So basically the title is overly dramatic. It says cul-de-sacs are killing America.
What it actually means is cul-de-sacs are symbolic of the mazes of twisty little residential streets that characterize today's suburban developments in the United States, and those mazes of twisty little residential streets basically force people to use cars to get anywhere, and thus get a lot less exercise compared to their brethren who live in gridded streets and have easier walking and bike access to things like shopping and public transportation. And getting less exercise tends to be not very good for people's health.
That said, I actually agree with that second paragraph. I've lived in one of those mazes of twisty little residential streets for ten years myself. I wondered how I could get anywhere without a car. It was like, I was entirely dependent on having my parents drive me everywhere, in most cases. Walking to school would take hours. Having a bike would only make things marginally better -- one would still have to bike all the way out of that maze of twisty little residential streets in order to get to the shopping center diagonally across the major street outside.
It's really inefficient for transportation. That said, what it IS efficient for is security -- if you want to restrict people's car access to the community to only a few entrances, where you can put guardposts or electronic gates...
Well, to some extent. You usually can just walk right in, as they rarely guard footpaths. In some cases, like where I used to live, if you were an enterprising criminal, you'd notice that our house was separated from the major street by...a 7 foot wall. Yep, that was it. So bring a ladder. Remember to take it with you when you get on top of the wall, so you can climb back over later. Or don't, and be youtubed with a video title of "dumbest criminal ever". That'll show them.
The other thing that mazes of twisty little residential streets are good at is packing in an illusion of privacy into as little space as possible. By privacy we mean "it takes a decent drive to get from a major street to your house, so you feel as if your little abode is far from the troubles outside your neighborhood." Which is funny when there's just a seven-foot wall and some grass separating you from the enterprising criminal outside who realized he could bring a ladder. Alternatively, the enterprising non-criminal guy with a convertible who realized that installing a loud soundsystem would allow him to show off his music taste to a moving half-mile radius around his pimped-out ride. See, the criminal might not break into your house, but that dude's music taste will.
Remember back in the 50s when they'd record like Elvis singing YOU AIN'T NOTHIN BUT A HOUND DOG and then they'd turn the record over and reverse it and it was all NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP and people were all like, "That is actually the voice of Satan coming from that song."
Pretty much what Aliroz just said. And too many suburban areas rapidly expanding like they often do is pretty much impossible to sustain.
Well I personally don't like how it's nigh-impossible to get anywhere by walking, and there's practically no public transit that you can use. So you're effectively forced to add car and gas money to your living expenses. (Unless you're somehow so incredibly wealthy you can just stay at home and order delivery of groceries and food.)
Well, I guess you could bike. Or trike, if you don't like biking. Adult-size trikes are more stable and can carry some amount of groceries. They're also nigh-impossible to find in the United States, despite being really common in some Chinese cities.
Despite its drawbacks, I'd certainly rather live in a suburb than in a city. Living in a city is nightmare fuel, for me.
Well, duh.
It's nicer to live in a suburb, but worse on the environment. Just like how cramped apartments and skyscrapers in an iron heckhole with no greenery is better on the environment because it's all stuck in one smaller area.
Rural spaces is where it's at, and even then, only when done right.
I'd prefer living in a city, mostly because I can just go anywhere I need to, anytime, at minimal cost.
Cars are fucking annoying to upkeep. And it's so easy for your sole means of daily getting around to be fucked over. Just one flat tire will do it, among a myriadof other things.
I'd prefer living in a city, mostly because I can just go anywhere I need to, anytime, at minimal cost.
Cars are fucking annoying to upkeep. And it's so easy for your sole means of daily getting around to be fucked over. Just one flat tire will do it, among a myriadof other things.
Dunno about you, but I've found it pretty sufficient to retreat to one's own room or office. Especially at night. Keep the lights off. Makes for a good time for some thinking and introspection.
I'm not so much a car hater as I am just scared of driving.
However, I very much agree with the city-loving sentiment. I think that's why I feel like Raleigh's such a drag-- you can't get to anything without a car unless you're downtown, and downtown is a lousy excuse for a real city atmosphere (there are buildings and they are tall but not tall enough, and compared to any real cities the skyscraper/condensed part of Raleigh is tiny).
Well I lived for a year somewhere around the upper west side of Manhattan.
You could still hear a little bustle of city life at night. Not much though. Though that probably depends on how close to the street you live and how busy it is down there.
