Suburbs hate thread
Discuss the greatest travesty to city planning
older eastern US suburbs are great though. because the houses sit on at least an acre of land.
the ones like in OP's picture are mostly in the southwest or newer mcmansion developments.
Glorious. Just build a brick firewall in between the houses and you have a nice row of townhouses.
Those houses are shitty ass duplexes for poor people. Look at how small the plots are. You can't even throw a frisbee with a yard that small.
At least my house is a proper McMansion with a yard big enough for my own mini forest and god no I don't share any walls with neighbors. Fucking poors.
>>937923
which suburbs would those be? The general trend in the east has been towards less density, not more. Levittown is only a bit less dense than that, and pre-war suburbs are generally urban towns in their own right.
I've always felt that one of the criteria for an actual house is a decent amount of land on all sides that you can fully enclose if you so please. not that these aren't "actual" houses, but in terms of functionality, they're no better than apartments. what's the point of owning your own building if you can't walk outside and spark up a bleezy without the old people you share a wall with calling the cops? what if you just want to walk around in your own backyard without 5+ families being able to see you?
Suburbs are ok. Sprawl is terrible.
>>937937
You pretty much have to go country for that experience because even if you have a decent enclosed yard on all sides there's always that one fucking busybody cunt neighbor.
>>937935
North Carolina here. Where I'm from, most of the neighborhoods have about an acre of land to go with each house, and the house I grew up in did too. You don't have to go far though to find neighborhoods like in the OP pic, though.
>>937933
>fucking poors
Lel don't pretend that you are wealthy.
Cathedraltown.
>>937935
I live in the inner suburbs of Atlanta now. all new development is no land mcmansions like op's picutre, or rows of connected townhouses
I don't get people that are paying half a mill or more, to live close in to a major city and have no land.
>>937984
...you don't understand why land close to a major city is expensive?
>>937987
no, i get that, I don't get the desirable part.
is shaving 30-60 minutes from your daily commute time, really worth a less enjoyable home?
>>938275
Less enjoyable to you, maybe, but I'm sure the people who bought them wouldn't see it that way. They're closer to work, they're closer to nightlife, they're closer to friends, and they don't have any damn landscaping to take care of.
Personally, I'd rather have a proper urban setting than high-density subdivisions, but I'd rather have either compared to being 30 miles away from anything.
>>937917
What do you mean specifically, OP?
>>938318
Soviet apartment developments, were, essentially, vertical suburbs. It's the same bad ideas in a different form: giant setbacks, separation of uses, pointless "green space" everywhere, giant roads connecting it all. They can both be traced straight back to Le Corbusier.
The whole reason they were so big and cramped is because they made such inefficient use of land. There's nothing really urban about them.
>>937937
If you want a nice yard, you could always live in a Cul de Sac. All of them have decently sized yards.
My old house was in a cul de sac, and people from the city (or so they said) would knock on our door and ask us if we were interested in selling some of our yard to develop some more houses in the neighborhood.
>>938328
>pointless "green space"
Agh, fucking kill me.
But yeah, the separation bit is a bit painful. Don't get me wrong, I love me some commie blocs, but if this thing is done (thought out) poorly (as it was) you end up with an urban dessert, where no one really lives rather than simply sleep and is basically empty throughout the day (every one at the factories/offices) and evenings (everyone in the city). On the principal, every few blocs would have a "pavilion" dedicated to services/shops/time wasting/whatever, but we all know it could never happen (and not necessarily because of the idea being used by commies).
>giant roads connecting it all
Literally same with American suburbs. You have lotsa people cramped in one place (be it flat house-pancacke or a big ass tower bloc) you end up with them needing to get to their workplace.
However, what would be the alternative? Labourer Hotel raised directly on the factory grounds?
>traced straight back to Le Corbusier
Hell yeah.
>>938340
Well, if you do it right, then lots of people will work near where they live, and they'll just walk. People who work in the business district should have a train they can take. Build lots of nice apartments next to the train station for these people. If you can take care of that, then you should be able to accommodate the people who need to drive with a much smaller road than the suburban 8 lane monstrosity.
