How Tasteless Suburbs Become Beloved Urban Neighborhoods | Hacker News Reader

How Tasteless Suburbs Become Beloved Urban Neighborhoods

theatlantic.com

67 pointsbrudgers58 comments

There does seem to be considerable distaste for the suburbs on regular display in large parts of the media. This title captures that perfectly: while the housing stock remains the same, it magically transforms from tasteless when suburban to beloved when the suburban area becomes urban.

There does seem to be considerable distaste for the suburbs on regular display in large parts of the media

Yes, this is eternal.

Meanwhile, the people who actually buy and live in these houses continue to want the things they've always wanted -- an affordable dwelling with space for the children to play, along with room for a cookout and maybe a small garden, in a safe neighborhood, with decent schools.

Conformance with the latest theories of architectural aesthetics isn't even on their lists, much less at the top of it.

From the article:

One is that everything old was once new, and new things often provoke a backlash. We ought to be humble in believing that our opinions represent some timeless, objective truth, looking backwards or forwards. The same bungalows that seem to us quaint and charming were tacky and soulless to many of the people watching them be built; it seems more than possible that the new apartment buildings we vilify today will be thought of sentimentally by future generations who know them only as an important part of their city since they were born.

Hum. Would you say that the evident distaste in media's suburbs portrayal is "architectural aesthetics* related?

My perception is that, although there's an architectural critique component when they portray suburb houses as "all the same", most of the disdain arises from a notion of individuals which "settled" for something less their dreams; from a notion of individuals which accepted that that's "all there is", a nice-y house and a family.

Relocating from suburban North Carolina to the Bay Area has really opened my eyes to one fact: the majority of America has no f'ing clue what the problem is because almost no one (percentage-wise) has experienced both sides of the "problem." There just aren't that many metros that are growing so fast they have the kinds of problems that exist here (SFBA). I lived in a city of 150,000, where my beautiful 4300+sqft/400m^2 home in a very nice neighborhood with manicured lawns, a playground, neighborhood pool, and 2mi/3.2km of wooded walking paths can be had for ~$600,000. In the majority of the country, that's a high end luxury home price. In the Bay Area, it's a hovel price but -- even if you could find a house like it, which is very hard -- would be a $4m house on a postage stamp lot in a cramped neighborhood.

I know it's impractical to build neighborhoods and homes like that in a place like the peninsula, but I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it... a lot. If you can't afford to live near work out here, and if you don't rent in an actual urban center, by the time you get home in the evenings the traffic has drained you so much it's hard to be motivated to do anything besides eat & sleep, rinse * repeat.

To your point, if you transplanted some of the nicer neighborhoods in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, for example, almost anywhere else in the country, and they'd just be slightly run down, mostly mediocre neighborhoods most middle/upper class folks would pass up in favor of new construction. And those are $3-5m houses here!

The auction-like homebuying isn't to blame. It's the paucity of supply. Damn NIMBYs.

It's also location. I never appreciated where I lived until I traveled across the United States. It's being close to mountains, nice mild weather, close to the beach, close to well paying jobs. Never cared about being close to "the excitement of San Francisco" though. I always felt it was a boring city.

For years, certain parts of the Bay Area were kept secret. They have pretty much all been exposed--thanks mainly to the Internet, and I guess Apple/tech? I still regret not buying the small house out in west Marin I could have bought for under $100K. I should have just bought it.

I was with you until the "well paying jobs" part. Are they well paying in relation to the insane real estate prices? When I hear of developers getting $80-100k in SF, that sounds...not great.

There's a big dichotomy between the developers working for tech companies and the developers working everywhere else. Most tech companies do a decent job of taking care of people, but those 80-100k salaries are very common in the non-tech industries (who also employ thousands and thousands of technical staff).

I think the echoes of the new topographics remains loud and in people's consciousness. It pervades with thoughts of materiality and alienation. Robert adams's Colorado springs.

The article seem to ignore a large part of the 20th century were in the post-war period many European countries took the "just build more and higher" approach extending cities with high-density suburbs. At the time forward looking and idealistic planned communities, today neglected and infamous for their social problems.

