Is there anything wrong with liking urbanism AND auto-oriented places?
 

My family always criticizes me because I'm not a picky eater. I like eating. I'll pretty much eat almost everything.

And I'm sort of coming to that conclusion about built environments.

I LOVE urbanism. Narrow lots, walkability, limiting parking, density, etc. I hate when auto-oriented projects interrupt a cohesive urban environment.

But when I drive around in sprawl, I find it somewhat less pleasing, but I still enjoy it for being the completely different world that it is. So many people live out here, and it's kind of a feat of engineering in and of itself. Lots of freedom of mobility, you tend to travel at higher speeds, and you can get to such a varying number of destinations of all different types and typologies.

Is it strange that I appreciate both environments? I like them as two separate entities, and I do not want to see them mixed. Does anybody else see it this way?

^^^

When it comes to the sprawl or some suburbs for example, even if they are spaced out, I always look at the character of the house. If its a place where every house looks identical, with that cheap vinyl siding and white/greyish, no-façade or no stone-treatment kind of place... the military barracks look... that is gross.

Natural scenery or topography also plays a role.

Urban areas and suburban areas have their charms. Even the suburbs!

A place where folks take care of their homes is always ideal. Nothing worse than going to some town and the folks have trash looking yards or let the homes go to waste.

you're entitled to like and dislike whatever you want, just like the rest of us.

that said, i would challenge the notion that the two are entirely separate worlds, because everything is relative, and the edges have A LOT of bleed.

case in point, i live in a quintessential "half-way" neighborhood caught in-between.

when my wife's friend from a small town in wisconsin came to visit us, literally her first words upon walking in our door were "oh my god, i had no idea you guys lived in downtown chicago!" (our home is in fact 6.5 miles outside of downtown chicago).

and when of a friend of a friend who lives in manhattan came for a visit he remarked on "what a nice suburban area this is".

so it's all about persepctive.

I like urban environments and I like rural environments (which are inherently auto-oriented). Not a fan of the worst-of-both-worlds auto-oriented (sub)urban ones though.

I get a kick out of the completely unreasonable sprawl of the Coachella Valley. It's so irresponsible -- it's essentially a grid of six-lane freeways LARPING as surface streets on Mars -- but it's very much itself, totally unapologetic.

In around 2007 it lined up so that I had the use of this old Hess & Eisenhardt XJ-S convertible for a week or so down there and I was rolling down this stretch of 111 at dusk every night, speakers blaring like it was my own private '80s movie.

I wasn't thinking about Jane Jacobs at all.




Of course it's not as good now and there's too much traffic. :haha:

This shouldn't be misinterpreted as a City vs. Suburb discussion.

It's really about the fact that I somewhat enjoy automobile oriented areas for what they are. Wauwatosa in Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, is an example. Drive around there, they've got everything, and it's all car oriented. Same with Steely's favorite place, Schaumburg, IL, or Oak Brook, IL.

They are what they are. The scale is huge. They are unabashedly auto-oriented. If you have a car, enjoy it. If you don't, go home.

Do I want to see more of that type of development? No. Do I want this type of development to encroach on walkable urban areas? Definitely no.

Do I still aesthetically prefer walkable, urban areas? Obviously I do.

My point is that I don't believe that one HAS to hate auto oriented places just because they appreciate urbanism and skyscrapers. And I think I am one of the people who can appreciate and enjoy both.

Tosa is in fact a perfect example of one of the shades of gray.

a decent chunk of it is craptacularly auto-centric, but they also have a traditional town center: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0494...7i16384!8i8192

and tidy traditional residential sidestreets that aren't as horrible as modern housing subdivisions: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0551...7i13312!8i6656


around the edges these things tend to get very blurry. it's a spectrum; not binary.

Chicago is both very auto-centric (like you can drive basically everywhere) and urban, but a huge fraction of the space is given to cars and the like.
When I think non-auto-centric I think places like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5083...7i13312!8i6656

Hi.

Well, this is the main point.
Dense central cities like the central districts of NYC or Paris can no longer support car-oriented developments because too many people live there.

So unless you're kinda better-off and can afford both, you must make a choice.
Either the central city, then you're likely in need to find an alternative to your car that would end up cumbersome and make you waste too much of your time.
Or cheaper remote suburbs where there is much more room, single-family homes + backyards and all, but much less activity and some different kind of constraints.

