American = Wasteful? When did this start?

[Count Dooku]

I honestly feel that big gas-guzzling cars are so associated with the Right because the Right just doesn't care. The people who are conservative Right wingers don't believe the emissions from their tale-pipe are causing any harm to the enviornment, and they really believe we have another 100 years before we need to change our driving habits.

[His Divine Shadow]

I think it also correlates with the decline in buying power of the "Greatest Generation". My maternal grandparents who were alive during the depression always use a phrase like "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." My grandfather still has a working lawn mower he bought back in 1970. In contrast I don't think I've ever heard of any similar frugal statement from the baby boomers.

Yeah we still got a lawnmower from the 80's as well. However I am and I think lots of other people too, appalled at the shitty qulity of many modern consumer products. Fuck plastics, I want stuff made of steel and iron.

[Spearfish]

Yeah we still got a lawnmower from the 80's as well. However I am and I think lots of other people too, appalled at the shitty qulity of many modern consumer products. Fuck plastics, I want stuff made of steel and iron.

Bring back wood! How many products would be improved by proper application of wood in their construction... it looks better, feels better and it's more environmentally friendly than plastic. It is heavier and more expensive, and therefore can't be used for everything, but when the oil runs out it's going to have to be employed a lot more.

[Starglider]

Bring back wood! How many products would be improved by proper application of wood in their construction... it looks better, feels better and it's more environmentally friendly than plastic.

Unfortunately 'wood' these days usually means 'low quality chipboard, maybe with a thin cosmetic veneer if it is in a visible spot'.

[RedImperator]

Suburbia is the most wasteful theory of urban design in human history. But as someone else said in this thread, you can't totally blame people in the late 40's and early 50's, because they really had no idea just how limited resources were. Nor did they appreciate the cultural and psychological damage suburban living would do, and to their credit, people like Levitt did attempt to create communities, not just places where people happened to live.

On the other hand, there's no excuse today, and what's worse, today's developers aren't even trying. The neighborhood in which I grew up was a subdivision (it used to be a golf course; the clubhouse is still standing) where the houses were small and close together. We had a family of four living in a small split level, and the population density of the neighborhood was (and still is) about 5000 per square mile. If PATCO ever gets its act together, that development will be connected by rail to Philadelphia. Compare that to some of the new subdivisions around here, with gigantic houses sitting on half-acre lots. And unlike my neighborhood, there will never be an option not to drive; nobody is going to spend the money to build a rail line or even run a bus there.

[His Divine Shadow]

Suburbia is the most wasteful theory of urban design in human history. But as someone else said in this thread, you can't totally blame people in the late 40's and early 50's, because they really had no idea just how limited resources were. Nor did they appreciate the cultural and psychological damage suburban living would do, and to their credit, people like Levitt did attempt to create communities, not just places where people happened to live.

Could you elaborate on this? How's this suburbia causing psychological damage? I really don't think I got a grip on what american suburbia looks like. Is the reasoning that if people spread out that social bonds will weaken?

[MKSheppard]

Nor did they appreciate the cultural and psychological damage suburban living would do

I've been living in Suburbia all my life and I'm not seeing any psychological damage from nice manicured lawns or trees. Perhaps you must be confusing the mental damage caused by staring out into a concrete jungle every day with that of staring out at trees.

[Xenophobe3691]

I've been living in Suburbia all my life and I'm not seeing any psychological damage from nice manicured lawns or trees. Perhaps you must be confusing the mental damage caused by staring out into a concrete jungle every day with that of staring out at trees.

No, he means how you can live in a community and not know the people next door to you, nor even care.

I've lived in Suburbia most of my life too, and I notice it extremely well. That concrete jungle you make fun of is a lot healthier for your spirit when you don't have to walk half a mile simply to exit your particular development.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I've never been able to recall a time when I looked south and didn't feel anything other than a little mortified by this spasming giant thrashing and flailing in consumer ecstasy. More disgusting than anything else, and I genuinely mean that it causes physical nausea, is the attitude among many, if not most Americans that being frugal and spendthrift is somehow wimpy. Stand-up comics like Dennis Leary are exemplary of this attitude, what with his opening rant to his "No Cure For Cancer" tv special where he ranted about how he intended to club baby seals and eat red meat and burn gasoline just for the hell of it. It wasn't tongue-in-cheek, not by a long shot; Leary was asserting that it was American and manly to do these things simply to stick it to the conservatist crowd and their conscientious attitude.

