Walkability, house size, etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's in your head. Nobody was belittling the choice to live the 'American Dream'. In fact, this post started out attacking urban dwellers and calling their homes shit shacks. If the respo se you got was people defending their choices---well, what did you expect?

My time in Europe was an eye-opener. My European friends come over and rave about Target and our big fresh grocery stores. Sometimes we want to live the exact opposite of our childhood upbringing. In my case, I was in the suburbs for 18 years and lived moving to the city. My sister, on the other hand, had replicated our upbringing which was wonderful. I was the sister that went far away to college. She commuted from home. Different choices. Not better- just different.

Relax.

You've mischaracterized the initial post on this thread, as well as the import of the prior post discussing the purported preferences of Americans for everything big. Obviously, people learn things when they travel about their own preferences and those of others. However, one need not to go Europe to learn some people prefer urban living.

No. However, it is a way of life over there. There are no big shopping malls. Go to Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Munich, etc and you will be outside shopping for your clothes. It is strips and strips of walkable city centers. We don't really have anywhere in the US that replicates this. We don't have car-free city centers. Living in pre-war buildings and carrying your crap up 5 flights without an elevator or a lift so small that you can't even fit a suticase inside is different. I worked out less, drank more beer and lost 15 pounds (and I wans't big to begin with) living that lifestyle. There was also a sociability factor. People don't drive into their driveways at 6pm and stay in for the night. MMaybe because they don't have Costoc or big fridges or storage space they get together a lot more frequently---at least where I was. Now--that could be why there is a crisis in Europe right now..

So yes-- unless you have lived abroad for an extensive amount of time (and with kids!) you don't get it from your big Engagment trip to Paris...

bhaahhahahah europe is magical, you dropped 15 pounds and weren't even fat! Amazing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They totally have suburban yuck in Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Suburban lifestyle is present and available in any European country. It's just that little American girls on their senior year trip don't get to see it. So they come back thinking "Europe" is about drinking coffee all day, sidewalk restaurants, wine at lunch and oh, "culture." Unfortunately, they continue to perpetuate the cliches while stateside.

Or maybe when we go over there TO WORK in our 20s and 30s...we live in the city! Who would have guessed?! That's where the work is, that's where the fun is.

actually there are more jobs in the DC suburbs and satellite cities like tysons, reston and the dulles corridor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They totally have suburban yuck in Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Suburban lifestyle is present and available in any European country. It's just that little American girls on their senior year trip don't get to see it. So they come back thinking "Europe" is about drinking coffee all day, sidewalk restaurants, wine at lunch and oh, "culture." Unfortunately, they continue to perpetuate the cliches while stateside.

Or maybe when we go over there TO WORK in our 20s and 30s...we live in the city! Who would have guessed?! That's where the work is, that's where the fun is.

Oh dear, you sort of ought to drop the Europe thing. It just isn't helping, because the lifestyle you describe is great because it is urban, not really because it is "European".

Of course, Europe boasts some of the world's great cities, and yes, our little District really, really should aspire to join them, as NYC has done in the last 100 years and as a handful of other US cities (DC probably included because of its progress in the last decade) have gotten a little closer.

But you get into some trouble when you attribute urban-ness to "Europe" as a non-specific whole. You ought to know the whole continent is a much more diverse and complicated place than that, and that there is no shortage of suburban sloth outside of these urban centers.

You're not wrong about a certain hostility to urban life having historically formed some very fundamental ideas of American-ness (Thomas Jefferson, anyone?) and that this has been an influential driver of attitudes here ever since. Just saying that post-War Europe hasn't been immune to bad development, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They totally have suburban yuck in Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Suburban lifestyle is present and available in any European country. It's just that little American girls on their senior year trip don't get to see it. So they come back thinking "Europe" is about drinking coffee all day, sidewalk restaurants, wine at lunch and oh, "culture." Unfortunately, they continue to perpetuate the cliches while stateside.

Or maybe when we go over there TO WORK in our 20s and 30s...we live in the city! Who would have guessed?! That's where the work is, that's where the fun is.

actually there are more jobs in the DC suburbs and satellite cities like tysons, reston and the dulles corridor.

And we make a full circle right back to Tyson's !!

[Anonymous]

Raise your hand if you actually *like Tysons*... anyone?

Is there anyone who thinks that Tysons is a fun place to live? Not a practical place to live, but a *nice* place to live?

If so, seriously?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Common theme in this forum is for people to discuss walkability. If you don't want it, you are somehow not 'normal'. Additionally, there's house size as in "you don't NEED more than X square feet".

Who determines what someone else needs? Who determines walkability? Why are these things considered desirable? Isn't desirable what works for you? And isn't it possible that what works for you isn't what works for someone else?

Why is "walkability" considered desirable? Why indeed, when you can just waddle out of your mcmansion into your H2 and drive past the cookie-cutter Mcmansions to Appleby's drive through for their gallon of mochachoochoo latte grande with fries? Drive to your mega-church on sundays to pray together with your vacuous neighbors? Then retreat to your basement theater to watch 4 hours of RHNY while scoffing down nachos drenched in kraft cheese?

