Quote:
Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker
I just don't consider suburbs very urban. The car-dependent lifestyle, to me, is... rural, really. Mount Pearl, Markham, all those types of areas just... don't count to me. They're lost population.
Empire Avenue was the ring road of St. John's in 1949. The entire city's population lived in neighbourhoods with about 5,000 people per km/sq minimum, because that's the density of those districts today. There was none of that North American sprawl. The rowhouses ended, and farmland/farmsteads began.
To me, it still feels like that. I need the street level density. Towers surrounded by highways, surface parking lots, car-dependent suburbs... all of that might as well be farmland to me. I hate it.
And I find when you visit European cities, their downtowns feel as large as those of North American cities at a fraction of the population.
There are easily towns of 40,000-60,000 in Europe that FEEL as large as St. John's.
A great example, the city most Newfoundlanders came from: Waterford, Ireland.
49,000 people.
Looks and feels exactly like St. John's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterford
And I'm not insulting my city - all of yours are just the same to me. |
But it's not rural...or urban. It's suburban!
I get what you're saying though, but you seemed to be insinuating this is only a North American problem. Go look at Melbourne or Johannesburg to see how much this isn't the case. Hell, much of Tokyo is really just townhouses with garages and tiny lanes. A dense version of sprawl.
The suburbs are an extension of the city and rely on it for employment, education, and general amenities. Vice-versa, the city would not have all these employment areas, educational infra, and amenities without being supported by the suburbs, at least not to the same degree.
Now the extent to which the suburbs boost the inner city depends on the suburb and its relationship to the city. Detroit's suburbs all but ignore the city that birthed them. Vancouver's suburbs seem more integrated into a larger regional consciousness.
I will concede that the impact of the regular on-the-urban-fringe suburbanite going to big box stores and going to local hockey games on Saturdays probably isn't contributing much to the central city's cultural amenities the way an uptown condo dweller would, but it still helps boost a city up. Many of those suburbanite kids are going to end up in the city in their 20s and might stay into their 30s and beyond as inner city living continues to grow in popularity. It also contributes to the general economic market of a place. A retail store or sports franchise may choose to open in the city based on the large pool of people in a metropolitan area.