It's the lending that enabled sprawl as much as the highways.  The FHA changed the lending by assuming the risk both for developers and individual homebuyers. 

Mechanization happened all over the world though, and sprawl didn't.  Postwar Europe had cars too, and they built freeways, and the war's destruction had given them a golden opportunity to reformat their entire built environment.  But they didn't.  Instead they maintained their density and their transit infrastructure, rebuilding their cities as before, while America chose to forcibly reformat its own intact cities. 

 

So no, American sprawl is not a result of natural laws or universal behavioral norms.  It was not some inevitable stage of history.  It was a result of specific policy choices by people in power who chose sprawl as their goal.

 

None of the other World War II era militaries were mechanized to anything like the degree the US’s was.  Nor did the US suffer destruction on the scale that the rest of the industrialized world did, with the exception of Canada and Australia.  Other nations either didn’t have the space, or had authoritarian governments disinterested in letting their city dwellers spread out.

 

The exceptions, again…..Canada and Australia.  Both of which have sprawl.

 

 

All of the big cities in Australia and Canada have big transit systems.  There is some sprawl because they based some of their lending laws after what exists in the United States (for example, in Canada you can buy a house for like 3% down just like here) and they built expressways, but the expressways in those two countries aren't on near the scale that they exist in the United States.  And transit in typical U.S. cities is pathetic compared to what exists in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, or Sydney.  It's pretty obvious, looking at satellite imagery of all of these cities, that sprawl is not permitted to sprawl without more regulation than here, and the old parts of the cities were not allowed to rot out.   

The Netherlands got sprawly in the '60s but reversed their decision very quickly and re-dedicated the cities away from the automobile by the late '70s. They were disappointed with the results of their sprawl experiment.

Mechanization happened all over the world though, and sprawl didn't.  Postwar Europe had cars too, and they built freeways, and the war's destruction had given them a golden opportunity to reformat their entire built environment.  But they didn't.  Instead they maintained their density and their transit infrastructure, rebuilding their cities as before, while America chose to forcibly reformat its own intact cities. 

 

So no, American sprawl is not a result of natural laws or universal behavioral norms.  It was not some inevitable stage of history.  It was a result of specific policy choices by people in power who chose sprawl as their goal.

 

I like everything you say here, 327... One very uncomfortable difference with Europe and the United States -- as well as, even, Canada and the USA (where the older parts of urban Canada mirror Europe more than its Yankee cousins to the south), is the stronger racial, ethnic and socioeconomic divisions, particularly the racial ones, which seem to have a much stronger impact on all facets of life in this country, from socialization, worship, employment, education and housing patterns than either Canada or Europe... The "freedom" often touted in this country, is the freedom to move away and live away from "others" into one's own homogeneous community (i.e. Medina).  Cities are often looked at with contempt in the US of A, where as small towns and their farmers, esp those in the South and West, are portrayed as the American Ideal.

 

It's evolving and didn't just happen yesterday, or even 3 to 5 decades ago, when the urban freeway became the rage and generator of sprawl.  The Van Sweringens, and other Heights RE developers like them, touted their new communities as elevated up and away from all the soot and smoke of Cleveland ... as well as being away from "them."  The Vans wanted a look-alike, WASP-y community in their new Shaker Village as they banned African Americans and Jews from the town. 

Their tool for escape from the city was rapid transit, similar to commuter trains in Chicago and the East.... It became the auto and the freeway in the post WWII era and, to this day, especially when you hear Libertarian and Republican rhetoric, the City is once again viewed with suspicion and contempt, with some pols and political pundits not-so-subtly dropping in accompanying terms like "multiculturalism" as if this were some kind of plague.

 

The Vans banned blacks and jews from Shaker Hts?  What about Catholics?  When was the ban overturned as now Shaker is about 38% African-American?

 

Why just this week the City of Cleveland renamed a section of Shaker Blvd after Don King.  Don King, murderer, gangster, all around shade.  Why would anyone view cities, esp. Cleveland, with suspicion and contempt?

It was legal for banks to lend to one ethnic or religious group but not others up until the Civil Rights movement.  Banks literally drew lines on maps indicating where they would lend and where they wouldn't. 

^^To answer 2 of your questions:

 

if Catholics were not outright banned, as were blacks and Jews, I'm sure they were, ah, strongly discouraged from moving to Shaker in the early days by the Vans and their compatriots.  Btw, the Halle Brothers, founders/owners of the eponymous high-end dept store whose large building still stands in PHS, moved in to Shaker and built a fabulous mansion that sits on a hill behind trees on Park Dr. near Horseshoe Lake.  The Vans discovered that the Halles were Jews, but apparently grudgingly granted them honorary Protestant status given their wealth and prominence in the Cleveland community.

