What the Suburb Haters Don't Understand
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Everyone is different, but man... I'm the guy that likes to fire up the bbq and chat with neighbors in the backyard while the kids are who knows where (but safe) in the sprawl. Seeing a teenager in their first job at an ice cream shop sort of reinvigorates my sense of community. These are things I recognize and grew up with, and everyone has different upbringings, but the suburbs are where I'm happiest.
I also realize this might be a very American skew. Living in cities with children feels a lot more normal in Europe.
I lived in Manhattan for years and I had a backyard with a smoker and had good relationships with my local bodega and cafes.
So crime ridden, so uptown.
My starving artist friend lives in a rent controlled apt, UES, roughly 86th st. Went to a backyard party to their place with BBQ last fall. Right next to transit.
People have no idea how awesome cities can be.
But we’re back in the suburbs now with our kids and I detest it so much. The driving, the lack of good food, the uninteresting suburban landscape, and the constant home maintenance that living in an apartment never required. My wife loves this though. We’ll never understand each other haha
I do this in "the city" right now (I BBQed some lamb on Sunday; my neighbour got a new motorcycle (Scrambler 1200XE) and I chatted with him about it). The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (mistaken) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment blocks, which is certainly not the case:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E
Here are some examples houses in an urban area with front yards, back yards, and garages (attached to lanes):
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON
A little less square footage:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...
Plenty of that was build pre-WW2 in ways that didn't depend on cars:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=1m8s
Suburban design is the worst of both worlds: lacking the density of the urban so infrastructure is inefficient and so is transportation, and basically bulldozing what makes more rural living nice (closeness to nature).
I'm visiting my native city in souther Europe after 2+ years living in the US suburbs (Seattle). When I go outside, there is a plaza full of children playing (I can hear them from my window in a 5th floor), people sitting in a bench chatting, and terraces full of patrons. In my suburbs in Seattle I never see children "going to school", I just see a School bus that stops and has some kids jumping inside. I also never see anyone around when I walk the dog, except that faithful old man going for his morning jog.
Also how is having the ability to drive everywhere more humanizing? here I just don't have to. Yesterday I had 15 minutes until a meeting, so I just went downstairs, crossed the street to pop by the supermarket, bought something and had time to spare to join the meeting. In the US it would take me that much just to drive to the closest strip mall.
In my city you can have both, completely depending on the neighborhood. Where I mostly grew up (<10km from here) we knew our neighbors, children could play in the 30 speed limit zone, etc.pp) and where I've been living for 15 years I hardly know or talk to my neighbors. But this is not always the case in apartment buildings, but relatively common.
So I guess what I'm saying is that we can have some of this suburban feeling (as much as I can assume it to be) inside the city (maybe not the city centre) in many cities here. We do have the real suburbs as well, but I think they're still more "communities" than just.. single homes with zero shops and bars and stuff.
And yeah, I'd totally take the small house with my own garden and being able to BBQ and invite the neighbors, if those weren't going for 1m EUR :P
I grew up in Maryland, outside the DC area. I now live in Annapolis, Maryland, in a suburb. In between I lived in California cities, and later in California suburb an hour and a half outside SF. There are about a dozen kids at the bus stop nearby, including my two kids. When I lived in a California suburb it was similar.
In the city I never saw kids. When I did it wasn't a good experience and they didn't look happy. I never saw them without parents, and when I did I wondered where they were.
In the suburbs I see kids without their parents all the time. They are climbing in trees or riding on bikes. I drive my pickup truck within 30 minutes all the time, for everything from general shopping to also picking up various house related things (lumber, mulch, whatever).
I've lived in places where everything was walkable, and lived in SF for 5 years without a car. I didn't care for it, for the reasons I mentioned. I love going into cities for day trips, but I prefer living around families and yards.
If you have never been abroad, I'd recommend you take a long trip to a European city and try to live like a local. If possible I'd avoid the world class metropolis that might feel a bit less homely, and target for smaller cities instead. My aim is not to change your mind about suburbs and cities, instead the experience might expand your mind and help you see why people love the lifestyle.
