If I socialize at home, it's with people I invite over, people with whom I want to spend time. It's not a dorm, you know? I just don't think this is odd. Even if I had a house, I wouldn't select it based on how awesome everyone was that lived around me in the hopes we could all chat over the fence and go back and forth to each other's homes.

I think it's important for a sense of community and safety. I know all my neighbors. We look out for each other. They help me watch my place when I'm on vacation, feed my cats, etc. I help them carry groceries up to their units or do maintenance. We work together to address nuisance neighbors. I've known some of my neighbors for two decades. I feel sorry for those who don't have this sense of community.

Except you're now assuming that the only way to have a sense of community is through regular interaction with your immediate neighbors. Which is objectively wrong. I am a part of a community, but "Westfalen Lofts Phase 2" isn't it. All those things you just listed still happen even without everyone being buddy buddy.

 

Proximity isn't the only determining factor in forming a community.

100% agree with jmicha. Most of my neighbors hate white people and don't speak to us. My community is my block of friends. Last night when I came home to discover the painters who are repainting my apartment unplugged my fridge and forgot to plug it back in, causing me to throw away a couple hundred dollars worth of food with no way to get out and get more because a) I'm broke and b) it was my kid's bedtime, I posted to complain about the idiocy on my FB page.

 

One friend came by within an hour with cereal, milk, fruit so my kid would have breakfast, and a grocery store GC so I could buy enough to get us through the rest of the week. Another friend, who didn't get off work at the grocery store he works at until MIDNIGHT, drove from the other side of town to drop off 3 bags of food to us at 1 in the morning. Another friend, in Seattle, paypal-sent me some money instantly and said he wouldn't take no for an answer. Two more E side friends put together a big basket of produce from their garden, which I am picking up from them today. THIS is my community. Not the people in my building, who wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire.

True jmicha, especially in this day and age of digital communities. But in terms of physical safety and protection of your property, it is reassuring to me that I know my neighbors, they know me, and that we can trust each other to look for each other on a moment's notice. No digital community or otherwise geographically extended community can call the police if they hear someone break into my condo while I'm in Europe. Nor do they compensate for the routine chats in the hallway when one of us is coming and going. It is a comforting feeling to me that I know I have people who care for me living only a few feet away.

 

Wow, RnRer, sounds like you live in the post-child area for what that article was complaining about.

The last time someone in my building called the police it was because the upstairs neighbors had so many people coming in and out of the building for whatever religious holiday they were currently celebrating that they backed up the sewer and it overflowed. It was a fire hazard to have all those people there and the hundreds of pairs of shoes in the hall, and bikes, and strollers, spilling out onto the front stoop, is also a fire hazard. They have complete disregard for the neighbors here. I don't care to associate with them. Anyone who lets their toddler walk around with no diaper unsupervised while she is crying alone in the hallway, or lets another toddler sit in the middle of the parking lot on a sewer grate with zero supervision while cars come and go are not the type of people I want to deal with. A friend of mine brought me some stuff for my son when he unexpectedly and suddenly became sick two weeks ago, and she couldn't believe how many really little kids were out in the middle of the street and heavily trafficked parking lot at 10:30pm in the dark with no parents watching them. These people wouldn't watch my apartment if I was gone, and I wouldn't trust them to take care of an animal of mine, no way.

 

The elderly people in my building are the only decent neighbors and most of them are increasingly infirm and will probably be gone in another year or two. I don't look forward to the new neighbors. The last ones in front prior to those who recently moved in had to be evicted in 24 hours when I notified management of the smell of feces. They had a dog and cat in there and did not take the animals outside to use the bathroom. There was a BABY living in there in that slop. The hazmat suit guys had to come clean it out for a week. These aren't people I trust in any regard.

But the assumption that those things can only happen when everyone knows each other isn't one I'm sure I believe. We had someone break into our basement storage units a couple times and both times word got out fast and people went through extra efforts to ensure the doors were closing properly (the side door of the building wasn't latching properly) until we could change up our security system on the entry points to the building. It might not be as personal as in your circumstance, but it still happens.

