Development| Published on October 11, 2007 8:50 pm

Are the suburbs the new cool in Columbus?

By: Walker


the270.com wrote Ha ha ha, the suburbs are the new cool

By wyliemac | October 11, 2007

With all due respect to the Columbus Underground urban apologists, but you really ought to rethink your urbanery (i.e. urban snobbery). I know you don’t want to admit it. But the suburbs are cool. Need proof? Check out Detail’s “Is it time to move to the suburbs?”

So let’s think local. And for me, Dublin is local. We’ve got TehKu. We’ve got Corazón. We’ve got Old Dublin. We’ve got Giant Dancing Bunnies. And of course, we’ve got giant freakin Corn. Oh yea, we’ve got the Dublin Irish Festival.

Yea, we might not be a very walkable city. But we’ve got excellent bike paths. So please CU urban guys, stop putting the ‘burbs down. You know who you are.

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Author: Walker Walker is the founder of ColumbusUnderground.com and co-founder of TheMetropreneur.com along with his wife and business partner Anne Evans. Walker has turned local media from a hobby into a full time career over the past decade and serves on multiple boards and committees throughout the community.

102 Comments

  • gramarye October 13, 2007 1:35 pm

    If solar arrays become cheap, how exactly would coating the outside of a 40-story building be a more inefficient use of space than coating the top of a 1-story house? Irrespective of how many solar arrays you have, it’s isn’t going to bring the Wal-Mart/Target any closer to your front door. Whether a sprawler is in a better long term position because of their “ownership” of more linear square footage of land has to be viewed with their weakness in terms of their gross political and physical strength in comparison to a densely populated city. Whether a “sprawler” has the will and resources to fight for their ever more consuming lifestyle in the face of downward trend in resource availabilty coupled with a massive upwards increase in energy consumers around the globe has yet to be seen. Generally speaking, the political leadership on energy issues has been just short of criminal and in the face of authoritarian political leadership in other countries pushing their own massive development of energy resources, it might be just a touch naive to place too much faith in corporate America.

    Transportation is not all that solar power would power, or indeed the primary thing, when we’re talking about panels on houses. Air conditioning is probably the foremost use, especially since solar power would peak at the time of peak need for A/C. Total exposure would matter. A 40-story building on its own could perhaps panel the walls as well, but if you build skyscrapers in groups–as tends to happen, outside of Dubai and Kuala Lumpur–total sun exposure is less.

    It won’t bring the Target or Wal-Mart closer, but of course, to the extent that cars of the future run on electricity, it does turn your 2-car garage into a 2-car fuel station, and cheaper than gasoline per mile.

    If I had to choose, I’d put my faith in “corporate America” over “government America.” However, I don’t have to choose. I put my faith in America. The whole thing. Sometimes we screw up, but who doesn’t? I still think our track record gives me a lot more cause to hope–and get in my car and head out to Wal-Mart, which I’m about to do when I’m done typing here–than to believe that we’re going to destroy the world and ourselves with it.

  • kitoba October 13, 2007 3:48 pm

    270.com wrote With all due respect to the Columbus Underground urban apologists, but you really ought to rethink your urbanery (i.e. urban snobbery). I know you don’t want to admit it. But the suburbs are cool. Need proof? Check out Detail’s “Is it time to move to the suburbs?”

    I’m not too concerned about the opinion of anyone who cites “Details” as a confirmation of how cool they are.

    But for the benefit of “270″, we’re on Columbus Underground because we like living in a real city, not some cookie-cutter strip-mall adjunct. Otherwise, we’d be on WestervilleUnderground.com or 270.com or someother nonsense like that.

    By the way, I’ve never seen “Weeds” but here’s a great version of their theme song done by one of my all-time favorite artists:

  • CJS October 13, 2007 6:16 pm

    I am very excited to know that people in my city, urban or suburban or ex-urban, are discussing all of these topics.

    Very good to see that this is such a hot topic and that people are REALLY interested in this issue. The thread began as dialog on urban vs. suburban, and branched out to include car vs. pedestrian, versus vs. gradations, etc.

    I especially enjoyed reading Mercurius’ posts. Thanks for the links to the Roundhouse. Are you familar with Earth Ship? There a couple in Ohio. Such ideology is very close to my heart and goals for my future. I would like find a way to marry the idea of those self-building types to modern construction techniques. There needs to be a way of attracting the retractors.