 

Shaker moved moved away this bigoted thinking in the late 50s and 60s as more liberal and enlightened whites moved in, or, often, the kids of the original shaker residents took root.  So much so that in the late-60s, Shaker became one of 1st cities in America to voluntarily bus schoolkids to achieve a racial balance.  Oak Park, IL was the other one.  Shaker became one of the pioneering suburbs in fair housing and openness which is why, today, there is a large black demographic in the city, today. 

All of the big cities in Australia and Canada have big transit systems.  There is some sprawl because they based some of their lending laws after what exists in the United States (for example, in Canada you can buy a house for like 3% down just like here) and they built expressways, but the expressways in those two countries aren't on near the scale that they exist in the United States.  And transit in typical U.S. cities is pathetic compared to what exists in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, or Sydney.  It's pretty obvious, looking at satellite imagery of all of these cities, that sprawl is not permitted to sprawl without more regulation than here, and the old parts of the cities were not allowed to rot out.   

 

The 401 that runs from Toronto Pearson Airport to Scarborough is the widest freeway in North America. It's insane and I say that living in the DC area. The GTA has the Gardiner, the Don Valley, the 401, the 400, the 404, the 427, the 410, on and on. Ontario is currently in the process of building a long toll-road expressway from the 400 at Newmarket all the way out to Ajax. Equivalent of building a toll road from Cleveland to Ashtabula. Toronto and Montreal a littered with expressways, just like here.

 

I wont even get into the rosy-eyed view that Europe is some sort of racial nirvana compared to US. Only have to do a recent news search on the migrant crisis to see how Euros are behaving along the lines of Trump with a new wave of outsiders at their gates. Remember the recent Paris suburb riots? That reaction was because North Africans are treated so kindly in France.

All of the big cities in Australia and Canada have big transit systems.  There is some sprawl because they based some of their lending laws after what exists in the United States (for example, in Canada you can buy a house for like 3% down just like here) and they built expressways, but the expressways in those two countries aren't on near the scale that they exist in the United States.  And transit in typical U.S. cities is pathetic compared to what exists in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, or Sydney.  It's pretty obvious, looking at satellite imagery of all of these cities, that sprawl is not permitted to sprawl without more regulation than here, and the old parts of the cities were not allowed to rot out.   

 

The 401 that runs from Toronto Pearson Airport to Scarborough is the widest freeway in North America. It's insane and I say that living in the DC area. The GTA has the Gardiner, the Don Valley, the 401, the 400, the 404, the 427, the 410, on and on. Ontario is currently in the process of building a long toll-road expressway from the 400 at Newmarket all the way out to Ajax. Equivalent of building a toll road from Cleveland to Ashtabula. Toronto and Montreal a littered with expressways, just like here.

 

I wont even get into the rosy-eyed view that Europe is some sort of racial nirvana compared to US. Only have to do a recent news search on the migrant crisis to see how Euros are behaving along the lines of Trump with a new wave of outsiders at their gates. Remember the recent Paris suburb riots? That reaction was because North Africans are treated so kindly in France.

 

I wouldn't say Europe is a racial nirvana by any means; bigots, hate groups and accompanying political rhetoric have been on the rise there in recent years.  I would, however, say that racism and racial polarization is much, much stronger in the United States than in Europe or Canada.  It's deeply ingrained in so many facets of American life, we don't even realize it.  Even though French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville greatly admired America's new political experiment, his famed 1830s treatise "Democracy in America,"  sadly predicted that slavery (and it's predicted demise and after effects) threatened divide America and harm its orderly legal/political process... Tocqueville proved not only to be great scholar/observer, but a soothsayer as well.

^^To answer 2 of your questions:

 

if Catholics were not outright banned, as were blacks and Jews, I'm sure they were, ah, strongly discouraged from moving to Shaker in the early days by the Vans and their compatriots.  Btw, the Halle Brothers, founders/owners of the eponymous high-end dept store whose large building still stands in PHS, moved in to Shaker and built a fabulous mansion that sits on a hill behind trees on Park Dr. near Horseshoe Lake.  The Vans discovered that the Halles were Jews, but apparently grudgingly granted them honorary Protestant status given their wealth and prominence in the Cleveland community.