 

People don't need to necessarily know someone to be overly kind to them. For example, I bought a piece of furniture and was struggling to get it into the building by myself. A neighbor I had never met dropped his groceries and helped bring it up to my unit. I don't know him, remember his name, or any of that but if I saw him (or any other neighbor) struggling with someone I would help them. Doesn't mean I want to be their friends or hang out with them.

 

Someone regularly delivers the boxes that are in the lobby to their respective units as well. The lobby of the building doesn't have a staircase, just an elevator, and as such many of us don't regularly use the lobby but rather use the two stairwells at either ends of the property. This means boxes will sometimes sit by the mailboxes for longer than most people would be comfortable with. I have come home to various things at my door several times. No clue who does it but I see it every couple weeks.

 

Point is, I get what it is that you get out of knowing your neighbors but I'm just not sure the cause of those things is being friends with them. I think there is just a general sense of looking out for your neighbors regardless of whether or not you really know them.

Maybe that's why you and others feel so unsafe? Maybe that's why I feel very safe?

Jesus rockandroller, where do you live?!

I feel very safe at home. I do live in a ground floor apartment so I don't keep my windows open at night, but I've had overnight guests come and stay and then just go out the sliding door when they leave, closing it behind them and leaving it unlocked, and I feel very safe there. There is virtually no petty crime that I know of. I've accidentally left my trunk open all night and it's never been a problem. I feel safe in terms of crime where I live. The city itself is safe, my complex is safe, and the particular area of where my building is is very safe, as I border a large woods. You'd have to really go out of your way to even find my building, let alone break in. It's way off the main road and pretty remote.

 

I feel unsafe when I'm downtown or in Tremont when the circumstances have a weird vibe. But I don't feel unsafe at home, ever. Just irritated that my neighbors suck and that there aren't more apartment complexes in that city, as I have to stay in the city to keep my son in his great elementary school.

Jesus rockandroller, where do you live?!

 

I live in the Islander apartments.

I know maybe hundreds of neighbors by sight, but I don't know most of their names even.  I think that is alright.  I have been in the same neighborhood for 20+ years, and so, over that time, some of the strangers became acquaintances, and some gradually became good friends. 

 

The guy who runs the corner store, or the maintenance man for the building next door might never become my best friend, but we can always chat for a few minutes and sometimes rely on each other for small favors.  We don't share much in common, except proximity, but this is part of community too.  Actually, this is one of the most rewarding parts of urban living.. .. becoming acquainted with people that are totally different than you.

I know maybe hundreds of neighbors by sight, but I don't know most of their names even.  I think that is alright.  I have been in the same neighborhood for 20+ years, and so, over that time, some of the strangers became acquaintances, and some gradually became good friends. 

 

The guy who runs the corner store, or the maintenance man for the building next door might never become my best friend, but we can always chat for a few minutes and sometimes rely on each other for small favors.  We don't share much in common, except proximity, but this is part of community too.  Actually, this is one of the most rewarding parts of urban living.. .. becoming acquainted with people that are totally different than you.

 

I agree. That's what I love too.

I think the isolation of many people in the suburbs is a very significant issue that goes way beyond just being a good neighbor.

 

In urban areas, you frequently encounter lots of different types of people. Your interactions with them be just saying "hi" or having a long conversation, and the interaction may be pleasant or unpleasant. But you're exposed to people of different age groups, financial brackets, races, interests, etc.

 

Of course, in the suburbs, you can add some of this spontaneous interaction into your life. But you're not forced to do so on a regular basis. So a lot of people drive from their house to their job, then drive to the grocery store in their neighborhood, then drive home and turn on the TV. So their only exposure to the world is to people who are socioeconomically similar to them and what the media portrays of other types of people. Why do think there is so little empathy for people of other social classes, and so much hatred whipped up by fear-mongering political movements? Because such a small minority of people are actually having meaningful interactions with people who aren't like them.

The best home-security system is a nosy neighbor you're friends with.

I didn't buy my house because of the neighbors, but I am grateful that I know them. We hang out with several pretty regularly. I felt better when our neighbor watched over my place when on vacation. Not to mention watering my flower baskets and veggies. I never had that kind of relationship with neighbors when I was renting. Owning your place gives you a different mentality.

