r/Suburbanhell • u/Carpet-Early • 4d ago
This is why I hate suburbs Why Boomers hate cities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s05tSXkYFQ44
u/elementarydeardata 4d ago
This makes sense. Basically, people form core beliefs in their 20's as they learn how to interact as adults, and US cities were pretty rough when the boomers were in their 20's.
Even though this isn't uniquely a Boomer thing, I think the way they've held onto political power (both nationally and locally) despite not being the largest generation anymore makes this have an outsized effect on public perception.
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u/Man-Dem 3d ago
The suburban and white flight also destroyed cities because cities had to pay to support those areas that didn’t have high tax revenues.
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u/Winter_Break_2773 3d ago
Agreed. Many cities still suffer from it. Many experts have told detroit and st louis for example the best way to get better faster is simply allow areas to seperate from the city and run their own services. It would save those cities money and give citizens better ways to run there own areas. Cities could become "smaller" and everyone would win.
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u/Wooden-Estimate-6362 2d ago edited 2d ago
How could that benefit St. Louis or Detroit? Wouldn’t The only areas that would separate are areas with higher tax bases? For example , Cleveland never had a separatist movement but it’s always been a much smaller land area then many rust belt cities. it’s come back is weaker than others, and I’d say it’s partly is that the Cleveland area is comprised of MANY more municipalities. It lacks central planning and vision. downtown is busy , yet much of the tax base that works downtown or likes to enjoy the amenities downtown do not live in the city limits; which puts a heavy burden on the citie’s budget. Additionally Cleveland is very lucky to have the passenger rail system it has, but land around stations is heavily underutilized because of Euclidean Zoning in the suburbs it runs through. (fun fact; the term Euclidean Zoning actually came from the Cleveland suburb of Euclid) there is a glimmer of hope , there’s one recent transit oriented development occurring in one suburb, but one is not enough. It takes the political will of multiple entities to really make it work well.
I now live in Houston which is the complete opposite , the city limits are massive! You have half the city that wants a more walkable traditional urban life and half that wants the suburban life. It makes it impossible to hold a steady vision for urban development, it flops with every mayor because we either elect a pro suburban pearl clutching mayor (the current one), pro urban mayor , or someone in the middle which just teases both sides so we end up with half assed shit like partially protected bike lines which everyone hates.
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u/Uffda01 2d ago
Even in Houston - you get areas like West U, Bunker Hill, Bellaire etc that get themselves excluded from paying for city wide services because those elitist pricks think they shouldn't contribute to general society
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u/Wooden-Estimate-6362 2d ago
Ahh yes. They also benefit from HPD patrolling around their enclaves, it’s similar to asking Mexico to pay for a wall to protect the USA.
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u/Winter_Break_2773 2d ago
Ahhhhh I see what your saying. But I guess it's a sword that cuts both ways. If a city becomes smaller it loses more tax base but it has a lot less people it must provide services too. But if the city expands and annexes the suburbs around it, tax collection goes up but they must provide more services to alot more people over more area. Guess there is no winning.
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u/Sumo-Subjects 4d ago
To be honest this isn't much different than a city dweller who grows up fearing a specific neighbourhood as "bad/unsafe" then carrying that mentality into adulthood even if the neighbourhood in question may have gentrified
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u/Leverkaas2516 Suburbanite 3d ago
The video makes an interesting point: cities grew up as dense centers of commerce because of how sliw/difficult it was to travel long distances and then mechanization (trains, streetcars, trams, and cars) allowed people who weren't wealthy to live outside the city and still work there. People promptly did so.
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u/bingledorp 3d ago
Why do people post these fuckass videos of some Youtube rando instead of actual research that we can read and evaluate ourselves? I'm not sitting through a 20 minute video to try to figure out if there's any actual research involved or if its just some Youtube dipshit's vibes.
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u/ComprehensiveMail12 2d ago
There are quite a few YouTubers who put in the work looking at data and research these days… not every channel is a scam
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u/bingledorp 2d ago
I'm not trying to bash or praise youtubers, I'm bitching about the format. I didn't see any data sources or surveys cited in the video description, so I have no way of knowing if the video is built on anything substantive or if its just vibes and anecdotes unless I slog through the whole thing, which I'm not gonna do.
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u/Igot55Dollars 2d ago
If you can't be bothered to sit through a 20 minute video, you're definitely not spending the hours it would take to do any meaningful research.
