I have a confession to make. I dislike suburbs. I really enjoy living in a city and similarly enjoy being in the countryside. But what is the point of suburbs? They are car-dependent hellholes where there is nothing to do, and you need to drive to do the most mundane tasks like going to the supermarket. And things get even worse in the US.
I wouldn't be surprised if you got a lot of flak from the suburban readers of this excellent piece. Confirmation bias is strong.
But also, the ideological city/country gap (even if 'burbs are mere fake countryside) is gigantic. Has even led to genocide à la Pol Pot (tho there's no need to be so drastic; citing Trump would suffice).
Nope, just multi-use denser living arrangements with lots of green spaces interspersed. Just look at inner cities in the Netherlands or Scandinavia. Many of them are immensely liveable.
Post WW2 architects, infrastructure planners and council members considered city centers something of the past. To a degree i can understand that because Europe lay in pieces and families were big yet houses were small. As for US suburbs: there are few attractive city centers to contrast them with in the first place and second i guess we have to see 'the house' mostly as a store of wealth and proof you've made it to the US middle classes (about the US class system i recommend https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022648/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/03/class-dismissed/307274/ )
But the idea of live here, work there and recreate over there is hysterical. (And time consuming). Le Corbusier and Moses are perhaps the two most famous dictators of mobility but locally planners had similar destructive ideas.
In the 50s Amsterdam's 17th century city center was at risk of becoming a highway...
Eventually the most famous expression of post WW2 architectural optimism was Amsterdam's high rise suburb The Bijlmer (flats in a park). Yet when it was completed former colony Suriname became independent and hundreds of thousands of Surinamese, who didn't believe that was such a great idea, left for the Netherlands. And ended up in The Bijlmer for instance. Crime, drug use etc soon became associated with it so these days we call it Amsterdam South East. That really helps.
It's cleaned up significantly but it's still boring like hell. I recently read commentary about the fact that when you look out the window you hardly see anybody, and when you do see someone there is no 'city' activity. You don't see actual life: shops, walking, talking, playing etc. It's sterilized life.
If you want to see what would have happened to Amsterdam had city planners won the fight to build a highway through the city centre, just go to Sydney, where there is a highway going straight through the Harbour Quay. Or look at the Bronx before Robert Moses built the Bronx Expressway...
Fact check re: Houston. Houston’s Memorial Park is one of the largest in the United States. Covering 1466 acres or 5.9 square km. Compare that to New York’s Central Park’s measly 840 acre Central Park. And if you get bored playing in Memorial Park, check out Buffalo Bayou Park (160 acres), Hermann Park (which includes an 8 acre recreational lake), the POST Houston Skylawn, or the beautiful tree covered streets of Houston Heights and/or Rice Military. All within in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in North America. Please and thank you.
Sorry, no offense but I have been to Houston and if I can help it, I will never go there again. Just my taste. If you like Houston, all the better for you. As I said, I don't like Las Vegas either.
Only Murica has this proto cave-man hatred against "cities". No it hasn't been manifested of late. It's puritan. It's like a biblical hatred of city life, as it were. City = Sin according to Murican political demographic lore. Cityslickers = sinful people according to Murican political demographic lore. Mind you they don't care to use the term "bourgeoise" which is also "cityslicker", but that comes with anti profiteering overtones. THAT they don't like. They wanna indulge the countryside serfs as they were, but Cities.....OMG! Hate!
I wouldn't be surprised if you got a lot of flak from the suburban readers of this excellent piece. Confirmation bias is strong.
But also, the ideological city/country gap (even if 'burbs are mere fake countryside) is gigantic. Has even led to genocide à la Pol Pot (tho there's no need to be so drastic; citing Trump would suffice).
Oh, I got that flak and fully expected it. But if I agreed with suburbanites, we'd both be wrong. and what good would that do :-D
Can't disagree with any of that. So what is the future? Bladerunner-style termite mounds?
Nope, just multi-use denser living arrangements with lots of green spaces interspersed. Just look at inner cities in the Netherlands or Scandinavia. Many of them are immensely liveable.
Post WW2 architects, infrastructure planners and council members considered city centers something of the past. To a degree i can understand that because Europe lay in pieces and families were big yet houses were small. As for US suburbs: there are few attractive city centers to contrast them with in the first place and second i guess we have to see 'the house' mostly as a store of wealth and proof you've made it to the US middle classes (about the US class system i recommend https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022648/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/03/class-dismissed/307274/ )
But the idea of live here, work there and recreate over there is hysterical. (And time consuming). Le Corbusier and Moses are perhaps the two most famous dictators of mobility but locally planners had similar destructive ideas.
In the 50s Amsterdam's 17th century city center was at risk of becoming a highway...
In red what was supposed to disappear in favour of mobility i.e. cars (top left corner: the most horizontal red bar is the canal along which i walked to school in the eighties): https://www.amsterdam.nl/publish/pages/982113/oprichting_plan_kaasjager_klein.jpg
In the 60s Le Corbusier-inspired American Jokinen proposed another onslaught but was mostly ignored https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokinen_Plan
Eventually the most famous expression of post WW2 architectural optimism was Amsterdam's high rise suburb The Bijlmer (flats in a park). Yet when it was completed former colony Suriname became independent and hundreds of thousands of Surinamese, who didn't believe that was such a great idea, left for the Netherlands. And ended up in The Bijlmer for instance. Crime, drug use etc soon became associated with it so these days we call it Amsterdam South East. That really helps.
It's cleaned up significantly but it's still boring like hell. I recently read commentary about the fact that when you look out the window you hardly see anybody, and when you do see someone there is no 'city' activity. You don't see actual life: shops, walking, talking, playing etc. It's sterilized life.
If you want to see what would have happened to Amsterdam had city planners won the fight to build a highway through the city centre, just go to Sydney, where there is a highway going straight through the Harbour Quay. Or look at the Bronx before Robert Moses built the Bronx Expressway...
Fact check re: Houston. Houston’s Memorial Park is one of the largest in the United States. Covering 1466 acres or 5.9 square km. Compare that to New York’s Central Park’s measly 840 acre Central Park. And if you get bored playing in Memorial Park, check out Buffalo Bayou Park (160 acres), Hermann Park (which includes an 8 acre recreational lake), the POST Houston Skylawn, or the beautiful tree covered streets of Houston Heights and/or Rice Military. All within in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in North America. Please and thank you.
Sorry, no offense but I have been to Houston and if I can help it, I will never go there again. Just my taste. If you like Houston, all the better for you. As I said, I don't like Las Vegas either.
Only Murica has this proto cave-man hatred against "cities". No it hasn't been manifested of late. It's puritan. It's like a biblical hatred of city life, as it were. City = Sin according to Murican political demographic lore. Cityslickers = sinful people according to Murican political demographic lore. Mind you they don't care to use the term "bourgeoise" which is also "cityslicker", but that comes with anti profiteering overtones. THAT they don't like. They wanna indulge the countryside serfs as they were, but Cities.....OMG! Hate!
How odd is Murica? How twisted?
Oldest thing in the world actually, and not restricted to the U.S.
Spot on.
"in my view, the worst place in the world I have ever been to is Las Vegas" wow, what a life!
Yes, I am privileged.