>>938287
If people are going to live some place where they have 1-3 yards of grass around their house. They might as well get a condo in a hi rise.
>>938463
that would almost certainly be more money for less space
also condos have a nasty habit of losing value over time
>>938352
Even then that doesn't always work. Some of the denser banlieues in Paris have a RER station built right next to them and the massive boulevards that surround the massive towers still get clogged up.
>>937917
>Always hear stories of "Was drunk, went into the wrong house"
>Wonder how the fuck you can be that retarded
>see picture related houses
Sure is nice living in an old house with 2 acres of property for half the price of one of those duplexes in a major city
>>938520
There's a film popular in Russia for new years that explores the same concept, but with commie block apartments.
"The Irony of Fate"
>>938520
I seriously doubt OP's picture is from a major city.
Sorry for potato quality of my picture, I took a photo with my phone a few years ago from a book of New Yorker comics. This was from the 30's.
>But, Hubert, dear, how will we ever know which is ours?
>Patience, dear, we shall plant a tree.
>>938831
What kills me is that it's not actually that hard to avoid this effect. If you look around historical neighborhoods (where the houses were built 130 years ago and haven't changed much since), there's often only a dozen or so designs there, and if you painted them all beige, they'd look exactly the same. Some paint and some decoration goes a long way, but at some point people stopped expecting developers to give a shit.
>>938275
>200 work days a year
>1 h saved every work day
>People who commute half an hour less than you every day live an entire week's worth more of leisure time than you every year
But if you'd prefer to tend a garden, who am I to judge?
>>937937
I live in a pretty dense city with high property prices. We have estates like these that I've always thought of as horizontal apartment blocks that cost way more, plus the added hassle of being infested by piss-poor drivers who clog up the tiny, winding streets with their fucking bimbo boxes (and the occasional supercar dentist who feels the need to tear through these tiny lanes for about half a second at a time).
Somebody explain the logic of building single family houses on such tiny lots. The few square meters of lawn are totally useless - you can't have a bbq or set up an above-ground pool without half the neighborhood coming in to watch.
>>938865
Think of them less as houses with yards and more as apartments with balconies
>>938865
The logic is
A: this is expensive land and/or there's a huge demand for cheap homes
B: it's zoned R1
This is what developers do when they'd rather be making apartments.
>>938933
Or I guess it wouldn't be R1, but zoned as single-family only.
>>938865
People want their own house, don't want to share a building with other people, and don't care about it being massively inefficient, destructive, and culturally worthless. So a combination of status and hating communal housing.
>>938865
I hope you're not referring to the lots in the image you uploaded.
Pic related is good urban form.
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/06/is-building-height-debate-mistaken.html
>>938340
I have another idea like yours, where apartments have shop units on all their floors. Higher volume units (restaurants, popular stores) on the lower floors and lower volume units (server-rooms, hobby shops, offices) on upper floors. It takes good use of mixed development zoning, allows more social interaction between neighbours, creates community, and produces more revenue for building owner.
>>940127
I live in formercommieland, commieblocks here were built with the "first floor for commerce, rest for residence" idea in mind.
In theory, it's nice. In practice, it feels bland, plebian and soulless. Like starbucks vs mom & pop coffee shop.
Even when the execution is great, it's just meh. I live in the historical center and its much, much nicer than well-planned commieblocks with gyms, restaurants, bars, barbershops etc on first floor pavilions.
>city builds a pleasant pre-automotobile Euro suburb full of trees as a prototype for post-WWI reconstruction efforts
>all the urban sprawl since then has been ugly American mcmansions and stripmalls
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
>>940161
>>938340
>>938328
It can be made to work, if you incorporate all the elemets in a smart manner.
Here in my commie suburb, there's everything, from shops, to schools to a small hospital.
The parks are lively and filled with people, the "pointless green spaces" are interspersed with benches, sport fields and playground equipment, so there's actually a point to them.
Most importantly, it's not just an area to shove poor people into, so the appartments (and windows and balconies) themselves are not desolate, unmaintained and post apocalyptic, but generally okay looking.
The blocks themselves might not be the most visually appealing thing, but at least they were built to top specifications of the time.
