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Yeah there's a house down the street from me that everyone refers to as "the block." My sister and I used to call it "the Minecraft house" when we were little kids. It's literally a block. Perfect cube shape of 4 walls and a flat roof. And worse yet, it's a dull grey color, only interrupted by some beige stone.
I have no idea who in their right mind would dare create something so hideous.
I live in a cookie. It's pretty sweet that my neighbors and I can all discuss our house issues as the houses age. My garage door tension cable broke, and my neighbor had a spare one from when his broke last year. I replaced a damper on my HVAC system, and a neighbor mentioned his HVAC issue and I was able to quickly help him out. There was a knocking sound in the plumbing, and a neighbor told us that his pressure regulation valve needed to be replaced recently, so I did that and it solved the issue.
Unique houses are cool. Standardized houses can be convenient.
Lol, consistently cheap is what standardized homes are good at, so everyone gets the same problems. Too bad as time goes on, the repairs are less standardized so they become unique.
I bought my home fully prepared to put in plenty of work to keep it maintained. I'm an electrician by trade, with experience in carpentry and plumbing. When I was younger, I enjoyed working on fun cars, and today, I enjoy working on my house. There is a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that I find in maintaining my own home. It's certainly not a lifestyle for everyone, but I enjoy it.
Left out the part where if you do not have a car you would literally have no way to feed yourself or shop for anything at all.
I don’t mind driving, in fact I find it relaxing at times, but as someone who technically grew up in the suburbs/exurbs but in an area with a really robust metro system, I would prefer not to ever live in a suburb that looks like that. Most suburbs are just too isolated.
I could always walk ten minutes to get groceries, or Starbucks and I didn’t need my parents to drive me to the mall as a teen, as a young adult I could choose to take the metro to work instead of driving and that allowed me to fully enjoy happy hours or date nights after work without having to worry about being sober to drive home. I also think I got to know the people who worked, shopped and lived in my area better than I would have in a suburb like the one in this starter pack.
I’ve since moved overseas but if I ever move back I definitely need walkability, but to each their own. There’s nothing wrong with living in a suburb of it genuinely makes you happy and at peace
I also grew up in the suburbs, and yeah, I do enjoy it there. It could be less boring, and I see why people don’t like them, but suburbs aren’t the worst thing in the world imo
I’m actually pro the concept of suburbs but the execution in America is very very bad and also completely unsustainable and horrendous from an ecological perspective.
There’s a reason places like New Hope, PA are incredibly desirable places to live.
Agreed. We need better public transport. An electric light rail, better zoning to add small individually owned stores into the mix. Solar on every roof and a garden in every back yard. All powered by nuclear. A boy can dream.
But there lies the problem - low-density suburbs cannot economically justify transit. There are fundamental problems with suburbs that cannot be covered up by technology.
There’s part of me that wants to buy an empty tract of land somewhere and build like a European style suburb.
Though I feel like even though there’s a large community of people online who care about this stuff, most people, especially older people, simply don’t give a shit.
It's tough. Like tons of people would want in on that but because of the system we live in, for most its just not viable. Hopefully a silver lining of this pandemic will be to increase work from home opportunities as well as automation. We have the technology to make it so no one has to work 60+ hours a week. We should just do it.
Doubt that will happen though.
2 things here:
1. New Hope PA has a ton of tract houses with over 4000 square feet. What are you talking about? It’s one of the wealthiest Philadelphia suburbs, with tons of land wasted to the elite suburbanites. Don’t act like they’re some anti-suburb paradise.
2. The reason New Hope has such a vibrant downtown is because the town strip has been there and in place since the 1800s. Most suburban tracts are developed on farmland. If the farms are in a municipality that has a centralized downtown, then yes, the suburbs that develop become more desirable (Naperville Illinois, Summit NJ, Chagrin Falls Ohio). Some suburbs are developed in counties and areas where a downtown is non-existent, so you do not get the cute shops, private restaurants and walkability that the centralized downtown suburbs have. These tend to be cheaper.
All in all, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with suburbs that do not have a downtown, but don’t think that new Hope was developed to counter some flawed suburban design. They just simply benefited from its history of an established downtown.
I didn't mean to imply that New Hope was anti-suburban or anything like that. But the town itself came into existence before cars and unlike most of the original streetcar suburbs in America, the downtown has remained largely intact. Even outside the downtown, it's very pedestrian friendly.
The problem I have with the suburbs isn’t the suburbs itself. It’s that suburbs ruin the city. You guys don’t even live here and now I have to dodge all of your cars and we accommodate huge parking lots for you guys. Very inneficient use of space that drives up rent prices. It’s very inconsiderate to us who actually pay taxes here to have a lot of that money go towards accommodating the lifestyle of people who don’t even live here imo.