 

Shaker moved moved away this bigoted thinking in the late 50s and 60s as more liberal and enlightened whites moved in, or, often, the kids of the original shaker residents took root.  So much so that in the late-60s, Shaker became one of 1st cities in America to voluntarily bus schoolkids to achieve a racial balance.  Oak Park, IL was the other one.  Shaker became one of the pioneering suburbs in fair housing and openness which is why, today, there is a large black demographic in the city, today. 

nobody knew the Halles were Jewish? I don't know how such a prominent family could have kept that so hidden! As for racial integration, I guess Painesville--30 miles from Cleveland--was way ahead of the "liberal and enlightened whites" of Shaker Heights of the late 60's, as I had attended multi-racial schools years before that that didn't require busing to achieve, and to this day it's probably the most diverse community in the Cleveland area. Where else can you find a homecoming court with three Latinas, two African-Americans, one person of mixed race, a white girl and an Asian king?!

[/url]

All of the big cities in Australia and Canada have big transit systems.  There is some sprawl because they based some of their lending laws after what exists in the United States (for example, in Canada you can buy a house for like 3% down just like here) and they built expressways, but the expressways in those two countries aren't on near the scale that they exist in the United States.  And transit in typical U.S. cities is pathetic compared to what exists in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, or Sydney.  It's pretty obvious, looking at satellite imagery of all of these cities, that sprawl is not permitted to sprawl without more regulation than here, and the old parts of the cities were not allowed to rot out.   

 

The 401 that runs from Toronto Pearson Airport to Scarborough is the widest freeway in North America. It's insane and I say that living in the DC area. The GTA has the Gardiner, the Don Valley, the 401, the 400, the 404, the 427, the 410, on and on. Ontario is currently in the process of building a long toll-road expressway from the 400 at Newmarket all the way out to Ajax. Equivalent of building a toll road from Cleveland to Ashtabula. Toronto and Montreal a littered with expressways, just like here.

 

I wont even get into the rosy-eyed view that Europe is some sort of racial nirvana compared to US. Only have to do a recent news search on the migrant crisis to see how Euros are behaving along the lines of Trump with a new wave of outsiders at their gates. Remember the recent Paris suburb riots? That reaction was because North Africans are treated so kindly in France.

 

 

Toronto's expressways were not jammed through pre-existing parts of the city like what happened everywhere in the United States.  That one was built along the northern edge of the city back in the 50s or 60s.  When looking at the metro on google earth, there is evidence that growth boundaries are keeping the edge of development from expanding haphazardly.  The metro's size is growing rapidly, so they are permitting development of farmland, but it is not all happening at the whims of developers and knuckle-head township trustees. 

 

 

Toronto, like most large Canadian cities, has a far better handle on sprawl than most USA cities.  And the subways system, esp the Younge Street line, has created insane TOD; in many cases, mini-downtowns, so large that they probably have more total office square footage than the REAL downtowns of several mid-sized American cities.

Toronto, like most large Canadian cities, has a far better handle on sprawl than most USA cities.  And the subways system, esp the Younge Street line, has created insane TOD; in many cases, mini-downtowns, so large that they probably have more total office square footage than the REAL downtowns of several mid-sized American cities.

 

There are still large warehouse and manufacturing areas on the edge of town, which cannot be served comprehensively by rail, in Toronto or elsewhere.  When I visited Europe I noticed bus stops outside most of the sort of postwar warehouses that almost always go unserved in the United States.  These are the low-wage jobs where people really do need bus service, whereas higher-paid office workers in skyscraper clusters served by public transit can afford cars.   

 

Where I live there are only a handful of bus routes that make a point of serving the low-density suburban warehouse areas.  I rode one of them last week in Northern Kentucky (TANK).  It is the #2 airport bus (Cincinnati's airport is in NKY) that on certain runs travels through nearby warehouse areas. 

 

 

All of the big cities in Australia and Canada have big transit systems.  There is some sprawl because they based some of their lending laws after what exists in the United States (for example, in Canada you can buy a house for like 3% down just like here) and they built expressways, but the expressways in those two countries aren't on near the scale that they exist in the United States.  And transit in typical U.S. cities is pathetic compared to what exists in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, or Sydney.  It's pretty obvious, looking at satellite imagery of all of these cities, that sprawl is not permitted to sprawl without more regulation than here, and the old parts of the cities were not allowed to rot out.   

 

The 401 that runs from Toronto Pearson Airport to Scarborough is the widest freeway in North America. It's insane and I say that living in the DC area. The GTA has the Gardiner, the Don Valley, the 401, the 400, the 404, the 427, the 410, on and on. Ontario is currently in the process of building a long toll-road expressway from the 400 at Newmarket all the way out to Ajax. Equivalent of building a toll road from Cleveland to Ashtabula. Toronto and Montreal a littered with expressways, just like here.

 

I wont even get into the rosy-eyed view that Europe is some sort of racial nirvana compared to US. Only have to do a recent news search on the migrant crisis to see how Euros are behaving along the lines of Trump with a new wave of outsiders at their gates. Remember the recent Paris suburb riots? That reaction was because North Africans are treated so kindly in France.

