I've personally found a great alternative to living in major cities is not the suburbs but smaller cities. I grew up in the Northeast and now live in a smaller city in the West (pop ~250,000). I can get to SF in a few hours, but locally I still have most of the things I'd want from a city: great restaurants, art, fun tech community, music, easy to access airport etc. I also have many of the perks of living in a smaller community: very little traffic, incredibly affordable cost of living, get to know the owners of most restaurants/businesses I frequent etc.

The crazy thing is that living in a house 10 minutes from the center of downtown I pay a fraction of what my friends and relatives back East do to live in a suburb so far away from the metro area they live near that they visit it only once or twice a year.

Especially with more and more remote work becoming available, if you're getting sick of living in a major metro area I highly recommend checking the diverse range of smaller cities across the US, imho it is a vastly superior experience to living in an expensive suburb.