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  #21  
Old Posted Apr 13, 2018, 7:32 PM
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JManc JManc is online now
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
These backcountry towns in CT (and far Western MA; places like Great Barrington and North Adams) are very affluent and full of New Yorkers and others from cosmopolitan cities who demand services.

Since the areas are so NIMBY and zoning so strict, there are very few chain store sprawl-type areas, and almost all the shopping-restaurants-services are in quaint town centers. The yoga studios, dermatology offices, wealth managers, whatever, tend to be in the town centers.

And those areas are beloved precisely because they're so sparsely settled, isolated and fixed in time. They're the antidote to too much big city during the week. If they were covered with subdivisions, malls and highways they would be like anyplace else.
True, they are stricter about controlling that sort of thing down that way than other parts of NE and NY. Even in the Boston area.
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  #22  
Old Posted Apr 13, 2018, 7:40 PM
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
I think people really shouldn't equate all older tree-lined suburbs as being the same. Streetcar suburbs are generally pretty dense, as are railroad suburbs and many of the "interwar" neighborhoods built out mostly in the 1920s. In the other thread I was mostly criticizing the "bucolic" back-country suburbs you find in New England, where lots of an acre (or more) are not uncommon. In many cases these don't even have a defined "town center" to speak of. Here's an example not far from where I grew up.
That's what I was trying to say. Not all "old" suburbs are streetcar suburbs.
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  #23  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2018, 3:03 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
I'm not aware of any backcountry part of CT that isn't proximate to a colonial-era town center.

I mean, people need services. These places wouldn't exist without the little town centers. These are generally affluent areas, many relocated from Manhattan, and they want a facsimile of rural living, not the real deal.

And while I'd agree these places are inefficient and wasteful, they're also beautiful and worth preserving. I don't see how it would be better if we leveled stone walls, hills, and wooded country lanes for tract housing.
I'm not saying these places aren't without their charm, but if it wasn't for their existing, you wouldn't have metro NYC extending into places like Litchfield County CT or Pike County, PA. Or you wouldn't have metro Boston extending so deeply into New Hampshire.

I mean, if you define suburban sprawl as being the overall level that a metro area sprawls across the landscape - the rough line where the suburbs end and the genuine rural area begins - then clearly allowing large-lot backcountry suburbia relatively close to core cities creates demand for new-construction suburbs even further out.

A lot of this really comes down to the New England model of local governance. Since zoning is on the town level, rural areas in New England can decide (if they aren't desperate for tax dollars) to set very high minimum lot sizes and effectively cap future development. Somewhere in Fairfax County Virginia couldn't really do the same, because even if NIMBYs exist, they don't control local zoning boards, and don't have any more pull than a particular neighborhood does in a city.
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  #24  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2018, 4:41 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
a large part of my dislike of sprawl-burbia is indeed aesthetic.

here's the street i grew up on in suburban chicago:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0695...7i13312!8i6656

it's not amazing or remarkable in any meaningful way, but it's attractive enough, is on a fully interconnected street-grid, the houses (while similarish) are not cookie-cutter, and most importantly, because it has alleys, all of the car shit (garages, drive-ways, curb cuts, etc) is kept out of sight at the back of the property.

if suburbia had been built more along the lines of the above in the post-war era, then i wouldn't hate it nearly so much, but post-war suburban developers tossed the street-car suburbia playbook out of the window for some stupid fucking reason and decided to make everything ugly instead. it was so unnecessary.



and yes, large trees can absolutely help improve a neighborhood, ANY neighborhood, a tremendous amount.

old growth trees indeed have a huge impact. whats unfortunate is a lot of the ones which were put up 100 years ago are starting to meet their end, due to age, more development, and increased disease/invasive species. and in a lot of cases they arent being replaced to the same degree. the block i grew up on probably didnt look all that different from yours, but nearly all of the big old trees have come down over the past 15 years, and its a completely different streetscape (to say nothing of how much warmer the houses are in the summer). theres a new one planted here and there, but the reality is that street will never look the same in my lifetime as it did when i was growing up.
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  #25  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2018, 4:46 PM
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Originally Posted by Via Chicago View Post
old growth trees indeed have a huge impact. whats unfortunate is a lot of the ones which were put up 100 years ago are starting to meet their end, due to age, more development, and increased disease/invasive species. and in a lot of cases they arent being replaced to the same degree. the block i grew up on probably didnt look all that different from yours, but nearly all of the big old trees have come down over the past 15 years, and its a completely different streetscape (to say nothing of how much warmer the houses are in the summer). theres a new one planted here and there, but the reality is that street will never look the same in my lifetime as it did when i was growing up.
Were they Ash trees? Since 2002, 30,000,000 Ash tress have died from an Asian beetle. 17% of Chicago's tree population is Ash. That is around 85,000 trees that are at high risk.
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  #26  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2018, 4:50 PM
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ash definitely did make up a portion of it, although the trees were beginning to rot even without that. and the cruel irony is that ash were chosen to replace dutch elms. the real solution is not relying on any one variety.

some were still healthy, but lots of homeowners also have a fear of branches falling in storms, etc., so they pre-emptively take them down. my parents house had 5 old growth trees surrounding it when i was young. as a kid, it felt magical. today there are zero. the rest of the block is a similar state. my parents did finally put some new ones in, but the varieties they chose will likely only grow to be 40 ft max. And most other homeowners havent made any effort at all to replace.

again, those sorts of intangibles really do have an impact, but it requires stewardship. theres no way around the fact that when a 100 year old tree comes down, it irreversibly changes the character of that block. (and sadly i doubt we will have trees like that again in parkways, just due to how much more infrastructure is now buried underground compared to when they were planted)
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