 

I wouldn't say Europe is a racial nirvana by any means; bigots, hate groups and accompanying political rhetoric have been on the rise there in recent years.  I would, however, say that racism and racial polarization is much, much stronger in the United States than in Europe or Canada.  It's deeply ingrained in so many facets of American life, we don't even realize it.  Even though French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville greatly admired America's new political experiment, his famed 1830s treatise "Democracy in America,"  sadly predicted that slavery (and it's predicted demise and after effects) threatened divide America and harm its orderly legal/political process... Tocqueville proved not only to be great scholar/observer, but a soothsayer as well.

 

Look, we disagreed on this before. There's widespread long term institutional racism and "culturalism" in all European nations and Canada, it just manifests itself in different ways. But I think we can agree on this: Over the last half-century "white flight" has had a profound negative effect on American cities not seen in Canada and most of Europe.

 

All of the big cities in Australia and Canada have big transit systems.  There is some sprawl because they based some of their lending laws after what exists in the United States (for example, in Canada you can buy a house for like 3% down just like here) and they built expressways, but the expressways in those two countries aren't on near the scale that they exist in the United States.  And transit in typical U.S. cities is pathetic compared to what exists in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, or Sydney.  It's pretty obvious, looking at satellite imagery of all of these cities, that sprawl is not permitted to sprawl without more regulation than here, and the old parts of the cities were not allowed to rot out.   

 

The 401 that runs from Toronto Pearson Airport to Scarborough is the widest freeway in North America. It's insane and I say that living in the DC area. The GTA has the Gardiner, the Don Valley, the 401, the 400, the 404, the 427, the 410, on and on. Ontario is currently in the process of building a long toll-road expressway from the 400 at Newmarket all the way out to Ajax. Equivalent of building a toll road from Cleveland to Ashtabula. Toronto and Montreal a littered with expressways, just like here.

 

I wont even get into the rosy-eyed view that Europe is some sort of racial nirvana compared to US. Only have to do a recent news search on the migrant crisis to see how Euros are behaving along the lines of Trump with a new wave of outsiders at their gates. Remember the recent Paris suburb riots? That reaction was because North Africans are treated so kindly in France.

 

 

Toronto's expressways were not jammed through pre-existing parts of the city like what happened everywhere in the United States.  That one was built along the northern edge of the city back in the 50s or 60s.  When looking at the metro on google earth, there is evidence that growth boundaries are keeping the edge of development from expanding haphazardly.  The metro's size is growing rapidly, so they are permitting development of farmland, but it is not all happening at the whims of developers and knuckle-head township trustees. 

 

 

 

You said that Canadian expressways aren't built on the scale of the U.S. Of course they are. The 401 is on a scale not seen in the United States. Ontario and Quebec have a lot of expressways and the GTA continues to expand the network plowing under farmland.

 

I will say the major eastern Canadian cities have done a better job of keeping the "spaghetti junction" connections out of their downtowns. Toronto has the Gardiner connecting to the Don Valley but it's a small interchange. Montreal has AutoRoute 720 that goes below Montreal but the main expressway interchange at AutoRoute 20 is over a mile outside of the center city and Quebec has AutoRoute 440 which is half boulevard/half expressway but doesn't connect with anything in the city center. Ottawa's main spaghetti junction is across the river in Hull, Quebec.

 

Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec all have expressways that were built over existing neighborhoods. Toronto didn't need to plow under as much because it was much smaller in 1950s and 1960s but the Don Valley, the Gardiner, the 427, the 401, the QEW, the expressways around Hamilton all were built over existing developments. Montreal has lots of Quebec AutoRoutes built through neighborhoods because it was much larger than Toronto during the decades of freeway expansion.

 

Toronto, like most large Canadian cities, has a far better handle on sprawl than most USA cities.  And the subways system, esp the Younge Street line, has created insane TOD; in many cases, mini-downtowns, so large that they probably have more total office square footage than the REAL downtowns of several mid-sized American cities.

 

The GTA does not have a handle on sprawl despite the condo boom.

 

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/09/15/gta_sprawl_out_of_control.html

 

From the 2013 editorial:

 

The population in Toronto’s core neighbourhoods grew by 52,000 people from 2006 to 2011, and the transit suburbs grew by another 26,000 people, which was good news. Meanwhile, the less sustainable exurban and automobile suburbs grew by 390,000 people, or 83 percent of the regional growth. 

 

Toronto actually has less office space going up than in DC currently. It's the first wave of office construction since the early 1990s with most of it concentrated in the expanding city center. Meanwhile many neighborhoods are being fueled by large condos with smaller offices. There are fewer office mini-downtowns going up in Toronto vs. American cities of the same size over the last few decades, this despite Toronto being the NYC of Canada.