I own my place and don't have that mentality. I have really close relationships with people in OTR but none live in my building. If I needed someone to watch my place it would likely be my brother or a best friend anyway. I'd rather someone I'm really close with in my place when I'm not there versus even a person I consider my friend but am not super close with. Of the neighbors I do know I definitely wouldn't want any of them having access to my place when I'm not there.

I've lived in apartments since I was 18 with the exception of the time period I lived in Beverly Hills, and I've always had an at least passing friendly relationship with several people in the building. In my last building in westlake, the one guy who lived in front grilled out literally at least four days a week, all year long, and everyone was welcome to stop by. A guy that lived on the 2nd floor was a chef and he'd also contribute to the meals, so there'd always be a few people going in and out of his place, having some beers and a big whole fish being grilled or whatever. The building before that, people used to hang out at the pool and chat with each other and occasionally go to each other's apartments for informal parties.

 

The makeup of residents is obviously very different where I live. While the other apartments were what I'd call multicultural, with a mix of whites, blacks, arabs, hispanics, etc, where I live now is 90-95% one race so it's a different story.

How the Federal Government Built White Suburbia

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,15945.msg770911.html#msg770911

When you buy a house there is no way to really know what is going on with the neighbors.  The guy who owns the 3-familiy next to my house appears to rent out only to people on permanent disability for mild mental health issues.  So these idiots are ALWAYS THERE.  It's like having to talk to the same nut job down at the Greyhound station day after day, year after year. 

 

I had a cordless drill run out of power while drilling holes in concrete the other week.  Sure enough stooge 2 or 3 waddles out and starts telling me "well you know that's why you always need to have two charged batteries...".  Okay dude, thanks for the tip. 

I think the isolation of many people in the suburbs is a very significant issue that goes way beyond just being a good neighbor.

 

In urban areas, you frequently encounter lots of different types of people. Your interactions with them be just saying "hi" or having a long conversation, and the interaction may be pleasant or unpleasant. But you're exposed to people of different age groups, financial brackets, races, interests, etc.

 

Of course, in the suburbs, you can add some of this spontaneous interaction into your life. But you're not forced to do so on a regular basis. So a lot of people drive from their house to their job, then drive to the grocery store in their neighborhood, then drive home and turn on the TV. So their only exposure to the world is to people who are socioeconomically similar to them and what the media portrays of other types of people. Why do think there is so little empathy for people of other social classes, and so much hatred whipped up by fear-mongering political movements? Because such a small minority of people are actually having meaningful interactions with people who aren't like them.

 

You realize of course that this is largely intentional?  I've semi joked about how the world of 2015 was created by the "nerds" of the eighties.  For many of whom, extraneous interaction is sheer torture for strictly neurological reasons (the autism spectrum).

 

The fact is, that pretty much every innovation that reduces the need for extraneous interaction, from suburbs to ATM cards to online shopping to 24 hour stores to texting/e-mail, has been a success.

 

Yet you have to be pretty far down said spectrum to never want any interaction at all.  But everyone wants it more or less on their own terms.

 

On the other hand, more interaction takes place among people with like interests.  I call it the Brony Effect:  groups coming together which never ever would have in the pre 'net days, based on interests which would be suppressed or kept private.

 

So there's a trade off.  I don't consider it unhealthy at all.  Just give each other space when desired, and maintain the structure that allows interaction when desired.

#Sprawl costs the U.S. economy $1 trillion a year, reports @newclimateecon: http://t.co/mCo2cHXx0B http://t.co/sJMuTThmZP

The richest places in America all have one thing in common

 

Kansas City, St. Louis and and Baltimore are missing holes on a map of American prosperity. They are relatively low-income, encircled by wealth. Cross their county lines into the suburbs, and households there make, in many cases, nearly twice as much.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/18/the-richest-places-in-america-all-have-one-thing-in-common/

A blog post by someone I went to school with re: her choice to buy a house in suburban Cincinnati after having lived in the Big City.  Where in Cincinnati I don't know -- I haven't seen or talked to her in about ten years.

http://www.thewilder.com/index.php/2015/09/26/making-peace-with-the-suburbs/

 

^She's comparing a suburban house in Cincinnati 3 miles from her parents to an apartment in Chicago. It sounds like the biggest factor was being in the same city as her parents.

