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Comment by loandbehold | Hacker News Reader

This.Most suburban communities build in the last 50 years are pretty nice. Almost no traffic, sidewalks everywhere, safe to ride a bike or walk your dog. If you have businesses in the community it brings traffic and noise. Much nicer to separate residential and commercial.

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Sidewalks vary wildly, often with some nasty history. I grew up in Southern California and and was used to sidewalks pretty much everywhere, rode my bike to school a couple miles away in bike lanes, etc. I thought pretty much the same as you.

Then I moved to the east coast and, wow, there are visible fault lines from white racists losing Brown v. Board & other civil rights cases in the form of these suburbs built between 1950 and maybe 2000 which have no sidewalks, windy layouts designed to discourage visitors and prevent transit, no public pools but private ones, etc. One of my coworkers lives off of a very busy road which has a sidewalk from their neighborhood which ends abruptly a ¼ mile away in front of the house with the Confederate flag whose owner has gone to every meeting for like 40 years arguing that completing the connection to the park & bus stop will lead to a crime spree. Most of these places had racial covenants in the deeds which are no longer enforceable but definitely set a trend for the formative decades.

(This is not to say that California doesn’t have exclusionary suburbs – I used to ride my bike through some of the ones around San Diego where a Caribbean friend only rode when there was a group to vouch for him after he got tired of explaining to the local police why a black dude was on a nice bike – but they tend to be smaller and less inclined to forgo basic civic infrastructure. Even with that experience I was surprised by how widespread it was in a lot of cities we’ve visited from Florida up to Massachusetts)

So it's safe to walk and ride your bike, but you have nothing close by worth biking or walking to? Sounds counter productive. What do you do, bike in circles?

Or my guess: you have to drive everywhere. Hence no autonomy for the kids.

That's exactly what I like to do. Cycle around the neighborhood, look at people'e beautiful front yards. But kids can also bike or walk to school or visit their friends in walking/cycling distance.

  "" You can bike around any time you like  
  But you can never leave ""
  - The Eagles, almost

What suburbs are you talking about? Whenever I see the topic discussed here, people always seem to be referring to some strawman neighborhood surrounded by desert and highway. And maybe that's true out west where land is sparse, but all the suburbs I've known have been places like Abington, PA. Look at it from street view. There's plenty of sidewalks, detached houses, shops and restaurants, big chain stores, small mom and pop stores, and train stations that take you downtown. You can start from anywhere on that map and make it to a supermarket within 20 minutes of walking.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Abington,+PA

You complain about people cherry-picking an unfriendly suburb, and then cherry-pick a friendly one. There are both types, and it's basically pure luck (as a kid) if you happen to live in a friendly one.

I didn't cherry pick anything. I'm just saying that no suburb I've ever seen fits the strawman description. And I've looked at plenty of them up and down the Northeast corridor.

"suburbia" generally refers to areas that were built out in the last 70 years, not towns that are 300+ years old

> If you have businesses in the community it brings traffic and noise

Surely if there's a coffee shop within walking distance, it would reduce traffic as people don't have to drive to get coffee?

Who goes to a coffee shop from home just to get a cup of coffee? Most people can make coffee at home. Coffee shops are more for meetings people or to get coffee on the way to/from work.

> If you have businesses in the community it brings traffic and noise. Much nicer to separate residential and commercial.

Completely false. If you have a bunch of small cafes, small scale grocery stores, etc, it brings no traffic. It reduces traffic because now people walk instead of driving to those places. I used to live in a suburb that somehow managed to grandfather in a small convenience store. It was great. I went to the grocery store less because when I ran out of bell peppers I just walked to the store. We drove way less.

Now I live in the inner city a few blocks from a thriving commercial district and there's hardly any cars. I have no idea why people actually believe this. Our neighborhood is pitch silent at night.

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