Im interested to see what these corporations with all this downtown office space are gonna do. For lower wage staff I assume they'll just require in office work for y'know "team building" purposes but for higher wage positions, where staff could more easily find another job they can do remotely, do you incentive coming into the office with like personal chefs and concerts, or do you cut your losses and just give up your primo office real estate
auspice wrote:I think for lots of people, especially those who spent their entire childhoods in suburbs and have nostalgic memories attached to that, it's just something they want to recreate for their own families when that process gets started
Yeah, the thing is that it's specifically that nostalgia that makes me distrust those people, because I suspect anyone that feels nostalgia for the suburbs was probably a fairly popular, normal person growing up, because the suburbs are quite literally hell for anyone that isn't white, attractive, and normal-seeming.
scramble wrote:my post is being misunderstood/mischaracterized:
if you leave the city to live in a more or less uniformly middle class suburb, however “liberal” or whatever, you are abandoning those in the city who are less fortunate and damning their environment to failure without the tax base and culture opportunities a healthy mix of citizens (classes) provides, while also choosing to surround yourself only with people much like yourself
and if you prefer your own yard to a park, private school to public, and driving to walking or taking the train, etc then you don’t have a real commitment to the commons, nor to the operations of a city as the means to achieve a more equitable society
the leaving, itself, is the harmful action, irrespective of however you tell yourself you feel about the city and those left behind
it’s your “right” to live this way but you should be real about the ramifications of that choice
i might still be misunderstanding your argument and i apologize if so, but it's a saviour complex to think neighbourhoods, cities would fail (in however that's defined) if not for the white, middle-class progressives living in them. i'm pretty anti-suburb, but there are as many pros to having gentrifying white folk leave a neighbourhood as there are economic incentives in catering to more affluent districts.
suburbs aren't the answer but neither is gentrification.
auspice wrote:I think for lots of people, especially those who spent their entire childhoods in suburbs and have nostalgic memories attached to that, it's just something they want to recreate for their own families when that process gets started
Yeah, the thing is that it's specifically that nostalgia that makes me distrust those people, because I suspect anyone that feels nostalgia for the suburbs was probably a fairly popular, normal person growing up, because the suburbs are quite literally hell for anyone that isn't white, attractive, and normal-seeming.
I'm gay and autistic. I have painful memories from my upbringing. I also have positive memories of my upbringing. I miss riding my bike without having to be mindful of traffic every other second. I miss being within close driving, or sometimes walking distance of large nature preserves. I just don't see wanting to live in the suburbs vs. the city as a completely black-and-white thing. I'm also not a private school kid, I went to public school and I really don't think the experience of being a gay kid at school in the 2000s would have changed much in a different setting, unless I grew up in a classically Republican area or something.
Right now I live in LA because I work in the entertainment industry and love film culture in general. This is one of the very few places in the country where I can see pretty much any new film I want in an actual theater, pre-COVID at least. But I'm also not a social butterfly, nor have I ever sensed some awesome community experience in the neighborhood I live in that I'm apparently missing out on. The people I see out having fun the most, pre- and during COVID, are usually teenagers on bikes or skateboards, and I think it would look pretty weird if a 28 year old man started tagging along to start participating in the community more. But community participation is generally not the vibe I get here, instead it's more of a "give everyone you come across unfriendly looks and then blast music in your apartment at the loudest possible volume every weekend" thing. I do have nice chats with immediate neighbors sometimes so that's something I guess. I'm also a regular patron of the hip-hop themed pizza joint on the closest commercial street and tip well there, along with a local coffee shop down the street. But in general the commercial area I'm close to doesn't really have much going for it and the gentrified office spaces being built don't seem to be replacing anything, aside from the one at one end of my street that replaced a really tiny school, that definitely sucks at an existential level.
IDK, I don't consider the suburbs to be some shining beacon of perfectness that can't be criticized, I'm onboard with most criticisms, historical and current. I just find it a way more nuanced thing than assuming people legitimately hate cities and their residents by moving to burbs. I like LA and have seen several neighborhoods that I'd like to actually have a house in and potentially raise a family if that sort of life is in store for me. If I could live in a house within walking distance of The Landmark or Laemmle Royal that would probably be the dream for me.
