why are american suburbs so badly designed?

[Darth Wong]

Point is, the majority of the people who pushed that developement out where heavily liberal, anti-growth (supposedly) enviromentalists.

Nonsense. They were business owners and residents in the city core, who wanted to keep big-box stores out of their neighbourhood. This story has been repeated many times in cities across North America. I don't know what "hur hur blame the environmentalist" right-wing hallucinogens you've been smoking, but if you think any of them honestly approve of big-box stores more in the suburbs than the downtown areas, you're either high or stupid.

[Pu-239]

we have something like that in america, we call it the Strip Mall. Examples of the badly designed suburban places that pop up when you drive down one of these oversized roads.

I dont know about you, but I've NEVER seen a strip mall in America that didn't have sidewalks connecting the stores all together or at least into several large blocks which you could still walk inbetween. Whatever place Wong mentioned sounds far worse then this.

We have an oversized strip mall somewhat resembling what wong is talking about in Fairfax, where one does often get a car to get from one end to the other. Sidewalks do connect them all, but w/ the length...

[Erik von Nein]

Nonsense. They were business owners and residents in the city core, who wanted to keep big-box stores out of their neighbourhood. This story has been repeated many times in cities across North America. I don't know what "hur hur blame the environmentalist" right-wing hallucinogens you've been smoking, but if you think any of them honestly approve of big-box stores more in the suburbs than the downtown areas, you're either high or stupid.

They didn't approve of either, and, yes, the businesses downtown supported them. However, it was because they were such a large voting block in this town they were able to push out the development to the edges of town, which caused the aforementioned problems. I should have specified that, no, it isn't true for every case, but it certainly was true for that case. I didn't mean to blame just them (product of not getting much sleep, blah), nor are they a good representitive of enviromentalists, but the poorly thought out consequences of their actions are apart of why things are so poorly planned in American suburbs and metro areas. These are the same people who also constantly push to have the nearby nuclear reactor to be shutdown just because it's a nuclear reactor.

I don't blame them for what they did, either. It's reasonable to keep growth to a minimum. But they have to work with the businessmen who want to build these projects instead of against them, or they'll get these kinds of horribly planned mega-projects.

I'm not right-wing, either, so I'm not even sure where that came from.

[Erik von Nein]

Guh. I shouldn't go "Oh, that'll be fine *post*." when someone's asking for me to do something. I get that mess up above.

What I mean with my specific example was that enviromentalists can be as much a part of the problem of poorly designed cities, suburbs, etc as any other group. I didn't mean for it to come off as me blaming enviromentalists for being the specific cause (like I said above, the downtown businesses supported their actions, it's just that those particular enviromentalists were the larger voting group. Also the problem is the subsidized nature of autos in the first place, mostly due to Republicans pushing transportation bills).

I consider myself to be an enviromentalists; I agree with global warming, am seeking out a relatively inexpensive electric car, am decreasing my ecological footprint as best I can and do support ecologically friendly candidates and legislation. That doesn't mean that they can't just as much a problem, even if their intentions are good.