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Comment by abalashov | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's that unconventional. I'm a published critic of American-style automobile sprawl, and I've argued that 90% of what notionally passes for a metro area in Middle America should be reclassified as a rural area in the eyes of most reasonable people from elsewhere in the world.

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If you can't walk to a corner store, you're not living in a "metro area" in my opinion.

In the UK you would barely even have neighbours if that were the case, it would be properly rural, US 'suburban sprawl' needs a different word IMO, it's a housing estate basically (though that implies social housing) but a spectacularly isolated/car-assuming one.

It's the idiotic American zoning laws. If an are is zoned for single family homes, you can't even put up a 7-11 in there. Even though it'd have booming business 24/7 just from people grabbing stuff ad-hoc that they forgot during their grocery run...

Instead people have to get into their 7-11 -sized trucks and drive to a store with a parking lot that's larger than many European neighbourhoods.

How do mexicans survive in the USA without a Costco and a taco vendor every half a mile?

Yeah. In other countries, suburbs are essentially just less dense parts of the town, but still has most of what makes a town a town. Suburban US is not much different from desolate rural areas minus the farms.

I grew up in a rural area and currently live in a suburb… They are worlds apart in terms of:

* Proximity to (non-farm) work * Available public/private schools * Municipal amenities like parks and libraries * Basic retail services - groceries, clothing stores, etc. * Social activities/clubs

In short, other than needing a car to get around both places, they don’t have much in common at all.

I would say suburbs are smaller communities next to a major city. Most inhabitants usually work in the city, and the suburb is clustered around a center with the town-hall, activities like an ice-cream shop, and a mass-transit connection to the city center. They also have an easy connection to a major road/highway taking you to the city. The connection to the city is easy and commuting expected. The suburb is similar to a town in a sense that it is self-sufficient with a school, pharmacy and one, two restaurants, but with few cultural activities due to the competition from the city. Inhabitants spend most of their time in the suburb and children grow up there, but due to easy access to the city people living in the suburb often go into the city to shop, go into a cinema, meet friends or into a museum/theatre. The symbiosis with the city differentiate the suburb to an adjacent smaller town.

Rural doesn't seem quite right--in rural areas you can actually buy food at a roadside food stand. NA sprawl is effectively 'housing desert' where the only thing is housing.

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