Upper NW DC the "Suburbs"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, CCDC is suburban, zero difference from CCMD or Bethesda. I assume it's not the same suburban experience as someone in Great Falls or Clarksburg or Loudon, but it's definitely urban living. Cmon, OP, you can't really be surprised by this.

CCDC is more gridlike and has more sidewalks. I’m sure there are other differences, but those are the ones I’ve noticed.

Having sidewalks and grid like streets is not going to make it urban. For it to be urban it has to have a higher density of commercial within shorter walking distance and higher density of housing, which is only present around metro stations. For me also, there is another factor: car accessibility. Urban areas are not car oriented even if not high density, businesses/commercial don't offer customer parking, street parking is a PITA, everything is scaled toward walking and PT. Suburban areas have way more parking lots, most commercial places offer customer parking if at least a few spots, it's easier to park and drive vs. take PT or walk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC isn’t “Chocolate City” anymore. The white and Asian population combines to be over 50 percent of the population.

It certainly isn’t creamy soy sauce city so let’s stick to chocolate for the time being

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC isn’t “Chocolate City” anymore. The white and Asian population combines to be over 50 percent of the population.

It certainly isn’t creamy soy sauce city so let’s stick to chocolate for the time being

It's a diverse city. Calling DC a chocolate city is insulting all the other residents of DC who aren't AA. Need to move with the times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC isn’t “Chocolate City” anymore. The white and Asian population combines to be over 50 percent of the population.

It certainly isn’t creamy soy sauce city so let’s stick to chocolate for the time being

Chocolate is no longer accurate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, CCDC is suburban, zero difference from CCMD or Bethesda. I assume it's not the same suburban experience as someone in Great Falls or Clarksburg or Loudon, but it's definitely urban living. Cmon, OP, you can't really be surprised by this.

CCDC is more gridlike and has more sidewalks. I’m sure there are other differences, but those are the ones I’ve noticed.

Having sidewalks and grid like streets is not going to make it urban. For it to be urban it has to have a higher density of commercial within shorter walking distance and higher density of housing, which is only present around metro stations. For me also, there is another factor: car accessibility. Urban areas are not car oriented even if not high density, businesses/commercial don't offer customer parking, street parking is a PITA, everything is scaled toward walking and PT. Suburban areas have way more parking lots, most commercial places offer customer parking if at least a few spots, it's easier to park and drive vs. take PT or walk.

You have odd criteria. Even some places in Manhattan offer customer parking.

Also, there are places in the suburbs that have commercial within short walking distance and high density of housing, even if you have to take a bus to the metro and there are parking lots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC isn’t “Chocolate City” anymore. The white and Asian population combines to be over 50 percent of the population.

It certainly isn’t creamy soy sauce city so let’s stick to chocolate for the time being

It's a diverse city. Calling DC a chocolate city is insulting all the other residents of DC who aren't AA. Need to move with the times.

Yes, but not as diverse as some of the MoCo/NoVA cities. According to WalletHub, it's #35 (https://wallethub.com/edu/most-diverse-cities/12690/).

DMV cities that rank above it are:

4 - Gaithersburg
6 - Silver Spring
7 - Germantown
23 - Alexandria
28 - Rockville

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC isn’t “Chocolate City” anymore. The white and Asian population combines to be over 50 percent of the population.

It certainly isn’t creamy soy sauce city so let’s stick to chocolate for the time being

It's a diverse city. Calling DC a chocolate city is insulting all the other residents of DC who aren't AA. Need to move with the times.

Yes, but not as diverse as some of the MoCo/NoVA cities. According to WalletHub, it's #35 (https://wallethub.com/edu/most-diverse-cities/12690/).

DMV cities that rank above it are:

4 - Gaithersburg
6 - Silver Spring
7 - Germantown
23 - Alexandria
28 - Rockville

How is this relevant to whether DC is majority AA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC isn’t “Chocolate City” anymore. The white and Asian population combines to be over 50 percent of the population.

It certainly isn’t creamy soy sauce city so let’s stick to chocolate for the time being

It's a diverse city. Calling DC a chocolate city is insulting all the other residents of DC who aren't AA. Need to move with the times.

Yes, but not as diverse as some of the MoCo/NoVA cities. According to WalletHub, it's #35 (https://wallethub.com/edu/most-diverse-cities/12690/).

DMV cities that rank above it are:

4 - Gaithersburg
6 - Silver Spring
7 - Germantown
23 - Alexandria
28 - Rockville

How is this relevant to whether DC is majority AA?

I'm responding to the person who called DC diverse. Many people assume the suburbs are whitewashed, when many are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes CCDC is the suburbs.

So is Brooklyn

And Queens!

Queens feels like the suburbs. Most of Brooklyn does not until you get to Sheepshead Bay.

Brooklyn is literally called the 1st suburb in the US.

It’s not about feel it’s about it being the suburb.