I am not sure any of this is specifically Suburban, there is no reason this same scenarios couldn't play out in a city neighborhood. It just so happens that in America, the suburbs have been sold as the idyllic place to aspire towards, so that's where you find kids and teens, couples move there.
Also the picture you're painting is not what passes for suburbs today. Most people can't afford to live in the kind of places where you can BBQ with your neighbor and walk to an ice-cream shop with a teenager at the counter. You might maybe find them at some soulless strip mall working at a similarly soulless ice-cream chain, but I am guessing that's not what you mean?
There are true suburbs but they are for rich people. Think places like Bethesda Maryland, Old-Town Alexandria VA, Morristown NJ...these are actual suburbs that have excellent mix of what an idyllic suburb should look like, but they are also mostly for the affluent.
What passes for suburbs in today's America, are patches of land with houses on them, basically just real estate development and not much else. Usually there would be some strip mall that is called "Town Center" that is shared between these developments. If your town center has a sign that reads "Town Center", it means you don't live in a town.
Of course it is, that’s just what suburbs are. Some are crazy expensive and some are not.
> There are true suburbs but they are for rich people.
You can’t define suburbs as being expensive and then complain they’re expensive. If you’re happy living in an expensive concrete jungle good for you, but you don’t need to make excuses for hating suburbs.
Living in Houston suburbs as an adult, I discovered that if you were a man, didn't have kids and weren't into sports, fishing, or hunting, you were gonna have a bad time. Also, good luck walking anywhere interesting!
The author writes that, because he grew up there, because the "bland" (olive garden, strip mall, ...) suburbs are familiar to him, therefore, he belongs there. I think it's more a lesson about people get used to pretty much anything, even non-descript places like the typical american suburb. It's about how childhood shapes your comfort zone, and you'll carry it with you all your life.
(you could write the same article about any place, just change the markers; growing up in kowloon, growing up in a cabin in the woods ...). It's an article about human nature, nostalgia, _not_ about the suburbs or their merits.
America is in a place where people can actually make it happen as turning a suburb in a 15-min city is much easier than turning an existing city into a livable space that is not a crime-ridden concrete dystopia.
When one place looks like any other place has been explored before:
> The Geography of Nowhere traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots.
Heavily referred to in the article.
i then lived in a dense urban neighborhood
i then lived in a walkable university bubble town
i then lived in a 1st generation walkable semi-suburb w/ small plots/old (1910s) houses
i now live in a suburb in a mountain town
they all have advantages and disadvantages
one thing that many fans of urbanism ignore is how important a strong common culture & politeness is for comfortable urban living once you have children
If the houses were that era, it was a "residential neighborhood." It likely originally had some amenities like corner grocery stores that were gone by the time you lived there that made it even more walkable.
I don't understand this. I have found a strong common culture and politeness in urban areas just as much as in suburban and rural areas. I don't think anyone is ignoring the importance of these things.
I have zero nostalgia for where I grew up (Salem, MA), which wasn't even fully a suburb in the way that most of America is developed. I could actually walk downtown and there were sidewalks the entire way, whereas a couple weeks ago I was in suburban Maryland for a client meeting and I couldn't even walk to the Walgreens near my hotel that I could see from the property. Not to say I don't have good memories of where I grew up, but I definitely felt like I was biding my time until I could either move to the woods or to a city. All my friends that grew up here in NYC just had so many more opportunities as kids, particularly around arts and encountering great teachers that mentored them.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
[2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizin...
And if they don't? If you find them alienating symbols of soulless consumption for consumption's sake? If they make you think of the very real and well understood racist practices like redlining, and the gatekeeping of federally backed mortgages that tracked along racist and classist lines? If you consider that they are economically awful, the understood causes of failing city budgets, ever-expanding and ever-clogged highway systems, ecological disasters, etc. etc. etc.? But no by all means, let's continue doing... all of that so that some deadeyed suburbanites can keep playing "look at my big house and my big lawn and my big SUV, what do you mean climate change, I can't go to the city it's scary!"