I'm mainly going by the rare occasions I've been in Pittsburgh proper, which seem like some kind of agoraphobic nightmare to me. Perhaps I'm oversensitive?
I've never gotten the "suburbs are boring" thing. This is the fucking 21st century. You have the internet, games, movies, books, music, whatever you want pretty much on demand. I can get all the entertainment I want without leaving home. Which is the best.
I'm mainly going by the rare occasions I've been in Pittsburgh proper, which seem like some kind of agoraphobic nightmare to me. Perhaps I'm oversensitive?
I've never gotten the "suburbs are boring" thing. This is the fucking 21st century. You have the internet, games, movies, books, music, whatever you want pretty much on demand. I can get all the entertainment I want without leaving home. Which is the best.
Thing is, though, some folks are less interested in staying home than others.
I mean, I love the internet, but it can't replace the feeling of going to a theater or a restaurant or a theme park, etc. yet, and if we're being honest it's probably gonna be a while until it truly does.
Reason enough for me to not want to deal with them, if my current area's management of the neighborhood is any indication.
You're fighting the Zombie Homeowners' Association
You step into the large central chamber of city hall. You peer into the darkness, and in that darkness a pair of eyes opens. Then, near it, another pair. And another, and another, until your own eyes finally adjust to the light and you see an abominable heap of well-dressed zombies, all connected by various bits of their anatomy to all of the others.
The largest one, the one at the top of the heap, begins to moan, the sound thick and wet.
"Weeds. Weeeeeeds."
"Don't... you mean... brains?" you reply.
"Weeds." she continues. "No more than... Niiiiiine inches. 90 contiguous squaaaaare feet. Fiiiiiiire hazard."
Great. Just what you need. A bunch of petty bureaucrats led by a nosy chairwoman.
> You have the internet, games, movies, books, music, whatever you want pretty much on demand. I can get all the entertainment I want without leaving home. Which is the best.
See, that's awesome and all, but something tells me that spending so much of my time indoors is probably not conducive to good health. Also, interacting with friends in meatspace is fun. You can do so much more in meatspace than in webspace. Playing tabletop RPGs is easier. Various group games like Mao are easier. Doing group projects such as building stuff is easier.
> Theaters and theme parks do not interest me. Restaurants rarely do outside the weekly trip to Wendy's.
You sound like a person with tastes similar to mine. :)
I don't mine the occasional theme park visit. They're interesting.
I see restaurants as nice gathering-places, as well as good places to pick up meals when I don't have time. I generally prefer mom-and-pop fast food joints over chain stores. I practically never patronize upscale restaurants, though.
I live in an older suburb that was built in the 1970s, has an actual local bus service, and has access to express bus service into DC if I need it. (I should really be using the express bus every day, but the parking lots fill up before I'm usually awake...waking up at 6 AM is something I've not been good at since high school). There's a grocery store about a mile away, and bigger stores about 3 miles away. My car is a Prius, which gets 40-50 MPG on longer trips, and about 30 on shorter trips in the winter.
There was a time, though, where we had to drive 25-30 miles one way, in a car that got maybe 18 MPG on a good day, just to go shopping.
Remember back in the 50s when they'd record like Elvis singing YOU AIN'T NOTHIN BUT A HOUND DOG and then they'd turn the record over and reverse it and it was all NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP and people were all like, "That is actually the voice of Satan coming from that song."
Scary rides actually don't bother me that much.
What theme parks do have though is unruly kids. Hoo boy. :|
Comments
What it actually means is cul-de-sacs are symbolic of the mazes of twisty little residential streets that characterize today's suburban developments in the United States, and those mazes of twisty little residential streets basically force people to use cars to get anywhere, and thus get a lot less exercise compared to their brethren who live in gridded streets and have easier walking and bike access to things like shopping and public transportation. And getting less exercise tends to be not very good for people's health.
That said, I actually agree with that second paragraph. I've lived in one of those mazes of twisty little residential streets for ten years myself. I wondered how I could get anywhere without a car. It was like, I was entirely dependent on having my parents drive me everywhere, in most cases. Walking to school would take hours. Having a bike would only make things marginally better -- one would still have to bike all the way out of that maze of twisty little residential streets in order to get to the shopping center diagonally across the major street outside.
It's really inefficient for transportation. That said, what it IS efficient for is security -- if you want to restrict people's car access to the community to only a few entrances, where you can put guardposts or electronic gates...
