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Really interesting piece on "New Geography" about Obama/Democratic urbanist tendencies vs suburban political leanings.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/001364-the-war-against-suburbia
A.
Columbus Underground Messageboard » General Columbus Discussion » Politics
"The War Against Suburbia"
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Andrew Hall
Dennison Place (The Circles)
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Posted 3 years ago # -
lifeontwowheels
Highland West
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Have we had a recent administration ever take a balanced approach to urban and suburban policy? It seems to skew, extremely, to one side or the other.
Posted 3 years ago # -
mbeaumont
Italian Village
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Tenzo wrote >>
Interesting article.
I'm not sure Obama has spent any time in the 'burbs. Not a cause for concern.
He grew up in Chicago, in the city and is more likely to share views with me on cities and 'burbs. (That scary~!)Actually, Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He didn't move to Chicago until the mid 80s when he started his work as a community organizer.
Posted 3 years ago # -
michaelcoyote
!seabus
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The guy makes some interesting points, but the idea that Scott Brown was a rebuke of environmental policies that the Obama administration is pushing is a really long stretch.
The reason Scott Brown won is because Coakley fucking stunk up that election to high heaven. And even then he only beat her by 5 points.
I'll grant that more needs to be done to integrate suburbs into the urban core through development and transit options that work for everyone involved, but lets decouple the Brown victory as an indictment of current environmental policy.
Posted 3 years ago # -
myliftkk
Columbus, OH
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Andrew Hall wrote >>
Really interesting piece on "New Geography" about Obama/Democratic urbanist tendencies vs suburban political leanings.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/001364-the-war-against-suburbia
A.Meh, it's written by a "professional trend gadfly" who simply cherry-picks his facts (when he didn't mischaracterize them) and numbers (as professional gadflys often do, regardless of their ideological leanings). He includes just enough "data" references to fool the average layman on the subject, unless they're well-read or just plain suspicious.
I'm not even clear why he goes to the length he does in the article, except maybe that he's shooting for a new book subject. "War against suburbia" isn't a bad meme to sell publishers on after all...
Posted 3 years ago # -
agtw31
columbus
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pedex wrote >>
suburbs won't need any help self destructing, they'll do it on their own and that process has already begun despite gargantuan efforts by the govt to slow it down or stop ityeah,i see a lot of suburbs turning neighborhoods into outdoor shopping centers,then build Arenas that aren't needed,and rent to shitty hockey teams.
the sky is falling.
Posted 3 years ago # -
rus
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DavidF wrote >>
The war against suburbia? Yeah, the suburbs are under attack the same way white men and christian values are. Oh, and Christmas, never forget the war on christmas.
I kind of pity the people who fall for this stuff.From TFA:
The anti-suburban impulse is nothing new. Suburbs have rarely been popular among academics, planners, and the punditry. The suburbanite displeased “the professional planner and the intellectual defender of cosmopolitan culture,†noted sociologist Herbert Gans. The 1960s counterculture expanded this critique, viewing suburbia as one of many “tasteless travesties of mass society,†along with fast and processed food, plastics, and large cars. Suburban life represented the opposite of the cosmopolitan urban scene; one critic termed it “vulgaria.â€Â
Liberals also castigated suburbs as the racist spawn of “white flight.†But more recently, environmental causesâ€â€particularly greenhouse gas emissions as well as dire warning about the prospects for “peak oilâ€Ââ€â€now drive much of the argument against suburbanization.
The housing crash that began in 2007 added grist to the contention that the age of suburban growth has come to an end. To be sure, the early phases of the subprime mortgage bust were heavily concentrated in newer developments in the outer fringes. In part due to rising home prices, a disproportionate number of new buyers were forced to resort to sub-prime and other unconventional mortgages.
The outer suburban distress attracted much media attention and delighted many who had long detested suburbs. One leading new urbanist, Chris Leinberger, actually described suburban sprawl as “the root cause of the financial crisis.†Leinberger and other critics have described suburbia as the home of the nation’s future “slums.†The favorite images have included McMansions being taken over by impoverished gang-bangers and other undesirables once associated with the now pristine inner city.