Brooklyn and Queens offer very mixed housing options. NWDC is definitely a lot more residential than either of them overall. There are areas of Brooklyn that are similar in density to NWDC, but they are still better covered by subway access, closer and more frequent subway stops, more commercial strips in closer walking distance than NWDC, not as car oriented, as commercial establishments don't offer parking for the most part. There are clearly suburban parts of Queens that are far from subway, but overall Brooklyn and Queens have large swaths of rowhouse/apartment building density that is closer in nature to DC core areas and not residential NWDC. DC itself is about as dense as Brooklyn and Queens, it's a mid rise and rowhouse density. NWDC has a more urban feel only around its main streets near metro stations, but metro stations are very far apart IMHO to make the entirety of this area feel urban. It's more like a denser suburb, then a city.

CCDC and Brooklyn are both suburbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in Upper NW and it is definitely not the suburbs.

All of upper NW was built around street car lines and most neighborhoods are very walkable to both transit and retail.

And several of the commercial corridors in Upper NW (really all of them except Wisconsin Avenue) have some fairly dense residential areas though the residential side streets are obviously mostly single family homes but even there the houses are mostly on lots that are a fraction the size of suburban lots including the lots just across the line in MD.

BTW there are many similar neighborhoods across all 4 quadrants of DC (ok not really SW DC) with single family homes immediately adjacent to higher density corridors with commercial and multi-unit buildings so NW isn't really that different from much of DC except it only has some small pockets of blocks with rowhouses which are more common in other DC neighborhoods.

Cool. We have all of that and live in MoCo, outside the Beltway.

Really - which neighborhoods in MoCo outside the beltway have all of that? The faux urbanism of King Farm doesn't count because the transit there sucks and there really isn't that much density there either though it may feel like it because the traffic is still awful.

I really don't feel like naming where I live so that you can mock it. Thanks.

Why would somebody from far out in MoCo chime in here! We don’t want to live outside the beltway. If I had to I’ve there I’d move to a Philly suburb. Or LA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC isn’t “Chocolate City” anymore. The white and Asian population combines to be over 50 percent of the population.

It certainly isn’t creamy soy sauce city so let’s stick to chocolate for the time being

It's a diverse city. Calling DC a chocolate city is insulting all the other residents of DC who aren't AA. Need to move with the times.

Yes, but not as diverse as some of the MoCo/NoVA cities. According to WalletHub, it's #35 (https://wallethub.com/edu/most-diverse-cities/12690/).

DMV cities that rank above it are:

4 - Gaithersburg
6 - Silver Spring
7 - Germantown
23 - Alexandria
28 - Rockville

How is this relevant to whether DC is majority AA?

I'm responding to the person who called DC diverse. Many people assume the suburbs are whitewashed, when many are not.

Nobody thinks the DC suburbs are whitewashed. You’ve got it backward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you live in a SFH with a yard? Yeah, that’s suburban.

Sure but idk why that's seen like a bad thing. A home with a yard in a major city? Where you can walk to some restaurants and the metro? Count me in.

Most of Chevy Chase isn't particularly walkable to the metro.

I guess if you are lazy - geographically about half of Chevy Chase DC is west of Connecticut and all of those homes are comfortably within walking distance of a Metro station. And technically some of the neighborhoods east of Connecticut are not even Chevy Chase.

What's your definition of comfortable walking distance?

Well we can't walk to the metro but we do walk 3 minutes to a gourmet grocery store and 15 minutes to a movie theater, several bars and restaurants, the library, the toy store, several coffee shops, and the supermarket. I don't care about the semantics but I don't think people in most of America's suburbs can do that (not to mention the fact that a 15 minute drive gets you to downtown DC).

I live in the suburbs and have sidewalks on every single street in my neighborhood. My house is a 5 minute walk from:

- a movie theatre
- a bar
- a dozen restaurants
- a farmer's market
- a grocery store
- hair salons
- 2 dance studios
- the post office
- a coffee shop

We are a 5 minute drive from the library. We are a 30 minute metro ride to Woodley Park.

Takoma Park is barely the suburbs.

[Anonymous]

OP, after 6 pages have you regained your cool, hip identity or are you going to accept that you are also a boring suburban mom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC isn’t “Chocolate City” anymore. The white and Asian population combines to be over 50 percent of the population.

It certainly isn’t creamy soy sauce city so let’s stick to chocolate for the time being

It's a diverse city. Calling DC a chocolate city is insulting all the other residents of DC who aren't AA. Need to move with the times.

Yes, but not as diverse as some of the MoCo/NoVA cities. According to WalletHub, it's #35 (https://wallethub.com/edu/most-diverse-cities/12690/).

DMV cities that rank above it are:

4 - Gaithersburg
6 - Silver Spring
7 - Germantown
23 - Alexandria
28 - Rockville

How is this relevant to whether DC is majority AA?

I'm responding to the person who called DC diverse. Many people assume the suburbs are whitewashed, when many are not.

Yeah the DMV burbs are way more diverse than DC. Unless you’re talking about Falls Church and Vienna.

[Anonymous]

Kentlands would be far more successful as a 'new urbanism' project if it had been located on a MARC or Metro line. As it is, it is just a seas of density mostly served by cars.