Quote:
Originally Posted by WarrenC12
Humanity has been urbanizing since the rise of organized agriculture.
The concept of the suburbs arose primarily in post-war North America, and parts of Europe. Other countries around the world emulated this development on the ideal of the US white picket fence, 2.5 kids, etc.
Now we are moving back towards urbanization as a society. To me, it's clear that is the long run trend, and the 20th century was more of an anomaly than a trend.
All that said, I don't think suburban lifestyles are affordable from a sustainability perspective. Humans are social animals and tend to enjoy being in groups, both family and otherwise.
Edit: Just to add on, I share an IT background and have done extensive working from home in the past. I much preferred working in my downtown condo and/or a local coffee shop, vs. in my isolated residential basement or office.
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The suburbs look like most of Vancouver does, with houses and little streets. I grew up in the burbs and I don't think I was denied a social up-bringing. On the contrary, I played street hockey nearly every day in the summer, ran around in the local parks with my 20+ friends, played organized sports on the fields around our houses, and would run around playing cops and robbers with the kids in my immediate neighborhood.
When I went to school 90% of my socialization was at school and because of the lack of funding in Surrey schools, it meant my high school had 2000 or so students crammed into a facility built for 1100 so there was plenty of socialization going on given we were on top of each other.
That said if you did any actual research you'd realize that suburbs date back as far as Ancient Rome (basically as far as record goes). The wealthy used to live on the hills in Rome where as the poor people would live in the low lands surrounding thus the word subburbe bening "under or bellow the city".
Suburbs continued well into early European history with urban market hubs being constructed taking the form of walled fortifications then small villages would spring up all around the market hub. These were also suburbs.
If you want a real example do some reading on the history of London or rather Westminster and how over time the suburbs were swallowed up as "London" expanded to the city it is today. Still though even today London has suburbs that meet the modern definition and many are older than even the United States or Canada.
So unfortunately you're just categorically wrong that this is some sort of post-war modern invention. What you're seeing today isn't a migration to urban lifestyles but rather the growth of the "central market hub" or main city like happened back in Ancient Rome and then in Europe.
What you call urbanization of the suburbs is simply expansion of the urban core. The suburbs will simply continue to move out as has happened in every other major city throughout time.
Eventually if the earth is maybe 15-20 billion people we'd all be in urban centers as we'd be completely out of space but that's never going to happen we'd run out of resources well before then.
There's also a huge myth that suburbs are a bad thing. They only became a bad thing with the invention of the automobile because automobiles pollute our atmosphere and contribute to global warming. I've said it a million times that when humanity finally gets its collective head out of its ass and replaced gasoline with hydrogen and cars no longer pollute, this entire debate over urban vs suburban will become moot imho.
Outside of motor vehicles, people living in urban areas are not any more efficient than those in the suburbs. They eat the same amount of food, produce the same amount of garbage, require the same amount of goods per capita, and so on and so fourth. It's only the evil polluting car that pits suburb vs urban center.
The above all said, I'm fairly certain (in my opinion of course) that the viaducts will be coming down. If it is such an important Vision Vancouver thing, the fact they are moving forward with a giant ugly expensive set of suicide barriers along the Burrard street bridge to save the lives of less than 1 person per year tells me that when they've made up their mind about something, they'll make it happen regardless of opinion.
I also think at the end it won't be too drastically bad and may have some major positives like making sure every single person drives by the devoid parking lots Concord Pacific has throughout the area eventually forcing them to actually do something with them.
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