MetaFilter posts tagged with suburban

John Stilgoe wants you to go outside and look at things a little differently.

jquinby — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:28:02 -0800

John Stilgoe is a professor at Harvard who teaches his students how to, among other things, mindfully observe the urban and suburban environments they inhabit. Moving slowly and deliberately throughout the sprawl, one can (if properly trained) read the entire history of an area in the minute details of the overhead power lines, road surfaces, rail lines, survey markers and even drainage lines. He urges his students (and everyone else for that matter) to go outside, walk deliberately, and observe the spaces in and around their landscape. He wrote a book awhile back to help get you started, but it might not hurt to pick up a field guide or two before setting out to reclaim a sense of history and place in your neighborhood. By the way: he wants everyone to know that passing a picket fence at 11mph will render it invisible. Stilgoe, previously. (Special thanks to occhiblu who answered my question about Stilgoe in this AskMefi)

sprawl suburbs

thedailygrowl — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 23:42:22 -0800

Boom! A master planned community. Boom! A big-box mall! Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia. This article, by New York Times columnist David Brooks, takes a look at exploding suburbs and exurban migration. This migration is nothing new, author Joel Garreau wrote extensively about it in his 1991 book Edge Cities. The phenomonon really took off after World War II, during the period of post war prosperity, and is best represented by this famous postwar American suburb. A veritable army of "suburban sprawl critics" has emerged over the years including Jane Jacobs and James Howard Knunstler plus many others including some who are predicting the immenent demise of suburbs because of oil depletion. For Brooks the critics of suburbs "just regurgitate the same critiques decade after decade, regardless of the suburban reality flowering around them" but you can't dismiss what the architect Paolo Soleri says about American society that "we have a society that is moving very rapidly to the super-, super-, super-consumptive."

It puts the lotion in the basket!

jonson — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 14:45:01 -0800

If you've ever wanted to own a Subterranean Fortress in the Pacific Northwest but didn't want to spend 14 years digging out and building one, your opportunity has arrived at last, priced at only $259,000. Conveniently located underneath a nondescript suburban home, you can use the shelter for fun, play, or surviving nuclear holocaust. Or, if you've seen Silence of the Lambs, you may have other ideas for possible uses.

The RAPTOR Mark III

GriffX — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 14:39:26 -0800

The RAPTOR Mark III - "The RAPTOR Mark III is the fastest and most versatile security vehicle in the world. It mounts a devastating choice of firepower as well as a comprehensive assortment of non-lethal weapons, all interchangeable and deployed through a retractable top."

You in the Hummer 2! Hold on a second... via William Gibson's blog

gen — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 13:48:39 -0800

The Weekly Standard: Patio Man and the Sprawl People
There he is atop the uppermost tier of his multi-level backyard patio/outdoor recreation area posed like an admiral on the deck of his destroyer. In his mind's eye he can see himself coolly flipping the garlic and pepper T-bones on the front acreage of his new grill while carefully testing the citrus-tarragon trout filets that sizzle fragrantly in the rear. On the lawn below he can see his kids, Haley and Cody, frolicking on the weedless community lawn that is mowed twice weekly by the people who run Monument Crowne Preserve, his townhome community.
More inside...

rorschach — Thu, 28 Dec 2000 09:05:42 -0800

The Baltimore Sun has a series of articles that explore the possible failure of Columbia, MD to live up to expectations after 30 years.