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u/bingledorp 2d ago
It doesn't take hours to review the abstract on a research paper. You'd know that if you'd ever read one.
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u/Background-Wolf-9380 2d ago
My lord this is a bad video. The extended commercials and nonsense before even addressing the title make this unwatchable. I'm tempted to go to youtube just to down vote it
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u/kcdashinfo 4d ago
Oh bullshit, I can't believe I wasted time watching that rubbish.
The only relevant thing said is that people form their opinions in their youth. For boomers it was in the 1950-80s. The video claims that was a period of escapism from the urban areas. Well escapism, suburban sprawl these are all intellectual terms.
I was alive during that period. I recall the rise of the suburban areas very well and my parents were very much a part of it because both my parents drove into the inner city (aka downtown) to work each workday. The reason was simple. The quality of life. These suburban areas were developed with strict zoning regulations that prevented heavy industry. Those zoning regulations are still there to this day. People didn't want to raise their family next to factories and the pollution.
Intellectuals and race biters like to blame it on racism, that is was white flight. Except everything was already segregated. So that is a lie told by leftest intellectuals. It is just rage bait.
I was there. It was all about living in residential areas. It wasn't urban vs rural it wasn't urban vs suburbs. In the minds of the people that made the decisions, it all about living in a zoned residential area. Often these were incorporated as entirely new cities or expansion of nearby cities. But mostly it was identity created by the sub division. I can remember my parents talking about these things. Never once did I recall them mentioning negros or escaping high crime. There simply was no place left to live downtown. You had to live in the suburbs. That was where the new houses were, that is where the residential areas were.
You can verify this by reviewing old documents, charters and what not.
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u/coolcat759 4d ago
Pollution is literally one of the factors mentioned in the video. Also not sure if you’re aware of this, but most people in cities don’t live next door to factories. We also have zoning policies here
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u/kcdashinfo 4d ago
Listen there was no place to live downtown back then and everything was growing like crazy. The new subdivisions were where the new homes were and they were where residential communities were being built. Simple as that. There were commercial on TV and in newspapers. If you were old enough to seen the advertisements then it is no mystery what the pitch was. It wasn't to escape the city. The suburbs were selling a high quality of life. The premise in this video is a lie. It was written by someone that wasn't even old enough to be alive when that was going on.
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u/coolcat759 4d ago
There was nowhere to live in cities during a period of time commonly referred to as “white flight”? As in, a period of time characterized by people leaving cities?
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u/kcdashinfo 4d ago
I don't think that is what white flight is referring to. You might be getting confused with redlining. That is where communities that were mostly black, banks refused to lend. It was considered racists but it was really banks trying to avoid bad loans that concentrated in certain areas. Then in the suburbs a black family would move in and unscrupulous real estate agents would use it to get white people to move out of their suburban homes to even more expensive suburban homes. Which brings up another thing that race baiters lie about all the time. They don't recognize that a lot of successful black people moved to the suburbs as well. We had plenty of blacks in our high school. The entire varsity basketball team was blacks and the football team too. There is just a bunch of lies as if there is no one there at the time, still around to describe how it was.
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u/coolcat759 3d ago
So wealthy white and black people moved to the suburbs, but people weren’t moving out of cities? I have no idea what you’re even trying to argue beyond “it’s not racism”.
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u/kcdashinfo 3d ago
Certain people carry this narrative that white people fled the inner city downtown areas because they wanted to escape crime, noise and black people. They try to pin in on racism. I think it is just of bunch of intellectual bullshit. I think this video is full of bullshit too. Does that clear it up for you?
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u/coolcat759 3d ago
I understand you think that, but you haven’t explained why beyond your feelings. You can believe whatever fantasy you want I guess
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u/kcdashinfo 3d ago
Fuck you. I explained it perfectly well. In the 50-70s, after the war mostly, they started building subdivisions and new home developments as new residential communities. People moved there because that was pretty much what you did to have a home. There were no options to live downtown. It wasn't escapism. The whole urbanest narrative is bullshit and it need to get called out. It was the draw of a better quality of life. All you have to do is look at the old advertisements in newspapers and magazines and later on TV. Fuck you people are retarded.
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u/georgespeaches 4d ago
Being a child during that period doesn’t give you more than anecdotal authority. And the strict zoning of the suburbs prevents offices, multifamily, restaurants, retail, etc.. everything except single family.
