and restaurants. I think this is much smarter than segregating everything off. Sure, keep the real industry away from the residential areas but don't make me drive 20 minutes into strip mall hell just to get my food & toilet paper.

Honestly, I'm not really a big city person either, I do like my space, but I don't find the North American model of completely separate residential / malls / industrial areas and a dead 'downtown' at all appealing. I hate having to make a big trip just to get to some kind of corner shop. One of my favourite things to do on a Saturday morning is to walk over to the bakery and pick up fresh bread for breakfast, which takes all of ten minutes. I'd miss that if I lived in the 'burbs.

Just my take, anyway. I grew up in Canadian suburbia, probably 45 minute walk to the nearest business of any kind, and I really don't think I ever want to go back to that. I could see going rural, which is what my parents did after my sister and I moved away, but even they have a few 'country shops' which are a good bit closer than anything in suburbia ever was. For now I'll preferably stick to the kind of lifestyle I've got going here.

My town was hick when I was a kid. Now we've got big McMansions instead of farmland. Luckily, most of the area is state park. If they ever close the parks to put up houses I am definitely leaving.

Jay, great description. I like that light urban, mixed-use structure. It just works so well. Where I live in Brooklyn, it's pretty "light". Most buildings are very residential, and look very house-like, yet the ground floor of many of them have businesses that you walk to.

In most US towns, you couldn't walk if you wanted to, without risking public humiliation, or physical injury.

Where I grew up, if you see someone walking down the road, you assume they lost their license, or cant afford a car. Nobody just walks to the store. I remember when I first got my license, and I would drive 1 mile to the store for soda or a sub. 1 mile. That's ridiculous, but then again, there were (and still are) no sidewalks, street lamps, crosswalks or any provisions for pedestrians on the way to that "convenience" store.

MrMook wrote:

I'd much rather commute a long ways just so I can go home to be AWAY from the city. They aren't for me.

That's the thing though....I'm worried that our need to "get away from it all" is literally destroying it all. The car has allowed us to live 50 miles away from our jobs, our stores, and our neighbors. "Back in the day" that sort of distance was only possible for the most rugged, self-sufficient homesteaders, growing their own food, and living a good 2-days walk from the nearest town. If (when?) we run out of cheap energy, how will the suburbs fare? Will we even be able to live there? We're so used to everything being "20 mintues away"....food, Home Depot, supplies.....but I'm suggesting that that way of life is not sustainable. On foot, that 20-minute drive becomes a 1 day walk. Our transportation system is mind-bogglingly dependent on the private automobile. This is why public transit doesn't work in the majority of the country. We all live by ourselves, away from everyone else, so why send a bus around on a wild goose chase looking for riders? I feel like we're painting ourselves into a corner. Again, I loved (and miss) the way of life I had in Vermont, but honestly, the city is pretty great, and I'm not murdering our remaining car with high-mile commutes. It just sits there, waiting for autocross, or the occasional trip out of the city. There are smaller cities and towns too. NYC isn't for everyone, that's for sure.

Very good point, sir. I fully agree that this is a problem. I93 south of the city is full of people doing just that, and it makes traffic miserable. However, had I not been tied down to a city, I wouldn't live even close to one. I have no desire to work in a city, and live in the suburbs. I'd rather live and work in the same place, as long as that place has a population under 100K, and is surrounded by rural-ness.

I don't mind being away from "big city convenience," because i've always lived away from it. Now that i'm in a city, i'm unhappy and the convenience isn't worth it. I don't use the convenience. I still go to the same stores I went to growing up, and I still drive there because, although they are closer, I can't carry all the stuff I buy across the interstate. only now I can't do alot of stuff I got used to doing when I was living in a somewhat more rural area. This is, of course, my opinion, and I have nothing against city people, It's just not for me.

We choose our lifestyles.

I live and work in a little town. My morning commute is 8-12 minutes, depending on the traffic lights, and the whole distance is two lane roads. If gas prices got too high, I could ride a bicycle to work and save gas to use for entertainment on the weekends. Before that happened, though, I'd probably park one of the cars in the back yard and end the insurance on it.

That flexibility is something I value.

I have a (perhaps very closed-minded and childish) point of view that cities are responsible for all the problems in the world. Put that many people that close together, you're going to have problems. Sprawl is almost worse, because it subtracts all public transit and bikeability from the situation. So I'll just say that cities and the suburbs are plain bad for your morale, health, and sanity.

I understand we can't just do away with cities tomorrow, and that most human beings crave being close to one another, but I'm the kind of guy who won't be satisfied until I own a house that I can fire a shotgun off the back porch of, and no other human being (aside from the soon-to-be Mrs. Twin_Cam) will be able to hear it, much less care. That's just me.

Twin_Cam wrote: I have a (perhaps very closed-minded and childish) point of view that cities are responsible for all the problems in the world. I'm the kind of guy who won't be satisfied until I own a house that I can fire a shotgun off the back porch of, and no other human being (aside from the soon-to-be Mrs. Twin_Cam) will be able to hear it, much less care. That's just me.

