Comments on: Choosing Where to Live

By: Arkansas Officials Surround State Capitol With Even More Parking | Streetsblog Los Angeles

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:39:51 +0000

[...] explores the tendency for every transportation faction to believe it is subsidizing another mode. Decatur Metro looks at how much gas prices have to rise to get folks to trade their car commute for transit in [...]

By: Mr. Boh

Mr. Boh — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 02:11:24 +0000

I think another aspect to people moving back into the city is traffic. People start to wonder why do I want to waste two hours of my life every workday in traffic? Is there another way. And people started moving back in. Things got nicer, and more people moved in (i.e. gentrification). I wonder if this trend will start falling off as we continue to move toward a telecommuting world. There won’t be the push to be close to ‘work’ and avoid the traffic.

By: At Home in Decatur

At Home in Decatur — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 04:17:11 +0000

On another level, there were other downsides to the suburbs of “back then”, especially on the social level. Like dysfunctional families (credits to Chekov or was it Tolstoy?), all suburbs were dysfunctional in their own way. Even though the suburb I grew up in was considered quite nice and had a good high school with mostly college-bound kids, almost no one stayed after high school or came back later. Something that’s always impressed me about Decatur is how many natives I meet who are incredibly loyal to DHS, the city, and the community. I could see my kids settling here when they are adults and I wouldn’t consider it a failure or lack of imagination or fear of the outside world.

By: Darin

Darin — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 02:27:09 +0000

“this current rejection of the suburbs and the move back to the city is really less about changing preferences than changing environments, and cities are once again good – and some would argue better – environments to live in for the first time in 150 years or so.”

This is a great point. I definitely have been someone who sneers at the previous generation’s adoption of the suburban-sprawl model. Yet, when I was a kid, the current crop of intown neighborhoods full of walkable, family-friendly amenities didn’t exist (at least not in their current form) — so you’re right, there wasn’t a choice. The metro Atlanta environments that could be considered “liveable” by middle class standards existed almost exclusively in the suburbs.

Nonetheless, I’ll continue to sneer at the subsidies, zoning regulations, prejudices and more that made the suburban model the only livable choice for so long. But I can’t fault the average working people (like my parents) who moved where they did.

I’ll adamantly disagree with you, though, on this point: “drawbacks of the ‘burbs that we rail against now, were a small price to pay for getting away from these other things.” The price of suburban blandness might’ve seemed small in the day-to-day life of suburbanite. But there is nothing “small” about the price we all pay for the loss of un-built land area to sprawl. The damage to our native plant and animal species and their habitats in north Georgia is incalculable. The loss of ecosystems and agricultural land to suburban development is well worth a regular sneer.

By: Decatur Metro

Decatur Metro — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 19:00:11 +0000

Indeedy. There was an article about Yelp a couple months back – that I kept meaning to post about but never did – that focused on how much power it had in driving local business and how it actually HURT chain restaurants. It was one of the first examples I had seen that tried to quantify the positive effect the web has had on local businesses around the world. If you’ve got a good business model and a good product, the communication model is a much lower hurdle than it used to be. People are just as aware of the new BBQ place around the corner as they are of the renovated Applebee’s.

It’s also interesting how the younger generation – myself included – openly mocks the previous generation for its choices in this arena. In many places, moving to the ‘burbs was a better choice back then. There was no internet to strengthen existing ties within the city, which affected everything from advertising for local businesses to rampant criminal acts that went under-reported. Not to mention the serious pollution problem. People weren’t dumb or any different than they are now. But the drawbacks of the ‘burbs that we rail against now, were a small price to pay for getting away from these other things back then. Just like we sneer at the canned green beans we ate growing up, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that they weren’t a choice back then, they were often the only option.

We may like to put on some Arcade Fire and feel empowered as we rebel against our suburban upbringing, but really this current rejection of the suburbs and the move back to the city is really less about changing preferences than changing environments, and cities are once again good – and some would argue better – environments to live in for the first time in 150 years or so.