Atlanta, for example, may have been known as "the city too busy to hate" but continues to suffer from many issues that are a direct result of white flight and deliberate efforts to keep minorities out of the suburbs. It's why the METRA train lines and public transportation in general has such limited coverage. It's why the metro area is a mess of disjointed services. It's why "Atlanta" has a population of over 6 million but the City of Atlanta has less than half a million residents.
None of this happened by accident. In the most extreme case, a 30 mile long, 10 foot wide city existed for decades solely to contain the City of Atlanta.[1] This happened in less blatant ways all over the metro area and bitter fighting to keep Atlanta out (with "Atlanta" being unsubtle code for "minorities") was a recurring theme throughout the 20th century.
The people living there today may not necessarily be racist, but the existence of the suburbs themselves is pretty directly attributable to racism. Some of those burbs are majority minority today; that doesn't mean that their formation wasn't racist or that that history doesn't have real knock-on effects.
[1] - https://www.wabe.org/how-atlanta-was-kept-out-cobb-county-10...
Edit: And to add a note, telling people to "get therapy" for expressing opinions you don't agree with sucks pretty hard. I don't know what kind of therapy you're envisioning here but I struggle to think of how chatting with a well-educated and empathetic person about the utter state of our world is meant to make me feel better about it, but it's not like any therapy I've had nor do I believe anyone would really benefit from.
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The neat thing about Chicago (and parts of NYC and probably at least one or two other American metros) is you can still somewhat affordably* buy or rent a house or flat with a yard in the city proper and have access to reliable public transit, architecture and historical landmarks, waterfronts, excellent dining and entertainment options, good public schools, amazing parks—urbs in horto!, etc. We even have a few near-suburbs that meet most or all of those criteria—although they are rapidly becoming unaffordable—like Evanston, Park Ridge, and Oak Park. Some neighborhoods and near-suburbs feel almost European. Sure, you might end up in Rogers Park or Logan Square and that might not be your cup of tea, but it's doable. As long as you can tolerate the weather, politics, and lack of topography...
So it's not the "city" vs "suburbs" dichotomy that I've found in most other American metros; there's actually a bit of a gradient where you can kind of find your best fit. Now head a bit further out to Schaumburg or Naperville where—although you can get a lot more land and house for your money—it starts to become a homogenous, car-necessitating, boring nightmare (and, like you, that's coming from someone who grew up there). Even the part of the city where we live now is testing the limits of "walkable" and "interesting", but it was a compromise my wife and I made to be closer to family when we decided to have kids. Fortunately it's still overall very good here, and we're a short Blue Line or Metra ride away from all the fun stuff.
Just between us Chicagoans, I lived on the north side for about 14 years and it was everything you've described and more. Why anybody would graduate college and move directly to the suburbs is absolutely unfathomable to me. I miss Lincoln Square and Uptown every day and I'm plotting to get us back there by the time my kids are ready to start high school. And I also think I did myself a disservice by never living on the south side, so that's another possibility...
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* – My neighborhood affordability and safety knowledge is about six or seven years out of date, but based on what I've heard from friends I think this is still true? Feel free to correct me.
As a result, most suburbs make me feel like I'm stuck the "backrooms".
I talk to one of neighbors maybe 4 times a year - never met any of the other people on my street in the year I’ve lived here
I love it
now that homes are commodity investments and few americans can afford them at all the appeal of a suburb is the opportunity to generate passive income for boomer landlords and capital management firms that own vast tracts of the neighborhood. its a chance to pay outrageous homeowners fees for the privilege of servicing your predatory home loan in the hopes of some sort of federal incentive during the next bust cycle.
Cmon mate, I grew up in mad max land and life wasn't that bad. Snakes, Spiders, Cars, Road trains.
Look left, look right, look left again before crossing the road. Directions may vary based on which side of the road your country drives on.
