Upper NW DC the "Suburbs"?

[Anonymous]

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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.

This isn’t Takoma Park. It’s Kentlands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Glad it’s not “more successful” or it would be out of my price range.

[Anonymous]

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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

Let’s not and avoid the blatant racism going forward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Glad it’s not “more successful” or it would be out of my price range.

It’s not exactly a failure, especially given the redevelopment of the retail part of it.

[Anonymous]

The way I see it, upper NW is MORE suburban than most surrounding suburbs. The suburbs are packed with diversity and ethnic dining options. Upper NW is basically packed with white people who want to say they live “in the city” without living in the city.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Well then Upper NW DC is way more urban than suburban relative to most of Bethesda.

Virtually everyone in Upper NW is withing walking distance of a one seat public transit ride to downtown. I get that some of those people wouldn't be caught dead on a public bus but the fact is that many wealthy NWDC residents do take the bus every day to jobs downtown.

Also most of NW DC is in fact within walking distance of retail areas too.

And most of NW DC has sidewalks and a typical street grid.

And believe it or not most of the commercial corridors also have some pretty high density buildings along them too and in fact to refute the previous comment quite a bit of the residential density in NW DC is not in fact near Metrorail stations.

There are lots of opinions on what makes something suburban vs urban. Some people think it is purely a density thing. Some think it has to do with walkability and transit access. Sadly some people think it is a racial measure.

But by most of the measures NW DC has to different degrees most of the elements that make a place urban while most of the elements don't exist once you cross Western.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The way I see it, upper NW is MORE suburban than most surrounding suburbs. The suburbs are packed with diversity and ethnic dining options. Upper NW is basically packed with white people who want to say they live “in the city” without living in the city.

This is how I see it too. It’s more just your typical white washed neighborhood in NW while suburban moms like the OP have to justify their existence to the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The way I see it, upper NW is MORE suburban than most surrounding suburbs. The suburbs are packed with diversity and ethnic dining options. Upper NW is basically packed with white people who want to say they live “in the city” without living in the city.

This is how I see it too. It’s more just your typical white washed neighborhood in NW while suburban moms like the OP have to justify their existence to the world.

My upper NW neighborhood has a wide array of different folks, we just don’t have the poors. The white, black, brown and other all have the same thing: staff!

[Anonymous]

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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.

DC is diverse. So are many of its suburbs. No one said otherwise.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Except Brooklyn used to be a separate city, and it’s 1,000,000,000,000 times more urban than CCDC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve always considered the boundaries of DC = the city, and outside the boundaries = the suburbs, even if there are suburbs with higher density than parts of DC (eg Rosslyn vs Brookland)

You can’t really define it based on walkability or having a yard, unless you plan to argue that all of LA, Dallas, Atlanta etc are suburbs. It’s about city boundaries vs metro area.

This. It's not the suburbs even though parts of it can feel suburban.

[Anonymous]

It’s majority white/Asian

[Anonymous]

I think part of it is just stage of life. When I lived in Mt Pleasant (def not the suburbs!) with school-aged kids and spent my evenings and weekends ferrying them to/from sports and activities, I felt like any other suburban mom -- only the traffic was worse for me because I was driving through the city!

[Anonymous]

Does the immediate mile consist of all houses with yards?

Does it have a noise ordinance when it’s late at night?

Does the neighborhood have any major transportation/bars/shops that are not within a mile?

Is the neighborhood mainly white and Asian?

If the answer is yes to all of these, you live in the suburbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does the immediate mile consist of all houses with yards?

Does it have a noise ordinance when it’s late at night?

Does the neighborhood have any major transportation/bars/shops that are not within a mile?

Is the neighborhood mainly white and Asian?

If the answer is yes to all of these, you live in the suburbs.

Huh? There are noise ordinances everywhere. Also, every place has transportation/bars/shops that aren’t within a mile.

You need to seriously think through your logic more.