[Starglider]

No, he means how you can live in a community and not know the people next door to you, nor even care.

I'm dubious about how damaging this is. The nice thing about ubiquitous personal transport and the Internet is that you can associate with whoever you choose, not whoever happens to live next to you. I am not clear what this 'community spirit' you allude to is supposed to accomplish.

That concrete jungle you make fun of is a lot healthier for your spirit

Not when you live on a council estate full of drug users and wife beaters or in a small town full of religious gay-and-athetist-hating nuts. Cities are again good largely because it makes associating only with people you actually want to be with practical without driving, not because they force you to talk to your neighbours more.

In fact you sound rather like the architects David Zondy made fun of on Tales of Future Past;

When you're talking about the skyline of tomorrow, you're up against two schools of thought. The first is that of the "serious" architects-- the sort Modernist dreamers that did away with all that bourgeois ornamentation and obsolete classical nonsense in favour of good, clean lines suitable for the enlightenment of the proletariat who didn't know what was good for them.

They loved to plop down great slabs of brick that were cities unto themselves in vast plains of concrete dotted with trees that gave no shade, marble benches that no human being could sit comfortably on, steps that were so wide and low that they made you walk like a duck, and nothing to give any pedestrian any protection from the elements. In the summer you roasted under the sun and in the winter you froze in the raw northern winds. But it gave the paperboard models a wonderful sense of perspective.

It's all horrible, so why do it? Because it was all so anti-bourgeois and it was the sort of place where, in the words of Alexi Sayle, "They expected working class people to wander around discussing Chekov."



Look at this city. The buildings are all straight lines and boxes. They stand perched on columns for no good reason. Nothing gives any impression of being handmade that can't be stamped out by a machine. Craftsmanship is nowhere to be found, because only the bourgeoisie can afford craftsmen. Everything is concrete, glass, steel, and stucco. No colours are used when white, grey, black, or beige are available. Functionalism is everything, right down to the sheer facades. There are no eaves and the roof is inevitably flat. Never mind that flat roofs leak, are structurally weaker than peaked roofs, harder to construct, and tend to collapse under heavy loads of snow. Or that the lack of eaves mean that the rain is free to cascade down the sides of the buildings until the concrete becomes a mottled grey mess like fish fillets that have been left out on the doorstep overnight. At least it isn't bourgeois.

But what are these buildings supposed to be? Government offices? Headquarters for some super mega conglomerate? No, Worker's housing.

Yes, Le Corbusier expected the masses to live in these giant concrete hives in flats stripped bare of any ornaments or colour and when they finally manage to escape from their warrens they have nothing to look forward to except empty spaces between the buildings and the the most dangerous aerodrome in history slapped smack in the middle of the mall just to confuse people and keep the neighbours awake.

Personally I like trees outside the window, though I prefer the 'houses down a series of meandering lanes through woodland and fields' model (such as where my parents live) to manufactured suburbs (unless they were one of those cool concept designs that never actually gets built, because no one wants to pay a 100% price premium for general coolness). Like the car-hating, the suburb-hating goes way too far with many people. They suck because they're unsustainable and inefficient; but people don't want to live there just because of marketing, they're genuinely desirable.

[His Divine Shadow]

No, he means how you can live in a community and not know the people next door to you, nor even care.

I've lived in Suburbia most of my life too, and I notice it extremely well. That concrete jungle you make fun of is a lot healthier for your spirit when you don't have to walk half a mile simply to exit your particular development.

Aren't there local stores and such in these suburbian areas? It does sound like this is just a huge swath of houses and roads without any of the stuff that should follow along, like local small stores and gas stations, libraries, schools and whatnot that makes up a genuine village or municipality.

Like the municipality I live in, we're very sparsely populated, mostly rural infact, but we got a community, I know my neighbors, there is a local school for grades 1-6, we have our own yearly easter celebrations in which most of the people show up. Same goes for christmas and new years too, usually hiring in a band and whatnot. So community, we got it.

But when I live in the city in the centrally located apartment with my girlfriend I don't even want to hear or see my neighbors OTOH, infact they mostly annoys us when their presence makes them known to us. American suburbia seems like a combo of these two situations, taking the bad aspects from each.

