Comment by bowlich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bowlich | Hacker News Reader

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Pockets of commerce is the thing that is totally gone from suburbia.

I went back to the Cleveland suburbs for a grandparent's funeral several years back and I could definitely see how in the 1950s the structure of the suburb would've been great for the large Catholic families that lived there.

It was centred around the VFW, several parks, and a school. Children could play in the streets. Parents could socialize at the VFW and walk home. Each corner had a shopping complex with a grocery, gas station, barber etc. It was never more than 1/2 mile to all your commercial needs -- and a safe sidewalk walk if you sent kids to go get milk or eggs. If you were working downtown there was public transit to take you from the suburb to the city center and back again. I could see how this would be a very nice set up for where my parents grew up.

Today this doesn't exist. The corner shopping complexes are entirely vacant. Grocery is now only available at bigger box-stores requiring an hour of commuting in traffic on roads that don't have sidewalks. The school closed. The VFW is no longer culturally relevant.

What you're describing actually has a name, "streetcar suburb".

Regardless of whether a streetcar serves the neighborhood, it is characterized by a town center (or "main street"). Retail, commerce, schools, and 3rd-places are nucleated near the main street. Distances are short, like you describe. It is in many ways an urban center and functions like a city. They're often just outside bigger cities and have multiple transportation options to get to the bigger city. These were the first suburbs but these days they're very much considered a part of the city at least symbolically or by name.

In the early naughts the "New Urbanist" movement among urban planners and architects sought to transplant this form of urbanism back to American suburbs. It was marginally successful but seemed to lose steam. The most relevant thing that remains from that effort was what is now called "complete streets" initiatives and measurements like "walkability score".

Many of the old streetcar suburbs still exist, and so do many new urbanist efforts. You can find these places if you look for them. I live in South Philly, but there are places outside Philly that are still streetcar suburbs. Walkability scores are almost as high as the big city, you can get to work in the city with a reasonably fast commuter train (septa for PA, patco for NJ). There's also office parks that are relatively short distances from these burbs-- Tech folks are vastly more likely to work in those than in the big city (which, sadly, is dominated by lawyers, hospitals, class-A corporate, retail).

Do you have any insight into why these commercial corners disappeared and if they were really common across the whole USA? The population density is still roughly the same in suburbs, so the only thing I can think of is consolidation into bigger stores and malls.

In places where they still exist, people drive past them to the mega-supermarkets and big box stores. Where the smaller shops exist, they no longer have general purpose retail, but are specialty shops, services, restaurants, etc. Or they are run down and occupied by low rent businesses. Or they've gone massively upscale. You can get anything you want except the basic necessities for daily living.

Actually I wonder if a rise in restaurants has crowded out other forms of retail.

And then in new developments, it may be that housing is more profitable than small retail shops.

I admit that there are 3 supermarkets within walking distance of my house in a pedestrian friendly neighborhood. I can reach them on foot or bike in a few minutes. But they are expensive and have limited selection so we drive a few miles to a huge discount supermarket at the edge of town, every 2 or 3 weeks, and only get perishables at the nearby stores.

Yeah. I live fairly near a fairly small (and admittedly somewhat downscale) city. Even if I lived walking distance from the downtown there which I don't I wouldn't actually shop there. There are a couple bank branches, a travel agency!, a convenience store, a few mostly downscale restaurants, etc. There's very little I would go there far. I'd drive to the local supermarket or Walmart.

An interesting thing in my neighborhood is that there are a couple of sizable retirement apartments, and also a row of apartments that have a lot of people attached to the university such as grad students and visiting scholars. These are people who might be less inclined to drive, benefit from shops that cater to them, and don't have space for huge bulk purchases. There's also a growing affluent population moving back into the middle of town.

A significant student population definitely helps lead to a happy medium between the hollowed out downtown and the boutique/art gallery/wine bar extremes.

Indeed, and the academic workforce helps too. For instance there's a premium on housing that's within easy bike commuting distance of the university, hospital, etc.

100% Amazon.

The walk to your mailbox is shorter than the walk from your parking spot into your store (and back).

Big box stores (and malls) were killing most local downtown businesses before Amazon was a thing. The sad reality is a lot of small-scale local retail just wasn't very good. High prices, lousy selection.

It will be interesting to see what shopping patterns stay in place post-pandemic. On the one hand, even I who already shopped a lot online, have switched even more to Amazon rather than taking a run to the store for something I don't actually need right now. On the other hand, I was picking something up at an Apple Store a few days ago (for reasons) and it was a little bit surprising to me that the shopping mall was actually pretty busy.

What's a VFW? a quick google search told me it is > Veterans of Foreign Wars

Yes. Pretty much a club house, pub, community center whose membership consisted of veterans.

The suburb was built within a decade of the end of WWII and during the Korean war. So it was a safe bet that most households had a member who was a Veteran or related to a Veteran who could wave them in.

As time progressed, less and less households in the neighborhood would probably qualify. So its no longer a community centerpiece.

More generally, there were a number of fraternal organizations (Knights of Columbus was another) where the men, many of which probably worked in the same factory, would gather in the evening while their wives looked after the kids. Bowling was big for some of the same reasons. Look back at some of the TV shows of the era that featured working class people, or even a cartoon like the Flintstones, and you'll see that they were just an accepted part of life.

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