I'm a "city kid", I've always have lived and prefer to live in urban areas. I think these suburbs often have a undeserved reputation, but that doesn't mean that a simplistic argument of "thing we didn't like before turned out good, so maybe doing thing people don't like now will be fine" has any bearing. Like anything else you still have to look at the facts, weigh the arguments and if you try your best hopefully come up with a winning compromise.

You hear a lot about the bad examples of this, but little about the good examples. I remember wandering through a working class high rise area in Southern Spain, and being amazed by how friendly the atmosphere was, but you'd never hear that area discussed in newspapers and magazines. The fact is living in apartments is very common all across Continental Europe, and that area is not well-represented by the Banlieues, or bad council estates in London.

FWIW, although I don't like Brutalist architecture, my attitude is that these mistakes are almost entirely down to social policies that came with the construction - or at least a mismatch between construction and policy.

In particular, it was a mistake putting large percentages of very disadvantaged, vulnerable families together into brutalist, modernist constructions that they found ugly, where they didn't want to live, and then not putting in the money necessary to maintain them. I don't think the same problems are likely to be repeated if you're replacing low density suburbs filled with wealthy professionals, with high density flats filled with wealthy professionals, who are specifically choosing to move there.

> then not putting in the money necessary to maintain them.

I think this is key. Brutalist architecture tends to weather well on the outside. Steel reinforced concrete needs maintenance just like everything else, but possible not on the same schedule, and not always of the same type. I think there's a reinforced loop of politicians not wanting to spend money maintaining these large, "ugly" (in appearance and purpose) structures, and getting away with that for a while, possibly for longer than their term. Then they start degrading from neglect, and now they are truly ugly,both in appearance in in what has happened to the people that live there (through more neglect).

If one were to follow the highly-cynical concept that 'every article is a "submarine article" for something', then it could logically follow that many of the apartment-bashing articles are secretly advertisements for house sales.

If you run a house construction general contractor, or maybe you're a lumber producer, and your sales hit a slump, how do you advertise? Everyone hates "normal" ads, but "native" ads are too new to be known. So you write up an article about the pains of apartment living, and shuttle it off to your friends at an influential newsblog.

> The fact is living in apartments is very common all across Continental Europe

I had to google what a "Brutalist architecture" is. Turns out it's somewhat similar to how Central and Eastern Europe countries look like as a whole: socialists governments used to love this style and were building tons of these. It's now extremely common. Wikipedia says that 1/3 of Czechs live in buildings like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Dlhe_die...

Which is probably representative to the whole former Eastern Bloc. Here in Poland these building were being built from 1950-ties to early 1990-ties, non-stop, one after another, district after district, city (and, to a lesser degree, town and village too!) after city.

I've lived all my life in one or another of those. They are old, very badly constructed and ugly as hell, but they are inhabitable and they provide homes for millions of people. It's somewhat gross to hear your neighbour peeing at night, but it somewhat "works" - you have a cheap shelter for really many people close to city centres.

I don't really want to make any point, I just wanted to provide some context to your statement about how common living in apartments is on this side of the Berlin wall.

Brutalist is a particular style, I think what was really meant was "prefabricated" — the buildings could be assembled on-site from parts (wall sections etc) manufactured elsewhere.

A huge number of houses had been destroyed in WW2, so rebuilding them quickly and cheaply was a priority. It wasn't just socialist governments, the UK built loads of these too — though as prosperity increased, they became much less common.

Singapore and Hong Kong (and to some extent even New York) seem to be doing fine with wealthy people in dense housing.

We only see this type of density in areas where there is no other choice.

You don't find Singapores in the middle of North Dakota, or even in Ohio. Why not?

Because approximately no-one wants to live there?

Ohio has a population of 11.59 million.

Singapore has a population of 5.3 million.

> forward looking and idealistic planned communities, today neglected and infamous for their social problems.

I meet many people who believe tall buildings = social problems. But when you go to Boston, the places infamous for their social problems aren't tall buildings. They have triple deckers like this:

https://goo.gl/maps/a5iJXP5FE4t

Cars were shot up on that block over the weekend. Neighborhood has the same triple deckers as parts of Cambridge where each of those buildings would fetch $2MM.