 

Being close to family consistently comes up as a top factor in choosing a place to live.

 

And yet it's often quite irrelevant compared to all the other traveling that's necessary on a daily basis.  The architecture firm where I work does a lot of assisted living facilities, and whether new, remodels, or additions, they're almost entirely in pretty far-flung suburban locales.  We know this isn't a good place for old people, and the owners and directors know that too.  It's much better that people who are too old to drive can walk to at least some of their daily needs.  It's usually vision problems that force people to stop driving, not physical or mental impairment, so people can walk for quite a bit longer than they can drive.  Thus locating such facilities near downtowns or neighborhood business districts makes a lot of sense.  There's stuff to walk to, neighborhoods are worth walking around, not much parking is needed anyway, doctors and other services are closer, and you don't have to provide things like extensive libraries, theaters, salons, and such on-site (they're usually pretty rudimentary anyway), and the shuttle bus to the mall isn't the only escape. 

 

So why are most old folks homes in greenfields?  Cost is a part of it, but it's a pretty small part overall.  The big reason is the children of the residents, who are usually the ones in charge of the decision to move there in the first place.  The kids are mostly of the Boomer generation anyway, pretty thoroughly entrenched in the suburbs themselves, and in many cases they simply can't comprehend how someone can live in an urban environment, let alone someone who's elderly.  More than anything however, they want to put their parents in a place that's nearer to them because they think it'll get them to visit more often.  It doesn't really pan out that way, and no matter how often the kids come to visit, it's a fraction of the time actually spent living in the facility, which is a sadly cloistered and infantilized existence, no matter how nice the building might be. 

In Portsmouth it is the opposite. All the good buildings downtown are reserved for retirees. Such is the power of hills, rivers and flood plains.

And yet it's often quite irrelevant compared to all the other traveling that's necessary on a daily basis.  The architecture firm where I work does a lot of assisted living facilities, and whether new, remodels, or additions, they're almost entirely in pretty far-flung suburban locales.  We know this isn't a good place for old people, and the owners and directors know that too.  It's much better that people who are too old to drive can walk to at least some of their daily needs.  It's usually vision problems that force people to stop driving, not physical or mental impairment, so people can walk for quite a bit longer than they can drive.  Thus locating such facilities near downtowns or neighborhood business districts makes a lot of sense.  There's stuff to walk to, neighborhoods are worth walking around, not much parking is needed anyway, doctors and other services are closer, and you don't have to provide things like extensive libraries, theaters, salons, and such on-site (they're usually pretty rudimentary anyway), and the shuttle bus to the mall isn't the only escape. 

 

So why are most old folks homes in greenfields?  Cost is a part of it, but it's a pretty small part overall.  The big reason is the children of the residents, who are usually the ones in charge of the decision to move there in the first place.  The kids are mostly of the Boomer generation anyway, pretty thoroughly entrenched in the suburbs themselves, and in many cases they simply can't comprehend how someone can live in an urban environment, let alone someone who's elderly.  More than anything however, they want to put their parents in a place that's nearer to them because they think it'll get them to visit more often.  It doesn't really pan out that way, and no matter how often the kids come to visit, it's a fraction of the time actually spent living in the facility, which is a sadly cloistered and infantilized existence, no matter how nice the building might be. 

 

Very much so.  Nursing homes are in competition with one another, and location is a major competitive feature.  Possibly the biggest.  The (boomer) kids are ultimately the ones who decide on a facility and they tend to want it near them. 

 

However, another recent trend in nursing homes is to include a "main street" area where resident services are clustered in a faux-urban arrangement-- with storefronts, lamp posts, the whole nine yards.  Thus, while selling exurban proximity for the relatives, they're also selling city living for the old folks.