Who is to say that is wrong?

Sounds better than spending half your waking hours pleading with the DC government for better schools and increased police presence.

But who's to say that is wrong?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ohhh... I'm totally on board with your urbanist agenda, PP, but you do know that there certainly are big shopping malls and Fairfax-style dullsville suburban developments all over Europe, right? Lots of Europeans live exactly the way you say they don't and are too stupid to miss their walkable city centers. The idiocy of rural and almost-rural life has claimed plenty of victims on both sides of the pond.

But "we don't care if it's walkable" PPs are irresponsible because we, as a society, pay a heavy political and environmental price for the subsidizing of the car culture and the fueling of their supersized homes and lifestyles.

What we don't care for is dimwits like you with a mind-boggling mix of idiocy and arrogance, presuming they can tell others how to live and judge them for following a model other than your preferred one. Who are you to decide what the right size is for my home and lifestyle?

Too bad you weren't born in the USSR, you'd fit right in.

And who are you to demand that those of us living more responsibly continue to subsidize the resources you so thoughtlessly consume? Haven't enough Real 'Merkuns died so you can continue to count on cheap gas? Haven't enough scary-assed regimes been fueled by oil money? Hasn't enough environmental damage happened to our own country as the result of our efforts to "unlock" our own fossil fuel reserves?

What about the depletion of farmland as it gets converted to "subdivisions"?

And yes, the obesity epidemic, for which car culture is at least in large part to blame.

You say all this is your business alone, but we all share finite natural resources and communal economic resources. Face it, your lifestyle choices are no longer so dominant in this region that you can continue to live as you do without coming under some criticism. And certainly, the faster-rising value of District and sorta close housing stock confirms that perceptions of the desirability of a car-centric lifestyle are changing.

Dude, when you describe the "District" as not-car-centric, you come across as myopic as little girls who wax poetic about "Europe." You don't actually mean the District of Columbia, because most of DC - outside of a handful of yuppy places like Dupont and Cleveland Park - are most assuredly NOT dependent on public transit. This applies across the economic spectrum. The rich kids of Kent and Spring Valley will have to schlep to a coffee shop or a restaurant for as as many hours as impoverished kids of Southeast to the library or a grocery store. Wake up. The parts of DC served by public transit make up only a small part of the ENTIRE DC. Oh, you may not have to drive as long as kids in Ashburn. But rest assured, your bumcheeks will know the caress of the carseat as certain as sunrise. Yes, you can live a car-free life in the District - in a small, small handful of District enclaves.

But no argument from me on the faster rising values in DC. I own a couple of rentals there, and I am pleased people like you pay my mortgage so I don't have to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Raise your hand if you actually *like Tysons*... anyone?

Is there anyone who thinks that Tysons is a fun place to live? Not a practical place to live, but a *nice* place to live?

If so, seriously?

Is there one definition of a nice place to live? Tysons proper actually doesn't have much by way of residential real estate except a few high-rises. Most neighborhoods "around" Tysons will have names of their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Raise your hand if you actually *like Tysons*... anyone?

Is there anyone who thinks that Tysons is a fun place to live? Not a practical place to live, but a *nice* place to live?

If so, seriously?

I think it's nice and convenient to everything and is going to be awesome with the new silver line metro.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They totally have suburban yuck in Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Suburban lifestyle is present and available in any European country. It's just that little American girls on their senior year trip don't get to see it. So they come back thinking "Europe" is about drinking coffee all day, sidewalk restaurants, wine at lunch and oh, "culture." Unfortunately, they continue to perpetuate the cliches while stateside.

Well no argument from me there. I don't see how Americans who have spent at least a few years in Europe as adults can fail to see that just like every place, it has its own problems and hypocrisies.

So let's not say that walkability matters because Europe is walkable and Europe is necessarily sooo much better because... Europe!

But the walkable lifestyle PP described is indeed a valid and responsible goal independent of it's having been imprecisely applied to non-specific "Europe".

It can be a valid and responsible goal, it's just not a goal for everyone and everyone should not be forced to conform to any one person's idea of validity and responsibility. It's a choice, one of many.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Common theme in this forum is for people to discuss walkability. If you don't want it, you are somehow not 'normal'. Additionally, there's house size as in "you don't NEED more than X square feet".

Who determines what someone else needs? Who determines walkability? Why are these things considered desirable? Isn't desirable what works for you? And isn't it possible that what works for you isn't what works for someone else?

Why is "walkability" considered desirable? Why indeed, when you can just waddle out of your mcmansion into your H2 and drive past the cookie-cutter Mcmansions to Appleby's drive through for their gallon of mochachoochoo latte grande with fries? Drive to your mega-church on sundays to pray together with your vacuous neighbors? Then retreat to your basement theater to watch 4 hours of RHNY while scoffing down nachos drenched in kraft cheese?

Who is to say that is wrong?

Sounds better than spending half your waking hours pleading with the DC government for better schools and increased police presence.

