Suburban Europe

[FREKI]

Now much of Norway is covered by Google Streetview too ( along with other parts of Europe for those interested )


( blue colour is covered areas/streets )

If in doubt it works by when in http://maps.google.dk/ that you drag the orange dude on top of the "zoom scale" onto the map..

[Fusey]

Something tells me that they won't be covering Belarus any time soon.

[FREKI]

I'm not sure how much business there would be for Google there so probable not likely any time soon..

But I would expect something like Germany and Poland showing up soon..

I don't know but it would surprise me if they covered so much of the north this summer without covering the central parts..



But their interest in Scandinavia could also have come from other companies already doing it here such as Eniro and Krak..


http://map.krak.dk/m/MyLIS

People interested can try Krak here: http://map.krak.dk/m/MyLIS

[Fusey]

One great thing for me, personally, with Street View was being able to see my great-grandfather's birthplace in Sicily. I probably spent three hours "driving around" a village of less than 1500 people.

[glowrock]

That's awesome! I just found the student dorms I was living in for 6 weeks in Feltre, Italy while I was attending my Geology Field Camp back in 2000!

Aaron (Glowrock)

[Anders Franzén]

Here's an example in (small) numbers:

I once lived in the Swedish city of Karlskrona.

The municipality has roughly 60k inhabitants.

The actual city has 30k.

Of these, only 10k lives "downtown" while the other 20k are suburbians.

[Cicerón]

Sorry for bumping this thread 3 months after

I'll talk about Spain. Most of the people think that we live in dense cities... and they're quite right. But there are also lots of low-density suburbs all over the country, called urbanización (plural urbanizaciones). Basically, there are 3 types of low-density suburbs according to its age:

1) Those built in the early 20th century. They were a sort of urbanism experiment, including some garden cities (brought by the British working in the mines of Bilbao and Huelva). Most of them are made up of houses built in a traditional architecture.

2) Those built during the Francoism. They were mainly built for the elites and consist on scattered houses with lots of tall trees and hedges so that you cannot see anything. Some of them don't even have sidewalks. The streets are named after trees, flowers, birds or countries

3) Those built in the last three decades. Most of them consist on detached and semi-detached "clone" houses very close to eachother. They are better urbanized though (no aerial cables, more parks, etc).

Some examples:

This is Ciudad Jardín, in Madrid. When it was built this place was the outskirts, now it's the centre. Some houses have been demolished to build new taller buildings.


L'Eliana, in Valencia.



Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona. Barcelona is surrounded by hundreds of urbanizaciones that spread along the coastline and the mountains.


The west of Madrid is filled with these urbanizaciones. Some of them are quite expensive, some of them aren't.



^What I said. You only can see trees and hedges.

This is not a suburb, this is just an urbanización built in the middle of nowhere for the people to spend the weekends/holidays in.


Same here. Surprisingly, they are not only located in the Mediterranean coast but actually everywhere, especially near the mountains.



Some newer urbanizaciones, built in the 90's. Clone houses.

Maybe the garage is too small?













And finally, this one was built in the 2000's:

[photoLith]

Those are European suburbs? Here in America we would call that stuff urban, not suburban. You guys are so lucky to not live in a land covered by wal marts, mcdonalds, and huge cars.

[Tolbert]

Infact Europe is also covered by Super Stores, Mc Donalds an so on. You just have to go to the right places. Maybee its not as bad as in the us but still its there. Only real difference is that uge cars are not that common in Europe.

When street view is up in Germany i'll show you. just heared they are doing the villages of Hessen at the moment...

[Cicerón]

Originally Posted by photolitherland

Those are European suburbs? Here in America we would call that stuff urban, not suburban. You guys are so lucky to not live in a land covered by wal marts, mcdonalds, and huge cars.

I don't know about the rest of Europe, those are low-density Spanish suburbs. The densest municipality in Spain (Hospitalet de Llobregat, near Barcelona) has 20k inhabitants per square kilometer so what I showed is suburban to Spanish standards.

[alleystreetindustry]

i wish american suburbs were as pretty and dense as european counterparts.

[Swede]

Originally Posted by Cicerón

I don't know about the rest of Europe, those are low-density Spanish suburbs.

In Sweden those would be medium density, looks about as dense as many row-house 'burbs. High-rise suburbia tends to be denser over-all (especially the poorer ones, overcrowding is a real issue), but also tend to look more spacious. We've got lots of space up here so Stockholm's metro area is in fact less dense than LA's and even the Netherlands as a whole! Most of it is forests, but there does exist sprawlburbs scattered amongst the trees.


Kallhäll is fairly typical for a Sthlm burb. Modernist "urban" planning made real!

source

[FREKI]

Originally Posted by Swede

We've got lots of space up here so Stockholm's metro area

That's an understatement - we drove trough 8 hours of forrest to get to Stockholm - you could place 3 Tokyo's there and there's still have enough space for each person to have a secondary house



Anyways yeah as usual Spain is very dense - and differs quite a bit compared to how it's done up here..

[hammersklavier]

So we know what suburbs are like in Scandinavia and Spain. What about in the heart of Europe--in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy?

[Tolbert]

Originally Posted by hammersklavier

So we know what suburbs are like in Scandinavia and Spain. What about in the heart of Europe--in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy?

Germany is quite simmilar to the scandinavian countries in suburbal planning.

Those are GE screens of the suburbs the city i live in. (150.000 inhabitants), but they pretty much reflect what you will find all over germany.

The quarter i live in. The lover left part is of the 1920s with later infillment the upper right a plannig of the 1960s -70s


The Southern part of the quarter


1920s to 1960s or later


more 1900s to 1920s


and of course we have those more dense modernist urban planings too...




Thats a town next to my city that is in fact nothing more than another suburb...


Another typical sort of suburb for germany are small villages near city centers that grew to Suburbs after WWII. The dense part on the upper half of the screen is the old willage center while the rest is 50s to present growth.



As for France and Italy i think they are more like spain. While low density suburbs are rarely seen in italian cities some cities of southern france have huge US stile suburban developements.

[Swede]

^Those look plenty dense to me! And not all the modernist, quite a lot of interconnections in most directions in fact. Stockholm suburbs tend to be enclaves with only a a few ways out. My suburb of Kista, combined with our neighbours Husby and Akalla have 30k residents and 30k workers (very, very small overlap sadly. poor district and computer/phone companies) and how many connections are there? 4 interstate connections (the E4 and the E18), one bus-only street, one subway line going into the City. Oh, and walk/bike-paths going thru forests. This lack of connections is very, very common in Stockholm. Maybe half live in enclaves like this.

[hammersklavier]

Yes indeed. Housing may not lie dense upon the land but the interconnections--which are almost more important--are there. A suburb in a grid, IMO, is a better one than one founded on enclavism and cul-de-sacs. (The strongest form of suburban enclavism is of course the gated community.)

[one very bored guy]

@Tolbert, are those individual houses in the upper images? Around Frankfurt and the Rhain Main, although you do have suburbs with individual houses, most are still apartments. I'm looking forward to Streetview coming for Germany (If it shows anything due to all the whining) to provide some examples.

[Minato Ku]

Some satelite view of some Bordeaux suburbs

Here we see the old village core and more recent development around.

[Tolbert]

Originally Posted by one very bored guy

@Tolbert, are those individual houses in the upper images?

Yes, most of them are. Of course some of the larger ones where changed after the war. The modernist ones are either individual houses or flats.

I looking foward street view too. There might be a picture of me sitting in a bus