The suburban wasteland?

The other thing that spoils a nice summer/spring day in the suburbs - the whine of lawnmowers.

Maybe the richer folk pay someone else to do it though so they get it done during the week. But saturdays are pretty much a noisy racket! lol

I was blessed to grow up mostly in the country, where we swam in the rivers, creeks, lakes, and ponds, rode bicycles miles and miles. We fished, and camped many nights on the river bank. My grandpa had horses and we would go riding off into the wilderness for miles. Sometimes we would just camp out in the barn, up in the hay loft.
There was always lots of work to do and sometimes it seemed like there was never an end to it, but we always managed to get up to some mischief on an adventure into the wilder lands. It seemed like we practically lived outdoors. We didnt even want to be in the house. We were up in the morning and out the door and tried not to be back in until dinner time.

ya cant go anywhere unless you like trespassing on other ppls property in the burbs. Its either the footpath or the road. In the outer suburbs there are no footpaths at all so you take your life in your hands getting run over. I recall the death toll was pretty high. Only recently has the council had this brilliant idea to put speed humps on roads to slow traffic down.
We always hear about ppl getting robbed but were never robbed outselves.

However, I am sure peoples inner lives eg in their imaginations, were rich.
and...pets...or more specifcally dogs and cats. But cats always. Cats have it good in the suburbs, a house in the suburbs is just about the right size for them and if they dont catch mice their staff/slaves feed them special food bought from the supermarket.

And if you DO go to a park its always full of dog owners running their dogs. You cant go barefoot as you will step on dog poo or broken glass or rubbish from mcdonalds. Parks are not fun spaces, mostly they are large expanses of lawn with not much shelter and nowhere to sit. . But playgrounds are pretty boring usually its a bunch of monkey bars and car tyres to climb over. Ive seem a lot of those generic playgrounds and they are stimulating for about 5 minutes. Nowadays you have to PAY to go into an indoor playground, where I supoose you pay not to get wet and not have fresh air!

I sometimes wonder what is exactly a natural habitat for a human being. Why do we live in suburbs with fences all around us? I kinda think they are like baby farms. Its almost akin to living in a zoo whwre everything is fake

The playground at school has special sails built over it so the kids dont get sunburnt.

I wonder why they dont just grow some trees and have natural shade from the canopy of leaves. There could be a treehouse. But someone might fall out I dunno. Theres a tall fence all around the school, but its not so the cows dont graze the grass. Its so the children cant run away.

anyway. When the big corportations started buying up farmland, I guess not many ppl could be farmers anymore. They were practically forced to earn a living in the city. But with lack of housing in the city or nearby, they were housed in suburbs where it was cheaper.

I think its hard in families cos most homes only had 3 bedrooms and cant fit a full family in that. You just have to have only one or two children. Grandparents get shunted off to old folks homes. many families dont share land unless they buy adjacent lots. But you have to have a boundary. And ideally a car.

People dump their rubbish in the rivers here and thats where supermarket trolleys go to die.

Its really terrible. People dont care, or moreover corporations dont care. If you do ride your bike you mostly in danger of getting hit by a car.

Good jobs for suburbanites - work in fast food, deliver pizzas, junk mail. or check out operator at the supermarket. caregiving at the local kindy, or primary school.

Everything else you need to commute to the city for. Its weird. all the factories and offices are in one place, homes another.

Industrialization has been horrible for people.
I think that the natural habitat for humans in in agricultural tribes. God placed Adam and Eve in a garden and said be fruitful and multiply.

Genesis starts with a garden but Revelation ends with a city. Part of subduing the earth was probably advancement to cities in my view.
I would agree that rural familial settings seem preferable to large urban centers but a balance can be struck.

I don't know. Babel comes to mind. I think subduing the earth probably would look more like villages and townships surrounded by farms dotting the globe.
Thats my opinion nothing more.
A city Ruled by God Himself wouldnt have all the problems of human cities.

I appreciate your position.

sUburbs are actually mentioned in the Bible though.
Im wondering if suburbs in Israel were good to live in, but maybe it was before the advent of the car.

In the Bible, the distance between towns and villages was measured by how fast it took to walk there. I think the car has made life a much faster pace for most people to handle, I mean speeding along at 100kms an hour everyday isnt exactly a relaxing journey. People say the city is a rat race, but the suburbs arent always quiet places where you can sleep at night.