Despite people's beliefs that social problems come in the form of tall buildings like Pruitt–Igoe, the honest truth is that the causes of social problems generally are not related to the shape of the building. In the case of Pruitt-Igoe, one only has to look across the city to Cochran Gardens to see that success came in exactly the same building form.

As someone surrounded by the new construction in Seattle, these things are hideous.

Predominant materials include cinder blocks, a random orange wall, corrugated metal, yellow windows jutting out at a weird angle, and one wall made from reclaimed artisanal barnwood. And that's all on one building.

Density, urban sprawl, NIMBYism, single family homes, etc. are issues for someone else. I just wish we were seeing some good looking buildings.

All these debates about housing and transportation in the USA seem to never even approach the idea that high density would solve the problem. Build vertically, build tightly - that is where urban happiness lies... Not in an individual house at the end of some suburb where no one can go anywhere without a car !

" Build vertically, build tightly - that is where urban happiness lies... "

Most people do not agree. They have always moved to low density areas any time it becomes feasible. This is a constant throughout just about all of human history, and under just about every form of social organization. The wealthy have always had country estates, even in the days of ancient Rome. The nomenklatura of the Soviet Union had their country dachas, etc.

You are getting the cause and effect backward. The car made it possible for people to spread out while remaining employed, and they took advantage of that capability. It didn't force them to do it.

It's called voting with your feet, dude.

This has been shifting. Even though it might still be true for "most" people (>50%) the portion of people preferring urban environments is increasing, and fewer people are leaving cities after starting families.

http://www.planetizen.com/node/77680/do-millennials-opt-citi...

I live in London and always wanted a nice detached house with a small garden. This wish of mine prices me out of London. We are about to buy the above mentioned house in a nice suburban area. Not because we prefer suburban to urban, simply because of the economy of the London property market.

Although that supposed trend seems to be exaggerated--at least in the US. According to this piece http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials-are-less... for example, the actual trend seems to be that a fairly narrow slice of demographics (25-34 with college degrees) mildly prefer living in a few specific dense urban environments like Brooklyn.

Overall there is something of an urbanization trend (especially in emerging economies) but it's not as pronounced as it's often made out to be.

A recent Marketplace podcast discussed this as well. Affordability was a large factor in why the suburbs are still popular.

  “There has been an increase in college-educated young adults living in very dense
  urban neighborhoods — smart young things living in Brooklyn, in downtown
  San Francisco,” said housing analyst Jed Kolko at U.C. Berkeley’s
  Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “But it’s not true of that generation
  overall. Only about one third of 25-to-34-year-olds have a college degree.
  Today they are actually less likely to be living in urban neighborhoods,
  as opposed to suburban areas, than that same age group was in 2000.”

1. http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/young-buyers-want-...

Everyone has their thing, and I definitely see the appeal to urban living when you're young and have time to yourself. Why anyone would want to live in a highrise or in a dense city when they have children, though, over having your own yard or quiet, safe neighborhood to play in, doesn't make sense to me.

Agreed. It's not that millennials are different in any way (preferring high rises vs the McMansions of the Boomer generation), but instead the millennials are putting off children until much later and just don't have many school aged kids yet.

In 5-10 years, they'll be heading out of the cities just like their parents and grandparents did.

That's definitely one interpretation of at least some of the increasing millennial urbanization (such as it is) that I've read. That it's more about delaying moving to the suburbs/buying a house for a variety of reasons including marrying and having children later and the economy (especially of a few years back where of the currently available data is from).

I think the reason for this is that most millennials are still in their 20's and family formation has been delayed by the economic problems by 5 - 10 years. Thus, less 30 year olds have school-aged children versus their parent's generation. In 5-10 more years, I think you'll see more migration out to the burbs as this generation's children reach school age.

I don't think that building high, dense housing is the important part. I think what you need are walkable neighborhoods where all the basic necessities are met in a small area. If you have to drive twenty minutes to get to a supermarket, a school, a restaurant or a bank, there is something wrong with the neighborhood. High density makes it easier to solve that problem, because it makes local businesses more profitable, but it is not strictly necessary. I'm pretty sure that people prefer a small house with a garden to a high-rise if the neighborhoods provide similar infrastructure.

