Comment by tod222 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tod222 | Hacker News Reader

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| Suburban flight in the US didn't occur until long after cars became ubiquitous.

It seems you're not acquainted with the concept of "streetcar suburbs" [1]. The Wikipedia article goes into some detail; I recommend it for the curious who'd like to know how streetcar technology drove suburbanization before 1920.

FTA: "Because streetcar operators offered low fares and free transfers, commuting was finally affordable to nearly everyone."

This is not academic information about the distant past that no longer applies. Transit-oriented development [2] is impacting our cities positively today. It will be a long time before driverless cars have an impact.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-oriented_development

I think we're running into a case of differing terminology. I'm well aware of streetcar suburbs - by our modern understanding of cities they are substantially more urban than they are suburban.

And that's part of the point exactly - before suburban flight the concept of "suburbia" was transit-aligned, grid-based, focused around walkable distances and small(ish) housing. People were fine living in these places, even long after cars became ubiquitous. The modern suburb was not born until the collapse of urban centers.

Today we understand all of the above as "urban". The bulk of the American population lives in the modern incarnation of suburbs, not the 1920s version of it. Still-extant streetcar suburbs are now sold more as urban neighborhoods than not.

The modern suburb calls for large houses, even larger lawns, and subdivision-style street layouts (with an unspoken design intent of keeping out undesirables, a core part of its history and continued appeal). Map[1] is a modern suburb, full of meandering streets, deadends, cul-de-sacs, and indirection - and that's what I was referring to, considering that modern suburbs such as this grossly outnumber streetcar-urban neighborhoods in the US today.

If you took someone from a typical suburban environment in the US and dropped them in a streetcar suburb they'd perceive it as distinctly urban.

[1] https://maps.google.com/maps?q=dallas+tx&hl=en&ll=33...

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