[Frank Hipper]

It's funny, the cars in the 1950s were actually much bigger than most modern cars, yet that era didn't seem as wasteful. I think they get a pass in many respects for sheer ignorance; they simply didn't know any better. They weren't trying to be wasteful. But in the 1980s, after the fuel crunch of the 1970s and the general worldwide trend toward smaller cars, something made people suddenly say "Fuck that, I'magonna do whatever I want, Ma!" and suddenly start buying ever larger cars again, despite knowing this time that it was wasteful.

Cars of the 50s may have been dimensionally larger, but they were for the most part lighter and had smaller engines. Particularly so for many a modern SUV.

My grandparents were all born well before WWI, and went through the depression as young adults; their attitudes on waste and what I'll term here as "conveniance living" were as different as night and day with those of my parents. Parents that grew up in their households...culture of "waste" as rebellion against strict parents, perhaps?

I honestly believe this concept espoused by W. of Americans having an "abundant" (wasteful) lifestyle as some divine right began much earlier than the 80s and 90s, I'm thinking the 50s was the source of it.

[Adrian Laguna]

I think some of the perception is because we buy alot more shit more often. Most of this is downright wasteful, but some of it can be blamed on shorter lifespans on alot of electronics.
My grandparents had one of those big assed furniture TV's with the carved wooden case. They got it in the early 70's, and didn't finally get rid of it until 1993. And it still worked. I think my grandfather had to repair it once, and that was because of the power cord being frayed. Meanwhile, I've gone through 4 TV's in 8 years, and the only one that wasn't bought because the last one broke is my newest one which is HD. The other 3 all broke down about 6 months after the manufacturers warranty expired and all of them were cheaper to replace than to repair. My first DVD player broke down after 4 years and I've gone through maybe 3 portable CD players in the span of 5 years. I'm very careful with my things, too.

I have a Panasonic radio/CD player/cassete player that's pushing 8 years. As are all the televisions in our house. The only "new" one is one my uncle gave to us when he bought a flat screen.

Though it is true that in the US things are oddly expensive to repair. In Venezuela, for example, it's so cheap that it's actually economical to ship a blender from Miami to Caracas, get it repaired there, and then ship it back. I remember my mother going to a seamstress to get her dresses mended and my father to the a cobbler to get his leather shoes repaired. All of this was more economical than buying new stuff. In the US an $80 appliance can cost as much as $70 to repair.

[His Divine Shadow]

Yes, I still got the original casette player in the Opel/Vauxhall from 1992 as well, the antenna is broken however, that needs replacing.

I've also tried fixing rust spots but they came back after a year even though I treated with anti-rust spray. I have gotten into the habit of buying tools and doing my own repairs.

I also fixed the rust spots on my Firebird and saved loads of money and now I can use these tools to fix my opel, again. Self-reliance is fun.

[Patrick Degan]

I honestly believe this concept espoused by W. of Americans having an "abundant" (wasteful) lifestyle as some divine right began much earlier than the 80s and 90s, I'm thinking the 50s was the source of it.

Oh, it definitely started way back in the '50s. It was all part of the propaganda to show the American way of life as superior to communism. You get snippets of that propaganda in the movie The Atomic Cafe. But even then, it was nowhere near up to the level of the mass-consumerist society which enshrined Gordon Gekko's "Greed Is Good" viewpoint as the cornerstone of its philosophy —which we got starting around 1983.

[Covenant]

Aren't there local stores and such in these suburbian areas? It does sound like this is just a huge swath of houses and roads without any of the stuff that should follow along, like local small stores and gas stations, libraries, schools and whatnot that makes up a genuine village or municipality.

Oh sure. Suburbia is really designed around the idea of combining the aspects of city life into a more spread-out and pleasent community. As they're swallowed up by completely urban development, it spreads out. As such, there's fucktons of stores all over the place, all easily accessible via car. If it wasn't someone's not making money, and suburbanites live in the suburbs because they're willing to pay for the lifestyle. Driving for a day to get to a store isn't economical.

Even in a bigass supersuburb like mine there are small stores, little local places that have been fixtures forever, and they're right up next to community bookstores (though most have gone online because it's cheaper that way) and big fancy resturants. There's no 'local gas station' since there's too much commuter traffic to make that economical. But there's tons of utilities. As for community stuff, the 'soccor mom' is the embodiment of the community. Mostly it revolves around kids, school sports, and so on. If you're married, have no kids, but yet still want to be involved in something, join one of the local pools or intramural Park District adult sports leagues to meet people and have community. Suburbs often have lots of parks as well, and you're not afraid to go there at night.