 

^^To answer 2 of your questions:

 

if Catholics were not outright banned, as were blacks and Jews, I'm sure they were, ah, strongly discouraged from moving to Shaker in the early days by the Vans and their compatriots.  Btw, the Halle Brothers, founders/owners of the eponymous high-end dept store whose large building still stands in PHS, moved in to Shaker and built a fabulous mansion that sits on a hill behind trees on Park Dr. near Horseshoe Lake.  The Vans discovered that the Halles were Jews, but apparently grudgingly granted them honorary Protestant status given their wealth and prominence in the Cleveland community.

 

Shaker moved moved away this bigoted thinking in the late 50s and 60s as more liberal and enlightened whites moved in, or, often, the kids of the original shaker residents took root.  So much so that in the late-60s, Shaker became one of 1st cities in America to voluntarily bus schoolkids to achieve a racial balance.  Oak Park, IL was the other one.  Shaker became one of the pioneering suburbs in fair housing and openness which is why, today, there is a large black demographic in the city, today. 

nobody knew the Halles were Jewish? I don't know how such a prominent family could have kept that so hidden! As for racial integration, I guess Painesville--30 miles from Cleveland--was way ahead of the "liberal and enlightened whites" of Shaker Heights of the late 60's, as I had attended multi-racial schools years before that that didn't require busing to achieve, and to this day it's probably the most diverse community in the Cleveland area. Where else can you find a homecoming court with three Latinas, two African-Americans, one person of mixed race, a white girl and an Asian king?!

[/url]

 

Is the "King" Asian?  Looks more Native American (specifically the natives from either the West coast or central America).  Painesville has always been fairly diverse, especially given its Latino population.  I always thought it was somewhat reflective of the near west side of Cleveland, other than the Latino population in Painesville being more Central American as opposed to Cleveland's heavy Puerto Rican influence.  I also seem to recall that there were two high schools in Painesville, with Harvey being very diverse while Riverside (?) not so much. 

^okay, I'm starting to wonder about your basic powers of discernment if you think that guy is Native American and not Asian (maybe a refresher course in ethnography might help :laugh:), so here's another picture that will maybe make it clearer. The Latino population in P'ville is overwhelmingly Mexican, not that many Puerto Ricans, although like in most places they were there since the 50's. I recall only a handful of "PR's" (I'm sure that's considered a derogatory term still) in high school. And yes, Riverside, much larger than Harvey, is the "other" high school, but located in the township, which is about 99.999% white (okay, not really, but it might as well be, like most of Lake County)

and yes, Painesville is, according to census data, the second most diverse city in Ohio after Springfield my mistake--Springdale (near Cincinnati, and I can never find this list but it's under some site called Homelocater or something. Lorain is #3), with a rating of almost 74% on the diversity index, maybe not that high by California standards, but good for Ohio (though I'm certain there are probably some neighborhoods in Cleveland, if assessed individually, would rank higher); although the schools are a lot more diverse than the general population (maybe eventually they'll stop using that as an excuse as to why they're not performing at a really--ahem--high level :|)

I suppose this isn't completely off-topic in the suburban sprawl thread haha.

Most theories say Native American Indians migrated to the American continent from Asia across a land bridge around 11,500 years ago. Yes, this would, in fact, make the first Americans Asians.

 

http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask41

A fairly interesting read that seems relevant to this thread. 

 

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/05/choosing-the-suburbs-or-settling-for-them/481923/

 

 

 

^okay, I'm starting to wonder about your basic powers of discernment if you think that guy is Native American and not Asian

 

I don't judge people based on their race/ethnicity ;)

A fairly interesting read that seems relevant to this thread. 

 

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/05/choosing-the-suburbs-or-settling-for-them/481923/

 

 

Most cities have surprisingly few 4-bedroom houses in the prewar areas, and one of the bedrooms in a lot of the 3-bedroom prewar houses (esp Cape Cod styles) isn't really a bedroom.  I hate the phrase "starter home" but seemingly half of the homes within Cincinnati's city limits (again, any of the Cape Cod variations) have a pretty unattractive bedroom and bathroom layout on the second floor.  In some areas like Oakley, people are paying over $200k for them, but in much of the rest of the city they are rotting away. 

 

 

The cost of sprawl:  "Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?"

http://mapstoryblog.thenittygritty.org/costofstreets/?utm_content=buffer245ad&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

A fairly interesting read that seems relevant to this thread. 