I think if you live in a cul de sac, it can be good but a small one where you get along with your neighbours. But a lot of people dont have that connection with each other since people work all over the place.

Babylon vs the New Jerusalem...what was the difference.

A lot of cities are based on ports (and now airports) where people could trade goods. So either harbours or river mouths or cross roads. They were a place people met. It used to be a city could only be called a city if it had a cathedral

Towns have squares, Villages had greens. They had common land and parks.

But nobody really meets in the suburbs. Its kind of a no mans land for tract houses.

God always shows me answers to my questions, often I'll come across something Ive been pondering for a while and He'll just lead me to a book that has the answer, if not a scripture.

In the Bible there is a lot written about places left desolate..and of places where the Israelites were taken captive away from their homeland, and they had to survive basically in a ghetto, without their temple, and they didnt have their family networks. they were scattered to the winds.

(hence, wandering Jew stereotype) However wherever Jews went they stuck close to ine another and kept up their traditions when they could. They had to live near a mikvah i.e a pool so they could do their baptisms and they always built synagogues wherever they went.

In suburbs, you might see a few churches but the churches wont actually be the centre of the suburb. Its just another stop on the road to somewhere else. Or its in a huge warehouse.

everyone is excited about Cost Co arriving here.

Im not fussed. Do we even need MORE stuff?

I have not lived in the suburbs. Growing up I lived in a residential area in a major city, and later on I basically lived downtown in a different city. The major pros I can think of suburbs (outskirts of a city) are larger homes at a lower cost and better schools. Nowadays in the suburbs there are kind of town center/strip malls, plus a huge mall with a movie theater, etc. (at least in the U.S.), so there are more things to do. In any case, unless I have kids, the suburbs are not for me. I prefer to live in a smaller place in a nicer safer part of a city where there are more things to do (different restaurants/stores, quicker to get around places, etc.). I have always thought living in a nice town with close proximity to a city would be nice, with nice coffeeshops, bookshops, cat cafes, etc. that are nicely decorated during Christmas, where I can walk everywhere, which I see on Lifetime and Hallmark movies. However, maybe these places only exist in the movies.

Im not a fan of suburban malls
I think when they were first built, everyone was excited about thm but they are not the greatest of places to spend your time in. Esp if you got no money. Or even if you have money. Just without soul...monuments to mammon.

and you have to have a car to go shopping in them , cos whos lugging their family groceries and purchases in the bus. Nobody.

I technically live in a town though I am near a suburb proper that was built near the motorway for commuters, like it didnt have any actual town centre at first it was just all residential housing. Then later they did build like a shopping centre of big box stores where its basically round a huge carpark.

then special, community groups were formed because they did NOT actually have any town hall, civic centre or anything, all the roads were built to service the motorway, it was assumed the people buying those homes would use it to get to work in the city, as no industrial or commerical areas where allowed in that zone. The suburb is all on the hills that used to be kauri forest, before it was all cut down and the gum dug out.

so they have problems with drainage and stormwater because of run off thanks to lack of tree cover.

I went to that surburban high school, it also had kids from the country that took the school bus to get there, and there was just nothing much to do at that school, I think was built on the cheap to cram everyone in. They used some of the land to grow pine trees to cut down later for cash. Otherwise the fields were empty and a bog in winter. The school never did much to involve the community, it was just a place to funnel students into university or drop out, career options in that suburb were non existent.

Boy, you really make the suburbs there sound terrible. While i agree, rural would be much preferred myself, I don't see the suburbs being nearly that morose here in the states. And i believe outside of very large cities, (N.Y., Chi., Detroit), most families own vehicles.

On a brighter note, I've been looking at a lot of vids about South Island. So gorgeous! My new #1 destination I would love to visit!!

God bless! 😊

nz was not built for car culture...our land is often hilly, windy. we dont manufacture our own cars anymore, fuel is expensive, we drive on the left, but we dont have good public transportation to offset it.

suburbs are very dependant on cars in nz we can only import them and road condtions are not that great as infrastructure is expensive

only a few cities are big enough to have suburbs but dependeant on growing population. The suburbs of the north shore of Auckland were totally dependent on. the harbour bridge, before that was built you had to get across by ferry.

so we very reliant on roads and motorways which soon become congested as everyone has to havea car otherwise you are sunk.

in the olden days the best way people got around was on the water. You had a boat or waka and sailed up the river or round the harbour.

In Queenstown it is unaffordable for workers to live there so actually they live in the next town and commute over.