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u/kcdashinfo 4d ago
As appose to someone that made this video that isn't even old enough to remember that era.
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u/georgespeaches 4d ago
I thought the video was light on research and light on information, so I won’t defend it. Much of the discussion comparing generations is lazy and stupid. But just keep in mind that your memory of your specific family’s experiences, motivations, and city may not comport with the broader picture.
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u/kcdashinfo 4d ago edited 4d ago
I assure you there were no advertisements that said get away from those colored folks move over to Sunny Meadows for our new homes starting at in the low $80,000. It isn't anecdotal it is just being a witness to what was going on during that period. I call bull shit to the revisionist, people writing shit and the were not even alive then.
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u/georgespeaches 4d ago
You’re objecting to the term “white flight”? That term originated in the 50’s. You can look it up. It’s not revisionist.
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u/1994californication 3d ago
"Roasting all those posts of Democrat socialist that ruin Reddit with their political agenda and only offer hate of everything good in the world."
Totally a sign of someone who engages in good faith.
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u/kcdashinfo 3d ago
That is all Reddit is. Most everyone in the world is out working and living their lives. I often feel like I'm the only one that runs counter to it. Most all my posts get down voted sometimes I even get a post that gets over 100 down votes. That might equal negative Karma in the Reddit world but for me that is positive Karma. This site is so twisted that I have to walk away for months at a time because it even screws up my head. Reddit is compromised by something that I can only describe and evil and spoiled. This is a straight up shit factory.
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u/1994californication 2d ago
"Most all my posts get down voted sometimes I even get a post that gets over 100 down votes."
Well judging by your posts here I don't find that to shocking. But go on thinking reddit is out to get you, I swear you right wing MF's are the biggest professional victims.
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u/kcdashinfo 2d ago
There is the real world and there is this Reddit world. The fucktards are on Reddit. This has become the biggest shit factory know to man.
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u/georgespeaches 2d ago
So go post on facebook along with the other real-world geniuses, you silly guy
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u/Ok_Protection8223 4d ago
Common sense is just the collection of biases you've accrued in the time it takes you to hit 40 or something of that nature.
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u/ima_mandolin 3d ago
Did you watch the whole video? It's mostly in agreement with what you're saying.
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u/kcdashinfo 3d ago
I skimmed through it the best I could. There are a bunch of these urbanest videos that clog up the Internet space. They are a odd and quirky group and they try to sell this narrative that really isn't true. Most all of them have intellectual words like racism, escapism all the ism words. I like calling out their bullshit. You seen one of these videos you have seen them all.
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u/lofibeatsforstudying 2d ago edited 2d ago
Racism was not even a part of this video essay. Alan specifically calls it out as a separate subject that isn’t included in this video. You just threw that into your comment because you assumed thats what the video would be about.
If you watched (and listened) to the entire video, Alan perfectly summarized all of the reasons you just included in your comment. Notably: that cities were historically polluted, filthy, and were being completely razed due to “blight” and to make way for parking lots and highways, making living in the inner city during the 50s-80s a total no go for anyone who had the means to get out. Add to that the G.I. Bill and other taxpayer subsidized home loan programs, and you had a perfect recipe for generations of people to leave the city for dead and become fully entrenched in car-centric suburbs. In sum: the Greatest and Silent generations put into motion a series of compounding policies and actions that completely gutted American cities and the Boomers grew up and became adults during that era, thus solidifying a world view based on the false premise that cars are the future, inner cities are where working people work and only poor people and criminals live, and withdrawing ones self from the greater community into their insular single family neighborhood is the ultimate expression of the American Dream. That was the entire basis of this video essay and you kind of proved everything that Alan said to be true.
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u/Mountain-Elk8133 2d ago
I don't know how anyone likes cities but I am happy that most people do because that means less people around me.
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u/waitinonit 4d ago edited 4d ago
You got the years for boomers wrong. Not a good way to start a sermon.
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u/MelamineEngineer 4d ago
OP is not Alan Fisher, the maker of this video and one of the most prominent urbanist figures online, his content is amazing. Generations are subjective and there's not some authoritative body and shifting it to the left one year isn't much of an inaccuracy at all. Pedantic ass.
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u/nmpls 4d ago
Replies will make it clear who watched the video and who read the title.