 

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/05/choosing-the-suburbs-or-settling-for-them/481923/

 

 

Most cities have surprisingly few 4-bedroom houses in the prewar areas, and one of the bedrooms in a lot of the 3-bedroom prewar houses (esp Cape Cod styles) isn't really a bedroom.  I hate the phrase "starter home" but seemingly half of the homes within Cincinnati's city limits (again, any of the Cape Cod variations) have a pretty unattractive bedroom and bathroom layout on the second floor.  In some areas like Oakley, people are paying over $200k for them, but in much of the rest of the city they are rotting away. 

 

 

 

What do you mean by "isn't really a bedroom"? Do they have exterior entry doors, lack closets and/or are unheated? My house in Oakley was technically one bedroom since the other had an exterior door. It was still valued on the auditor's site at $160k 8 years ago. It wasn't in that lower value (at the time) part of town north of the dive bar.

^okay, I'm starting to wonder about your basic powers of discernment if you think that guy is Native American and not Asian

 

I don't judge people based on their race/ethnicity ;)

 

Not to mention the fact that Native Americans originally were from Asia anyway.  Though it makes some people very uncomfortable, we're all truly brothers and sisters on this planet.

A fairly interesting read that seems relevant to this thread. 

 

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/05/choosing-the-suburbs-or-settling-for-them/481923/

 

 

Most cities have surprisingly few 4-bedroom houses in the prewar areas, and one of the bedrooms in a lot of the 3-bedroom prewar houses (esp Cape Cod styles) isn't really a bedroom.  I hate the phrase "starter home" but seemingly half of the homes within Cincinnati's city limits (again, any of the Cape Cod variations) have a pretty unattractive bedroom and bathroom layout on the second floor.  In some areas like Oakley, people are paying over $200k for them, but in much of the rest of the city they are rotting away. 

 

 

 

What do you mean by "isn't really a bedroom"? Do they have exterior entry doors, lack closets and/or are unheated? My house in Oakley was technically one bedroom since the other had an exterior door. It was still valued on the auditor's site at $160k 8 years ago. It wasn't in that lower value (at the time) part of town north of the dive bar.

 

There is some formula by which the auditor and banks consider a room a "bedroom".  Sometimes a room is technically a "bedroom" but is very small, has a tilted ceiling (again, the plague of Cape Cods), has no closet, and/or has some sort of weird feature.  My house is not a Cape Cod but has a third second-floor "bedroom" that measures about 9x9 feet but with a chimney that makes about a 20x20 inch indentation in one of the corners and has no closet.  It does have a window, which apparently makes it a bedroom instead of a closet.   

 

 

Hmm, even tilted ceilings can knock you out of bedroom territory then. My current bedroom takes up the whole upstairs, but the door to the upstairs on the first floor has been removed. There is no door at the top of the stairs. It also has tilted ceilings but has a closet and windows.

People screw up all the time when they think a Zilllow estimate of their home's value is accurate, only to find that a bank won't count a finished part of the house as actual square footage.  For example, the attic space in one of these houses might count but not the other:

Zestimates... no...

A tremendous graphic showing NE Ohio sprawl in a region that stopped adding population in 1960....

 

County Planning ‏@countyplanning  35s36 seconds ago

Northeast Ohio developed areas, 1940–2010, mapped by @BuildZoom. (More details: https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/cities-expansion-slowing …)

Government policies hurt urban areas, Wolf says

May 11, 2016 12:00 AM

By Karen Langley / Harrisburg Bureau HARRISBURG BUREAU

 

HARRISBURG — Flawed policies, social biases and a lack of imagination are hurting Pennsylvania’s cities, Gov. Tom Wolf says.

 

Urban residents pay more than they should for utilities, he believes. Infrastructure development follows sprawl. Racism has led to segregation of residents. And even advocates may privately consider cities “a tough bet.”

 

“The truth is, if we actually had a level playing field, the cities would do quite well,” Mr. Wolf said Tuesday.

 

MORE:

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2016/05/11/Government-policies-hurt-urban-areas-governor-says.html

This column about baseball is completely a result of the decline of walkable neighborhoods and the rise of auto dominated exurbs. But  the general public has no idea about it and lacks the vocabulary to talk about it. Urbanism gets painted as some wacko liberal idea when it made a lot of our traditional American ideals (such as small business) and activities possible.

