Your opinion on [US style] suburbs [and exurbs, and edge cities]

Well I'm reminded of a post on an old forum, and I have to ask you all. What do you all think about suburbs or edge cities. Having seen how people live in suburbs from all sorts of white american comedies (Malcolm In The Middle, Edge City, Baby Blues, etc etc) there seems to be a certain way people act. From my personal experiences with people in the suburbs, some of the stereotypes are true and some aren't. However I dont have the wealth of experiences other people have re this for various reasons (growing up and living in a city, in the ghetto, as well as a "rich" integrated city neighborhood with some experiences with an irish ghetto - as well as going to other parts of the city etc etc - as well as other stuff etc etc)

Also, I Ask you all specifically what do you all think about the concept of Edge Cities. When I was younger I wondered why whenever I was on the tollways that ring the suburban parts of Chicago, that certain regions where the expressways had a shitload of tall buildings that reminded me of downtown. Now I know, the airports as well as land prices and suburbanization in general prompted this).

Uh, continue from here please :p

WHASSUP....... ....with lolis!

Well, I've spent my whole life growing up in the suburbs, though it wasn't really the rich white neighborhood people picture. Modesto area, Victorville, San Bernardino, Rancho Cucomunga.. Now I'm living in lower class Ventura condo complex.

Most of my streets have been a pretty good mixture race wise, and it was both sides of the scale of middle class, upper and lower. I remember when I was growing up our little band of kids that used to play together was me, a mexican girl, two chinese brothers, two assyrian brothers, two white boys besides myself, and a white girl.

Yeah, we were like The Affirmative Action Gang I guess. I didn't really talk to any of my neighbors when I was in Victorville, most of them didn't have kids and I was in high school. I remember that the house on one side was a rental and we almost always had trashy people living there, lots of domestic violence and shouting and shit, or people who just didn't take care of their lawns and got booted out by the homeowners association. On the other side we had a nice old white lady who I'd talk to from across the fence sometimes. It was a very beautiful neighborhood, really orderly.

I was in brand spanking new suburbs in Rancho/San Bernardino, I didn't know anybody on my street except that the guy living in the house across from us was a firefighter, and that a few guys on our streets came from various parts of Law Enforcement like my dad did. It was basically First Responder Land, but no friends there. All my friends were the people I worked with.

I never really walked anywhere, being in the suburbs often means not having any places in walking distance to shop or eat. I used to walk to the marina when I was in victorville, was a 3 mile walk and I'd always get these badass sandwiches and chill by the lake with a book, also had a pizza place.

Like most steriotypes, most steriotypes of the suburbs are exaggerations of the truth. In other words, you can probably find Troper Tales about any trope fom a sitcom set in the suburbs, but not everyone is like that and in some cases the steriotype is actually the exception not the rule.

I grew up mostly in suburbs. Our neighborhoods were probably more white than Barkey's. My dad was in the Air Force and then a computer engineer, so we moved a lot and were never rich or poor. We tended to live in more open suburbs, closer to being an exurb but still a suburb. The most remote place I lived, you could walk out into the desert a mile down the street.

Never really had all that much use for edge cities actually. My father and I have worked mostly in factories and offices that were set away from the main town, and shop in neighborhoods where it's very rare to see a building over three stories tall.

edited 21st Feb '11 2:34:48 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

I hate them because it's impossible to get around them without going on the freeway, it's more difficult than it's worth to get anywhere if you're on foot or using public transportation, and strip malls are a lousy way of collecting businesses in one place.

The only thing I really like about them is that they tend to be really nice neighborhoods for exactly that reason. Unless you live there, you've got no reason to go there unless you're visiting somebody who does.

So no shitty foot traffic through your neighborhood of folks going places, usually just people taking a walk. Really safe place to jog at night most of the time. I hate my neighborhood.

Au contraire, they're nice neighborhoods when rich people live in them. The part of town I live in has a lot of onetime picturesque houses built in the sixties and seventies, that became downwardly mobile and are now considered rather shabby.