    The Tesla is rad. A 70 pound motor? 0-60 in 4 secs? wow, almost makes me want to own a car again. Almost.

  • neela October 15, 2007 3:03 pm

    myliftkk wrote The next couple decade(s) will certainly be interesting in that I think we’ll see if the suburbanites have the stomach to fight for the resources they’ll need to keep their lifestyle choices afloat.

    neela wrote If things do get really bad (peak oil, climate change, etc) then suburbanites with a small patch of land may actually be in good shape. If things break down they might be able to grow lots of veggies, although it will be a completely different lifestyle than they have now.

    myliftkk wrote

    I would argue though that there are major forces at work which will have drastic impacts on people’s current lifestyles if they don’t anticipate them and at least band together to deal with them. Though it would be nice to assume suburbanites would revert to a happy pastoral people picking their vegatables, if I were a betting man I’d place my money on greed. The Indians bet on the fact that the Europeans would be happy with log cabins and some maize, but that didn’t exactly work out for them now, did it? :wink:

    I think we actually have the same mindset about this. I completely place my money on greed, for sure. But my comment (the vegetable growing suburbs) was more about the super-far-away future than the more immediate political struggle. In other words, if things totally break down, to the extreme, and everyone is just fending for themselves, then having a patch of land might be a good thing.

    It’s tough discussing things online sometimes, huh?

  • neela October 15, 2007 3:13 pm

    HeySquare wrote

    But there were no zoning laws, no building permits, no health and safety laws. So if I wanted to put a tannery next to your residence, and have cow guts and hooves in a pile next to your house, I could do it. The city streets were pretty much a mass of horse shit, debris, trash, decaying food, and in many cases human waste.

    Germ theory hadn’t been thought up yet. Epidemics were rampant. Heat meant burning coal. Air quality sucked. In short, cities were dirty busy and often unhealthful places in the 19th century.

    This is a pretty interesting book that covers lots of this history. http://www.amazon.com/Health-Community-Design-Environment-Physical/dp/1559639172/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/104-4276054-4143149 Health and Community Design by Lawrence Frank. My memory is fuzzy, but I believe one of the things the book explains is that lots of the zoning laws were motivated more by anti-immigrant, anti-other sentiment as opposed to the medical reasons. (Or maybe it wasn’t so much a point as mentioned but I glommed onto it.)

    But I do agree with you, the tannery next to the house, the shit in the streets, all bad bad stuff.

  • neela October 15, 2007 3:30 pm

    CJS wrote I am very excited to know that people in my city, urban or suburban or ex-urban, are discussing all of these topics.

    Very good to see that this is such a hot topic and that people are REALLY interested in this issue. The thread began as dialog on urban vs. suburban, and branched out to include car vs. pedestrian, versus vs. gradations, etc.

    I especially enjoyed reading Mercurius’ posts.

    +1 on this. I leave this thread for the weekend and now there’s too many posts to respond too!! I am also glad to see the discussion, even hearing from people with views opposite mine. I liked Mercurius’s book excerpts, now I’ve got a few more books for my reading list.

    My last comment for now… I understand some people don’t believe in peak oil, or global climate change, or whatever. But isn’t it a good thing to walk more? To bike more? To have the option of getting your food from local farmers?

    Even if I’ve been sold a bill of goods, I don’t think there’s any harm in making communities more walkable. Then grandparents can walk to the grocery store, instead of driving around when their reflexes are slower.

    Isn’t it nice if little kids can bike to the video game store, instead of forcing their parents to drive them everywhere? Sure, there are other issues sometimes (dangerous neighborhoods may have sidewalks, but parents won’t let their kids walk around after dark, for example) but it’s still a step in the right direction. If there’s a local farmer using more organic/sustainable practices, let’s support them!

    There’s a huge public health issue coming, with basically all these fat little kids. Not trying to be mean, they are waaay overweight and have diabetes, the type that a generation ago NO kid had. Why are they not eating right? Is it too much processed food? (high fructose corn syrup) Is it not enough exercise? (Driven everywhere b/c there are no sidewalks)

    These are just good things to work towards, even if you ignore topics like peak oil, etc.