>>940161
Central planning of cities just plain doesn't work. A good city comes from millions of people trying to make their way, not from a handful of people in an office trying to decide exactly what people need to live, and then building that over and over until they can house as many people as they want to.
>>940127
>apartments have shop units on all their floors
>>940127
>>940161
Well, for one, the base idea was to create a viable living space and not just a "sleeping housing".
And the blocs would have, apart from shops/whatever on the ground floor (or dedicated pavilions nearby) also socializing spaces (again, on the blocs themselves or in dedicated/shared pavilions). This was supposed to be a case in my neighbourhood although the bureaucrats forgot to put the cinema and culture centre up (or run out of money because they stole more than they should've).
>>940173
Very nice.
>>940352
IMO some sort of authority is needed or you're ending up with retarded favelo-fittings in all the wrong places, or Big Money™ buying everything left and right and putting retarded malls and glass towers. But whatever.
>>937917
this looks like those supermarket grain and cereal isles or coffee beans.
mmmm delicious.
>>940419
I never knew Dredd enforced zoning rules.
From a transportation perspective, much of the (justified) hatred towards urban planners comes due to their arrogance. Many act like they know engineering more than engineers, statistics more than statisticians, the railways better than the railway's own planners and crew and so forth.
Many come out with delusions of grandeur and want to shape an area to their own shitty vision, more often than not something shit with lots of cars and trams whereby there's no real distance connectivity and they expect people to all live 5 minutes from work even though it won't happen.
>>940419
I'm not opposed to planning, but it needs to be reactive. Once you start telling people to build a grocery store here and apartments over here and a pedestrian mall over there, then you get a boring city, and when you have a boring city, people decide they'd rather live in the suburbs and eat at Applebee's.
>>937979
>Get physically aroused by Eastern-Euro-Style huge open boulevard
>Look up town
>It's a largely abandoned Canadian shithole
>>940438
Director's cut, bro.
>>937917
Um, okay.
>>940570
I really don't see what's wrong here.
>>940570
looks like a nice building
>>940570
There is a middle ground between massive impersonal towers and space wasting suburbs.
Where I live it's all fucking traffic, traffic, traffic. No cycle lanes. Nothing to make you want to go out on your bike. I have to take my bike on the back of my car to somewhere worth cycling otherwise I get so depressed I want to throw myself in front of the nearest bus.
>>937917
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwd4Lq0Xvgc
Watch all 9 parts.
>>940652
We just need to kick all of the poor people out of the prime real estate in the city center and make them live on the out skirts. The optimal places to live in LA are either safe and extremely expensive or fairly cheep and gang turf.
>>940438
He is the Law, mate.
But I was rather hinting to your ordinary blocs becoming MEGA STRUCTURE HABITAT UNITS in order to accommodate shops and shit on "all their floors".
>>937917
Things like converting every suburb.into "New Town" ?
amazing how many suburbanites there are on a board about bikes and trains
>>940600
Maybe work on being less of a bitch and go ride anyway.
>>940787
Aren't those exactly the people you would expect to make use of bikes and trains?
>>941066
Uh... I'd expect them to use cars in reality. Ideally they would start using those yes.
>>940676
Thank god for hipsters and gentrification.
>>939251
Newmarket here, the GTA's public transit probably is the worst for a supposed global city.
>>940652
Watched it all, thanks. Reminded me of the Kunstler TED talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ&nohtml5=False
I will never get to live in Daria's McMansion. la la la la.
>>941085
Lel the ttc tried.
>>941112
>There will never be more Daria
>You will never meet a girl like her
;_;
>>941128
>implying that Daria isn't inferior
>>941066
....no? Most train riders live in urban areas, by a massive margin. You need density for the concept to work. Suburban rail never comes anywhere close the ridership numbers of a metro.
>>940584
Buildings like that are illegal in most of the US, so general perception here is that your choices are either suburban houses on 1+ acre lots, or Manhattan high-rises.
>>941207
> Buildings like that are illegal in most of the US
Totally false.
>>941209
Partially false, which is why I said "most".