Well, to some extent. You usually can just walk right in, as they rarely guard footpaths. In some cases, like where I used to live, if you were an enterprising criminal, you'd notice that our house was separated from the major street by...a 7 foot wall. Yep, that was it. So bring a ladder. Remember to take it with you when you get on top of the wall, so you can climb back over later. Or don't, and be youtubed with a video title of "dumbest criminal ever". That'll show them.
The other thing that mazes of twisty little residential streets are good at is packing in an illusion of privacy into as little space as possible. By privacy we mean "it takes a decent drive to get from a major street to your house, so you feel as if your little abode is far from the troubles outside your neighborhood." Which is funny when there's just a seven-foot wall and some grass separating you from the enterprising criminal outside who realized he could bring a ladder. Alternatively, the enterprising non-criminal guy with a convertible who realized that installing a loud soundsystem would allow him to show off his music taste to a moving half-mile radius around his pimped-out ride. See, the criminal might not break into your house, but that dude's music taste will.
they may not be perfect but they're a lot better than many other places
Also, I'm trying to hate MLPFIM and failing. Stupid show.
Well, I guess you could bike. Or trike, if you don't like biking. Adult-size trikes are more stable and can carry some amount of groceries. They're also nigh-impossible to find in the United States, despite being really common in some Chinese cities.
It's nicer to live in a suburb, but worse on the environment. Just like how cramped apartments and skyscrapers in an iron heckhole with no greenery is better on the environment because it's all stuck in one smaller area.
Rural spaces is where it's at, and even then, only when done right.
SO much better than One Coarse Meal, which is so terrible it makes you happy because everything else is glorious by comparison.
Cars are fucking annoying to upkeep. And it's so easy for your sole means of daily getting around to be fucked over. Just one flat tire will do it, among a myriadof other things.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
However, I very much agree with the city-loving sentiment. I think that's why I feel like Raleigh's such a drag-- you can't get to anything without a car unless you're downtown, and downtown is a lousy excuse for a real city atmosphere (there are buildings and they are tall but not tall enough, and compared to any real cities the skyscraper/condensed part of Raleigh is tiny).
You could still hear a little bustle of city life at night. Not much though. Though that probably depends on how close to the street you live and how busy it is down there.
so I'm sure that's probably tinting my perspective, as well as the fact that I've been here pretty much since 2001 (i.e. the majority of my life).
Like, a very small town. A few hundred people or so.
I've never gotten the "suburbs are boring" thing. This is the fucking 21st century. You have the internet, games, movies, books, music, whatever you want pretty much on demand. I can get all the entertainment I want without leaving home. Which is the best.
Or terribly. Either way.
I mean, I love the internet, but it can't replace the feeling of going to a theater or a restaurant or a theme park, etc. yet, and if we're being honest it's probably gonna be a while until it truly does.
Reason enough for me to not want to deal with them, if my current area's management of the neighborhood is any indication.
Now, it is true that you can probably find a good library in a city.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
You step into the large central chamber of city hall. You peer into the darkness, and in that darkness a pair of eyes opens. Then, near it, another pair. And another, and another, until your own eyes finally adjust to the light and you see an abominable heap of well-dressed zombies, all connected by various bits of their anatomy to all of the others.
The largest one, the one at the top of the heap, begins to moan, the sound thick and wet.
"Weeds. Weeeeeeds."
"Don't... you mean... brains?" you reply.
"Weeds." she continues. "No more than... Niiiiiine inches. 90 contiguous squaaaaare feet. Fiiiiiiire hazard."
Great. Just what you need. A bunch of petty bureaucrats led by a nosy chairwoman.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
pretty much on demand. I can get all the entertainment I want without
leaving home. Which is the best.
See, that's awesome and all, but something tells me that spending so much of my time indoors is probably not conducive to good health. Also, interacting with friends in meatspace is fun. You can do so much more in meatspace than in webspace. Playing tabletop RPGs is easier. Various group games like Mao are easier. Doing group projects such as building stuff is easier.
You sound like a person with tastes similar to mine. :)
I don't mine the occasional theme park visit. They're interesting.
I see restaurants as nice gathering-places, as well as good places to pick up meals when I don't have time. I generally prefer mom-and-pop fast food joints over chain stores. I practically never patronize upscale restaurants, though.
Your tastes suddenly sound a bit less similar to mine.
Or were you bull-headed enough to believe there is only 1 America?