Politics of fear in Boulder:

 

This is Mega-NIMBYism at work in Boulder http://t.co/kpH7F1Kihj http://t.co/8xvdjq9BuW

Politics of fear in Boulder:

 

This is Mega-NIMBYism at work in Boulder http://t.co/kpH7F1Kihj http://t.co/8xvdjq9BuW

 

Wow, that's awful.  And unfortunately, I can see measures like that being very attractive to the insiders who would get to vote on it.  That's the central problem of growing downtowns and urban neighborhoods: The people with the greatest interest in increased access to the neighborhood are those who might want to live there someday but don't live there yet, and therefore can't vote.  I can only hope that neighborhood businesses understand the implications of eternally freezing the size of their local customer base.

^  Aaaahhhhhh zoning.  Sometimes it's a good reminder to see an institution used for exactly the reasons it was created.  See Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.

 

Justice Sutherland:

With particular reference to apartment houses, it is pointed out that the development of detached house sections is greatly retarded by the coming of apartment houses, which has sometimes resulted in destroying the entire section for private house purposes; that, in such sections, very often the apartment house is a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district. Moreover, the coming of one apartment house is followed by others, interfering by their height and bulk with the free circulation of air and monopolizing the rays of the sun which otherwise would fall upon the smaller homes, and bringing, as their necessary accompaniments, the disturbing noises incident to increased traffic and business, and the occupation, by means of moving and parked automobiles, of larger portions of the streets, thus detracting from their safety and depriving children of the privilege of quiet and open spaces for play, enjoyed by those in more favored localities -- until, finally, the residential character of the neighborhood and its desirability as a place of detached residences are utterly destroyed. Under these circumstances, apartment houses, which in a different environment would be not only entirely unobjectionable but highly desirable, come very near to being nuisances.

 

 

Monopolizing the rays of the sun!!!!!

Politics of fear in Boulder:

 

This is Mega-NIMBYism at work in Boulder http://t.co/kpH7F1Kihj http://t.co/8xvdjq9BuW

 

Wow, that's awful.  And unfortunately, I can see measures like that being very attractive to the insiders who would get to vote on it.  That's the central problem of growing downtowns and urban neighborhoods: The people with the greatest interest in increased access to the neighborhood are those who might want to live there someday but don't live there yet, and therefore can't vote.  I can only hope that neighborhood businesses understand the implications of eternally freezing the size of their local customer base.

 

On the other hand, the people who are already there have invested time, money, and effort into their neighborhood.  Their views matter less than those who "might" want to live there?

^ They should retain full rights over their property.  That is, the property that they have rightfully purchased.  Not other people's property.  When you purchase land, your title is to the land you have bought - you have not purchased the right to control everyone else's land use decisions (barring nuisance)....at least not under our original conception of property rights which has all but been destroyed at this point.

 

Politics of fear in Boulder:

 

This is Mega-NIMBYism at work in Boulder http://t.co/kpH7F1Kihj http://t.co/8xvdjq9BuW

 

Wow, that's awful.  And unfortunately, I can see measures like that being very attractive to the insiders who would get to vote on it.  That's the central problem of growing downtowns and urban neighborhoods: The people with the greatest interest in increased access to the neighborhood are those who might want to live there someday but don't live there yet, and therefore can't vote.  I can only hope that neighborhood businesses understand the implications of eternally freezing the size of their local customer base.

 

On the other hand, the people who are already there have invested time, money, and effort into their neighborhood.  Their views matter less than those who "might" want to live there?

 

Their views should not matter less, but they should also not matter more.  First, I question how much a typical suburbanite has typically invested in "time" and "effort" into their neighborhood.  Second, in terms of money, the prospective newcomers would be looking to invest their money there, too, but not a premium forced on them by insider protectionism.  What measures like this seek to grant insiders is essentially a legally-guaranteed oligopoly premium.  That is not an appropriate use of the democratic process and it is not a way of increasing one's wealth that is entitled to any respect from principled free market advocates.

 

Zoning per se is bad enough, and the pro-sprawl, pro-oligopoly activists behind this clearly think that exclusionary zoning isn't exclusionary enough.  This is the kind of thing that almost makes me support the draconian AFFH rules Obama's HUD just put out, and at the very least forces me to pull my punches on criticizing them.