Sure, 2-6 story mixed-use buildings exist in most American cities, but most of that stock dates back before WW2. If you read through the zoning code of a lot of those areas, you'll find it is now impossible to replicate the same buildings that exist in the neighborhood, mostly due to minimum setback requirements, minimum parking requirements, and ADA rules. Some of these codes don't outright prohibit traditional midrise urban structures, but they do make them prohibitively expensive, meaning that when new buildings in this style are built at all, they're done as massive luxury condo projects.
Add to that federal mortgage rules, which don't guarantee loans for individuals building multifamily structures with more than 4 units, or more than 25% revenue from commercial use, and it means that individuals are railroaded into buying or building, at most, a quadruplex with no on-site commercial use. The rest is left to the national corporate developers, which build as big and as standardized as possible to minimize the effect on profits of permitting and financing.
>>941207
>mid-rises = high rises
School was challenging for you, wasn't it?
>>941214
You do make a good point (although I'm not sure what the ADA has to do with anything).
There has been a lot of progress made in the last few decades though and it is encouraging to see some cities encourage mid-rise developments to some extent.
>>941221
ADA mandates stuff like elevators, which impose a certain fixed cost, requiring a larger building to maximize profit. It also specifies stairway configurations and street access, to similar effect.
ADA is regulation for the right reasons, but it does reduce the economic competitiveness of certain traditional building types.
>There has been a lot of progress made in the last few decades though
You're right, though a lot of that progress has been in getting suburban corporate developers to build big multiblock midrises downtown instead of big single-family housing tracts out along the Interstate. It's better than what happened to cities in the late 20th century, but often produces a somewhat sterile facsimile of authentic urban life.
The next step need to be taken by the FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, to put these building types on an even financial footing with single-family homes so that they can be developed organically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO3CaJtSfjg
breddy gud
>>941223
ADA doesn't require adding elevators to residences as long as you can meet the mandated number of accessible units without one.
>>941237
You're right, don't know where I read that, but it's not in HUD's guidelines.
>>941223
>but often produces a somewhat sterile facsimile of authentic urban life.
To be fair, the old tenements in industrial cities were pretty bland and unappealing too. Those buildings only really became attractive to buyers when owners started sprucing them up and when artists starting populating those areas.
>>941246
Those were built as downmarket immigrant housing, though.
What's getting built now is certainly much nicer, but it's targeting a market segment more analogous to that of 19th-century row homes. How do they compare?
In any case, I'm just poorly echoing various blog posts along these lines:
http://granolashotgun.com/2016/03/03/who-really-controls-which-house-you-buy/
The idea is that, by consolidating development into major projects only accessible to large developers, cities lose the economic vitality generated by individuals building their own live/work buildings and doing millions of individual low-stakes experiments.
I should point out that this isn't an argument for detached single family residential, since zoning there outright forbids most businesses, but for the now mostly-extinct sort of townhouse where the owner gets a mortgage to build a place for their business on the ground floor, then lives above it, possibly with a few additional apartments to supplement income.
Well I live in Melbourne and we have commuter railways that go to and through suburbia, high frequency during morning and evening peaks but less so in the afternoon and late night.
Buses operate around neighbourhoods, along main roads, to shopping centres to/from railway stations turning them into transit hubs.
So Merika... Why not both?
>>941291
We're a really all-or-nothing nation. If suburbs are the right answer, then it's time to federally subsidize them and demolish inner city neighborhoods to build highways and parking lots.
Also our urban rail networks self-destructed in the 50s, unlike Melbourne, which is a fairly unique city in the Anglosphere as far as I'm aware.
Post pics of your commuter rail suburbs?
I'll bet they're more dense and walkable than our automotive cul-de-sacs.
>>941296
You already have the shitposting down, I think you should immigrate to Australia if you hate it so much here.
>>941301
>lose my constitutional rights to free speech and to bear arms
>have shitty Internet access
>all for some trams
I critique because I care, Anon, and if it comes off too aggro it's because it's the prevailing tone of this site.
>>941291
>Melbourne commuter network
>good
>frequent
Confirmed for never having set foot in Melbourne. Fuck MTR and the Xtraps.