I have lived in the same suburb almost my whole life — mostly consisting of whites of western European ancestry but a decent share of blacks, Asians, and Slavic peoples. All average middle-class with a few lower-class families.

It is nice and it is safe, but also very boring and inconvenient. You can't just walk down the street to a store, restaurant, or other places where people congregate like you can in the city (unless you want to walk more than a few miles). There are no beautiful forests to walk in or wide open spaces like in the country.

Welcome the world of asphalt, concrete, and cookie-cutter houses.

The suburban "warmth" and "kinship" that you see on a lot of shows is largely a myth in my experience, especially since the original residents have moved out. I've never met the neighbours on either side of my house, for instance, and they've each lived there for more than two years.

edited 21st Feb '11 5:02:43 PM by apassingthought

Nah, my neighborhood wasn't rich. Mostly middle class, a few really cheap folks who made lots of money, but mostly just people in the 100k a year range, usually lower.

That was the disadvantage, while everything was beautiful, the whole neighborhood was so.. sterile.. to my young mind.

Was a great place for jogging though. I wouldn't jog around my own neighborhood at night.

Well I don't know any of the people in my neighborhood, but I'm not very social. My parent know everyone a lot better. Occasionally there are informal parties on the street and stuff.

I can't think of any minorities on my street, but then again, I don't know everyone.

Also, it's hard to walk anywhere. We've walked to the mall a couple times, but it's not something that's easy or common to do. In some streets, they don't even have sidewalks.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

@apassingthought Interesting you mention that. The 'rich' city neighborhood I currently live in apparently has some neighbors who do greetings for new people who move in. As in I was talking to this girl who also moved in from the ghetto and she was surprised at how the (mainly white) neighbors around them greeted them when they moved in and how they gave them gifts (mainly food I think). She thought they were 'being fake' and well, given some stereotypes of [white] suburbia/white people- that's an understandable statement to make. [not to be racist or anything]

This was a part of the city where they also did block parties once a year or so (mainly during summers), well the various nearby neighborhoods (that weren't on arterial streets).

edited 21st Feb '11 5:16:32 PM by BalloonFleet

WHASSUP....... ....with lolis!

I have a car, and I got one pretty young, so that wasn't hard. But that just meant I could go visit my friends who lived everywhere else. The only suburb I was living in where I knew people locally was the one in Turlock. We used to have big street parties every 4th of july, it was a nice place to live.

My mom remarried to our old next-door neighbors brother actually, I.E. my step-dad.

100k isn't rich?

yeah im sorry but 100k is rich to me, esp if its a mcmansion attached to the lifestyle or some old large house in a city....

WHASSUP....... ....with lolis!

Not for a Southern California standard of living it isn't. It's upper middle class.

My folks both make upper 90's per year now, but they probably made about lower 70's when we lived in that neighborhood. Dad's an LAPD detective, mom's a case manager for a medical insurance company.

You can't get a Mc Mansion with that kind of salary. You can get a decent tract home in a good neighborhood, but not a mansion. Our house was a nice one story 3 bedroom 2 bath house with a one car garage, and almost no yard. iirc it ran about 250k. Houses here are expensive as fuck for what you're getting. For that price you really could get a mansion in most parts of the USA.

Not like, epic hollywood mansion status, but a really big property and home.

Edit: I should mention a bit of background for comparison I guess, our entire community(not my specific neighborhood) had Mc Mansions on the lake, they were huge and epic looking, but usually costed in the 700 range. Those guys weren't fucking around, they had money, usually saw boats parked out front and hummers and shit, with a private little dock. I walked by them on the way home from the bus stop as a kid.

This is one of those houses.

This house is about the same price and on the street I lived on.