The richest places in America all have one thing in common

 

Kansas City, St. Louis and and Baltimore are missing holes on a map of American prosperity. They are relatively low-income, encircled by wealth. Cross their county lines into the suburbs, and households there make, in many cases, nearly twice as much.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/18/the-richest-places-in-america-all-have-one-thing-in-common/

 

Oakland County by Detroit is actually really unique. You've got one of the nation's poorest major urban counties next to one of its wealthiest major suburban counties. Over 1.2 million people live in Oakland County, Michigan, so it's not some small cluster of wealthy people like Perrysburg near Toledo.

 

In fact, that's the biggest difference between Detroit and Toledo. Detroit still has a lot of suburban wealth. Toledo doesn't. It's also why Detroit is showing bigger projects at the core. The collapse of Toledo's suburbs (not that they were ever on the level of Detroit's suburbs) is what's really leading to the decline in Northwest Ohio. Those younger suburban people with money who would move downtown are just in much shorter supply in Toledo. :|

 

Detroit may have more inequality than Toledo, but the fact there is still a large population of moneyed folks nearby is what's leading to the dramatic turnaround of downtown Detroit. Urbanism is in fashion again, and money tends to follow fashion.

 

Taking this back 30 years and moving up to 35,000 feet, the large, nearby clusters of suburban wealth are what led to the growth in San Francisco and Manhattan, and they're still partly fueling it today. Both of those urban areas had decades of population loss, but once the cities got safer, people started flooding back. There is an endless supply of young people who grow up in upper-middle class suburbs of San Francisco and New York City who want city life. Those suburban kids have always been a big part of SF and NY nightlife too. Hence the term "bridge and tunneler" in those two cities.

 

Detroit could very well end up like this due to Oakland County. 1.2 million people with money is enough to entirely rebuild Detroit.

Yeah, showing the income percentiles for the counties is an OK stat but you don't want to read more into it than what is there.  For example, I see the bright blue top-20% coloring for Medina County (~175k people) and Geauga County (~95k) outside of Cuyahoga.  But Medina and even Geauga County have nothing on the higher-end suburban counties of D.C.  They wouldn't even come close.

^True, but nothing really compares to DC's suburbs due to the extremely high public sector salaries there and defense contracting. Those are pretty much the only large suburbs that compare to Silicon Valley.

 

*Economically, DC-Baltimore is most similar to SF-Oakland. What makes the Bay amazing is that it's almost all private sector wealth.

Tweets by @JeffSpeckAICP of presentation by @JoeUrbanThree

What sprawl does.

 

Cities are bankrupting themselves by not requiring and subsidizing dense mixed use.

 

Jeff Speck ‏@JeffSpeckAICP  36m36 minutes ago

Downtown West Palm generates $9M in tax, gets $7M in County investment. All of suburban Loxahatchee region generates $14M, receives $70M.

1.5% of West Palm (downtown) produces 21% of the county tax revenue, yet receives none of the transportation funding.

 

 

 

From @JoeUrbanThree: You say, “Well, I would never live there.”  Well, who the hell cares?  (Somebody will.)

From @JoeUrbanThree: How many of you would live in a 400-600 SF Unit? (10).  Now, how many of you HAVE lived in a 400-600 SF unit?

Asher M ‏@AsherOfLA  55m55 minutes ago

@JeffSpeckAICP Many planners think they're developers and block something because *they* think it won't sell. "C'mon everyone needs parking"

 

 

Form follows finance. The Mansard comes from the French taxing only what's below the roof.

 

Nixon in 1960 saw sprawl as problem but his remedy was federal support of local zoning http://t.co/VaGYmULELK

 

In 1973 the Nixon administration published a document called The Costs of Sprawl.

 

Elizabeth Magie Phillips invented this game to teach children about land value and development.

 

The deeper message:

You need to have @JoeUrbanThree speak in your community.

I'm not telling you to stop doing this, because it's not hurting anything, but when you just post tweets on the forum, I never bother to read them or click the links. Just an fyi.

I'm not telling you to stop doing this, because it's not hurting anything, but when you just post tweets on the forum, I never bother to read them or click the links. Just an fyi.

 

I started posting these on my phone posting only the links until I could get to a desktop to embed the images so you wouldn't have to click on the links. Let me know if you can see the graphics now.