I know my neighbors, for example. Suburbs aren't anathema to the idea of a block party. The neighborhood kids like to come over and play with my dog, and I always see people out when going for a walk to get some exercise and fresh air. My neighbor to the left is a complete waste, which is awful, since the family that was there before was totally awesome and the woman loved swapping cooking ideas and gardening stuff. The other family is quite evangelical so I don't get into deep conversation with them, but they like my dog, and love coming over when she's out. It's a bulldog. It really attracts attention.

But when I live in the city in the centrally located apartment with my girlfriend I don't even want to hear or see my neighbors OTOH, infact they mostly annoys us when their presence makes them known to us. American suburbia seems like a combo of these two situations, taking the bad aspects from each.

I think that's a really negative stereotype that has no basis in reality. My neighbors are right over the fence, but they won't hear me playing music in my house or complain unless it's thumping 100 decibal bass. You might get an old person who is whiny, but imagine living next to one in an apartment?

It's not 'cramped city' or 'luxury suburb', so that's not what I'm saying. But suburban life is quite good and very enjoyable, and it really does foster a sense of community just as well, even if you're more than able to abstain from the community if you've got a headache or would rather just be left alone.

[His Divine Shadow]

I'm not sure how you meant, I only meant that apartment living didn't bring us closer to the people we live close to, they are just perfect strangers that we have no interest in getting to know. Infact we wish to move away from here as soon as possible because it's not really a pleasant place, lots of students with their drinking and "partying hard" habits, and the litter and broken glass everywhere, stolen or vandalized bicycles...

[Xenophobe3691]

I'm dubious about how damaging this is. The nice thing about ubiquitous personal transport and the Internet is that you can associate with whoever you choose, not whoever happens to live next to you. I am not clear what this 'community spirit' you allude to is supposed to accomplish.

What about if you don't have personal transport? My father grew up in NYC, and now works in a Trauma Center, and as such refused to let us have cars. I didn't have one until I was a Junior in Uni. More a failing of my family, but you assume that personal transport is ubiquitous.

When your kids are too young to drive, and you're busy on call and your wife is busy in her job in the City (Miami in my case), how're they supposed to get there? Neighbors are the simplest solution. Family friends too, but it's a lot easier for the kid to look outside and see who's available.

I'm not that architect, but I know what it's like in the Suburbs when one of those corner shops is quite literally miles from your home, and you have to walk it in the South Florida Summer. The suburbs are grand...until you have to navigate them on foot or with nonexistent public transport.

[Covenant]

I'm not sure how you meant, I only meant that apartment living didn't bring us closer to the people we live close to, they are just perfect strangers that we have no interest in getting to know. Infact we wish to move away from here as soon as possible because it's not really a pleasant place, lots of students with their drinking and "partying hard" habits, and the litter and broken glass everywhere, stolen or vandalized bicycles...

I'm saying that Suburbs give you neighbors that you can choose to associate with. You get the same spread of good or bad people, but since you are less intimately assocaited with them in terms of proximity, things are generally more pleasent and peaceful. If you want to get to know them, you can. But if they're jerks and you don't like them, then you don't have to, and you won't be inconvenienced by them nearly as much. My response to that paragraph was directed at the last line. It's not the worst of both by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm dubious about how damaging this is. The nice thing about ubiquitous personal transport and the Internet is that you can associate with whoever you choose, not whoever happens to live next to you. I am not clear what this 'community spirit' you allude to is supposed to accomplish.

When your kids are too young to drive, and you're busy on call and your wife is busy in her job in the City (Miami in my case), how're they supposed to get there? Neighbors are the simplest solution. Family friends too, but it's a lot easier for the kid to look outside and see who's available.

I'm not that architect, but I know what it's like in the Suburbs when one of those corner shops is quite literally miles from your home, and you have to walk it in the South Florida Summer. The suburbs are grand...until you have to navigate them on foot or with nonexistent public transport.

Don't you have a bike?

I had a bike all the time, and that was my method of self-mobility. You could walk or have a bike. Once you hit highschool, people could get cars. I never did, and I still don't (I commute via train) but my friends always drove us places depending on who had a car that day.

Yes, the Suburbs are not the best place to be found without a bike or a car, or a friend with a bike or a car, but I can't think of too many instances that I suddenly needed to go somewhere. Why did you need to go to the store? Was it really pressing? Or was it to just get a slurpee or something?

