Who names their chicken Bessie? Everyone knows Bessie is a cow’s name.
Just don’t mess with a chicken cow. Those things are dangerous!
Takes all of 5 minutes to start a car and drive a mile and back. Nobody walks into a Costco for just eggs or brings the entire family.
I get that you all hate cars but when you make up fantasy stories like this you just harden mind of those you must convince.
There’s no reason you should need to drive for that kind of stuff. Sure, it takes 5 minutes, but it’s worse for your health, the environment, your wallet, and your morale.
I never said you should. Only that the above in no way describes the majority experience. It’s really not that stressful in the least bit. It’s a 10 minute experience with an extra wide parking spot for your f150 at one of the dozens of choices you’ll have to grab your eggs.
I am particularly lucky in that I could go to Wegmans or one of several farms within that 10 minute time frame.
It’s far closer to my hometown experience than what you describe.
I know of 2 grocery stores there (the other half of that town is a mystery to me, probably a couple more there but it was 10 minutes just to get over the bridge, 40+ minutes in the summer, so I never went there), and they got their first supermarket in a decade about 5 years ago now, after the previous one closed 10 years before. For a town of 30,000.
Granted, it’s a summer vacation town, so it’s like 60% rich people’s summer homes, but everybody I’ve talked to who’s lived in a summer town has described more or less the same experiences that I had growing up.
When I lived there, it was a 5-7 minute drive to the closest grocery, where you could pay tourist prices, or 20 minutes to that new supermarket. Your other option was to drive to the next town over or 30 minutes by highway in the other direction.
I visited the US once for a week. Visited Walmart exactly once, and Wegmans every other time. Wegmans blows even my European expectations for a grocery store out of the water.
Sure, and a suburbanite could bike 10-15 minutes there instead of driving. This isn’t really a problem with suburbs. Grocery stores are incredibly common there, probably moreso than urban areas.
Unless you live in the US with its Euclidean Zoning laws which prohibit mixing land use types in a lot of the country. Groceries are commercial use, and so have to go in commercial developments. Plus the big box stores have killed off most of the small grocers, so you have to go to the strip mall on the edge of town.
Drive, a mile? To a whole hypermarket for eggs? I’d just walk down the 95 meters to the grocery store here to get those missing eggs
Okay, that’s still a similar effort. And I don’t disagree the preferred approach. The above is absurd though. If anything it describes a more rural experience and still quite exaggerated IMO.
The above is fantasy circle jerk material. Meme better and have a basis of truth. Those are the best memes.
If I didn’t have to dox myself for that I’d gladly go out and record my way to the store. Just because you can’t have basic necessities over there across the pond it doesn’t mean everyone is going out of their way to lie for magic internet points.
Honestly? Walking 95 meters to the grocery store is way less effort than getting in the car, putting on your seat belt, starting the car, driving off, and parking.
I lived 300 meters from a small grocery store and a 5 minute drive from a bigger one. I almost never went to the bigger one even though it had a better selection of food.
Yeah, realistically this hypothetical person just grabbed eggs while they were at the Wawa. Nobody goes on a whole ass Costco run when they were already making dinner just for fucking eggs.
Yeah I agree that car dependent suburbs are a problem and car brainedness is an issue in North America, but these fake stories are kind of laughable.
Ive lived in suburbs and cities all over NY state and this story is funny. I’d probably be able to get to like 3 or 4 regional groceries (not cosco) in 5-10 minutes or to a gas station with good prices on eggs and milk in 2-5 minutes. Ive been to orlando so I know the OP isnt entirely untrue, but Ive lived in plenty of places where I’d be there and back again before the city guy gets to the bottom of the elevator/stairs. Also the corner bodega is almost definitely going to be more expensive.
Again I agree car dependency is bad, but this whole thing is silly.
Suburbanite in a proper suburb: “Come child, walk with me to the corner store to pick up some eggs.”