Others portray future suburbs as serving at best as backwaters in a society dominated by urbanites. In contrast to a brave new era for “the gospel of urbanism,†the suburbs are expected to contract and even wither away. According to planner Arthur C. Nelson’s estimate, by 2025 the United States will have a “likely surplus of 22 million large lot homesâ€Ââ€â€that is, residences on more than one sixth of an acre.
That doesn't seem fabricated to me.
Posted 3 years ago # -
lifeontwowheels
Highland West
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To each their own. I could care less where someone lives. Just don't get too critical on the expenditure of an "urban" project when government subsidies have largely been responsible for creating the suburbs we have today.
Posted 3 years ago # -
myliftkk
Columbus, OH
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rus
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lifeontwowheels wrote >>
To each their own. I could care less where someone lives. Just don't get too critical on the expenditure of an "urban" project when government subsidies have largely been responsible for creating the suburbs we have today.Not aimed at you specifically, but what would the urban/suburban/rural landscape look like if there were no government subsidies of any kind?
Posted 3 years ago # -
lifeontwowheels
Highland West
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rus wrote >>
lifeontwowheels wrote >>
To each their own. I could care less where someone lives. Just don't get too critical on the expenditure of an "urban" project when government subsidies have largely been responsible for creating the suburbs we have today.Not aimed at you specifically, but what would the urban/suburban/rural landscape look like if there were no government subsidies of any kind?
Which kind of goes back to my point. This specific author talks about the $8 Billion in high speed rail projects while ignoring how many billions spent on federal and state highways by the same Recovery Act dollars. And for all the criticism of smart growth policies, couldn't these same policies help reign in some of the budgetary problems we are seeing? By giving people opportunities to seek transportation alternatives, it lessens the need for maintenance and repair on roadways and reduces congestion. A lot of this remains to be seen, of course. But the oversimplification and glossing over simply doesn't do anyone any good.
Posted 3 years ago # -
scornflakes
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rus wrote >>
That doesn't seem fabricated to me.And that constitutes a "war" how? Oh right, because the time-tested way for a morally corrupt political ideology to stifle debate and win followers is to "tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger" (just replace "pacifists" with "liberals," "intellectuals," "progressives," "urbanists," or whatever outsider is deemed most susceptible to AM radio rage at the moment). So everything is a war now. Here, in this article, in lieu of a respectful and forthright expression of ideas regarding the real economic problems that suburban overdevelopment and urban blight describe, we are hit over the head with yet another assertion that an undeclared "war" has been unleashed upon a once tried-and-true institution in our society. And that assertion is backed up with misrepresentations of still fluctuating recent trends, dodgy analysis of poorly-cited and obscure sources, almost one sweeping-generalization per paragraph, and a checklist of reactionary talking-points (ie, we're becoming Europe, "white flight" is a left wing myth, liberals hate families and freedom, intellectuals are bad, on and on).
But I suppose (at the risk of sounding "elitist") the average regular Joe just eats that stuff up with a Chinese-made spoon. Perhaps it's time I get cracking on that book "The War On 'War On' Books: How the Liberal Battle Against Marketing Half-Cocked Theories to Paranoiacs is Destroying Jesus's America."
Posted 3 years ago # -
Columbusite
Minneapolis
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I'm confused. I must have missed all of the huge amounts of money the city poured into Linden, Hilltop, etc while at the same time not notice the major disinvestment of our suburbs. Must explain why all our transportation dollars are being spent on streetcars and road diets, not more roads and more lanes.
Posted 3 years ago # -
agtw31
columbus
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to be fair,the suburbs have been sucking up tax dollars,and still do.
dublin and their 33/161 business buildup is a prime example.
now they want funds for a new interchange,dumbasses should have thought of that beforehand
i remember driving down old 33 back in the 90's wonderring wtf they are doing out there,building all that crap on old 2 lane roads.
suburbs have an addiction,they are land/tax base junkies.
the thing is,this disease has now spread back into the urban areas.
in the suburbs,it's called development.in the urban sector,it's called rehabilitation.
Posted 3 years ago #
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