But who's to say that is wrong?

and watching dc's unexpected surpluses being spent to house and up the people committing the crimes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
But "we don't care if it's walkable" PPs are irresponsible because we, as a society, pay a heavy political and environmental price for the subsidizing of the car culture and the fueling of their supersized homes and lifestyles.

And many people are paying the price of gentrification, as more families flock to walkable urban centers. Could we argue it is irresponsible to displace long-time residents, and that other consequences of gentrification have an impact that isn't always positive? I'm not being snarky or calling you to the carpet. I'm just playing devil's advocate and interested in hearing viewpoints.

Nothing is without a societal cost, IMO. Gentrification included and that is the "price" of increased desire for a walkable community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ohhh... I'm totally on board with your urbanist agenda, PP, but you do know that there certainly are big shopping malls and Fairfax-style dullsville suburban developments all over Europe, right? Lots of Europeans live exactly the way you say they don't and are too stupid to miss their walkable city centers. The idiocy of rural and almost-rural life has claimed plenty of victims on both sides of the pond.

But "we don't care if it's walkable" PPs are irresponsible because we, as a society, pay a heavy political and environmental price for the subsidizing of the car culture and the fueling of their supersized homes and lifestyles.

What we don't care for is dimwits like you with a mind-boggling mix of idiocy and arrogance, presuming they can tell others how to live and judge them for following a model other than your preferred one. Who are you to decide what the right size is for my home and lifestyle?

Too bad you weren't born in the USSR, you'd fit right in.

And who are you to demand that those of us living more responsibly continue to subsidize the resources you so thoughtlessly consume? Haven't enough Real 'Merkuns died so you can continue to count on cheap gas? Haven't enough scary-assed regimes been fueled by oil money? Hasn't enough environmental damage happened to our own country as the result of our efforts to "unlock" our own fossil fuel reserves?

What about the depletion of farmland as it gets converted to "subdivisions"?

And yes, the obesity epidemic, for which car culture is at least in large part to blame.

You say all this is your business alone, but we all share finite natural resources and communal economic resources. Face it, your lifestyle choices are no longer so dominant in this region that you can continue to live as you do without coming under some criticism. And certainly, the faster-rising value of District and sorta close housing stock confirms that perceptions of the desirability of a car-centric lifestyle are changing.

Dude, when you describe the "District" as not-car-centric, you come across as myopic as little girls who wax poetic about "Europe." You don't actually mean the District of Columbia, because most of DC - outside of a handful of yuppy places like Dupont and Cleveland Park - are most assuredly NOT dependent on public transit. This applies across the economic spectrum. The rich kids of Kent and Spring Valley will have to schlep to a coffee shop or a restaurant for as as many hours as impoverished kids of Southeast to the library or a grocery store. Wake up. The parts of DC served by public transit make up only a small part of the ENTIRE DC. Oh, you may not have to drive as long as kids in Ashburn. But rest assured, your bumcheeks will know the caress of the carseat as certain as sunrise. Yes, you can live a car-free life in the District - in a small, small handful of District enclaves.

But no argument from me on the faster rising values in DC. I own a couple of rentals there, and I am pleased people like you pay my mortgage so I don't have to.

Plenty of DCUMs live in DC's urban neighborhoods. You shouldn't assume we're all UpperNWesties, and by the way, not UpperNwestie doesn't automatically mean we've chosen larger, cheaper houses in Petworth over the walking neighborhoods you describe as "Yuppie". (That's an '80s-referencing term if ever there was one!)

Sure, your urban properties were great investments. But how do you not see the connection between their popularity and the increasing popularity of urban living?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
But "we don't care if it's walkable" PPs are irresponsible because we, as a society, pay a heavy political and environmental price for the subsidizing of the car culture and the fueling of their supersized homes and lifestyles.

And many people are paying the price of gentrification, as more families flock to walkable urban centers. Could we argue it is irresponsible to displace long-time residents, and that other consequences of gentrification have an impact that isn't always positive? I'm not being snarky or calling you to the carpet. I'm just playing devil's advocate and interested in hearing viewpoints.

Nothing is without a societal cost, IMO. Gentrification included and that is the "price" of increased desire for a walkable community.

Populations have always been on the move. Property changes hands, and demographic profiles of any given area will look different from one moment to the next.

Frankly, the history of most of the DC neighborhoods experiencing gentrification didn't begin with their current "longtime residents".

Now, the lack of affordable housing pricing necessary workers out of walkable and even reasonably commutable areas-- that's a practical problem that needs solving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Raise your hand if you actually *like Tysons*... anyone?

Is there anyone who thinks that Tysons is a fun place to live? Not a practical place to live, but a *nice* place to live?

If so, seriously?

Not that many people live in Tysons.

On the other hand, many people live nearby in Vienna, McLean and Great Falls, which are some of the nicest places in the DC region to live, hands down. They may not appeal to the Logan Circle crowd that cares more about dog parks than schools, but most of their residents are very happy to live there.