I resent growing up in the suburbs. Kids can’t choose the life they’re thrust into.
Now, not all suburbs are created equally. Some are pretty good. A high schooler growing up in North Raleigh has access to all the greenways and Raleigh’s sidewalk coverage is pretty good. They can bike to visit friends, and buses are free or cheap.
A high schooler in Briar Chapel is basically in a minimum security prison. I think when older generations wring their hands and wonder why their kids ended up so antisocial and poorly adjusted to adult life when they first enter it… well… Something about reaping and sowing comes to mind.
I grew up in 2 different car dependent suburban homes. One was in a crowded/tiny lot neighnorhood but afforded me an easy walk to my elementary school and a short bike ride into hills near my home to catch lizards, frogs and snakes with my friends. My second suburban home, when I was middle school age through high school, was further removed from both my Jr and Sr high schools, but I was thrilled to ride a yellow school bus: well, at least until the novelty wore off. I was further away from my friends because the houses sat on large pieces of property and it was less dense.
I don’t have hatred for how & where I was raised, but it gave me the perfect contrast to the difference in life once I enrolled at State. I quickly realized that I didn’t want to go back to the burbs.
I have a hard time understanding how anyone here would give a thumbs down to your reply, and yet that’s all the reaction you got. I mean what better thing can you ask than for everyone to live they way they want? Yikes to whoever wont agree to that.
I mean parents do their best to raise their kids and give them the best life, or at least MOST parents do. I am unfamililar with Briar Chapel but I googled it and it appears to be a lovely suburb over near Chapel Hill. Here’s a pic from a random street in that housing development If that’s a “minimum security prison” count me and my family IN. What a great place to grow up. I’m sorry you resent where/how you grew up, but not everyone feels the way you do, even on here. As a kid gets older your friends aren’t limited to those on your street and you naturally travel to those you know out of your neighborhood from sports or school or clubs. But that’s why there’s transportation, whether owning a car, uber, or a bus to get there.
I’m a parent and having a safe neighborhood full of other families with kids was part of the attraction of moving here from a much older and somewhat denser area.
as a kid I’d rather have other kids to play with and not navigate a sketchy neighborhood like the photo you posted. That looks like something out of Little Rascals or Christmas Story. Really gross TBH. As a parent I DEFINITELY would not want my kids out on their own in a place like this: (your photo)
It’s 90% single family homes with unkept yards. The single family homes in Briar Chapel are actually built on smaller lots than what you see in Oakwood, Boylan Heights, and the design chaos of southeastern downtown single family homes.
II can’t help but notice that when I walk through suburban Raleigh neighborhoods with large front yards and streets with little traffic, there is not a kid to be seen. It can be any time of day, any time of year, a neighborhood of any income level, and yet it is almost always as silent as a graveyard. Where is this play happening? Is it indoors? Back yards?
You don’t speak as if you were someone that grew up in a suburban neighborhood. I did, and agree with everything Vatnos said. Why don’t you tell me us what your experience was before discrediting those of us here that grew up in this ‘great place to grow up’?
Also, those of you looking for the kids. They’re inside. Probably playing Xbox.
A yard sucks to play in anyway. I went to the park as a kid, or explored the nearest woods. Both of those things are accessible to kids in urban places… arguably moreso.
Where do I find such urban forests. Send your kids to Moore Square, get a good dose of Israelites, learn how to handle a knife, along with other life skills.
Any neighborhood full of kids won’t be full of kids for all that long. The kids grow up and move out and the neighborhood becomes full of empty nesters and retired people for a much longer time. Where are the kids? Some of them grew up and moved downtown.
I mean, these narratives at the extremes are a waste of time…
They found a body down by a creek in Chatham, does that mean it’s a death zone or the bucolic oasis you portend it to be ?
“Live and let live” is fine, except that the suburban American lifestyle is plainly unsustainable and is therefore implicitly subsidized by everyone else on earth, now and in the future. We’re talking about carbon footprints that are 10X higher than sustainable levels, i.e., need to be cut 90%.
Yes, it’s legal – because the auto and homebuilder industries rewrote the rules starting a century ago.
Yes, it looks cheaper – after all the implicit subsidies.
Yes everyone else is doing it, yes it feels good right this moment, yes it’s what’s expected of you…
…but if you’re sticking me with the bill for your lifestyle, I’m still going to complain about it.
Most of the people on here I am sure will agree with your statement. My question is what is happening in Glenwood South the urban utopia that you envision for all of us? My vision of a good lifestyle is much different than what you seem to be offering.
Odd comparison. Glenwood South’s recent challenges from a crime perspective is a product of a concentration of evening/late night entertainment patrons, not financial analysis comparing to subsidized urban sprawl. If you’re talking about cost of living and cost of development and more importantly, cost of city infrastructure to accommodate that area (that is NOT taking into account for urban/suburban sprawl), Glenwood South is MUCH more sustainable than the typical American suburb.
But I think you’re changing the topic to focus on crime that happens to come from a very particular area of downtown.
It was his topic. Not mine. The original comment was concerning sprawl and living the way I want. He’s against it for monetary and saving the planet (?) reasons. I am for suburbs for safety reasons and quality of life that I prefer. It’s actually a great comparison.
You said this, so it was very much your topic. The math and finances of it all have concluded that the suburban life is subsidized by those that don’t live there.
It’s easy for you to “let live” when you choose a way of living that is unsustainable and drains the tax dollars of everyone else without paying the true cost of your bill.
You ordered the most expensive things on the menu, asked everyone to split the bill equally, then criticized everyone for getting a salad.
It was his topic. Not mine. The original comment was concerning sprawl and living the way I want. He’s against it for monetary and saving the planet (?) reasons. I am for suburbs for safety reasons and quality of life that I prefer. It’s actually a great comparison.
I am for urbanism for safety reasons as well, and my numbers are objectively more numbery than yours.
It’s really interesting that the increase in murders in Raleigh have sparked a huge amount of pearl clutching, yet traffic deaths have increased at an even faster rate in Raleigh and are in fact higher–everywhere, and will increase as we continue to gain people and put them in car dependent places. You’re more likely to die driving on I-40 than walking Glenwood at midnight yet this has strangely not provoked any discussions about maybe changing the way we commute?