The United States encompasses 3.79 million square miles Our population is over 308 million people. That's about 80 people per square mile, and something like 8 acres per person (check my math...i did that in my head with Googled numbers). If it wasn't for cities and other densely populated areas, we'd all be within earshot of someone's shotgun. Now where is our wild open spaces that we try to protect? Covered in houses. It's been happening for years. My parents bought open land, and built a house on a road that was once surrounded by one family's farm. Now there's more neighbors than ever on that old farm road. A new house went up every year or two while we were there.

I think densely populated areas (towns, cities, villages) are one way to preserve the land that we destroy by development. Our larger cities have almost no farmland around them to support them anymore. Even if residents of central Los Angeles, or Manhattan want to buy local food, it still has to make its way 50 miles or more to the city center.

I probably sound preachy, but I don't want to. I love country life, and crave space to work on my car(s), set up a woodshop, and just relax. I just think we've become cripplingly dependent on cars, and that's tough to wrap my head around as a car enthusiast. Although, if E36 M3 really hits the fan, I'm totally cool reverting to horses and such. Anyone want to invest in Grassroots Equiestrian Sports?

Yep-put people closer together and make them share space and you get good public transportation, shopping in walking distance, massive access to anything you want.................and higher crime, congestion, smaller residences, lack of privacy, group governance of your personal actions, etc... We have many options in this country, pick the one you like.

"Anyone want to invest in Grassroots Equiestrian Sports?"

The new answer is Messara! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messara

we must redefine growth--from urban planning to family planning. If you made a 3+ child family, you are the problem. your love for racing will pass when fuel goes away. start gathering seeds for your food gardens. stockpile toothbrushes, peroxide and all the other things oil produces.
we will all turn amish. giddyap

thummmper wrote: we must redefine growth--from urban planning to family planning. If you made a 3+ child family, you are the problem.

I agree completely. I don't think the world as we know it could survive no longer using oil, so carbon sequestration is another area that would be wise to pay attention to or the location of ocean front property is likely to change rather drastically in the next couple hundred years.

I hate living in a bigger metro area (Tulsa metro area is approx 1 million), but can't stand living without the benefits.

I'm fortunate in that I get to
- Work four day weeks
- Basically choose when I go to work and leave, as long as get my hours in!

So even though I live 20 miles from work, since I arrive at 5am, my commute usually takes about 21-22 minutes. Usually the way home is a few minutes more. But I don't live in one of the "popular" suburbs, so i'm usually going the opposite direction of traffic.

Hopefully once the I-44 construction is done and capacity dramatically increased, the congestion will calm down a bit and I won't have to wake up so early.

I think that in the future the past 100 years in the USA will be looked back as the greatest mistake of mankind. We figured out how to harness the cheap energy of fossil fuels and then proceeded to act like they will always be available. We built our sprawling suburbias, big box stores, strip malls, and interstates. We used the gift of cheap energy not to prepare for the future when there would be less available or with the idea of conserving it to make it last, but we burned through it as fast as we could. We used it to industrialize agriculture and transportation and thus greatly expanded the human population to many times what could be sustained with oil. Heck, we make things that we throw away (trash bags, packaging materials) out of oil. Some day when it is no longer available in great quantity and low prices people will be amazed that plastic bags ever existed. I have no plans to become Amish or anything - I like to burn dinos as much as the rest of you. I think all we can do is realize the tenuousness of our lifestyle and enjoy it while we can. Things will be drastically different in 50 years than they are now. That much I know, but exactly how they will be different is anyone's guess.

I've read a few of Kunstler's books - I think he has it more or less right. I'll watch the Duany videos - don't know of him.

Click on this link and watch the Crash Course.

I've lived in the Atlanta area for decades. This place is the poster-child for unplanned urban sprawl and reveals the good and bad.

The good - the city of Atlanta couldn't support housing a population explosion that came with the influx of new businesses; in-town housing prices skyrocketed. Also, the city management is so poorly run and corrupt that a lot of people just didn't want to live there, anyway. Outlying towns and counties were still pretty close to Downtown and offered far lower prices for more property. The interstate and secondary roads were capable of handling more traffic, at least for a while.

The bad - It turned out that the suburban counties and towns proved just as inept in managing their growth. They allowed development to occur in a haphazard manner and chaos followed. Roads and water systems were/are inadequate to sustain growth, but that didn't stop anyone. And, people kept going farther and farther out to get away from the sprawl. There was a time when 25 miles out of Downtown would put you in farmland and forests. Now, you have to travel twice that distance to get that same feeling, but only if you choose the right direction. And the interstate and secondary roads are way too congested; the system couldn't/wouldn't keep-up with expansion.

Much of the problem might be attributed to cheap oil and transportation costs, BUT, I put higher blame on those who flat-out screwed the pooch with mismanagement of the growth. Greed, stupidity and corruption are bigger players than cheap fossil fuels.