I'm running into this now. Were withing the City of Columbus OH and are being forced to move to a suburb. Many reasons, one being the Columbus public schools is a lost cause, another being the city trying to integrate ow income housing into nicer neighborhoods such as ours. Now I have nothing wrong with low income housing except that there are more bad apples there than the norm, you get the few people who don't want to work and just keep having kids so the governement will support them and then you get a bunch of punks breaking into your stuff all the time. And its gotten to where it takes the police so long to get here that the drug addicts can walk back to their house and flush their drugs and change clothes to they don't get caught. that actually happened when two kids were driving their parents truck and were too drugged out to hit the brakes when they pulled into our drive way at 60mph to turn around and just drove into our house so my insurance had to foot the bill and the police didn't even write them a ticket.

Okay, so you are moving to the suburbs in Ohio. So what if suburbs have better schools, less crime, and your children will be safer? You choose to overlook one important thing -- the suburbs are SOUL-DESTROYING.

Although I grew up in the suburbs, and I live in one now, I never realised this, either. Probably this is because MY SOUL HAS BEEN DESTROYED. Luckily, these helpful urban planners have straightened me out on that score.

Hope that helps.

There's nothing like some theater major telling you that you have no soul simply because where you live. I am sorry that I ever thought that it's people that make a location great instead of the urban planning, how stupid of me.

Ok - first of all, although I hate Urban Sprawl, most of what it's referring to are NOT traditional suburbs.

Traditional suburbs are actually rather nice, the problems lie mainly with strip malls and total automobile dependency.

As long as suburbs are relatively dense (we're not talking Manhattan here, we're talking Berkeley) and as long as there are parks and sidewalks and kids can walk or bike to school, then I'm all for it. Manhattan is not the answer any more than exurbia is.

A "bad" suburb, is one where you need to drive somewhere to blow your nose or even wose, the sort of high density housing you get in today's suburbs where you have all the disadvantages of urban life (ie- stacked atop one another) with none of the benefits - you still have to drive 3 miles to the store.

That's the problem, not "suburbs" in general.

I was going to say, how is moving to the suburb more soul destroying than being stuck in the city limits. lets see, I'm stuck in the city with its higher crime, neighborhood where I can reach out my window and touch the neighbors house and I have to drive several blocks to get to any stores. Plus I then have to drive 30 minutes/20 miles to work each day because any decent place to work has moved outside the city limites as well. So I'm selling my house and moving into an apartment for a bit until we can find a house we like, I'm going to be in one of the two apartment complaxes where I am close enough to walk to work and the grocery store. Yeo I guess thats bad for my soul.
The real problem and reason for the urban sprawl is our city planners have failed us. You have all the places of work stuck together in a few blocks in the center of the city and houses spread out for miles around. Then you have a poorly laid out bus system. If I wanted to take the bus to my work I would have to ride one bus 30 minutes into downtown get out and get on another bus and ride it 30 minutes north to my work place. And then if I missed either the single bus going there in the morning or leaving in the evening I'm screwed. And those whole two bus runs are timed around an 8-5 schedule and my schedule is some days 7-7 and other days I'll work half a day. So you need better laid out cities and better planned public transportation. Oh and an odor detector pass through to get on the bus.

It's comments like these that really restore my faith in this site.

Suburban residential planning isn't the problem so much as urban commercial planning with offices, stores and other businesses grouped together at un-walkable distances. We live in a culture that caters to business at the "expense" of our quality of life. Businesses profit from economy of scale and close proximity to other businesses with which it deals. We sacrifice our lifestyles for the sake of corporate profits.

Great to see that you are interested in this film! We have been promoting it's recent Canadian release -- but we also have a discussion forum going on where we talk not only about the film, but list some resources and encourage ideas about how to make cities sustainable.

We are also selling (in Canada) some other very fine DVDs that deal with urban isses and the environment. (Manufactued Landscapes, and A Crude Awakening- which deals with peak oil). And of course The Corporation which is what started us off!

http://forums.hellocoolworld.com/

Our overall mandate is: Ideas to audiences, audiences to action, action to outcome. We'd love to widen our discussions base, we recently relaunched the new forum after our old one was overun with spam. This one has features to keep out the spambots, but we love to hear from readers on this site.

Soon we'll have info on a new film about BC forests and the different people who all "love trees" -- The Green Chain. (Go to TheGreenChain.com to check that one out)