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Comment by courgette | Hacker News Reader

I don't find suburbs boring. I find them soul-less.

I grew up in rural France. Small village have shops, bars, services like post-office, hair-dresser and whatnot. It's not a dichotomy between things and absence of things.

Suburbs would be fine in my own personal book if they were offering basic services and a sense of comunauty.( not in warehouse operated by large chain, but by people living there and earning a livehood out of it )

Totally get your point about being left alone, but I still want the place I live and raise my kids to be a network of humans sharing a sense of belonging. Not private lots next to each other.

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The modern suburbs in the US are soulless and boring. I grew up in suburbs outside of US and they were anything but boring. The core of it is density and city planning.

1. The suburbs I grew up in had mixed zoning, you had apartments, multi family homes and single family homes in every 5x5 blocks.

2. There were smaller public spaces reasonably located to where you lived. Instead of massive parks for an entire corner of the suburbs, you had a lot of empty lots developed into smaller gardens bustling with neighborhood kids

3. Streets were narrower and the sidewalks were wider

4. Shops and mom and pop stores were part of the neighborhood. Those apartments that I talked about, had cafes and local stores where the store owners knew you and your parents. I remember walking alone to the store at the age of 7 and bringing back stuff my mom needed, without having a phone on me.

The more you make people spend time in their neighborhoods, the more you have a character. If you have to take your car out for every little thing, you spend more time in your car than walking around and knowing people in your neighborhood.

> The modern suburbs in the US are soulless and boring.

I find this refrain tiresome. I grew up in a US suburb and had similar experiences to what you describe outside the US. I mean, yes, there are some suburbs in America that are husks of their former selves due to economics, etc. But I grew up in a small midwestern suburb of a failing city. I had the following:

1. Would regularly walk or ride my bike to the store with my friends to get things at the age of 7+.

2. A vibrant art scene.

3. A plethora of science and learning opportunities including a branch of a well-known University.

4. A walkable downtown with mom and pop stores.

5. 30 minutes from big events like concerts from our favorite rock bands. 60 minutes from famous sports franchises. 30 minutes from the symphony and art museums.

6. 5 minutes in the other direction was rural farmland where you could learn about agriculture, etc.

I think while the refrain maybe tiresome for you, it is for me generally true.

Older suburbs in the US did have this, and I grew up in one, it is now empty and vacant. Many suburbs I lived in were all bedroom community types with no shops, no sidewalks, etc.

I sort of did find what you’re talking about in the US later on, a newer upscale model of mixed living, it wasn’t bad. It had a lot of chains though and it was very expensive.

So I will definitely grant you it is possible in several regions that to find this sort of lifestyle, it is not easy in some parts of the US or cheap in general (in my experience).

Living in Europe now, it’s been very easy to find these integrated neighborhoods or towns, and they come in all price points.

To be sure there are still bedroom communities, they’re just not even close to as common where we are as they were in the US.

I don’t think this is a radical statement if you just compare gas prices, it is rather organic and obvious why things are this way (and 30-40 other equally important factors contributed I am sure)

Around here at least, most of the cool local places around here are in the suburbs. That's where you find 99% of the "ethnic" supermarkets (Polish market, Japanese market, Chinese markets, Korean markets, Indian markets, etc.), where you'll find the more authentic ethnic restaurants or bakeries, where you'll find the authentic bubble tea shops, the family restaurants, etc.

Not that you can't find any of this in the city (though almost all the ethnic markets are gone now), but the rent inside the city proper has gotten so high that you're often left with large chains and places that are trying too hard to be "hip."

In general I feel like I'm more likely to find a cool hidden treasure exploring the suburbs these days than exploring the cities.

And I don't think it's just around here. For example, I've noticed that many Chinatowns around the U.S. have moved towards the suburbs over time.

I suppose it depends on your suburb. Mine is 40 minutes outside of a top10 US metro area and has shops, bars, hair dressers and whatnot.

Perhaps they are soul-less, but I think it’s quite beautiful with trees and trails and safety.

> I grew up in rural France. Small village have shops, bars, services like post-office, hair-dresser and whatnot. It's not a dichotomy between things and absence of things.

Ah, comparing France of 30 years ago with US today. Reality: France has changed. I mean, this model hasn't totally died, but it's in it's last spasms.

Even back then, I guarantee that small villages like where I grew up didn't have any shop. Some never did, actually. The 'centre village' of the neighbouring municipality valiantly sported: one church, its presbytery, the town hall if we may call so, one house, and that was it. They were coming to school in my village, because we had no shop but we had a 2-room school.

But they closed the school a few years ago, and everyone has to drive to a big burg.

Of course I get what he meant, and everyone has a different definition of 'small' and of 'village'. Personally, I'd says shops start from 'big village' and post-offices from 'small burgs'. But you can have quite many neighbouring country municipalities in a row which do not have any shop.

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Yeah, in the last 30 years, the spread has been terrible, and it is not contained to suburbs of cities and big towns, but it also affects remote areas, around small burgs and even many villages. What we have then is suburbs without the 'urb'; perhaps even more depressing to witness than actual suburbs.

Yes it has changed, but I would still live in rural France over rural US for the reasons aforementioned. ( typed from a small French placed :) )

I’m in France now, looking for some real estate with my USD.

The spasms I see are good ones in my book. Yes, that will be bumpy soonish. But I see life there as many fold more agreeable than in rural US ( that I only now superficially; one short decade )

But that’s only me; and I’m culturally very French so no surprise in my preferences either

People have different preferences, so it's unsurprising that what you want and what others want will sometimes be different. I'm perfectly happy to, even prefer to, interact with strangers on a daily basis when I'm out doing things. When I come back home though, I want to be able to shut all that (literal and figurative) noise out and just be with my family or invited guests.

That's not inherent to rural/urban, that's just good soundproofing. A badly soundproofed house won't help anymore with a neighbor's shitty leafblower than a badly soundproofed apartment will help with a car's backfire in the street.

It just so happens that 25-200' of spacing and trees is remarkably effective soundproofing, which is a lot easier to come by (as in is often the default) in a rural setting.

Cities may have a soul but they lack a heart (and a brain too).

  From 2018 through 2020, the NCVS found that the violent-crime rate in urban areas was between 29 percent and 42 percent higher than the rate in rural areas

  The property-crime rate in urban areas was nearly twice as high in 2021 as in suburban areas (157.5 to 86.8 victimizations per 1,000 households)

https://www.city-journal.org/violent-crime-in-cities-on-the-...

Crime is just one of many quality of life factors. Mortality rates are significantly worse in rural areas than urban areas, and the gap is widening.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-in-rural-a...

There is a difference between rural areas and suburbs.

I don’t see whether the study you linked counts suburbs as urban or as rural.

Most studies do urban, suburban or rural.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demogra...

Without that split, claims about suburban communities are hard to separate out.

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