It was the only way to access a particular area without taking a large detour. No sidewalks, you walked down on the dirt, or biked on the road and prayed
That said, I hate driving to work; it's a half hour drive to and from downtown Cincinnati if I keep crazy hours (I work 6-2:30 just to avoid any hint of stopped traffic, otherwise my daily total commute time shoots to 2-2.5h). I envy those of my coworkers -- generally the younger ones -- who live two minutes by foot from the building, but my dogs would have to give up their big backyard, so ... not happening.
As a teen or adult relying on bike/public transit, yes that would be hell. You have to embrace car culture in the burbs.
It’s super quiet because the only people entering the subdivision are those that live here
I like having a healthy distance between my house and the neighbors
Urbanists hate them because they are designed for cars instead of people, and are actively hostile to simply existing in the outside natural world.
Try this experiment: go to your local big box plaza or McDonald’s. Get out of your car and stand on the sidewalk on the four+ lane stroad. How does it sound? How does it feel to be there? What’s it like to cross the street at the crosswalk? Do you feel comfortable and safe?
But really, it feels terrible, doesn’t it? Like being inside a noisy wind tunnel. But there are these designed places where city planners are telling you that you should technically be able to walk there (sidewalks and crosswalks and signals), even though you know that nobody in their right mind would want to spend a spare moment there. You can’t actually be a happy person in that place unless you stay inside your car, completely removed from the real world, and these spaces take up the majority of the American suburb.
But that specific experience isn’t universal to all suburbs, it just happens to be common in North America. Urbanists hate the suburbs that disconnect the pedestrian environment even in cases where on a Birds Eye view you can see that some of the shopping and schools are so close to the residents. There are endless cases of easy 1/4 mile walks turned into a twisted loop of 1.5 mile long excursions just to follow the car infrastructure to the nearest safe crossings and access roads.
The automobile is America’s largest wealth destroyer that takes car payments averaging something like $500-700 a month and sends them to rapidly depreciating assets that fund a handful of corporations in the automotive industry. Meanwhile, these cars are fueled by oil we have scientifically proven to already use too much of.
There are numerous videos from urbanism channels like Not Just Bikes proving that car-light or car-free suburban living or even rural living is possible and exists successfully in places outside of North America. There are farming towns in places like the Netherlands and Japan where getting around via bicycle, train, and bus is completely viable.
Considering the electrification of bicycles and other similar light vehicles, getting around via non-automobile should be better than ever. No more excuses about being sweaty before work, the only barrier now is that there’s no bicycle infrastructure, no safe place to actually ride your e-bike between destinations.
Cars have only existed for a tiny fraction of human history. Far-flung villages and cities have existed for millennia. The bicycle can move a human faster, more reliably, and cheaper than a horse ever could. Trains are far more energy efficient, pleasant, accessible to people with disabilities, and safe than automobiles, and North America had loads of them before they ever had automobiles. The majority of towns and small cities in the US had something to do with the railroads or canals and waterways, nothing at all to do with personal vehicles or owning a 7,000 pound lifted truck.
The American suburb’s design is a purposeful choice, not a development model that is an inevitability nor does it have to be a model that we stick with forever. We don’t have to build a single new development this way if we choose not to.
Here’s a delightful fun fact: if the global car death count occurred in aviation, it would be equivalent of 20 commercial planes crashing and killing all occupants every single day.
As I said, people and business flock to areas where they are welcomed and the limiting factor is money.
But man, this anti-car movement has gone completely off the deep end, to the point where it's practically become a religion where pedestrian walkways and bike paths will bring about a utopian society and cars and highways are the devil to be defeated.
The only thing reducing the number of cars on the road is going to do, is make it more enjoyable to use a car.
I’m not telling people who love cars to stop driving. I own a car myself! I just want to live in a world where I’m not forced to use it for every single daily task.
So, yeah, it would be amazing if you didn’t have to take your car to work or school or the grocery store. Maybe you would still choose to! But the beauty of it is that a good slice of people would say, “geez, why am I paying this car payment and insurance and gas when I only use the car twice a week, maybe our family can go down to one car or keep our cars for longer.”