Found this article on japanese urban planning, I was more shocked to see how restrictive american zoning is. How much more practical is it to separate multiple and single family housing, really?
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com.br/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
>>941350
>The creation of a national law establishing a limited number of zones is, in my opinion, a great idea
It blows my mind that someone from Quebec does not seem to realize how unfeasible this is in North America. If the federal government in either the US or Canada tried to impose standards upon the provinces or states then a political shitshow on the topic of state or provincial powers would occur.
The best we can hope for is for provincial level regulations since municipalities are creations of the provinces.
>>941360
I think a bit less regulation is needed. If what he said about mixed-use being hard to do because of current regulations is true, simplifying it based on a national standard is the ideal goal, with municipalities still being behind zoning. They would now be forced to zone in a simpler way though.
>>941361
I agree from a technical standpoint but the fact of the matter is that trying to force legislation down onto other levels of government is just going to cause another fed-provincial polemic. The fed is so scared of starting another one these days that it doesn't even have the guts to force objectives for greenhouse gas reduction onto provinces anymore and would rather 'consult' with them.
It would be more effective to pressure the CIP (in the case of Canada) to campaign for rapid abandonment of Euclidian zoning in favor of another model.
>>941362
American and canadians suburbs aren't even questioned anymore, they are everywhere. Unfortunately I have to agree with you, people would be up in arms if japan-like legislation passed. Shame, really.
>>941362
In the US, you could tie it to highway funding, like they did for the drinking age.
>>941364
I wasn't really trying to get that across (sorry if I wasn't being clear). I think people are open to higher density planning considering inner-city housing has become desirable again in the US and continues to be desirable in Canada (suburbs certainly hurt urban growth but there weren't exoduses to the burbs like in the States). I was more contesting the the feasibility of the federal governments pushing legislation upon lower levels of government in a matter the states/provinces have historically governed would spark conflict over the limits of power of the different levels of the government.
>>941365
I know American politicians have tacked on some insane amendments to laws over the years but is that actually true?
>>941366
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_Act
The states are nominally self-governing republics, but free government money trumps ideology. Tying funding to zoning laws in the same way would never happen, but it would be hilarious to see the feds strongarm state and local governments into less restrictive legislation for once.
>>940570
Ah, so it has to be one extreme or the other? Got it!
>>937917
white flight happened for a reason, nigger.
>>941243
It seems to be a common belief with urbanists, but I've never found any basis for it...I guess just not realizing that rules for residential are different from office and commercial (ADA didn't originally even apply to residential).
That said, I don't think anyone would build a 6-story walkup nowadays. Even 4 is pushing it.
>>941686
A lot of the new class of urbanites appear to get their talking points from right-wingers who bitch about everything from fire safety regulations to handicap ramps. It's weird but I guess it makes sense if you consider most of them come from the affluent upper classes.
>>941688
It's an odd alignment of ideology, but I think it comes from the way government policies over the past half-century have overwhelmingly favored car-oriented suburbs. That way you end up with urbanists, who want to see more dense, pedestrian-oriented construction, arriving at a libertarian position to put transit on an even footing and reduce zoning restrictions.
>>941190
Metro aren't trains?
>>942104
In what way is a metro not a train?
>>942132
I meant American style suburbs. RER serves a ton of dense towns.
>>942157
metros are usually some 8-12 car long EMU packed full of people while trains are usually 16 car long and you have to reserve a seat before getting on?
>>942170
>reserve seat
>has never seen a commuter train
>>942170
>tfw metro
This is the area I live in. It fucking sucks and there is always traffic. The main road is congested all hours of the day.
>>938328
Bullshit, they had the right idea.
>>940352
This
>>940570
Is this supposed to look bad? The actual inside of each unit looks pretty comfy.
>>942538
It's just one of those anti-highrise fools.
>>941207
>Sharing walls with your neighbors
>Not having your own yard
>Having a "yard" that's 10 square feet and is in plain view of 30 other households
"No thanks"
>>943063
Why are you people so scared of a shared wall?
>>942201
looks like britbongia
>>943325
It's in the US.
>>943063
What do you people do in your backyards that requires so much damn privacy? Naked gardening?