Milquetoaster Strudels wrote:It's dispiriting enough to deal with centrists in the city, I cannot imagine actually surrounding myself with people that would totally be cool if a right wing militia pulled me from my bed
one good thing about living in a college town is this is not as big an issue
most of the suburbs in the immediate radius outside liberal cities are also liberal
i think many of the criticisms of the burbs in here are completely valid but i also remember growing up and playing a lot in the yard, driveway and street and i get why ppl think that’s good for kids
also for the price i pay now in the city i can have more than double the square footage, family can then actually visit us, kids can have a play room vs just his bedroom
I also dont think focusing on white flight is really that relevant... cities are safer, nicer and more expensive than ever id guess most ppl leave because they cant afford to stay
the boring thing also seems a little weird... probably most burbs are like a half hour from the city so seems like you still have access to all the same stuff, especially if you still work in the city
Last edited by The Dirty Turtle on Sun Jan 24, 2021 9:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Milquetoaster Strudels wrote:It's dispiriting enough to deal with centrists in the city, I cannot imagine actually surrounding myself with people that would totally be cool if a right wing militia pulled me from my bed
one good thing about living in a college town is this is not as big an issue
my town has a life of its own far removed from the university there but it is also a college town. that being said, the majority of the college population in my town is Jersey kids who for whatever reason think having access to Long Island Sound beach life is the dream. I spent a bit over a year back home after I finished school and one of my jobs was working at the restaurant on the college campus (it was an off-shoot of another restaurant I worked at in town and the guy running it was my sister's best friend's husband so it was a sweet setup as far as working for delivery tips goes), and weekend shifts would go as late as 2am to accommodate the rush of wasted kids. I ended up having a quarter-life crisis once I realized a lot of the students thought I was another student and then would go "you're a TOWNIE?! what's that like?" when I clarified I wasn't a student. it was such an absurd reaction for them to have because the town has a 60K population, the university is not its lifeblood, but nevertheless it was really disconcerting to be servicing these kids and their shitty tips after having just had my own college experience.
Just so it's completely clear I am from a mostly suburban county in CT that is responsible for pretty much every CT stereotype in the book. My county's suburbs and rural areas are far more offshoots of the NYC economy as opposed to the actual cities there like Bridgeport or Stamford (granted, Stamford has always been in a state of boom, it's not just the place where Jim and Karen from The Office worked for a 6-episode arc). Even its wealthiest denizens often commute by rail instead of car.
As such, the suburbs here really aren't typical suburbs both in appearance or character. The only time you see neighborhoods where all the houses look the same are if they've only recently been constructed, and even then it'll just be a few streets off a main road or even one small lane of houses. Like, the beach neighborhoods in my town have a lot of character and aren't depressing in the least bit, there's always a lot of activity and community stuff going down there and it was nice having a bunch of friends who lived in that area as opposed to my own neighborhood, which was further into the woodsy area of town. Still, I grew up walking/biking to my elementary school and sometimes middle/high school if I had more time, until I got my license. Despite being around those locales there was still a significant divide between kids like myself and the ones whose parents are Mad Men characters.
My parents also divorced when I was 12 so I spent basically every single weekend until college in Bridgeport where my dad was, which wasn't a huge change of pace but certainly different than my actual town. But I was also closer to the two movie theaters serving our area and could walk there so that was nice. Hearing comments from friends' parents that they were shocked I was biking to "the ghetto" and walking around there was sort of the start of realizing how uptight CT people are, though. But it is really annoying when people find out you're from CT and attribute the worst stereotypes to you immediately, most of that was not my upbringing at all. I set foot on country clubs maybe three times all throughout my childhood and it was always invite-only and I hated those places anyway and never understood why those people wouldn't just go to the public beaches like everyone else.
DAE feel like a ghost floating through the administered and settled world never quite touching their feet to the earth but looking with a kind of distant yearning melancholy at the incomprehensible strangers who seem to draw sustenance from the ground itself as if through tree roots
asking for swim ofc
On Hipinion, posters taxed their bonds and brotherhood, pushing themselves to the brink as a board and as buds.