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Comment by ToucanLoucan | Hacker News Reader

> If strip malls and subdivisions remind you of home

And if they don't? If you find them alienating symbols of soulless consumption for consumption's sake? If they make you think of the very real and well understood racist practices like redlining, and the gatekeeping of federally backed mortgages that tracked along racist and classist lines? If you consider that they are economically awful, the understood causes of failing city budgets, ever-expanding and ever-clogged highway systems, ecological disasters, etc. etc. etc.? But no by all means, let's continue doing... all of that so that some deadeyed suburbanites can keep playing "look at my big house and my big lawn and my big SUV, what do you mean climate change, I can't go to the city it's scary!"

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Oh that's rich, like city and urban areas aren't historically racist either.

Everywhere is racist, but suburbs were built on racism and they're maintained by it.

Sounds like you might want to step away from the computer, walk around and meet people in these "racist suburbs" that you lambast. There's very few around me at least that are white majority. I see worse race and class divisions in the city neighborhoods.

Right. Urbanism is a primary driver of racial strife and violence. Look at crime stats. Cities make people violent. Nature makes people calmer and less likely to commit violent acts.

In many major cities, racism being a major factor in the development of the suburbs is plain undeniable historic fact.

Atlanta, for example, may have been known as "the city too busy to hate" but continues to suffer from many issues that are a direct result of white flight and deliberate efforts to keep minorities out of the suburbs. It's why the METRA train lines and public transportation in general has such limited coverage. It's why the metro area is a mess of disjointed services. It's why "Atlanta" has a population of over 6 million but the City of Atlanta has less than half a million residents.

None of this happened by accident. In the most extreme case, a 30 mile long, 10 foot wide city existed for decades solely to contain the City of Atlanta.[1] This happened in less blatant ways all over the metro area and bitter fighting to keep Atlanta out (with "Atlanta" being unsubtle code for "minorities") was a recurring theme throughout the 20th century.

The people living there today may not necessarily be racist, but the existence of the suburbs themselves is pretty directly attributable to racism. Some of those burbs are majority minority today; that doesn't mean that their formation wasn't racist or that that history doesn't have real knock-on effects.

[1] - https://www.wabe.org/how-atlanta-was-kept-out-cobb-county-10...

I would urge you to consider therapy.

Went! Quite pleased with my results. Still feel like suburbs suck ass though.

Edit: And to add a note, telling people to "get therapy" for expressing opinions you don't agree with sucks pretty hard. I don't know what kind of therapy you're envisioning here but I struggle to think of how chatting with a well-educated and empathetic person about the utter state of our world is meant to make me feel better about it, but it's not like any therapy I've had nor do I believe anyone would really benefit from.

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