I was debating with myself if I should say that. But I thought I shouldn’t exclude third world countries.
The distinction here is not “suburb and non-suburb”, it’s “car-dependent suburb and non-car-dependent suburb” the large large majority are the former.
This was definitely something I didn’t realize was a thing until I moved into a far more non-car dependent suburb. I grew up in suburban sprawl so bad it would literally take you half an hour to foot just to leave the neighborhood. It’s not nearly as good as some of the places I’ve stayed in Europe, but it was eye opening to say the least.
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https://piped.video/MWsGBRdK2N0?si=L7Jz-SvZS_xkahyG
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streetcar suburb: “Come child, let us take the tram to the store and buy some eggs”
In a proper streetcar suburb there should be a supermarket at the tram stop. Also daycare and small primary school, a hair stylist, a GP office, and a restaurant/takeout. Parcel pickup. You only take the tram if you need to go somewhere that has a larger catchment area than a tram stop and especially the supermarket and takeout should be directly at the tram stop so that commuters can grab something on their way home, the rest can be a bit more distributed. One tram stop might have a clothing store, another a shoe store.
Have plenty of bike parking that doubles the radius for the catchment area. housing density should gradually fall off from the tram stop outwards, you can e.g. have a couple of 8-storey blocks around the tram stops with a quasi-urban feel surrounded by 3-5 storeys interspersed with football pitches and greenery and playgrounds, then terraced homes, then finally single-family homes. As to street design: Plenty of cul-de-sacs and traffic calming, make sure that the cul-de-sacs are only for cars, bikes can continue on (you don’t need separate bike infrastructure in traffic-calmed areas), also plenty of small paths cutting through everything so kids can visit friends living away 100m without you having to get on a highway first.
196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
egg
Was not expecting something about literal eggs.
Suburbs should not exist. I get Urban, i get rural, but there is absolutely nothing justifying suburban.
When rural community populations increase, should we advocate for euthanasia or forced relocation?
That’s not how suburbs happen. That’s how small towns happen. Not the same thing. Small towns can be cool.
Living within 30 minutes of my job in the city costs $3,000/month in rent for a 800sf apartment. Living within walking distance would cost $4,000 if I could even find anything to rent.
Living an hour away costs $750/month in rent for a 1200sf trailer. My car note is $450/month and I spend about $300/month on gasoline on average. All in my rent, vehicle, and gas is half the cost of just the rent in the city.
Yeah - there’s an extra hour lost every day to the drive, but the savings comes out to around $75/hr for that commute. And I have the freedom to travel anywhere I want with my vehicle on top of that.
So yeah, I live suburban and fuck anyone who criticizes me for making that sensible economic decision.
Nobody’s saying ‘fuck you’ for being forced into suburbs. Were saying ‘fuck you’ to the people who built suburbs instead of high density housing and made housing near your job unaffordable.
And the people who genuinely had the choice (I might argue you didn’t) and chose to pay extra for suburb.
I mean to be fair people might be more open to it if high density housing didn’t suck ass. The exact same shitty template copy pasted a thousand times. It’s honestly not even that it’s the same that’s the problem it’s that the template sucks ass.
There is a middle ground between high-density housing and showing you into a tiny poorly put together space but nobody seems willing to build that. Give me a suburb house, a full two floors, with a standard layout. And turn that into high density housing and I’m willing to bet a lot more people would be fine with it.
It’s not like that’s even all that difficult to imagine, we build fucking skyscrapers 100 plus stories tall there’s zero reason we couldn’t just take a two-story suburb townhome and just stack 50 of them on top of each other. Then the only thing lost is a dedicated garage and your own private backyard which some people will still heavily want but it’s a much easier pill to swallow versus the “shitty cramped poorly designed apartment layout”
Also it should be mandatory that high density housing has a minimum of one dedicated parking spot per unit, the first two floors of any high-density buildings should be dedicated to a parking garage. That is the other thing that makes people say fuck you to high density housing is it’s always a shit ton of units crammed into not enough parking and it’s a huge pita to deal with. Do we need better design the cities that are less reliant on cars for transport? Yes, but you should still expect at least one car per unit regardless it’s just the reality of America
Who pays extra for suburbs? Suburbs are significantly cheaper than the city.