 

Check out this article from The Cincinnati Enquirer:

 

Doc: MLB needs backyard ball, but that summer's passed

 

http://cin.ci/1TuwwFX

Video games and then the internet killed off pickup games, not suburban neighborhoods.  I was in third grade when the original Nintendo came out and almost instantly, the kids who had Nintendo stopped playing outside.  I never got one and so kept playing outside.  We had a highly contested shared field that bullies would try to push any other group off if they saw anyone else playing.  They also wouldn't let you join a game that they were playing.  That ended the time when I was playing with a bunch of nerdier guys and they showed up to kick us off the field and I ended up punching one of them out (he had braces and his mouth filled up with blood) after one of them came out to me while I was playing outfield and kept getting standing in front of me and taunting me while the game was underway.  I had to leave the area because I knew they were going to round up some more guys and come after me so I biked about 2 miles away and spent the afternoon at another kid's house.  When I got home they had come by mom's house and threatened her and told her some version of events that was completely false.  Then they got some other kid to tell us they wanted to fight at 7pm.  So I called up two of my friends and we met them at the top of the street to fight. I remember all three of us had penny rolls in our hands which we were convinced were something like brass knuckles.  It was about to go down when an older kid I used to play with but who was now 16 rolled by in his Oldsombile hooptie and threatened to go get his gun if they didn't leave me alone, so they backed down and walked home. 

The "problem" with most nerd hobbies and why they have nearly destroyed all other suburban hobbies is that the nerd stuff is insanely convenient and cheap. Most of them can be done at any time, any place, indoors, in any weather and they cost almost nothing compared to other types of hobbies. So the reason that those pickup games were popular is that they were extremely convenient and cheap as compared to other types of hobbies that require you to be in a certain place at a certain time across town or out in the boonies. Pickup games still required decent weather and daylight.

 

This is also why the nerds have pushed out a lot of other people at minimum wage fast-food jobs. Non-nerds have time constraints forcing them to be elsewhere in order to take care of the rest of their lives. On the other hand, since the nerd stuff can take place at any time any where they don't mind the crappy hours.

Between that Outsiders chapter followed by whatever the heck that nerds post was saying, I appreciate the morning laugh, guys.

Methinks this thread is a nerb hobby. :D

All forums are, yes.

 

You know what else has really died off? Pool halls. People shoot pool at bars still, but these giant rooms full of bored guys have really tapered off. I remember even in the late '90s going to a pool hall every weekday when we got off work at 10am. We'd hit there around noon and the place would be packed.

Ironically, my son and I watched a cutthroat pickup B ball game yesterday evening at my apartment complex. I heard three different languages being spoken and the boys playing were all different shapes, sizes and races/ethnicities, and I remember thinking two things. One, this is great for him to see, it's like what my Dad would have seen growing up in his neighborhood and i'm glad these still happen and that there's such diversity even out here in suburbia. And two, I'll never be able to take him to a Cavs game, let alone one where he could see things this close, but we have this. He told me he thought they were as good as NBA players.

All forums are, yes.

 

You know what else has really died off? Pool halls. People shoot pool at bars still, but these giant rooms full of bored guys have really tapered off. I remember even in the late '90s going to a pool hall every weekday when we got off work at 10am. We'd hit there around noon and the place would be packed.

 

There's one on Westerville Road a bit south of 270 called Cushion's. Pretty interesting place.

Yeah I tend to agree with the video games and just how organized everything is now.

 

I am 28 and I think I was young enough to start seeing the change but still old enough where my mom wouldn't allow us to sit in front of the tube all day.  We were lucky and lived in a small town outside of Cedar Rapids.  In the backyard was a set of train tracks and woods where we made forts, booby traps, etc.  I could get to all my friends houses by going 3/4 a mile south down the tracks, and we would be at Robins Park.  I had different friends I would do different things.  My good friend Adam was lucky enough to have two buckets of baseballs.  We would go to the backstop and I would pitch and try to strike him out and he would hit off of me.  We would do this all the time even during the season in the summers.  He was really good and made me a lot better.  He ended up playing for Coastal Carolina and took our hs team all the way to the state championship game.  I had other friends where we would play pick up football (Tackle) with only 3 or 5 of us (all time QB).  We would play backyard Baseball at different houses (stadiums) with tennis balls, paintball, and of course pick up basketball all the time.

 

I remember in high school my football coaches wanted me to stop wrestling and playing baseball and just lift for football because that's what my future was.  I shunned all that and played all four sports (including track), and I never got caught up in all the organization of outside things like AAU basketball, etc. even though some of the guys were in on that.  Though I did do some AAU freestyle wrestling when I had the time, I mostly just did the sport in season and it kept me from getting burnt out.  I think so many kids now adays are getting burned out too early on one sport.  Not only that, I don't think kids are outside enough.

 

Growing up with bikes, railroad tracks, tressles, lake quarry's, paintball guns, footballs, baseballs and basketballs and a lot of friends who all did the same... can't get much better than that.  I hope I can do the same for my kids but times are changing.  My half brother is only 12 but all he does is sit at home on youtube or video games or movies, and it's either too hot or too cold to go out and do anything.  Kind of sad...