>>943387
>only criminals or degenerates require or desire privacy
You are everything wrong with modern society.
Having a large private yard is a luxury that has no place in an urban environment.
Shared outdoor greenspace can be great without affording individual privacy.
Trying to compromise on this results in wasted, unusable space that nobody wants to spend time in.
>>943391
Anonymity and privacy is one of the major cultural distinctions between a town and a proper city. You desire a private yard because you're used to the neighbors giving a shit about what you do in it. In a city, well, you'll still have the occasional nosy neighbor, but the social networks involved are far too vast and complex for them to have any impact on your life.
And in response to the guy asking "where do you smoke weed?", you blow it out the window. No one cares, including the cops.
>>940584
Delicious
>>943387
I just want to be left alone when I'm at home, wallow in my kiddie pool without 30 pairs of eyes in me, and be able to smoke weed in my backyard and not have to blow it out a window like a teenager.
My goal is to have a house with a pool. I fucking love backyard pools.
>>943170
I can't play my music as loud without disturbing my neighbors if I have a shared wall
>>943395
>Having a large private yard is a luxury that has no place in an urban environment.
>Shared outdoor greenspace can be great without affording individual privacy.
That's, like, your opinion, man. Plenty of people seem to like having their own backyard and don't want to be around people when they just want to relax outside on their back patio around grass, trees, and flowers. I like parks too, why not both?
>>943400
I already have to deal with enough peoplw out in public all day, I don't want some turn of the century Mulberry Street scene when I get home where I have to make small talk with a neighbor every time I step outside. In not antisocial but I am an introvert, and want to just be left alone and relax in my backyard without anyone seeing or talking to me after a long day at work.
I lived in manhattan for a bit and loved it. Enjoying living in congested places is really just preference. Some people like the big yard and privacy thing.
Personally i'm the type who is almost reclusive but does enjoy meeting people, so when i've lived in a house with the big yard and that kind of deal, I met nobody in my town during pretty much my entire time living there and was quite lonely.
Living in manhattan, I met people every time I left my house because if I wanted to relax outside it was in a public place with probably 5000+ other people around at any given time. I had a much more healthy social life.
Sadly, you have to be so rich you literally shit gold bars to afford to live in manhattan. I moved there with 80grand from a lawsuit and made it a year before I couldn't afford it anymore.
>>943400
also, what this anon said. You want to smoke weed in a city? I'd just go for walks at night and smoke a joint. Nobody ever stopped me or implied that they cared at all.
>>943892
As a person who moved from a friendly small town to a large city as a teenager, I find your misconception to be pretty common among small town people, and also wrong.
Cities are much more suited to introverts because physical proximity isn't seen as free license to interact with someone. In a small town people get all up in your face over nothing because it's considered good etiquette to do so, and bad etiquette not to do so. In the city, even making eye contact with a stranger is somewhat intrusive.
The only neighbor in my building I'm on a first name basis with is a friend of a friend who I had drinks with multiple times before we started saying hello to each other. The people who live in the unit below me only reached wave-of-recognition status about five years into our neighbor relationship. Lady across the hall from me I've seen nearly every day for ten years, I only started interacting with her because her child got old enough to start talking to me on its own and I guess it was too autistic to realize I don't like kids.
Contrast that with small town life where if you're just walking down the street some nosy nancy can stop you and start interrogating you about some incredibly personal detail like your family life or whether you're dating anyone, for some trivial reason like you didn't seem like you were from around these parts, and that's treated as perfectly normal.
>>943908
>got an $80k windfall
>blew it in a year partying in an expensive neighborhood
>what? it's all gone? I guess I can't afford it anymore, what a surprise!
You couldn't afford it to begin with, congratulations on squandering the one lucky break you're ever going to get in life.
>>940652
I didn't even know I wanted this.
>>943942
Not him, but I don't really see a problem with spending unexpected cash on a year living as you please. Most people would just buy some unneeded material good. Sure he could invest it and that would maybe be better but not everyone cares to do.