Notice that more importantly, raising kids in a densely built environment also requires some money, because room is more expensive where it's harder to find.
I don't think any regulation can really help it. It's just a natural rule endorsed by the market.
Whenever anything grows both desirable and a bit harder to find, it goes more expensive.

This. Traditionally, people with the means to do so usually had 2 homes, a city home and a country side home. Suburbs tried to blend those 2 together into a single thing, usually failing at both.
Wouldnt mind having a part time home in a pedestrian-hostile locale like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6736...7i13312!8i6656

Or a nice pedestrian-unfiendly house like this in the Keys:
https://www.google.com/maps/@24.9135...7i13312!8i6656

To me, the perfect compromise would be somewhere like Lincoln Park and similar neighborhoods in Chicago. It's urban but you can still own a car and park it off street.

I think there's nothing wrong with liking sprawl--and I also think there's nothing wrong with disliking sprawl.

To me it's all about scale.

I live in a very auto-oriented small/medium city: Ventura. It has a very quaint, walkable downtown area, a very good portion of the city is pre-war or pre-1970s suburbia (where I live), and then there's an eastern portion of the city that is the large mile grids of 70s-current developments with 6 lane arterials, sound walls, and shopping centers at every major intersection. I'd rather be shot in the face than live out there. Oxnard and Camarillo (nearby suburbs, though Oxnard is twice as large) You couldn't pay me enough...

Ventura works though, fairly well.

Is it urban? Not really.
Is it soul-crushing? Not really because there are parts of even the east side that are occasionally necessary.

That being said, it's a city of 105,000 people.

When you multiply that 20-100 times that blah suburbia part becomes something else entirely for me. It angers me. Not in a 'Jane Jacobs would be ashamed' way, but in a truly, 'I fucking hate everything about this place' way, especially when driving.

I recently spent a week in Folsom, California and also visited family in the Rocklin, California area around Sacramento. Driving around each, and between them, I found myself constantly agitated by nearly everything I saw, every experience I had, and found nearly the entire trip miserable (with some notable exceptions when I escaped to DT and Midtown Sacramento).

It's not just the driving thing either. I drive everywhere. My company is located in Santa Barbara (30 miles from my house) and so I drive all the time.

But those exurbs which are slowly eating at the edges of every US City? God damn do they suck.

It is exactly why I don't live in Phoenix or Sacramento anymore. I just can't.

^ I loved Ventura. It's got the beach, quaint downtown and good mix of old/ new developments. close enough to LA to benefit from from its amenities but far enough to move at a slower pace.

I get that way living in Phoenix sometimes, especially if I've been driving (or browsing SSP) too much.

Somewhat counterintuitively, bicycling as my main transportation has made living in suburbia OK. I live in a 1970s suburban neighborhood--not the most attractive, but also not 2000s beige stucco tract homes--and commute by bike into urban-ish downtown Tempe. When I'm driving on errands, or on the rare commute, I quickly get that feeling you describe of just being agitated by the ugly built environment. But when I bike, it's more of a "me against the world" feeling--it's mostly just me on the reasonably wide and accessible bike lanes, and biking is just fun wherever you do it.

I've got family in both Rocklin and Folsom, and have made the trip between them many a time. I know exactly what you're talking about--especially Rocklin. It's got to be the worst of all worlds--massive, tree-less cookie-cutter tracts of homes that were value-engineered into dung heaps, postage-stamp sized yards with high, plain walls, overly wide roads that eventually twist and turn in the most irrational ways, and interminable red light cycles. Much of Folsom is as bad, but at least it has an old downtown for strolling.

I totally agree. I've only been to Chicago twice, and both times, I got around by driving. I found it much easier to drive around Chicago and finding parking than driving around and finding parking in San Francisco; in fact, I didn't even find driving in Chicago to be intimidating at all, whereas the first few times I drove in San Francisco, I was a little intimidated, but I've been to SF so many times now that driving in it doesn't faze me at all.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/54/b4...e520b4e3e8.png pinterest.com

In general in Seattle-area, I find some of the auto-oriented areas to be nicer than Seattle itself, like Kent or Tukwila.

I don't know if this is because they are auto-oriented, or because they are greener.

Absolutely. Now that I work in the burbs, I see both sides.

The energy and life of the city is very engrossing, I can't help but love it.

However, driving around towns like Glen Ellyn and Elmhurst, I find the peace and quiet really nice too. And I also like having drive-thrus everywhere because I am lazy.


It's kind of like how I enjoy different transportation. When I am on the train I wish I was in a car and when I am in a car I wish I was on a train. Life.