> Suburbia done well can be great. Not everyone wants to be crowded into cities with noise and crime and no access to nature.
That such a hilarious understanding of 'nature' and 'cities'. I live in a city and I can be in nature very quickly.
In fact, the sprawling nature of suberbia is what destroys the most amount of nature and makes it harder for everybody to access nature.
> Suburbia can still have mixed use areas.
The term 'Suberbia' talkes specifically about US style subburbs and just based on facts, 99% of it simple doesn't allow commercial usage.
Sometimes you have commercial zones next to the R1 zones, but usually the ratio is very small and the distance to the commercial zone is very far for the majority of people. Thus commercial areas are often reached mostly by car.
Mixed use zoning is almost nowhere to be found in most of the US.
The term 'Suberbia' refers to that.
> We had parks and nature preserves and even areas with condos for cheaper housing.
Then it isn't really what is called 'subberbia' at all. Subburbs can be done well, but not subberbia.
And in most places in the US where there is a massive lack of alternative housing options with a vanishingly small part of the total land area allowing anything but low-density residential zoning.
So yes, subburbs can be done well, but if its done well its not called 'subburbia' anymore. And the amount of places where it was done well is incredibly small.