Countries with no suburbs

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

do any exist?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It boggles my mind why anyone would want to live in such awful places. It's like moving to Fallujah.

According to an online directory I found, there's a total of 3 strip clubs in the entire suburban Twin Cities area, technically 4 but one is all male. And there's a total of 14 in the Twin Cities. What the hell do people do out in that wasteland that is the suburban Twin Cities? I wonder this every time I drive through it and see lots of identical looking houses.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Oh well. Pretty much everyone I know down here agrees with me though that the Twin Cities are hoping places and the suburbs are boring as hel (except for the Mall of America). I actually have lots of friends who grew up in the suburbs and they all hated it.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I've heard some horrible stories about German suburbs. Although the French had an interesting way of dealing with it, they forced all the poor people outside the cities and basically built a lot of sh**tholes around it. So most suburbs in France are Camden or East St. Louis type ones. Beats the hell out of your typical lily-white one in the US, that's for sure, although I definately can't approve of that since it's class warfare at the worst.

What I would do if I were dictator of Minnesota is expand the Twin Cities areas to take in Richfield and St. Louis Park and South St. Paul, etc., although I'd bulldoze the space wasting suburban communities in those areas, and then build urban style housing or apartments in its place. Then I'd basically wipe out the outer layers and force the people back into the new urban style housing I'm building, saving a lot of space. Then put a bunch of government run farms and factories in the old suburban areas, thus keeping all the pollution and problems away from residential areas, and stopping further sprawl.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Oh well. Pretty much everyone I know down here agrees with me though that the Twin Cities are hoping places and the suburbs are boring as hel (except for the Mall of America). I actually have lots of friends who grew up in the suburbs and they all hated it.

You allwyas have a lot of friends who support your beliefs. First it was private schools, now this. Unless you are a magnet of other looney leftists, and a repeler of anyone to the right of Pelosi, I seriously doubt your assertions.

I go to a very liberal university in a pretty damn liberal city, and most of my friends would classify as "loony leftists" to you although I'm significantly to the left of most of them. I don't associate with anyone who likes Bush though, I know that.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

You don't. My aunt has lived in Minneapolis for over 10 years, she lives in a fairly safe neighborhood that's probably safter than the one I live in, and has never been the victim of any sort of crime.

I remember growing up in my sterile boring yet safe city when my mom would talk about how awful it was her sister actually had to lock her doors every night. oh the humanity!

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There are some fairly bad parts of Minneapolis, but most of the city is not like those areas. She lives fairly close to the University of Minnesota where she works, so I guess it's not entirely safe since you do have the rioting drunk college students, but even with the recent riots up there they wasn't any property damage in her neighborhood.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I looked up the stats on Minneapolis and Erie:

http://www.city-data.com/city/Erie-Pennsylvania.html
http://www.city-data.com/city/Minneapolis-Minnesota.html

first of all, Erie is not a major city. There's more people in Sioux Falls.

Anyway, the stats are interesting. Yes, Minneapolis is wealthier, median income is about $38k compared to $28k for Erie. However, crime is not. Minneapolis has a crime index of 597.1, with 330.6 being the national average. Erie however has a 269.1, which is LOWER than the national average. There aren't any crime stats for my city, but I'd guess that they're pretty close to Erie's.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

not exactly, but the corrrelation of strip clubs to how fun a city is is usually pretty accurate.

anyway, I think we're basically comparing apples to oranges above, since not only is Minneapolis almost 4x the size of Erie, but it sounds as if soulty lives in one of the most dangerous parts of Erie, while my aunt lives in one of the safest parts of Minneapolis. However this proves my point, you can live in a major city and not have to worry about a drive by gang shooting every night. There's no reason to flee to the cultural wasteland of suburbia.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

well the crime rate is lower than the national average. it's also lower than the rate in Des Moines, Iowa, and anyone who gets scared in Des Moines is one wussy person.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I should've said besides city states.

Oh yeah, I did some math:

My city has only 1 strip club, but we have 33,158 people. However if you include North Mankato which usually is, we have 45,211 people. So we have a person:strip club ration of 1:45211

population of Twin Cities: 659672
number of strip clubs: 14
person:strip club ratio: 1:47119

population of suburban Twin Cities: 2314938
number of strip clubs: 3
person:strip club ratio: 1:771646

the ratio of strip clubs in my area and the Twin Cities are about equal, but the suburbs have one 16x as much. Now what does that tell you about the suburbs?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Having to drive 20-30 minutes both ways everytime you went to a strip club would suck bad. That also kind of cuts down on the number of beers you can have.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Oh well. Pretty much everyone I know down here agrees with me though that the Twin Cities are hoping places and the suburbs are boring as hel (except for the Mall of America). I actually have lots of friends who grew up in the suburbs and they all hated it.

You allwyas have a lot of friends who support your beliefs. First it was private schools, now this. Unless you are a magnet of other looney leftists, and a repeler of anyone to the right of Pelosi, I seriously doubt your assertions.

I go to a very liberal university in a pretty damn liberal city, and most of my friends would classify as "loony leftists" to you although I'm significantly to the left of most of them. I don't associate with anyone who likes Bush though, I know that.

Have you ever stoped to think that may not be the best sample?

never said it was.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Oh well. Pretty much everyone I know down here agrees with me though that the Twin Cities are hoping places and the suburbs are boring as hel (except for the Mall of America). I actually have lots of friends who grew up in the suburbs and they all hated it.

I grew up in the Twin Cities suburbs from 6th-12th grade during the early 70's. I didn't hate it, I had plenty to do, I lived there during my college summers in the late 70's and enjoyed that as well. So now you you know of someone who didn't hate it.

yeah but unlike my friends you're a Republican

But really, Twin Cities suburbia changed A LOT between the 70s and 90s