4 comments

[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 33.9 ms ] thread
That was a long article and I'm still not sure what I learned from it beyond there is a fight over suburbs.
Yeah, I don't know, they talk about cities having to change their zoning to accommodate different types of housing because people demand it in those places but then turn around and complain about suburbs.

So cities are responding to a demand and for some reason suburbs should also respond in kind because...

>Title: How to End the War Over the Future of the Suburbs I was not aware there was a war over suburbs.

Author mentions Wayland MA. Wayland is a "rural", forested, suburb a few towns out from Boston. People live there because they like that. Why should anyone outside even get the right to comment about this yet alone complain??? As the author mentions zoning is very specific to get a specific result. Why does Wayland have to grow? They clearly don't want to grow.

I don't understand the self righteousness to tell a happy, (more) balanced with nature, small (insignificant), community that it has to change and grow? This strikes me as psychotic and makes me wonder about globalist conspiracies of infinite growth at the cost of the planet and the globalist ownership of media. Is anyone in Wayland complaining? If Wayland doesn't embrace "growth and change" nothing changes and as I suspect they would prefer it that way.

I, ignorantly, agree that housing costs seem high. But population growth is modest at best so we shouldn't need more homes in areas with good access to commerce. My, ignorant, guess as to the root cause of this problem is a stagnation of middle class wages over the last 40-50 years, possibly compounded by increased business and foreign acquisition of housing stock. This is a very ignorant guess on my part (only so much time to research everything).

I have no dog in this fight. I live in an over priced and tiny apartment in LA. I did visit a friend in Wayland once so I have been there. It was a beautiful town in the wooded suburbs of Boston. It never occurred to me anyone could find a problem with this other than not wanting to live in a wooded suburb in which case you wouldn't.

I still can't figure out the problem the author has with Wayland. I feel like he's being passive-aggressive for personal or political reasons. And there does seem to be a political and cultural war between traditional American self-determination vs leftwing authoritarianism, density fetishists and the globalist class (grown fetishists).

I completely agree, I live in Seattle where the war has been going for a while. A lot of people here love nature and like more wooded communities on the outskirts, but there is this small, vocal minority that is demonizing anyone who resists 10 story apartment buildings that they are trying to push everywhere. The worst part is that most here that want higher density are not from here, they come here and tell everyone , most that already lived here and like the city the way it is, that we have to change because they want cheaper housing.