  • myliftkk October 15, 2007 4:16 pm

    neela wrote
    myliftkk wrote The next couple decade(s) will certainly be interesting in that I think we’ll see if the suburbanites have the stomach to fight for the resources they’ll need to keep their lifestyle choices afloat.

    neela wrote If things do get really bad (peak oil, climate change, etc) then suburbanites with a small patch of land may actually be in good shape. If things break down they might be able to grow lots of veggies, although it will be a completely different lifestyle than they have now.

    myliftkk wrote

    I would argue though that there are major forces at work which will have drastic impacts on people’s current lifestyles if they don’t anticipate them and at least band together to deal with them. Though it would be nice to assume suburbanites would revert to a happy pastoral people picking their vegatables, if I were a betting man I’d place my money on greed. The Indians bet on the fact that the Europeans would be happy with log cabins and some maize, but that didn’t exactly work out for them now, did it? :wink:

    I think we actually have the same mindset about this. I completely place my money on greed, for sure. But my comment (the vegetable growing suburbs) was more about the super-far-away future than the more immediate political struggle. In other words, if things totally break down, to the extreme, and everyone is just fending for themselves, then having a patch of land might be a good thing.

    It’s tough discussing things online sometimes, huh?

    Actually, I like these types of discussions the best because I can link to reference materials, opinion articles, etc to support my arguments. That’s very hard to do in a bar setting (no offense to the CU Meetup, Walker :)). You just have to avoid reading more into people’s posts than what they write, but I find it to be a good mental exercise.

    As for the concept of an agrarian pastoral people, I find it an appealing concept, but also detect that people who wish for that type society skip past the fact that it would take a major societal upheavel to get the mass of mankind there. Major societal upheavals, historically speaking, usually mean a lot of red pools on the ground. If its supporters can stomach that, more power to them, but they shouldn’t pretend the last “ism”, capitalism, is going to fall quietly. It has cost a lot of people their lives to “instill” the “values” of capitalism around the world, let’s not kid ourselves about what we’d have to do to root it out if we so chose.

    On the flip side, if resource shortages do test the limits of societal tensions, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that “having” isn’t going to amount to “defending” at some point either. Regardless, it’s a fascinating topic for discussion :wink:

  • hobbesOSU October 15, 2007 4:21 pm

    neela wrote

    There’s a huge public health issue coming, with basically all these fat little kids. Not trying to be mean, they are waaay overweight and have diabetes, the type that a generation ago NO kid had. Why are they not eating right? Is it too much processed food? (high fructose corn syrup) Is it not enough exercise? (Driven everywhere b/c there are no sidewalks)

    Not to take this thread down yet another digression, but I 100% agree with that point. That’s why I’ll never vote for socialized health care.

  • Coremodels October 15, 2007 4:24 pm

    hobbesOSU wrote
    neela wrote

    There’s a huge public health issue coming, with basically all these fat little kids. Not trying to be mean, they are waaay overweight and have diabetes, the type that a generation ago NO kid had. Why are they not eating right? Is it too much processed food? (high fructose corn syrup) Is it not enough exercise? (Driven everywhere b/c there are no sidewalks)

    Not to take this thread down yet another digression, but I 100% agree with that point. That’s why I’ll never vote for socialized health care.

    bah, no worries…just buy them all Wii’s.

  • enzo October 15, 2007 5:15 pm

    Support OrganicAthlete.org and teach them Transcendental Meditation!! It is up to the parents encouraging activity and limiting tv and games. Actually, I wonder what type of role model some parents are if they are just perpetuating their own state of health. Over consumption of material items and food items and instant gratification=short term gain, long term pain. Great, you can afford to indulge, balance is the key people forget. I never want to live anywhere that I cannot walk to the grocery or where my son cannot walk to school.. unless it is a farm.

  • myliftkk October 15, 2007 5:31 pm

    enzo wrote Support OrganicAthlete.org and teach them Transcendental Meditation!! It is up to the parents encouraging activity and limiting tv and games. Actually, I wonder what type of role model some parents are if they are just perpetuating their own state of health. Over consumption of material items and food items and instant gratification=short term gain, long term pain. Great, you can afford to indulge, balance is the key people forget. I never want to live anywhere that I cannot walk to the grocery or where my son cannot walk to school.. unless it is a farm.

    Or, we could just give them forced wheat grass enemas… :wink:

  • gramarye October 15, 2007 6:20 pm

    Not to take this thread down yet another digression, but I 100% agree with that point. That’s why I’ll never vote for socialized health care.