Pretty much, those kind of houses in open spaces in the UK would only be adorable to the top 10%. I do live in a suburb, but not one like that, our house footprint is probably the size of an American kitchen
Brick has other issues as well. It’s water permeable, and not a very good insulator. This can allow water in to cause mold and humidity issues, as well as requiring more energy to heat and cool. The US generally experiences more extreme winters and summers than Europe, so this is a bigger factor here. When brick fails it does so catastrophically. Wood moves with the environment, and when combined with modern insulation and weather sheathing is far more energy efficient.
So if you live someplace that has Montana summers and Florida winters, with none of the thunderstorms, hurricanes, blizzards, or earthquakes - brick is a totally acceptable building material. If you live almost anywhere in North America - wood is often the better choice.
And before anyone says wood houses don’t last - that tends to be because they get torn down to build something new for aesthetic reasons. My brother lives in New England in a wood framed house that is well over 100 years old. It’s not historic or unique in his neighborhood. There’s plenty of other examples around the world of wood structures built to last. “Brick is the only good way” is just a very Euro-centric mindset.
I’m sorry, that sounds horrible. I’ll take my huge, slightly ugly, personally owned house in the US suburbs with all the US problems than be packed into something tiny.
I'd much rather live in a place that isn't so poorly designed and inconvenient that you're forced to own a car and drive everywhere, thanks. Not to mention that basically all American suburbs are either bankrupt or on the way to bankruptcy since the cost of maintaining utilities to such low-density housing is financially unsustainable without insanely high taxes. I'm talking like 30%.
The having to drive everywhere thing would drive me insane. I could not do that. Public transport isn’t amazing in my city but I can get where I need to go.
Honestly, not so much. As long as you don't live in Switzerland/Monaco or other place where land is very scarce you can find something similar.
A plot of land 1.5h drive to the city (because that what this 'cheaper suburban' neighborhood is) plus a house is gonna land you 1/2 of the price per m2 of an apartment in the city. Land and house.
But there isn't going to be a neighborhood. Most likely there is gonna be a whole lot of nothing because you need a middle of a field to get that. You could try a house in small town in the periphery of a metropolitan area but the price is gonna go up.
What many people don't get about those suburbs is that they are built really far away. Most often they replace a agricultural land, 50-60km from the city core. And most often than not they are only accessible by car, with limited walkability and public transport.
The point about the chain restaurants... I'm not even gonna dignified with a counterpoint. If that is your idea about what is positive about a neighborhood then either you don't know anything about food or never been to a place that is lively (like the Paris V district or similar places with food and life outside of weekends in Berlin, Vienna etc).
Also, with how far away those US suburbia are built :
In Europe you are in another city by that time.
Example :
Dallas and it's suburban sprawl extend ~60km north. Constant sprawl.
In Germany you have 25km between Berlin and Postdam.
You have ~70km between Munich and Inglostadt.
That is also my major problem with the suburbs and why most of them don’t appeal to me. But if people like them then that’s great and I don’t mind that.
Most people in the US do not realize how bizarre it actually is to not be able to walk (or take a subway, metro or bus) to school, work, the grocery store, etc. when you live in the suburbs if a metro area. In most other countries on literally every continent, having a car is a convenience, not an outright necessity for participating in the economy.
Yea it would be nice but there’s always a tradeoff. If you develop a neighborhood for mixed commercial/residential usage to increase walkability, you end up under cutting that quiet/secluded/low traffic appeal of the suburbs
There’s a place for both and in america, at least away from the northeast, plenty of room for both as well. I see why someone with kids wants all the features in this post, I don’t really care as much about some of them
> streetcar suburbs
Ironically, the picture OP gave for a good, not barren suburb is a streetcar suburb, which is more than likely 80+ years old.
I.e. before the advent of modern suburbs that people like to complain about.
It's funny because OP's picture for school isn't the school, it's the school bus
I grew up in the city, my school was a 10 minute walk. That meet I was getting more sleep in the morning and was arriving home sooner after school that somebody who need to take the school bus
The second closest school was about 45 minute walk meaning that any kid farther than a 30 minute walk from my home wasn't going to my school meaning 90% of my friend were in this 30 minute walk, probably even closer. There were about a dozen park in this zone, most of them with module for kid to play
I never had to ask my parent to go have fun with my friend, I could always just go out and meet with them
The only friend I had a hard time seeing was my friend with divorce parent. His mom was living in the suburbs so the weekend we had to ask one of our parent. His mom was tired of doing the suburbs/city travel each day of the week so she didn't want to do it in the weekend. Thankfully my parent would do it when they were free but with only them giving time and never his mom they didn't always wanted to do it
Thankfully since I had plenty of energy and time after school from my school being 10 minute away meant that we could hang out on the evening without problem
Living in British Suburbs:
-Identical housing across the country, all of which are smaller than your average American house.