Tim Davis ‏@kettlemoraine  8h8 hours ago

The 10 most sprawled U.S. counties have FOUR times the rate of #traffic deaths as the 10 most smart-growth counties:

Oh boy...

 

An inner-ring suburb on the edge, Maple Heights can't offer residents much – not even basketball hoops: Mark Naymik

 

 

http://www.cleveland.com/naymik/index.ssf/2015/10/an_inner-ring_suburb_on_the_ed.html#incart_river_home

Good memories of family going to Southgate and barbecuing with cousins nearby.

 

At least the city's library is pretty nice.

Good memories of family going to Southgate and barbecuing with cousins nearby.

 

At least the city's library is pretty nice.

 

I remember that being built.  It was definitely a point of pride.

 

Someone tagged it a couple weeks ago and it was a major shock to a lot of people.

So in honor of Back to the Future Day today, I thought I'd bring up something I haven't seen mentioned in all the discussions of what they got right or wrong about what's now our present.  Most people are talking about flying cars, hoverboards, self-lacing shoes, and the Cubs winning the World Series (hehe), but I haven't seen anyone mention the representation of Hill Valley itself.  Back to the Future II has a pretty good handle on the Back to the City movement, if a bit accelerated compared to most of the country. 

 

Recall that in 1955 Hill Valley, downtown was basically firing on all cylinders, though on the verge of a long painful decline.  There's a nice courthouse square, businesses all around, well kept neighborhoods and schools, all great stuff.  By 1985 the courthouse square has been paved over for a rundown parking lot, the theater is showing porno, other stores are boarded up, Doc Brown's mansion has been replaced with a suburban commercial strip, and the Twin Pines (or Lone Pine) Mall and other subdivisions like Lyon Estates and Hilldale have sucked most people and jobs out of downtown.  Hill Valley 2015 however is even more happening than it was back in 1955.  The courthouse square is now a park/pond, the courthouse itself is a mall (not surprising considering that's when downtown malls were seen as a thing), but the main point is that all the stores are occupied and it's a busy place.  Hilldale on the other hand, a suburban development that was new in 1985 and exclusive enough that someone with a Rolls Royce lived there, had become a rough and run-down neighborhood, nothing but a breeding ground for tranks, lobos, and zipheads.  Granted that's a bit extreme, but it illustrates the vulnerability of the "new hotness" suburbs, especially in the face of disruptive transportation technologies like flying cars and the like.  Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting take on the subject. 

Oh boy...

 

An inner-ring suburb on the edge, Maple Heights can't offer residents much – not even basketball hoops: Mark Naymik

 

 

http://www.cleveland.com/naymik/index.ssf/2015/10/an_inner-ring_suburb_on_the_ed.html#incart_river_home

 

This article misses the point on how badly these inner ring suburbs need to embrace regionalism to survive.  Combine maple heights, Garfield heights, Bedford heights etc.  shared emergency services, shared tax base etc.  it's the only way

Oh boy...

 

An inner-ring suburb on the edge, Maple Heights can't offer residents much – not even basketball hoops: Mark Naymik

 

 

http://www.cleveland.com/naymik/index.ssf/2015/10/an_inner-ring_suburb_on_the_ed.html#incart_river_home

 

This article misses the point on how badly these inner ring suburbs need to embrace regionalism to survive.  Combine maple heights, Garfield heights, Bedford heights etc.  shared emergency services, shared tax base etc.  it's the only way

 

They definitely need regionalism to survive, but combining with each other doesn't do much. These suburbs have been poached and sucked dry by their second-ring and exurban neighbors. A better and fairer solution along those lines would be to combine Garfield Heights with Cuyahoga Heights and Valley View, Maple Heights with ?, and the Bedfords with Walton Hills, Oakwood, Northfield, and/or Macedonia. But of course, that's exactly why all of these municipalities exist in the first place: So the wealth can be segregated from the poverty. Even when that wealth is unearned in the form of non-resident income tax havens.

A long article -- and a must-read for this weekend!

 

The Suburb That Tried To Kill the Car

Evanston was failing as a suburb, so it reinvented itself as a mini city. Now the city of Chicago wants to follow its lead.