    If digressing on threads were a banning offense here, I think the boards would be fairly empty.

  • myliftkk October 16, 2007 8:24 am

    hobbesOSU wrote
    neela wrote

    There’s a huge public health issue coming, with basically all these fat little kids. Not trying to be mean, they are waaay overweight and have diabetes, the type that a generation ago NO kid had. Why are they not eating right? Is it too much processed food? (high fructose corn syrup) Is it not enough exercise? (Driven everywhere b/c there are no sidewalks)

    Not to take this thread down yet another digression, but I 100% agree with that point. That’s why I’ll never vote for socialized health care.

    I know Walker’s going to threaten me for even extended this digression, but why would a looming public health issue correlate with your non-support for socialized medicine?

  • gramarye October 16, 2007 9:04 am

    I’d hazard a guess the answer lies in the quote of neela’s that HobbesOSU quoted:

    Why are they not eating right? Is it too much processed food? (high fructose corn syrup) Is it not enough exercise? (Driven everywhere b/c there are no sidewalks)

    All of the latter are preventable with nothing more than a little self-discipline (or parentally imposed discipline). At the very least, it’s hard to feel obligated to shell out tens or hundreds of thousands of public dollars to fund surgery to correct the effects of something that the victim could have prevented for free.

  • hobbesOSU October 16, 2007 9:07 am

    myliftkk wrote
    hobbesOSU wrote
    neela wrote

    There’s a huge public health issue coming, with basically all these fat little kids. Not trying to be mean, they are waaay overweight and have diabetes, the type that a generation ago NO kid had. Why are they not eating right? Is it too much processed food? (high fructose corn syrup) Is it not enough exercise? (Driven everywhere b/c there are no sidewalks)

    Not to take this thread down yet another digression, but I 100% agree with that point. That’s why I’ll never vote for socialized health care.

    I know Walker’s going to threaten me for even extended this digression, but why would a looming public health issue correlate with your non-support for socialized medicine?

    I don’t feel like subsidizing peoples poor lifestyle choices any more than I have to. If we were to charge people who are in a higher risk group more for their theoretical govn’t health insurance, then I might be more likely to support it. I just don’t see that happening.

  • Coremodels October 16, 2007 9:14 am

    Or, to take it one step further based on the original post…I don’t feel obligated to cover the health care costs of lazy parents who raise unhealthy, fat kids…and additionally it provides no incentive to raise thin, healthy kids.

  • myliftkk October 17, 2007 10:55 am

    So Walker doesn’t penalize me I’m not going to take this thread down the socialized medicine path :D

    However, if any of you have the cohones to start a “I don’t want to support sick people because…” :wink: thread, I will happily debate the merits of socialized vs. privatized medicine.

  • neela October 17, 2007 12:49 pm

    gramarye wrote I’d hazard a guess the answer lies in the quote of neela’s that HobbesOSU quoted:

    Why are they not eating right? Is it too much processed food? (high fructose corn syrup) Is it not enough exercise? (Driven everywhere b/c there are no sidewalks)

    All of the latter are preventable with nothing more than a little self-discipline (or parentally imposed discipline). At the very least, it’s hard to feel obligated to shell out tens or hundreds of thousands of public dollars to fund surgery to correct the effects of something that the victim could have prevented for free.

    Yea, so I’m confused as to where several people have gotten the idea that I talked about a remedy for this issue. I never said anything about socialized medicine, and certainly not surgery!! My point was that issues like what food you eat (and where it comes from) and walkability have an effect on other things… One little diabetic kid, two little diabetic kids, not a big deal. Millions of them, well they are going to put quite a strain on our health care system. How do we stop this trend?

    Actually I will say I am 100% against surgery for this kind of issue, obviously that’s just a band-aid solution, not to mention a poor use of resources.

    I guess I should just be glad that most people seem to agree that it’s an issue.

  • hobbesOSU October 17, 2007 1:21 pm

    myliftkk wrote So Walker doesn’t penalize me I’m not going to take this thread down the socialized medicine path :D

    However, if any of you have the cohones to start a “I don’t want to support sick people because…” :wink: thread, I will happily debate the merits of socialized vs. privatized medicine.

    I have a sneaky feeling that we’ll be getting more of that sort of thread the closer we get to Nov ’08

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