Posted on 02/20/2006 5:19:12 AM PST by Clemenza
Half a century ago, millions of young white couples left America's central cities for greener places to build homes and rear families. Their move created booming commuter communities and a new way of life.
But that idealized picture has been transformed and the future of those pioneering suburbs is in jeopardy, according to a study issued yesterday by the Brookings Institution, a research group in Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
> I live in what would be called a "first suburb" outside of Boston...
Massachusetts is a far cry from New York. What the Times describes simply doesn't apply here. Nor does the effect of public transportation reported by some posters on this thread.
I checked out the report on the Brookings Institution web site, and they made a genuine effort to cover "first suburbs" in metro areas all over the country. For obvious reasons there are few examples in the Sunbelt, but the study does cover Middlesex County outside Cambridge and also, I believe, Norfolk and Hampden County (minus Springfield.)
I was not surprised to an emphasis on Light Rail in the Urban Land Institute's recommendations for the rebuilding of New Orleans. They basically want to connect the Delta region with the state capitol along the I-10 corridor, with all of the outer suburban areas and even with the Mississippi coast.
Ain't gonna happen.
the main phenomena I see are multiple wage earners per home now on long island. extended families live in them, to afford the cost and the property taxes. you can easily have 4 wage earners in a household.
I once lived in New Roc. Scarsdale like wealthy north and New Endland like waterfront south- and a community in the center that fulfilled a criminal stereotype.
I wonder if the "Left Bank" is still there on North Ave? . I believe that was my first club visit at 16 years old. It was punk rock.
I went to Gorton.
My only arrest was on North Ave. The bars down there were crazy!
The first tier of Boston suburbs was gobbled up by the city 100 years ago. What you see in places like Brighton and Roxbury/Medical is the long arm of Harvard, Inc. (to name one force reversing decline), and with the investment in tech-research-educational-medical facilities, a robust improvement since the low point of the 70s. Davis Square had thoroughly deteriorated till the Red Line came through and HCHP came in. When they took down the El in Charlestown, a renaissance took place. Look for good things across the river in Watertown with the redevelopment of the Arsenal. This has not happened in Dorchester...yet. But there just aren't any more Southies and South Ends to become gentrified, and professionals have to live somewhere. It seems like immigrants who don't want to join in are going to get squeezed out.
The "inner city" neighborhood I grew up in in the 1950s was built as a suburb in the 1880s when "street cars" first came along providing transportation back and fourth (the 4 miles or so) to the center of the city where the factories and other places of employment were. It had been farmland before that. Those homes had something almost unheard in the 1880s --- indoor plumbing!
Oh my memory is not shot then that is a good thing. I don't remember any other bars. At the time New Rochelle was considered preppy and I was a metal head!
The suburbs I think of in Boston that are covered by the report are older cities like Chelsea, Milton, Somerville, and Quincy and suburbs like Medford, Braintree, Waltham, Malden, Framingham and Revere.
Some of them have ritzy areas, some of them are quite tidy, but they're all facing either serious aging issues (people AND housing), immigration driving changes, and economic shifts. The report also didn't rule out gentrification in some areas, but that causes its own issues. Framingham is technically a suburb, but socially it has more in common with Boston, and much more in common with Somerville and Medford, than it does with a real recent suburb like Franklin or Norfolk.
No more than me. I still blast Slayer!!!
SSSSSLLLLLAAAAYYYYEEEERRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know you love your metal! Slayer LOL LOL
My 10-year-old daughter is appalled at my music; she says it is all screaming! I tried; she does like some of Ozzie's Crazy Train.
I live in such an area here in Nashville, my home was built in 1967.
When tract-built homes get this old, the maintenance costs rise and many people die or move away by then.
I put over $12,000 in this house last year just for a new roof, gutters, and replacing the HVAC.
I've lived here for 11 years and hated every minute of it.
It is getting to where every time the T.V. says a tornado is in my area, I find myself rooting for the tornado.
Sounds like you live in Shaker Heights.Shaker encountered that twenty years ago. I'm in Maple Heights, which used to often be called "the Parma of the east side".
-Eric
My parents are mortified that I still love mtal. I just tell them I had a great musical taste early in life.
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