Quote:
Originally Posted by chris08876
Suburbia can be done right if it meets a few requirements:
1) House diversity - big diversity in homes where a lot of houses are unique and its not the same cut and paste job
2) Landscaping - this is important. Your diversity of flora and trees and property owners who care about the look
3) No trucks or cars on the lawn... keep it on pavement
4) sidewalks on both sides.
5) Oak trees or decent flora along the side walk edges (more an added value of older, mature suburbs)
6) Residents who take care of the properties and who care
IMO, if it meets all 6 requirements, its a good suburb. A suburb with character and love can be a great place to live and also visually will look nice. Unfortunately tends to be an upper middle class or wealthy area, because some of those suburbs look very nice but they can be nice visual places to live IF DONE right.
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My "nightmare" was that I would have to spend the rest of my life in my Houston suburb. Despite how comfortable the home was or tidy the neighborhoods, it always felt very isolating. Despite living there for well over a decade, I never saw most of my neighbors beyond them driving in or out of their attached garages. All backyards were surrounded by tall wooden fences. No front porches, no lawn chairs out front, few kids playing out front. And when walking through the neighborhood, especially during the day, I was nearly always the only person on the street or in front of their house. It was as if being outdoors and not in a car was entering hostile territory. While walking I would sometimes see suspicious cars driving around, and on a couple of accessions had objects thrown at me from cars, so in a sense it was.
But the neighborhood "looked" good, and often get recommended as one of the "best" neighborhoods.
My former street in the suburbs met all 6 criteria, more or less. But the subdivision was an island, surrounded by roadways that were either unwalkable (
no sidewalks, ditches, heavy traffic, etc), or
prettified parkways that perhaps looked good from a car (see #2 and #4) but not useful for getting or going anywhere on foot.
I think a #7 is needed, and should be a central "Main Street" area with accommodations for bike and walkers, preferable close enough to residential areas where people can actually walk or bike to them. It doesn't even have to be just shops, but it could be a central park or town square, but one that has more than just
green space and a playing field but can serve as a neighborhood destination of sorts. It could even be a focal point of things like schools and churches. But it needs to be more than a series of parking lots.
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