What's the point of this film? Is director suggesting that people should move back to city and live in crowded apartments with 2~3 kids around? All I saw in this film is that the director caputured all kinds of complaint about suburban life. These people moved to suburb becase they wanted bigger spaces and they didn't have money to buy one in town.Is the director criticizing people who couldn't afford houses in inner city? I just cannot see any point of this film. My suggestion to the director is: Go to Asia and see what people over there are living in.

With 4.6% growth in our community of 7,000 people, we see the same thing happening at the rate of 150 houses a year.

Caught and kept my attention. Covered a number of perspectives in a relatively integrated way. However . . . as tends to be the case, it will probably be those who already question the suburban lifestyle who will watch and listen.

It's quite a challenge to go from intelligent commentary/analysis to agent of change.

Frankly we didn't appreciate the deception, regardless of whether it was used to illustrate the suburban deception - but that could have been made up for by some real content to supplement the 'story'. Basically I feel stupider for having watched it.

As within our community we are attempting to create an agricultural urban community with Andres Duaney leading us through a design charrette from May 6 to 13 on the Southlands property in Tsawwassen, I found this to be a fascinating look at everything wrong about the suburbs. The fact that it was filmed in Canada made it easier to identify with and I found some aspects of it profoundly sad (even though identified as a play at the end using actors). It is everything I don't want our vision to be.
If anyone is interested in our project please check our website :southlandsintransition for preparation details and in depth information.

As an individual who has lived in a "classic" suburban community growing up as a child, a horiffic new suburban 'community' as a young adult, and finally, by choice, in an ultra-urban environment in Vancouver and Ottawa, I found that Radiant City really spoke to me.

As a child, the neighborhood I lived in bordered Ottawa's Greenbelt and extensive farmland, offering considerable greenspace for me to frolic in. Because of the public service boom in Ottawa at the time, there were many other children that lived in my neighborhood whom I was able to make friends with very easily. Looking back, it was not an ideal community, but it provided a nourishing environment for my young mind.

Later, I lived in Stonebridge, Ottawa's new "elite community" for a few years and found it downright alienating. The absence of peers to engage with and the forced commute by car (for lack of a transit system) truly did make me angry, intolerant and arrogant, as Marc Boutin surmised might happen when public space is exchanged wholesale for private space.

Keeping in mind the social, budgetary, and environmental effects that urban sprawl are having across this country, I found Josepth Heath's comments both poignant and seemingly apathetic. In my experience, people living in these new suburbs have a love-hate relationship with their built environments, but if it truly comes down to incentives that keep people there, then the solution to our urban planning woes are supply-side, not demand-side.

Yet most Canadian municipalities have demonstrated that they are not up to the task of reigning in developers eager to maximize their profit. What then (beyond getting people to "wake up" and elect local governments that will keep the city's interest - as opposed to the individual's - in mind) might a concrete strategy look like? Pardon the pun.

Very well done

Cindy Dong, the point isn't so black and white. The film wasn't telling suburbanites that their life choices were inane; rather it was criticizing city planners. The alternative they did offer (and yes, if you watched the documentary carefully you would have seen this) is that urban planners should use "New Urbanism", which is quite a ways away from the over crowded Mega cities of developing Southeast Asia. By the way, some of the commentators *did* reference another continent, but it wasn't Asia. It was (western) Europe and that's a lot fairer a comparison, as Canada and Europe have similar growth rates.

How affordable do those homes become when gasoline hits $1.50/liter? 2.50/liter? The main point that I took from the film is the unsustainability of this living arrangement which is entirely based on the automobile.
Unlike Europe we have the space to expand in North America but what does that look like when the cost of energy to propel us that hour to work, or 20 minutes to then nearest Mega Centre is unaffordable?
"The Long Emergency" is a good read if you can handle looking at some very depressing realities.

I think the issue here is "living in a Consumer society". After all, as Mister Kunstler indicated, Global Warming and the depletion of the oil reserves of the Planet will take this off the menu!!! And for the Developing World - you name it, Asia, South America, Africa, if their goal is to achieve "the riches of the West", perhaps they should think ahead to what the "sterility" and "vacuous-ness" of the American Dream really is!!! Of one thing I definitely know of "being human" - we know how to kill very well! The "paragon of animals"!

I thought it was interesting and true. As a former university student of geography and urban planning, it wasn't anything new to me but enjoyed it nonetheless. As I think was mentioned by someone, those who watched will either agree with it because they are already aware of the problems this type of development is causing and/or are not attracted to this type of lifestyle. Or, there will be those who take personal offense as if it is a poor reflection on them personally, most likely because they live in these types of neighbourhoods.

Living in Calgary I thought the film was great - particularly as it allowed me to see my home from a slightly different perspective. For example, I have not been on a bus in a long time, and the footage on a bus was great. Same with the footage of some of the roads I drive on a regular basis.

It was also interesting to see the planners talk about placement of the higher density parts of the new developments as noise barriers for the single family homes as opposed to integrating the higher density into the neighborhoods.

Very entertaining.

I found the film thought provoking--right up until I realized it was not really a documentary, but a work of fiction. For a documentary to be compelling, it can't have actors telling the story. At least Michael Moore films real people before splicing together his baloney.

Radiant City is propaganda. Whether or not the filmmakers have a valid point about suburbia, they have disqualified themselves, by taking the massive journalistic shortcut of using actors. And none of the filmmakers rationalizations for using actors, mouthed by the out-of-character actors themselves, brings them back to the status of documentarians.

I was wondering if the show time, set at 10:00 was intentional so that living in the suburbs would not be able to stay up late to watch it in its entirety.

Either way, this documentary reminds me of a story my mother told me recently. It started innocently; a school age child knocked on her door selling chocolate for a fundraiser. My mother looked at the child and recognized him from her school where she had taught him a few years prior. She engaged the child and asked where he lived. He replied: 'next door'. Shocked my mother asked him how long he had lived there. They had been neighbors for 5 years.

That just reinforced my desire to remain in my small city home where I am raising my 2 kids. We know our neighbors (perhaps too well) and the kids play outside from morning to dinner time. Arguably my kids would not have this sense of community if I was rich and could afford a house in places like Forest Hill. Their parents call me so that their kids for a play date. They may have 2 play rooms in the house but how useful is it if you don't have any kids to play with.

Regardless, city living is certainly the only way for me. I can walk to my hairdresser, butcher, bakery, etc� all this reinforcing my sense of community and have one car that sits idle from Monday to Friday.

A community for me is where people know your name for better or for worse when you walk down the street.

MODERATOR'S NOTE: 10pm ET/PT is our standard documentary timeslot on CBC Newsworld.

I really enjoyed this portrayal of suburbia. It expresses everything about the place that I am forced to live in. Yes, I mean forced! I would love to live in an area of higher density. I have even looked at all the new in-fills that have been built in Langford and Victoria, but with 3 children, we cannot fit into a 1 or 2 bedroom condo. Yet that is all that is being built.

I would love to see developers start to build smaller spaces within the cities that have more then 2 bedrooms after all not everyone has chosen to not have children.