[Darth Wong]

I'm dubious about how damaging this is. The nice thing about ubiquitous personal transport and the Internet is that you can associate with whoever you choose, not whoever happens to live next to you. I am not clear what this 'community spirit' you allude to is supposed to accomplish.

Yeah, you're totally right! It's not as if people gain anything by being forced to associate with people not of their own kind, right? Self-segregation is the Brave New Path to the Glorious Future of the Reich!

[Sea Skimmer]

This idea that living in a city inherently makes you know your neighbors better is a fucking lie and just absurd.

I live in apartment building located within a suburb, it has about fifty apartments total, and the only other people in the building I have ever known in seven years are the resident managers. Half the building is non English speaking Ukrainian or Chinese immigrants to start with, I couldn’t know anything about them if I wanted.

I used to live in a house in the same general area, and I knew everyone who lived around me, because we had yards and actually saw each other in a context other then passing by in a hallway or along the sidewalk! Amazing hun how having space to socialize in, rather then a paved over wasteland of narrow streets lets you get to know people because you can easily invite them over and enjoy it.

People flock to the suburbs because it is a nicer place to live. More plant life, more space, less pollution, less crime and less noise. If you want to know the people you live around, then you can easily go out and meet them. If you don’t want to know them, then it doesn’t fucking matter where you live, you’ll just ignore everyone anyway.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm not that architect, but I know what it's like in the Suburbs when one of those corner shops is quite literally miles from your home, and you have to walk it in the South Florida Summer. The suburbs are grand...until you have to navigate them on foot or with nonexistent public transport.

Ride a damn bike, it’s what I did in my apparently unmanageable impractical suburban youth life. Hell of a life safer then biking in the city too.

[Starglider]

Yeah, you're totally right! It's not as if people gain anything by being forced to associate with people not of their own kind, right? Self-segregation is the Brave New Path to the Glorious Future of the Reich!

When you cram people together in cities, you do get self-segregation and ghettos because it's impossible to escape pressure from neighbours and people often feel safer in their own areas. At least it's not too hard to move to a block where your entire group isn't discriminated against, but there is no escape from asshats. Small towns are worse, in that they may well be dominated by a specific flavour of religious or racist nut who enforce their brand of conformism, and it's much harder to move away.

Suburbs remove much of the motive for segregation in the first place in making it harder for asshats of all stripes to hassle you. I would much rather have people who couldn't care less about their neighbours, and drive off to their in-group (church, knitting circle, gun club whatever) three nights a week than whole blocks full of like-minded assholes who make life hell for anyone in their territory who doesn't meet their standards. This is a form of tribalism that suburban living errodes, and the positives of that outweigh the negatives.

[Darth Wong]

This idea that living in a city inherently makes you know your neighbors better is a fucking lie and just absurd.

Proximity does tend to make you know your neighbours better. Of course, if you live in a shitty area, you'll avoid them at all costs, and the overuse of private schools is also a major contributor to the problem. Most of the socialization I've done with neighbours in my area has been due to our children attending the same public school.

People flock to the suburbs because it is a nicer place to live. More plant life, more space, less pollution, less crime and less noise. If you want to know the people you live around, then you can easily go out and meet them. If you don’t want to know them, then it doesn’t fucking matter where you live, you’ll just ignore everyone anyway.

You are judging urban life by the fact that American cities have been allowed to decay into shitholes.

[Sea Skimmer]

Proximity does tend to make you know your neighbours better. Of course, if you live in a shitty area, you'll avoid them at all costs, and the overuse of private schools is also a major contributor to the problem. Most of the socialization I've done with neighbours in my area has been due to our children attending the same public school.

That’s your own choice, and if you lived in a row home you could make the same one. I know plenty of people who have moved out of my town in and into Philadelphia, and they don’t know more then one or two people on the block because they simply don’t care to know them and the tenants of the houses change all the time to start with.

You are judging urban life by the fact that American cities have been allowed to decay into shitholes.

And why exactly should I judge the situation by anything but its factual reality? Moving more wealthy people into cities typically means that the desperately poor are simply displaced into even worse situations.

Claiming that the problems in American cities are all the result of recent decay is false anyway. American cities have had huge slums and ghettoes populations for the past 200 years, with the details changing only as different waves of immigrants arrived. It used to be that Irish Catholics where the most hated of immigrants after all, for both reasons. Protestant America used to fear the Catholics worse then the Catholics now hate gay marriage. Nothing fundamentally has changed.