Suburban dwellers often already live “shoulder to shoulder,” but you can’t actually walk or cycle between close destinations because of the built environment being designed and optimized vehicular traffic.
I’m actually advocating for making your suburbs better and more livable. I’m trying to tell you that many rural towns don’t actually require you to take a car to every single destination. Rural towns existed before the car.
Are you really going to claim that living in a city is part of the natural world? Why is it that whenever a city has a blackout, people call the police terrified of seeing stars in the sky?
>Urbanists hate them because they are designed for cars instead of people
That may be a valid point for old cities that predate the industrial revolution. But there's nothing about NYC, LA or any of the other major US cities that are people centric. Besides, I can flip that argument on its head, cities are limiting and put people in cocoons never having to leave their own neighborhood and see the world. Have car, can travel.
>There are numerous videos from urbanism channels
Because videos from random youtubers with stated agendas are objective sources?
>The automobile is America’s largest wealth destroyer that takes car payments averaging something like $500-700 a month
That's cherry picked if I've ever seen it. There's a massive used car market and cars can last for decades when cared for. Mine is old enough to drink at this point and cost $4k outright. Now there definitely is a problem with new cars, especially EVs being a right to repair nightmare. But there's a large overlap between those who push BEVs and urbanization. I agree that there is a massive issue with the TCO of these vehicles, a battery lasts 10 years and will cost more than the value of the car to replace at that point and they aren't even making them easy to replace. And nobody seems to care. If you ask me, it almost seems as if a backdoor way to make sure the poor cant afford a car and are forced to live in cities in 20 years.
Look, you have your preference, that's cool. That's the nice thing about choice, you can live where you want and you don't have to show the commissar work papers that let you live there. Cities aren't going anywhere so there's no need to feel threatened by suburbs. People who want to live in suburbs and have a patch of grass to call their own will. And they aren't hurting you by doing so.
I’ll pick little example. Get on Google Maps. Put a pin down at Trebes Park in Chicago. “Walk” North on Racine. At what point does this look like an uncomfortable place to walk? At what point do the trees go away? At what point are you further than 1-1.5 miles from a grocery store? A park or playground?
> Besides, I can flip that argument on its head, cities are limiting and put people in cocoons never having to leave their own neighborhood and see the world.
You think city people can’t rent a car or get on public transit to the airport? The average American spends $5,000 a year on their cars’ total cost of ownership, that could buy you a week long car rental every month.
Again, I’m advocating for reduction in car trips and not designing the lived environment for cars, I’m not saying that nobody should own a car or that city people will never own a car. I own a car myself. I’m just saying that we are putting cars above people on the priority list.
> Have car, can travel.
> That’s the nice thing about choice…
What if you don’t have a car? What do you mean by “choice?” You don’t have a choice, you have to own a car! I think you’re mistaking me here: real choice would be being able to choose not to own a car while still living in the suburbs. Real choice would be someone in a big urban city like LA not having to own a car (but you pretty much have to in a city where public transit was destroyed and the city has been designed around driving for decades).
I’m trying to say that living in the suburbs without being dependent on cars is actually is possible, but not in a poorly designed suburban environment that makes no consideration to other modes.
You’re looking at this as me coming after you and your lifestyle. I’m not. I’m trying to make your patch of grass better! I’m trying to increase the amount of choice that suburban people have! I’m not asking you to make your house smaller or give up your yard.
Compared to the real nature they look uncomfortable to walk.
>> What if you don’t have a car?
Then you get to live in a city and use every opportunity on HN to dunk on suburbs.
>> I’m trying to increase the amount of choice that suburban people have!
How nice of you. I guess there are no more problems to solve in the cities and now you have all the time to help the unfortunate suburbanites.
I don't know, I live in NYC and just walking down the street to the train I can hear half a dozen languages being spoken. I can head over to Jackson Heights and eat food from a couple dozen different cultures. And the money I don't spend on a car I can put towards leaving the country, which I generally do 2-3x per year.