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Comment by acabal | Hacker News Reader

I think most people in the suburban US have no idea what a public, car-free, communal space where people can casually gather without buying something even is.

At this point, entire generations have grown up in unwalkable suburban life, using cars as the only mode of getting from point A to point B from the day they were born, with a strip mall as the only place to go - and even then only if you have to run an errand or get the occasional meal out.

Having been been isolated from a real third space like public plazas since probably the 60s or 70s, it's no surprise that today's suburban generation views them with suspicion, confusion, and disdain. They like their strip malls just fine thank you very much, and anyway, how would they park their car?

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> most people in the suburban US have no idea what a public, car-free, communal space where people can casually gather without buying something even is.

They all know what a park/playground is

Playgrounds require you to have children with you - for example I don't think it would be socially acceptable for a group of unaccompanied adults to show up to a playground and sip some beers while they chat amongst themselves, like you might do in a public plaza in Europe.

Municipal parks, like the kind you can find in Savannah GA, are nice third spaces. But I think there are very few such parks in suburban America that are not also mostly playgrounds. I would not count nature reserves as real third spaces.

Most parks with playgrounds in America are, by area, 90% park and 10% playground. Or something roughly like that; the playgrounds are designated areas tucked away into some corner of the parks.

Except you're probably not allowed to drink beer there anyway, because a law against drinking in the park provides a convenient excuse to keep the park clear of homeless so everybody else can enjoy it.

Its usually not literally just a playground. Its usually a whole park which happens to have a playground or two. For instance, this last weekend I went to a park with some adult friends which had playgrounds, but we were there for the disc golf. There were other adults having some kind of cookout at the grills and picnic tables. There were adults playing soccer in one of the fields. Then yes, there were kids and parents at the playgrounds.

The vast majority of parks I see around me aren't just a playground. Those mostly seem pretty rare.

> But I think there are very few such parks in suburban America that are not also mostly playgrounds.

Reality disagrees with you. Just search for parks on Google maps for SV and you will see so many where playgrounds are just a small part and the rest of the park is for everyone - https://www.google.com/maps/

My favorite ones: Las Palmas, Cuesta, Washington. And if I want to drive for ~15-20 min: Shoreline, Rancho San Antonio, Baylands.

> a strip mall as the only place to go

I don't get why so many in the comments think suburbs only have strip malls as the places to go. I've lived in many suburbs, they've always had a lot of places to go. Libraries, parks, running trails, recreation centers, sports fields, publicly subsidized water parks or pools, town square areas, public golf courses, public disc golf courses, etc. In my current suburb almost all of these kinds of features are connected by separate bike trails and transit.

There's a city park at the end of my suburban street with pavilions, playgrounds, a fishing pond with a dock/platform in it with picnic tables, picnic tables and grills dotting the tree line, a paved running trail, and a few different sports fields. No driving, not a long walk. This is the experience for pretty much my whole suburban city, not some one-off thing.

> I've lived in many suburbs, they've always had a lot of places to go. Libraries, parks, running trails, recreation centers, sports fields, publicly subsidized water parks or pools, town square areas, public golf courses, public disc golf courses, etc.

Indeed, that suburbs offered better access to many of those things than did cities (especially poor parts of cities) used to be one of the big arguments offered against suburbs. The argument was that suburbs had those things due to racism--suburbs were mostly white and so governments built those things in the suburbs.

The suburb I'm talking about is less white than the national average, by a significant margin. (50% versus 75%)

The suburbs where we live, white people are a minority. And they have all the great stuff GP mentioned.

Any grocery stores? Cafes? Restaurants? Bars?

Yes, but I'm only including free/government subsidized places, places that aren't expecting to make a profit off you being there.

There are a few restaurants and a corner store at the edge of my neighborhood. I can hop on the bus right outside my house and go to several different supermarkets, a farmers market, several cafes, several different kinds of bars, loads of restaurants, trampoline parks, movie theaters, arcades, bowling alleys, classical/music theaters, and more.

Connecting from the bus to the light rail, I can access the sports complex downtown for my favorite teams, a nice zoo, a few different universities, several suburb town center areas, the large state fairgrounds, a few different bar scenes, and one of the largest airports in the country.

Were you really trying to suggest suburbs don't have grocery stores?

The commenter they responded to specified "without buying something", but yeah they have those too

Lol, the _nice_ suburbs had those things. Poorer suburbs? Yeah, no, you get strip malls and Chicken Express.

A lot of the same could be said for poor or wealthy urban areas.

> I think most people in the suburban US have no idea what a public, car-free, communal space where people can casually gather without buying something even is.

The place where I grew up had a town center with offices above shops, and plenty of open areas for people to gather; it was designed for being a "third space."

Then (a few years before COVID), it went under new management who was livid that so many people were spending time there without shopping and they did various things to make it much less desirable to go there if you aren't shopping. About 30% of the stores/restaurants went out of business in a year. Turns out, for the right sized pies, a large slice of a smaller pie is worse than a small slice of a larger pie.

Don't they have community centers and parks in basically all of suburban US?

> most people in the suburban US have no idea what a public, car-free, communal space where people can casually gather without buying something even is.

You haven't really lived in US suburbs then. I live in one and within 0.6-0.8 mile radius, we have 3-4 parks and 2-3 libraries. Within 15-20 min driving distance, we have amazing parks. We meet other people regularly in such places without having to buy anything. And thanks to California weather, those are accessible except when it is raining.

So please stop your FUD.

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