All these posts remind me of when I was around 11 and my mom moved me to a new town to live with my new stepdad. I started playing baseball with some neighborhood kids in a local dirt lot. One day we didn't have a ball to play with, so I grabbed my stepdad's ball from his office. What I didn't realize was that it was signed by some famous ball player from way back in the olden days. Anyway, before I knew it, one of the kids hit a long ball into a junkyard behind the lot which was guarded by a mean sounding guard dog. We had quite an adventure trying to get it back. Ultimately, though, we learned a lot about life and ourselves that summer.

^ You're killing me Smalls!!

City Observatory ‏@CityObs  6h6 hours ago

You've heard of congestion costs. But what about the sprawl tax? http://cityobservatory.org/introducing-the-sprawl-tax/

 

Ghost Boxes: Reusing Abandoned Big-Box Superstores Across America

ARTICLE BY KURT KOHLSTEDT

 

Big box stores promise convenience and jobs for suburbs and small towns, but have a mixed reputation with designers and citizens. Many see big boxes as icons of unsustainable sprawl, reinforcing car culture with highway-oriented access and expansive parking lots. These boxy buildings not only take up vast amounts of land but often also require infrastructure around them to be overhauled. Later, when their super-sized occupants leave: a giant empty structure is left in their wake, which can be difficult to reuse unless a similar retailer takes its place.

 

Some communities and architects, however, have started to turn these voids into opportunities, taking advantage of qualities unique to such megastructures. In one Texas town, a vacated Walmart has become the biggest single-story public library in the United States. Located in McAllen, the 123,000-square-foot building in question was redesigned and retrofitted by architects from Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle. Their approach to the project turned some of the biggest challenges of big-box reuse into opportunities. The sheer volume of the structure provided an open framework, ready to be re-purposed.

 

http://99percentinvisible.org/article/ghost-boxes-reusing-abandoned-big-box-superstores-across-america/

Ghost Boxes: Reusing Abandoned Big-Box Superstores Across America

ARTICLE BY KURT KOHLSTEDT

 

Big box stores promise convenience and jobs for suburbs and small towns, but have a mixed reputation with designers and citizens. Many see big boxes as icons of unsustainable sprawl, reinforcing car culture with highway-oriented access and expansive parking lots. These boxy buildings not only take up vast amounts of land but often also require infrastructure around them to be overhauled. Later, when their super-sized occupants leave: a giant empty structure is left in their wake, which can be difficult to reuse unless a similar retailer takes its place.

 

Some communities and architects, however, have started to turn these voids into opportunities, taking advantage of qualities unique to such megastructures. In one Texas town, a vacated Walmart has become the biggest single-story public library in the United States. Located in McAllen, the 123,000-square-foot building in question was redesigned and retrofitted by architects from Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle. Their approach to the project turned some of the biggest challenges of big-box reuse into opportunities. The sheer volume of the structure provided an open framework, ready to be re-purposed.

 

http://99percentinvisible.org/article/ghost-boxes-reusing-abandoned-big-box-superstores-across-america/

 

I thought it was supposed to become a FEMA camp.    :evil:

New Study Finds Most Of Earth’s Landmass Will Be Phoenix Suburb By 2050

NEWS IN BRIEF

October 6, 2016

VOL 52 ISSUE 39  

 

SYRACUSE, NY—Forecasting the continued rapid growth of the metropolitan area in the coming decades, a study published Thursday by researchers at Syracuse University has found that the majority of Earth’s landmass will be Phoenix suburbs by 2050.

 

http://www.theonion.com/article/new-study-finds-most-earths-landmass-will-be-phoen-54107

How utilities costs subsidize sprawled out places, via @nextSTL

https://nextstl.com/2016/10/how-we-subsidize-spread-out-places-via-utilities/

Brutal Note Shames Parents for Raising Kids in Tiny House

 

 

Mike and Kelly Brüning, from San Diego, CA, are feeling shell-shocked after receiving an anonymous letter from a neighbor shaming them for the size of their house. According to San Diego's KSWB, the couple, who have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, have been living in their two-bedroom condo, not far from the beach, for almost nine years.

 

 

 

https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/parents-received-brutal-note-shaming-153036372.html

It serves them right for raising two kids in that hellhole.

 

Seriously. I was reading it and was like, "damn, I wish I could've grown up in a place like that instead of suburbia with nothing to do anywhere."

Seriously. I was reading it and was like, "damn, I wish I could've grown up in a place like that instead of suburbia with nothing to do anywhere."

 

It's dumb enough that I'm half wondering if the note was left by someone trying to get their condo haha. 

IKEA plans to adapt to urban populations by locating stores more centrally https://t.co/mwphYc2jWk