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Comment by RHSeeger | Hacker News Reader

Nobody I know would call that street the city. In my mind, "the city" is, minimally, houses that are a few feet apart, small yard in back/front, pretty much nothing on the side. Frequently, it's 2-3 story buildings, with whole floors rented out as an apartment. That's my "least dense" vision of a city. Anything less than that (ie, full yards) falls into my vision of suburb.

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That street is basically identical to most of the city of Chicago. The only difference is fewer 2-flats.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9301849,-87.7195955,3a,75y,3...

>That street is basically identical to most of the city of Chicago. The only difference is fewer 2-flats.

The front yard space and number of driveways in the Oak Park link also stuck out to me.

This is the Chicago block I grew up on. It's less dense than Oak Park. It's easy find blocks like it elsewhere in Chicago. Jeff Park in Chicago and Oak Park are basically clones of each other.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7099143,-87.6801127,3a,75y,1...

This is really what most of Chicago looks like (modulo economic conditions in the different neighborhoods --- they're not all this upscale). It's a city of neighborhoods. Most of the streetscapes that jump to mind about Chicago, if you don't live here, are places people basically don't live.

Wow, you weren't kidding about the relative density between those areas. I'd consider Oak Park dense compared to most suburbs, just not as dense as some neighborhoods in Chicago. I'm most familiar with the north side neighborhoods and had those kind of lots in mind, with their near non-existent front yards, with front steps right off the sidewalk, and virtually no front driveways.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9405345,-87.6750174,3a,75y,2...

My old stomping grounds. I lived in Lakeview (incl. this block) for a long time.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9403868,-87.6590203,3a,75y,3...

Apartment building on Pine Grove in Lakeview for me and then a beautiful old two flat in Ravenswood. My rent in Pine Grove in 1999 was $400 I think for a two room apartment.

Haha my wife lived on Pine Grove and I lived a couple blocks from that spot in Lakeview. Small world.

To compare, a residential neighborhood a fifth the population of oak park, mostly pre-war and what a German would consider as "urban":

wiki, use translator: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichlinghausen-S%C3%BCd Maps overview with borders highlighted: https://maps.app.goo.gl/fvr34T8JbLEVQLAF8 Street view of a normal street there; though I recommend 3D view for a better understanding: https://maps.app.goo.gl/QXEGChFvHciAq8Va8?g_st=ac

This is btw. 2.9x as dense as Oak Park, IL.

Yes, I agree, Oak Park could be a lot denser; that's what I'm working on.

> Most of the streetscapes that jump to mind about Chicago, if you don't live here, are places people basically don't live.

Note that 41k live in the Loop and 27k live in Jefferson Park.

Maybe if you sample by area, places look more suburban than stereotypical cities, but by population, lots of people live in the dense parts.

100k in the Near North Side, which I think is basically a “downtown” streetscape.

And of course many in the in-between density neighborhoods (eg 71k in Logan Square).

Source:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_areas_in_Chicago

Small world, my wife and I literally just moved to Beverly not far from there. This area is a bit of liminal space between city and suburbs (or at least my definition of them) and it can vary quite a bit block to block. I'm walking distance to a grocery store, the Metra, coffee shops, restaurants, parks, etc., which is unfortunately more than many areas of Chicago can say.

I moved from a denser part of Bridgeport, so it definitely has been an adjustment (particularly in variety). But even some areas of Bridgeport, which is much closer to downtown, had pockets that are equivalently walkable to where I'm at now, or maybe even less so. Anyone surprised to see SFHs and front yards in Chicago probably hasn't ventured far out of downtown/a handful of North Side neighborhoods.

Those houses are more densely packed than in what I'd call a suburb. And much more importantly, nothing in that area is more than a few blocks from some sort of commerce. Suburbia (at least in the US) isn't so much about the houses themselves, but what's around them. I'm in one of those "streetcar suburbs" and the nearest store is a mile away and the bus comes every 20 minutes. I could get by without a car but it would be very annoying. You might find a fairly similar set of houses in the nearby city, but they'll be near a lot of stuff and living without a car would be far more practical.

Nothing in Oak Park is more than a few blocks from a commercial zone either.

Yeah, I wouldn't call that a suburb either for practical purposes. It would be one by the definition of "small city near big city," but in terms of how it functions it looks like city to me.

Some US cities incorporated their lower-density "streetcar suburbs" over the years and other US cities didn't. This is why "Kansas City" proper has literal farmland [0] within its city limits, while "St. Louis" proper [1] on the other side of the state doesn't even include most of the skyscraper development that's occurred there within the last 40 years.

This is entirely arbitrary and knowing whether a particular place is technically part of "the city" doesn't really tell you anything about it. As you might expect, this causes a ton of unnecessary confusion.

[0] Part of Kansas City proper: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9B9rhVzAtSykLhUs5

[1] "St. Louis" but not part of St. Louis proper: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xXM7A2fQYY2Kh3vY6

They're pretty clearly not using "the city" to refer to city but instead to a certain density threshold, so pointing out that city limits are arbitrary doesn't really help anything.

What you're describing is called "agreement." I'm very plainly arguing that if the distinction between "city" and "suburb" is to mean anything at all, then it can't just be about what's within municipal boundaries and what isn't.

So you were agreeing with OP's comment, not disagreeing?

> Nobody I know would call that street the city. In my mind, "the city" is, minimally, houses that are a few feet apart, small yard in back/front, pretty much nothing on the side. Frequently, it's 2-3 story buildings, with whole floors rented out as an apartment. That's my "least dense" vision of a city. Anything less than that (ie, full yards) falls into my vision of suburb.

What this back-and-forth, and this thread more generally, demonstrates is that these words are not very useful.

They almost never clarify. What they do is produce silly arguments like this one.

That's why people have been using paragraphs to clarify what they mean. Paragraphs that you seem to have ignored in favor of critiquing the utility that specific words have when taken out of the context the author intentionally put them in.

I agree, but if only you could convince all the NIMBY asshats in Seattle who want to live on a half acre lot ten minutes from the center of downtown.

Good luck convincing someone who lives on a half acre 10 minutes from downtown to give that up.

Offering to make them multimillionaires in exchange for the land so you can build apartments should work

Except for the neighbors who will likely block that apartment build-out via any means possible.

Do they actually do that here, or are you just saying that?

They do that everywhere!

It's baked in to the process as part of design review, after getting pass the first wall of zoning.

https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/public-participation/e...

No clue about Seattle, but they definitely do in Northern VA where I live. Every new development that requires a change of permitted use goes through a lengthy review process with plenty of opportunity for locals to object.

Edit - sibling comment indicates Seattle has something similar.

Indeed, that’s the nimbys

Apartments are banned in about 70% of seattle residential land. Here are the things you are allowed to build: https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDCI/Codes/Nei...

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