Suburbs vs. the city
I got this note this week from an old friend, David Sullivan, whom I hadn't seen in a while.
Now I know why: He and his and wife Robin have up and moved away from my suburban neck of the woods. I finally found this out after last week's column about my own itch to move closer to the center city. David, by the way, is active in the Sierra Club and was a member of the Smart Growth Coalition between developers and environmentalists.
Hi, Allen. Robin and I loved your editorial Sunday. What you wrote is US! We too were thinking seriously about moving downtown. Robin and I just love it down town. Some Saturdays we will just stroll down through town. We love the atmosphere and "ambiance" of the center city.
So, when we decided to move, downtown was on our short list of places to live. But, like you, we had dogs to consider. If we only had our 35-pound Baxter to consider, then we may have pursued looking at an apartment or town home.
However, a 175-pound Great Dane named Gunther is a totally different subject. We selected a home on Audubon Drive in Starmount. We wanted to get back closer to town, shopping and work. In our old house, I was 13 miles one way from my office. The drive was over 30 minutes, and after 3 years I was sick of the drive. Sounding familiar?
We loved our old suburban home. The walkability of the neighborhood with sidewalks and trails is hard to top.
Our move to Audubon has been wonderful. There are no sidewalks here, but that has proven to be a minor nuisance. Neighbors go out of their way to meet you. Everyone says hello. It is not unusual to stop in the middle of the street while on a walk to talk to neighbors.
Everyone picks up their pet's poop. There is a respect here that was at times missing in the suburbs. My drive to work is about 15 minutes, but with the continued development along Wendover, the drive time keeps creeping up. Friendly Shopping Center is less than 5 minutes away. We have never second-guessed our move. If I ever wondered if all my work and effort to promote smart growth has been worth it, then our move has proved it is. Starmount is far from being a compact development, does not have sidewalks and is not mixed use.
But!! It is a true neighborhood with parks, narrow streets, parallel streets and easy access to shopping. This past month we had three homes on the street go up for sale. All three sold in less than a month. Says something does it not? l could go on, but you already know all this.
If you ever want to move back in closer to town, come on over to Audubon Drive. We would love to have you as a neighbor.
David E. Sullivan
Comments (3)
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I second the notion of smart growth in Greensboro. If we can get people out of their cars and away from traffic, pollution, alienation, stress, climate-controlled-air, and soon-to-happen $5 a gallon gas(the oil companies call it "the $5 push",at least in my conspiracy theory) then we could be the Portland, OR of the East Coast. But all the entrenched "Wall Street" corporate interests of oil, home builders, car companies, big-box stores, i.e. those who benefit from sprawl, will squash smart growth at the expense of us down on "Main Street". They hate words like "less" and "dense"; they like "more" and "bigger". More stuff = more profits. They want us to get 3000 square foot homes filled with Jet Skis and trucks and 4x4s and fill them with gas and use them to drive us as far away from work and home as possible. Because more gas pumped is more profits. More cheap drive-through burgers eaten, more profits. More congested hearts, more medical bills. Their governmental lackeys then complain of $2 bil. subsidies to Amtrak meanwhile they spend $245 billion in road subsidies so we on Main Street can have more chances to be cooped up in cars road-raging at each other instead of pleasantly chatting on a train/light rail! Portland, OR and NY, NY are the most interesting and pleasant places to live because they are dense and have investment in public transportion. I don't advocate micromanaged social engineering(I'm speaking only for the geographic confines of Greensboro, not all of America), but you have to put your foot down and encourage the formation of a city, not some semi-dense race track where no one wins.
Posted on March 24, 2005 1:26 AM
I second the notion of smart growth in Greensboro. If we can get people out of their cars and away from traffic, pollution, alienation, stress, climate-controlled-air, and soon-to-happen $5 a gallon gas(the oil companies call it "the $5 push",at least in my conspiracy theory) then we could be the Portland, OR of the East Coast. But all the entrenched "Wall Street" corporate interests of oil, home builders, car companies, big-box stores, i.e. those who benefit from sprawl, will squash smart growth at the expense of us down on "Main Street". They hate words like "less" and "dense"; they like "more" and "bigger". More stuff = more profits. They want us to get 3000 square foot homes filled with Jet Skis and trucks and 4x4s and fill them with gas and use them to drive us as far away from work and home as possible. Because more gas pumped is more profits. More cheap drive-through burgers eaten, more profits. More congested hearts, more medical bills. Their governmental lackeys then complain of $2 bil. subsidies to Amtrak meanwhile they spend $245 billion in road subsidies so we on Main Street can have more chances to be cooped up in cars road-raging at each other instead of pleasantly chatting on a train/light rail! Portland, OR and NY, NY are the most interesting and pleasant places to live because they are dense and have investment in public transportion. I don't advocate micromanaged social engineering(I'm speaking only for the geographic confines of Greensboro, not all of America), but you have to put your foot down and encourage the formation of a city, not some semi-dense race track where no one wins.
Posted on March 24, 2005 1:27 AM
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