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Where do you live - City or Suburbs?


Guest donaltopablo

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I live in Northeast Huntsville, about 4 miles from downtown. It's a less sprawling, more industrial area, with only a few hundred homes planned here compared to the 4000+ planned for West Huntsville/Monrovia. Near my house is Chase Industrial Park, which makes everything from DVDs to doors to aircraft windows. It's normal suburbia; the area is auto-dependent, there are fast food joints everywhere, and the biggest store here is a Kroger (but thats about to become a Publix, then a Wal-Mart). The schools are great, except for the high school <_<, which is still a bit too "country" for many people out here, including myself. There is no mass transit of any kind, except if you are handicapped. But the scenery is great, and the traffic is liveable, so that's why I like it here.

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I am currently home for summer in Danbury, CT, where the population is offically about 77,000 people but more recent estimates that account for the illegal aliens place the population around 90,000. The school district classifies itself as a "urban-suburban' district.My house is about 10 minutes away from our traditional downtown (first established in the mid 1600s), 7 minutes to the 1.2 million square foot mall and about 15 minutes away from the typical box stores that are on the eastside of town (borders, walmart, target, circuit city, loews, home depoit and a bunch of furniture stores). Danbury is a city onto itself by all means but it is on the exurban area of New York City being 60 miles to the south west. Due to its 'excellent location' to NYC, White Plains and Stamford, CT and its 'low housing cost (in comparision to lower Fairfield County), it is booming. About 2/3rds of the neighborhoods were constructed between 1960 and 1980 or so. About 5 years ago, Union Carbide moved out of town and devolpers are going to turn their 500+ acre site (3 minutes from my house) into a Planned Neighborhood Devolpment with 3000 houses/town-house, about 500,000-1,000,000 sq feet of commerical office or retail space, 300,000 square feet for industrial stuff (most likely hi-tech), a new elementary school and maybe a minor league baseball stadium. The school system does not get a good reputation in comparsion to the wealthier, pre-dominantaly white suburban towns of Danbury but the schools do an excellent job for people that have been in the system their entire life, and all of my high school friends and I are going to graduate from colleges in the next two years. There is some public transportation. There is the HART (Housanic Area Regional Transit) that operates selective bus routes to the surrounding town's downtowns and to slective neighborhoods or large companies. Whever I need to go into NYC, I get a ride to the trainstation just across the border in NY state and its about 1hr 15 minutes to get to the city. There are about a million ways to get everywhere in town.

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  • 1 month later...

Long Beach, in the city. A lot of ppl who don't know Long Beach think of it as a suburb but in reality it's a city in its own right since it first developed, with a proper CBD, port, airport, etc.... LB kind of has its own suburbs (e.g. Lakewood, home to what was once considered one of the first "mall of the americas".. now that place is BURBS :D

I guess this raises the question, what makes a city a "city" and not a "suburb" ?

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What is it about living in the suburbs that you like?

For me, I like being in the city because it's convenient -- everything is close by, work, schools, university, shopping & entertainment, beaches, everything...

When someone says "suburbs" I think of huge un-peopled streets, everything very far apart and widespread, everything has to be driven to... I guess I like pedestrian friendly places, smaller, higher density...

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I guess it depends on what suburb Zachdaman lives in. Angelina, here in Detroit things are kind of reversed from the type of lifestyle that you describe.

I can vouch for Zach if he lives in a burb like Dearborn, Royal Oak, Ferndale, Pontiac, St. Clair Shores and the like since they have old neighborhood qualities and certain levels of vibrancy.

But I can't defend if he lives in the stereotypical suburb that has flattened Detroit and its metropolitan area into a horizontal wasteland. I'm not saying that to be offensive to anyone, just illustrating the fact that we have what some would call "a bit of a SPRAWL problem"! ;)

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I live in University Heights in the city of San Diego, downtown is just 5-10 minutes driving. It is an urban area and I love it. I don't like the suburbs at all, they are bland, do not have any personality, you need a car to go everywhere, you cannot walk and if you walk people look at you as if you where an alien. All the houses look the same, there is not social or cultural live at all, with a few exceptions in some big cities public transportion in inexistent. The only place to go are those horrible strip-malls or even worse, the big monstruous brand-new stinking mall. I could go on and on, but suburbs definitely are the most un-urban places of the world. I would prefer to live in a small town better than in a suburb.

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