Have you been to large cities? I bet you can drive an hour from actual Chicago and still be in the suburbs of Chicago. For example. And not cross over farm lands either.
Just doing some casual google mapsing.
Chicago to Naperville, Plainfield, and Elgin, are all roughly an hour, and its all pretty much populated area the entire trip on each. Its basically an hour in any direction to reach the edge of the Chicago suburbs.
Its 2 hours north to Milwaukee and if you stayed along the lake route it would probably be populated suburb areas all the way too.
European here. That concept is really alien to me: if I drive 1h in some direction (assuming I’m not just stuck in traffic) I’m somewhere else, some other city, region, maybe even a different country.
Maybe the gaps between the towns/cities have closed, and it’s just buildings everywhere now, but they were separate at some point and that still shows in how streets, schools, etc are organized - like smaller hubs that expanded until they fused, but not like some tree where every year there’s more and more rings around the central core…
But if feels like people not from America, don’t quite get just how much land the US has (and frankly, Canada too). Especially in some things like “why don’t they all go protest their shitty leadership.” Because for some people its a 40 hour drive, or an expensive plane ticket.
Its also why we have no got “high speed rail”. Part of that is, we do have rail, but its still slow, becsuse its a lot of distance. And maintaining a high speed rail that long would be very difficult (I think we should still do it).
I live in a rural area, which is probably more comparable to your experience, it takes aroujd 45 min to an hour to get to one of several small-mid sized cities. But all are within the same state, and all of those are another 60-90 min to the nearest state border at a minimum.
No, I’m pretty sure it’s not the size. If I take my car and drive from Lisbon all the way to Moscow, that’s about the same as going from NYC to LA in terms of distance.
I’ll grant that it might be related to “free land” though, as I think it’s mostly a matter of organization. But first there’s this “single use” zoning mentality in the US, which forces people to travel for everything by design - in Europe ground floors were traditionally businesses, and upper floors housing - mix is the norm, cars didn’t exist back in the day and people still had to get to things. Then there’s the way cities grow - most places in Europe you can’t just build swaths of single-family houses in the periphery of existing cities, either because it’s already reserved land (parks/ecological reserve/farming/other uses) and because the access would be awful (already crowded highways) - so instead usually it’s the existing town centers that already have good mass-transit connections (train, subway, …) that see an increase in density: old single-family houses give way to apartment buildings or mixed use buildings (commerce, offices). So it kinda grows in “nodes”, not as an ever expanding ring of single-family houses.
But this is simply a mater of policy - build a train line that connects a few several small towns in the outskirts, connect that up to some mass transit inside the city proper (subway ideally, if it exists) and boom, the density in those small towns that now have a good connection will skyrocket.
Honestly it can take an hour just to get out of NYC from Manhattan, hitting the beginning of suburbs. It can then take another 30-60 to get through suburbs, depending on which direction youre headed.
an area within a metropolitan area which is predominantly residential and within commuting distance of a large city.
I’d say it’s a very fit definition of where I’m at. Most people commute to the metropolitan areas which are mostly manufacturing, and can reliably commute to the nearest city by car (though it can be an hour drive at some places). It’s mostly residential here, some woodland between communities but sometimes little woodland within them.
“1h from the nearest city”
“suburban area”
What? How? I has questions…
Have you been to large cities? I bet you can drive an hour from actual Chicago and still be in the suburbs of Chicago. For example. And not cross over farm lands either.
Just doing some casual google mapsing.
Chicago to Naperville, Plainfield, and Elgin, are all roughly an hour, and its all pretty much populated area the entire trip on each. Its basically an hour in any direction to reach the edge of the Chicago suburbs.
Its 2 hours north to Milwaukee and if you stayed along the lake route it would probably be populated suburb areas all the way too.
When traffic is bad, you can drive for an hour in LA and still be in the same neighborhood.
European here. That concept is really alien to me: if I drive 1h in some direction (assuming I’m not just stuck in traffic) I’m somewhere else, some other city, region, maybe even a different country.
Maybe the gaps between the towns/cities have closed, and it’s just buildings everywhere now, but they were separate at some point and that still shows in how streets, schools, etc are organized - like smaller hubs that expanded until they fused, but not like some tree where every year there’s more and more rings around the central core…
This is not a critisism on you, or Europe.
But if feels like people not from America, don’t quite get just how much land the US has (and frankly, Canada too). Especially in some things like “why don’t they all go protest their shitty leadership.” Because for some people its a 40 hour drive, or an expensive plane ticket.
Its also why we have no got “high speed rail”. Part of that is, we do have rail, but its still slow, becsuse its a lot of distance. And maintaining a high speed rail that long would be very difficult (I think we should still do it).
I live in a rural area, which is probably more comparable to your experience, it takes aroujd 45 min to an hour to get to one of several small-mid sized cities. But all are within the same state, and all of those are another 60-90 min to the nearest state border at a minimum.
No, I’m pretty sure it’s not the size. If I take my car and drive from Lisbon all the way to Moscow, that’s about the same as going from NYC to LA in terms of distance.
I’ll grant that it might be related to “free land” though, as I think it’s mostly a matter of organization. But first there’s this “single use” zoning mentality in the US, which forces people to travel for everything by design - in Europe ground floors were traditionally businesses, and upper floors housing - mix is the norm, cars didn’t exist back in the day and people still had to get to things. Then there’s the way cities grow - most places in Europe you can’t just build swaths of single-family houses in the periphery of existing cities, either because it’s already reserved land (parks/ecological reserve/farming/other uses) and because the access would be awful (already crowded highways) - so instead usually it’s the existing town centers that already have good mass-transit connections (train, subway, …) that see an increase in density: old single-family houses give way to apartment buildings or mixed use buildings (commerce, offices). So it kinda grows in “nodes”, not as an ever expanding ring of single-family houses.
But this is simply a mater of policy - build a train line that connects a few several small towns in the outskirts, connect that up to some mass transit inside the city proper (subway ideally, if it exists) and boom, the density in those small towns that now have a good connection will skyrocket.
I can drive for 10 hours in one direction and not leave my U.S. state. I’m not even close to the border to another state either.
Honestly it can take an hour just to get out of NYC from Manhattan, hitting the beginning of suburbs. It can then take another 30-60 to get through suburbs, depending on which direction youre headed.
Tbf in Atlanta 1h from the city is IN the city.
I feel like sub-urban has lost meaning.
If closer to the boonies than a city, you’re no longer sub-urban. Though does rural count as country town, or just farm, or both?
Wikipedia defines it as:
I’d say it’s a very fit definition of where I’m at. Most people commute to the metropolitan areas which are mostly manufacturing, and can reliably commute to the nearest city by car (though it can be an hour drive at some places). It’s mostly residential here, some woodland between communities but sometimes little woodland within them.
I mean commuting could be anything between 5 minutes and 4 hours.
Like walking distance. What does it mean???