Don't forget work. As much as I love having supermarkets, banks, schools and restaurants within walking distance, the one thing i fear losing more than any of that with an impending move is not being able to walk to work.

Or alternatively, spread out and include good public transportation. Several European countries do this well.

Maybe, but the cost of good public transportation per inhabitant increases as density lowers - as does every infrastructure cost. Density makes excellent public services more affordable.

This somewhat reminds me of San Francisco today. Most of the "hot neighborhoods" now were immigrant neighborhoods even only 50 years ago.

People are paying $2M for homes that 50 years ago were in areas regarded as low income. Tiny homes!!

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

Not totally: returns to people living in dense cities have risen, per Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City.

In addition, most cities have erected draconian land-use policies, which I wrote about here: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu.... That means demand is rising rapidly while supply is being strangled. Prices rise.

You don't think it's amazing that people will pay exorbitant amounts of money for housing that a few decades ago was regarded a ghetto? I do.

It wasn't the housing that was regarded as ghetto, but the people who used to live there.

That was actually my point. The areas of SF that have gotten ridiculously expensive are areas where the housing is actually sub-standard to what you'd see in most of America.

The house that just sold for $2M wouldn't even be worth $200K in most US cities. The house is just beat up and old.

I could see paying $2M for a gorgeous house that is either new or recently upgraded. There are houses that are basically condemned going for >$1M!

I think the mistake you're making is thinking that the value of houses in SF is dominated by the value of their structure. Rather, it's dominated by the value of the land they occupy. In the case of the $2M sub-standard SF house in a desirable area you mentioned, if it burned down to the ground, the land would still be worth well north of a million dollars.

Edit: wording

Could be both.

Here in NYC you can find a lot of tenement housing going for exorbitant prices - originally built on the cheap for the poorest of the poor.

It's why some $3500 apartments have showers in the kitchen - saves on running more pipe.

Nah, not at all. Neighborhoods change a real lot over a short amount of time. I grew up in a city that went from desirable (my parent's lifetime), to very undesirable (my childhood), and then back to desirable again (last decade). That's why I always laugh when people talk about their home's future value in 50 years which is basically a dice roll.

Amazing, but not surprising.

Price and value are two completely different things. If you are able to spot (or predict) high value for a low price the world is in your hands.

By the other hand if you follow the sheep and buy scarce but low value stuff for an high price you're in the rat race..

I live in Bath - it's a world heritage city, it's considered very beautiful.

Thing is, when it was built, it was viewed as a sort of tasteless Vegas-cum-Milton Keynes.

It's just a never-ending cycle, like most things.

I agree with the Vegas comparison, but what made you think of Milton Keynes?

Milton Keynes is the standard example in British usage of a boring city.

It's one of the few cities in the UK with a grid layout, which is enough to convince many people that it must be boring.

http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage

Unfortunately I don't think I've seen a "tiny" design that's wheelchair accessible.

Right, almost all of them involve ladders to lofts or something, but there is no reason a tiny house can't have a normal bed near the ground if you need that.

Anyway, by any chance did you read my page? I am pretty bummed out because I have been trying to link to that tiny villages thing from everywhere I can just so maybe a few people would read my idea, but the traffic analysis on the github page keeps saying there is 0 traffic (except for 2 the other day and 1 of them was me).

Hi ilaksh, I read through your page although I don't think it would be my preference for living there are some neat ideas.

Adding these simple lines to your css file will make your site instantly much more appealing to read!

    body {
        max-width: 960px;
        margin: auto;
    }

There's a bit of a problem with the page so far:

http://imgur.com/zhPbYuA - see the whitespace?

Maybe adding photos would help the traffic?

There is an image. Well, thanks for reading through the text if you had time, really just trying to get the ideas out there.

I did not see any whitespace like that on my browsers (obviously). What browser do you have? I will have to test with other browsers and find a way around that.

my sub 400 sqft "apartment" would have been accessible if it had an elevator to get into it and the bathroom were adjusted accordingly.

344 sq ft is enough for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB2-2j9e4co

Yes, that lady's youtube channel is amazing.. I watched most of her videos and it has been an inspiration for me.

By any chance did you read my tinyvillages page? github says there were 0 views :/.

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