I did the same math and my results came out the opposite way - in a much cheaper country however. I had a rent free situation over an hour away, but ended up renting an apartment near work. My time alone was worth it, being able to pay the month’s rent using one week’s commute time for freelancing after work. And the monthly fuel cost itself would’ve been 2/3 of my month’s rent.
Everyone’s circumstances are different. I made what I believe was the most sensible economic decision - paying to get out of commuting. For you, the opposite was sensible, commuting to reduce rent. Can’t really judge you for doing what’s best for your wallet in these tough times we’re living.
Sure, there are inconveniences with living in the suburbs, but there are some positives. A dollar typically goes further than in the city, meaning more space for gardening, hobbies, kids, etc. You get to have neighbors without literally living on top of eachother. Usually more quiet then urban settings,etc.
You don’t have neighbors though. Not in american suburbs at least. Not in any good way.
I mean if you get urban and rural, what’s there not to get about the suburbs? It’s the best and worst of both. More open lands and less congestion but also rush hour sucks and people suck at driving. It’s far to go get something, but car rides with buddies is its own fun.
It’s not the best of both though, it just the worst of both.
The best of both are small towns along railways, with a dense core with some amenities surrounded by decreasing density until it quickly becomes pure countryside, and thanks to the station it’s easy to get to and from the big city.
And if you only want rural surroundings you can have train halts basically in the middle of nowhere, there’s a couple like that in my region and it’s absolutely delightful.
So do you put a population limit on small towns? How do you think major Metropolitan areas got started? They didn’t just appear one day, they grew over time from small port and station towns…
Not the best. The best of rural is nature wildness and independence. The ability to wander off into your backyard and shoot something and not get an eyebrow raised. The ability to pick a direction, and start walking, and not turn around until your water gets low, then go home, and not meet another person unless you choose to. The option to just dig a big ass hole or marvel at the intricacy of the ecology. Maybe have a few dozen semi feral cats, so nobody xan quite say you are ir arent the creepy cat lady. The best of rural is room to experiment and play, to be entirely food independent, etc. And oh my god it can get so quiet! Its nice. Peaceful, if a little rough. And if something goes horribly globally wrong? Might not even be your problem.
Suburbs have… A little privacy indoors, I guess? Room for a small garden, if your house is old, maybe some fruit trees? A garage to play with if you don’t drive, which is a major sacrifice?
The best of urban us art culture and people at your fingertips, connectedness and depth. Walking two blocks into an entirely different world, hopping on the train/bus to a dozen art museums and twice as many different cuisines and so many options. Knowing that there are friends for you nearby, if you just find them. Enemies too, probably. Its collaboration and history and the intense humanness of the designed world around you, and oh my god the architecture. At its best, which I admit is rare, its the very very almost imperceptibly low grade version of the thrill of collaboration all the time. And if something goes horribly globally wrong, at least you know youre not alone. Its pretty cool. I’m a fan.
Suburbs have none of this. They pretend at the restaurants, but they’re all chain shit, homogenized to pointlessness.
Suburbs are garbage. Youre as dependent on long ass supply chains as an urban core, but you’re all tiny little ratter dogs pretending to be wolves on the tundra, so you don’t acknowledge or embrace it. You get all the isolation with none of the solitude. It takes almost as long to get anywhere, but you can’t just chill on your farm or go forage in the woods, so you need to go.
Suburbs ate garbage poison and ecologically unsustainable. One can argue modern cities are unsustainable too, but there’s room for doubt on that one; there are economies of scale to take advantage of.