By T.R. Goldman

October 22, 2015

 

At first glance, downtown Evanston, Illinois, doesn’t look revolutionary—just another a gentrifying urban core with the obligatory Whole Foods, the local organic sustainable restaurants serving $14 cocktails, the towering new, high-end luxury apartments filled with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. The booming downtown feels increasingly hip; this summer it was featured as a “Surfacing” destination in the New York Times Travel Section. “I have everything here,” says Joanne McCall, pausing one evening on her way inside Sherman Plaza, a soaring, 26-story condominium building. “The post office, the dry cleaner, the movies, I work out upstairs, the Whole Foods is over there, the hair dresser over here. And the Uber thing is getting big here.”

 

It takes, in fact, a few extra minutes in the neighborhood to realize what’s different—and what’s missing. Downtown Evanston—a sturdy, tree-lined Victorian city wedged neatly between Lake Michigan and Chicago’s northern border—is missing cars. Or, more accurately, it’s missing a lot of cars. Thanks to concerted planning, these new developments are rising within a 10-minute walk of two rail lines and half-a-dozen bus routes. The local automobile ownership rate is nearly half that of the surrounding area.

 

Which again, may sound like so many other gentrifying urban areas. Who owns a car in Brooklyn, after all? But Evanston isn’t Park Slope—the city, now 75,000 strong, is quintessentially a suburb, somewhere to escape the density of nearby Chicago, a place to get extra room and, especially, a place to drive your car, jetting down Lake Shore Drive or the Edens Expressway to the Windy City. The houses in Evanston were so idyllic, in fact, that filmmakers came to use it as the beau ideal of postwar suburban life—it was where Hollywood came to film all-American suburban movies like Sixteen Candles, Dennis the Menace, Uncle Buck, and both Home Alone 2 and Home Alone 3.

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/evanston-illinois-what-works-213282#ixzz3pOss7QPZ

Regionalism is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for addressing issues like this, but it's getting pretty darn close to "necessary" (and the things that would make it unnecessary aren't likely to materialize), and it would at least move the needle in terms of being sufficient.  But I agree with Clevelander17 that combining large numbers of small, distressed municipalities into small numbers of large, distressed municipalities isn't going to do much.

 

There are many services that can't feasibly shrink even in consolidated municipalities.  You will still need x numbers of policemen per 1000 residents, y miles of water and sewer lines, etc.  Even in terms of central offices, a single city engineer probably isn't enough for a hypothetical merged entity of half (or all) of the eastern Cleveland suburbs, so you'll have an East Cuyahoga (just to pick a name) Engineer's office who will need more support staff than any given city engineer in the older, Balkanized suburbs.  You might get better results, because the engineer's office will be able to toss aside the artificial constraints of jurisdiction lines and start thinking about what makes sense for the area's topography, lithography, hydrogeology, etc.  But there's a certain basic minimum of staffing that won't really be redundant and can't be eliminated.

 

This is even more the case with things like police and fire protection.  With fire protection, the footprint matters far more than any jurisdictional boundary.

 

And unfortunately, with police protection, you can't avoid talking about culture and actual levels of crime.  Merging Maple Heights with wealthier, more stable suburbs might enable hiring more police, but you will never actually start seeing monetary savings until you start needing fewer police.

The Suburb That Tried To Kill the Car

Evanston was failing as a suburb, so it reinvented itself as a mini city. Now the city of Chicago wants to follow its lead.

 

Kind of a weird article that misleadingly makes Evanston sound like the kind of sprawling, scattered, strip-mall, subdivision suburb it never was. In fact, Northwestern began when Chicago was a modest sized burg 12 miles down the path before the railroads came. True, its real growth came with the growth of Chicago and the coming of the rails, but it was always a denser, transit-oriented, first-ring 'burb. Southern parts of the city are almost indistinguishable from Chicago -- three-flats, big courtyard apartment blocks, a smattering of tightly spaced single-family houses, etc. But the density of the landlocked (in terms of space to grow) inner-ring suburb is essentially unchanged in almost 70 years -- with a population estimated at 75,000 now and 73,000 in 1950. Nonetheless, kudos to Evanston for a good job of doing the obvious -- building up rather than out in order to remain viable, and embracing TOD.