Hehe...this reminds me of a scenario I encountered a couple months ago. I was meeting up a few friends at the Neshaminy Mall to go see a movie one night, and since I was with someone in a wheelchair, we decided to take the train out there. Well, we only had a mild idea of where we were going, but we knew the train station wasn't far from the movie theater, so it wouldn't be a problem to just walk on over. A couple people on the train asked us where we were going, and when we explained our scenario they looked at us as if we had lobsters crawling out of our ears. "You're going to walk to the mall?!?!" About three people offered to drive us over. They couldn't understand why we would want to walk. It took us under 10 minutes.

Needless to say, we were probably the first people to do this in 10 years. Walking is just so much easier in the city. There are very few towns with real centers that encourage similar pedestrian habits. I've seen some, but boy are they rare.

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- George -

http://www.barackobama.com

That's because no towns have been built since before WWII, except for a scant few New Urbanism projects -- and they aren't even that great. Every suburban town that has a real walkable layout (West Chester, Conshy, Doylestown) is old. All post WWII building is housing developments filled with siding-covered houses, gloomy office parks, and cartoon-goofy commercial strips. These places are anti-people. They are hostile to people even. They are built for cars, plain and simple. The human is lost; secondary. Isn't that so f***ed up when you think about it?

I'm not saying everyone has to live in big cities, but why can't they build mixed use, city-grid style towns? Why couldn't "Main Street at Exton" actually be a real town instead of a fake shame?

One reason is, in many places, the zoning laws prohibits, among many other things, tradtional town building by way of disallowing apartments to be built above stores, i.e. keeping uses sprawled apart.

If you are interested in the topic of sprawl, development, etc. James Howard Kunstler is a fascinating guy to check out. Kunstler.com. He's not an academic, just a layman pissed off at our American landscape.

Doug

Sorry to get off topic but...

Isn't it funny how people who live in the city seem to have a strong dislike for the burbs and people who live in the burbs seem to have a strong dislike for the city?

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"Just go with it."

No, it explains why we live where we live. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/new...ts/9784981.htm

A good article on if we're urban or suburban-minded folks. I'm sort of in the middle, I guess! (Thanks Dan for directly my attention to this.)

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Resident of Fishtown, Moderator of Fish/No. Libs/Kenzo forum, Real Estate Agent-Prudential Fox & Roach

Does the dislike show? . I"ve beat off all the barburbians who just insisted I join them out there as life was soo much better but now there is a fresh onslaught of people living over the bridge that say were nuts to live in Pennsylvania. Everyone gots a plan for how you should live your life that's for sure. I prefer extremes I can do rural and urban but not the burbs you get none of the benefits of either of the aformentioned options. I went to highschool in the infamous planned burb, Valencia, CA and I can tell you that blew too. Our boredom drove us to hollywood every night and that wasn't good.

I'm ashamed to admit I got drug to crap'n'barrel the other day and my wife wanted to go to nordstrom rack for some odd reason. Since I could see it from where I was standing I said lets walk, what a mistake! Walking across miles of parking lot dodging frantic shoppers is no fun. I'm suprised we weren't handed change for the bus.

In Pittsburgh they have burb silos springing up here and there, robinson town center for example, and people from the city bus out there to work in the red lobsters or lowes but as soon as they get off the bus they have to walk in the middle of dangerous streets with crazy drivers perplexed at their presence. Not one sidewalk...

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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken

That's one of the ways they keep the crime rate lower than in the city. Nobody ever interacts with anyone else, except with several tons of metal between them.

Which reminded me of something I read once:

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node...ode_id=1292349

I was actually walking through an african american neighborhood in the south once and got stopped by one of the neighbors who began asking what I was doing and whether I was high on various illegal substances.

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Your representatives on Philadelphia's City Council are at odds with our new mayor over whether many reforms he has proposed should become law. Please write to them and tell them what your priorities are.

Indict State Senator Vince Fumo into The Crooked Pol Hall of Fame.

That was fair and balanced.

Re: Tom Ferrick's Column

Other differences:

Philadelphia has PhillyCarShare; suburbanites can't even share a power riding mower or a snow blower.

City folks eat strange things from strange lands; suburbs, iceberg lettuce still rules.

City folks pound on hoods of offending automobiles; suburbanites simply run down pedestrians - and if you're a state legislator, you drive away without stopping.

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

Thanks for the link. Quite interesting.

Rather than genetics, though, I think it's more about what you're used to. The author, for instance, keeps referring to children who appear to have grown up either in the city or the burbs.

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Your representatives on Philadelphia's City Council are at odds with our new mayor over whether many reforms he has proposed should become law. Please write to them and tell them what your priorities are.

Indict State Senator Vince Fumo into The Crooked Pol Hall of Fame.

Here is another:

A person is murdered 6 out of 7 days a week in Philly; the burb numbers are much lower.