>>944619
>a down payment on a house, or even a house in a less expensive area, is an unneeded material good
>a college education is an unneeded material good
>starting a business is an unneeded material good
You sound like you are surrounded by some not very smart people
>>944628
>a down payment on a house, or even a house in a less expensive area, is an unneeded material good
I'm afraid you're in the wrong thread. Houses are poor investments to begin with so unless you actually want to live in a house, it's a waste of money.
>a college education is an unneeded material good
How do you know if he needs or is interested in one?
>starting a business is an unneeded material good
Not everyone is interested in running a business.
>>944630
>Houses are poor investments to begin with
So get a condo instead. Renting is a waste of money. $80k is enough for a down payment on a condo in a fast-gentrifying neighborhood like the South Bronx or Hamilton Heights, he could have cashed out in a few years and bought the place he lived in while drinking $20 cocktails and taking joy rides in taxis for a year, and then he could have lived the dream forever, instead of just for a year, if only he could grasp the concept of delayed gratification.
Not everyone has the same goals in life, but only an idiot could defending blowing $80k by partying for a year.
>>944636
Again you're assuming he has the same interest as you in whatever you consider to be "the dream". As if he would be spending a year in Manhattan before returning to a life that he hates. Your inability to understand preferences outside of your own is remarkable.
>>944639
> whatever you consider to be "the dream"
Notice how I never said anything about my own dreams. He, however, told us flat out that he loved his life in the city and it was sad that he had to leave.
You are defending an idiot, because you yourself are an idiot.
>>944641
He loved the life he was living with his $80k year of pleasure. That's not the type of life he'd be living if he just bought a condo and lived modestly for the rest of his life.
>>943908
I like it how you're changing what he loved about Manhattan to suit your agenda, even though he said what he loved was being close to other people and having an active social life. And how lonely he was living in a less crowded area.
Just give it up, there is no way you can possibly make his choices out to be rational or justifiable. Unless you are now going to argue that his dream was to blow $80k and then be lonely but with happy memories forever, which wouldn't surprise me at this point.
>>944646
Nice assumption. Maybe he went somewhere else and lived happily close to people. You seem to be assuming he's completely destitute and that that 80k was his only shot at escaping the suburb. I still fail to see any reason why a year of leisure in Manhattan is somehow a bad expenditure if he enjoyed it and learned more about his preferences as a result.
>went to Denver to see my father
>downtown Denver is tiny compared to the monster of suburbia surrounding it
Ugliest shit ever.
I live in an older c. 1920s suburb in a Midwestern city. Lots of thoroughfares and easy access to the city core, inside the outer freeway belt etc. I recently got temporarily assigned to a newer suburb further out of town. It's typical of the newer burbs, just a small rural town that has been developed since the 1970s without upgrading or adding to the two country lanes that pass for roads. They just keep developing more commercial and higher density condo housing with the same inadequate roads. No question of mass transit. Their solution to traffic problems? Build series of roundabouts at every intersection. This is pretty much my idea of hell but it's where all the affordable housing is. If my city's public school system doesn't fix its shit I'm afraid I'll be stuck living in such a hellburb for the decent schools and attainable real estate.
>>941112
I grew up in a house like that, it was pretty cozy, but eventually when I got older I realized my parents had no need for a 6 bedroom house, and we never used most of our yard, but had to pay 4/5 grand every few years for outside landscaping.
>I promised my self I'd never have a 1 hr+ commute or I'd probably end up like Daria's dad
>>937917
where are the trees?
>>940652
very enlightening
thank you for posting
video looks ancient but addresses a current issue
>>942201
god damn it is lolipop-on-a-stick so fucking ugly
>>938328
>>940161
>>940419
All bretty good posts. Le Corbusier was a brilliant architect, but, as far as our current understanding reaches, not a very good urban planner. Of course, his ideas were at the time revolutionary and much needed in order to progress urbanism, but his work (Unité d'habitation) shows that pure modernism just isn't enough. If you're interested in these topics, you should check out The Art Of Building Cities (Camillo Sitte), A City Is Not A Tree (Christopher Alexander) and Delirious New York (Rem Koolhaas).
>>940173
A fellow slobro on /n/? What are the odds!
>>945274
They are at the sawmill, waiting to be turned into more attractive and affordable single-detached housing!