A nice house, but not a Mc Mansion.

edited 21st Feb '11 5:56:41 PM by Barkey

Well I've lived in the suburbs mostly. I grew up mostly in the Gated Community of Stockton. Christ was it filled with rich self important white kids. Our school was attempting to do a busing thing where they got some poor kids in as well, so it was half split. Most of the run down Suburbs on the otherside of the river were populated by hispanics, some white and black.

Then I moved up to Folsom. Holy crap, it's filled with pretty much only white suburbs, and over by Golden Empire and Lexington Hills it's full of...miniature estates. And like half the population is Mormon.

My other signature is a Gundam.

^

Ahh, my aunt lives in Folsom, says the same thing.

I cannot truly articulate my feelings about suburbia without breaking into stream of consciousness.

Let's just say my experiences fall firmly into Stepford Suburbia and leave it at that. Such maddening obsession with image...

edited 21st Feb '11 6:03:36 PM by Pentadragon

Yea, over by Roseville, on the other side of the river. There's a fairly large Eastern European enclave thou.

My other signature is a Gundam.

Cool. Reminds me of E.T.

I think we were more like 50-75k. We always lived one large neighborhood over from a neighborhood with big houses. We liked to drive through those neighborhoods, especially near Christmas.

This would be typical of the houses in my neighborhood. This is typical of the "neighborhood with big houses".

It was actually pretty common for my parents to offer new neighbors food. They called it a "housewarming gift". I guess it's a mostly white people thing.

edited 21st Feb '11 6:15:06 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

I'm not even sure where my home falls in these categories; it's certainly too old and varied to be a true "suburb", but I wouldn't put it at edge city, either. It's also called Roseville, funnily enough, it's about equidistant from St. Paul and Minneapolis.

My experience was that it's a pretty nice place to walk around, sadly when I was growing up there were not a lot of children around there. I used to know just about everyone within 3-4 blocks due to selling popcorn for cub scouts. There are some places fairly close by that you can (and I have) walk to, within 3 miles or so, but nothing worth walking to immediately nearby. Except the park, we have a bitchin park. Which goes all the way around a small lake, plus another section that crosses the street, which goes back behind some houses and across another street to another park which, after some rather confusing twists and turns, lead to another park which comes out within a block of one of my friends houses. Ahh, good times...

Yeah, the housewarming thing, that's legit. I think it's kind of expected.

Only thing was it's very white. I can only think of one black family, and they moved in more recently. They get discussed frequently because they appear to have something like 20 people living there (or because people are racist, who knows).

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

@OP: I've lived everywhere from a tiny island on the ass end of nowhere to an influential major city. I was born in a house that lacked electricity, and ended up living in a condo in the middle of Seattle WA (It's on the world map, it fucking counts). I also spent a good deal of time in small-town suburbs, and recently I bought a house out in redneck-ville.

And I can say...the "stereotype ratio" (as in, what is right vs. what is not) stays pretty much the same: 50/50.

Yes, that's right; the stereotypes are at least half right.

Oh boy, I can hear the sound of knives being sharpened and torches being lit as I type this, but I've officially consumed enough whiskey not to give a rusty fuck. stereotypes exist because they're close to the mark, and the fact that the targeted group hates this does not begin to make it untrue.

You mad? Good and mad? Great. I doubt you'd be so incensed if I wasn't at least 50% correct.

Which half is right and which half isn't? That's the tricky part, and the reason we should take said stereotypes with a grain of salt.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

You know, that "oh man I'm so gonna get flamed for this" shit makes me want to flame people far more than what's actually being said.

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!

@Wicked: if you get distracted by that, then you're just the same as the assholes who flame for content.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

I have spent my life living in bright little Union City. We have an interesting dynamic. There is a whole area of people who are mostly rich and white, and then there is the apartment area, much more varied.

I fall into the rich "prep" demographic. Mom is a manager nurse, dad works for the CEO of a computer company.

In my experience, its...unique.

Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.

I've never lived in the suburbs but I do go to a school that's in the country/suburbs and it can be a rather odd experience. There just seems to be this fakeness to the whole thing, it's hard to describe.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?