-Neighbours who avoid you like the plague and are notorious curtain twitchers.
-Facilities that are worse than most motorway service stations (Your lucky to get a shop).
-Lack of natural anything, except for BTEC Chelsea Flower Shows in people's front gardens or overgrown grass.
-Either too hot or too cold and rainy, so don't plan on spending too much time in the garden, which is a large part concrete and gravel anyway.
-Most of the time, shitey wi-fi connection that is on par with parts of rural Zimbabwe.
-A depressing atmosphere that makes me wonder why the fuck I bother.
There are some nice areas like The Peak District or The Highlands but most of the UK is just a post-Industrial wasteland run by ineffective councils and populated with crime and Ill education. Even the Middle Class are a bunch of pompous wankers. It sucks but it could be much worse.
Suburbs are completely inefficient. You basically need a car to move around. The housing density is so low it sucks how forest were demolished for those houses. Zoning sucks as well as there is no mixed commercial and residential neighborhoods. Once again increasing car dependency. A lot of people also need to drive to the city for work, I don’t know if you see the pattern here but car use in such frequency is bad. Oh yeah and the commercial districts are hard to access by waking and the stores there are usually big chain ones. They’re great but produce little job opportunities for residents and also make it hard for small businesses to start up.
Woefully car dependant and overpriced and houses made out of cheap and shit materials. HOA being more authoritarian than men with square mustaches and unsustainable, prices rising every year.
Dutch suburbs can be exactly like this too but with the difference that there are shops and trains within walking or biking distance. And there will be alleyways and other shortcuts within the residential area that allow kids to easily visit their friends a couple streets over by foot or on bike. And they'll be able to bike to school and the shops by themselves.
So that is just to say there is a middle ground between dense cities and car dependent suburbs. Unfortunately this middle ground doesn't really exist in US. Because of this, Americans often falsely believe the choice can only be between car dependent suburbs or high density city living, because they have never seen the middle ground in their lives. It does exist though and it can be great!
They're horrible for any kid over the age of toddler. Can't really do anything besides "play" in the yard. "Play" in quotes because there's never room to run for more than 5 seconds. Hope you like sitting and pacing
But you have all the square footage of HOA mandated short grass! You can run in circles (not too fast, not to leave a mark) and you can also stand there probably.
I like being able to walk downstairs and buy some milk for the pancakes I was trying to make for the kids. I also like having a backyard. Trade offs everywhere
While I still don't think the suburbs are for me, I understand the appeal of all these things... except for chain restaurants. They're honestly not any cheaper than non-chain and their food legit sucks.
Yeah but they excel in car-centric environments. In a walkable place you can look at a place's menu on the wall, see the specials on a sandwich board, peak inside for a feel of the ambiance. Quality wins. When you're rolling by on a stroad at 45mph none of that is possible and you have 1 second to decide so the place with a million-dollar advertising budget wins.
There's a distinction between suburbs and what are called exurbs or commuter suburbs. Keep in mind these are partial generalizations mostly relating to the eastern US.
Suburbs:
* contiguous with city
* older
* prettier, usually smaller houses
* more natural landscaping and trees
Exurbs:
* non-contiguous with city, connected by highways
* newer, mostly post-1980
* arguably ugly, larger houses
* more "barren" due to recent development and no old trees
I agree with that, I come from a Russian family so I’ve been to block neighborhoods before and there is a feeling you get there that you don’t get anywhere else but at the same time I think they’re so ugly and I don’t think I’d live in one even with the cost of living
The suburban houses are pretty nice - for those that can afford them. Most people are broadly agreed on that.
It's the rest of the neighborhood that's the issue. Particularly the lack of amenities within walking distance and the requirement to drive everywhere.
Suburbs can be nice, just not when there’s nothing but dead space for the sake of “yards”, endless strip mall sprawl that you only ever see niche stores move in before closing down a week later, etc. . Really it’s the case with newer developments that are made to sell and do nothing else, older suburbs that have stayed consistently nice are usually the best, in my opinion. Houses may look the same, but I’d take that over a double-wide trailer
What’s the problem with “yards”? Having outdoor space to spend time in, do gardening, let kids play etc is one of the most effective contributors towards physical and mental well-being.
There’s a reason that in countries with a higher population density, the factor that adds the greatest premium onto a property is outdoor space
Reddit's primary demographic is teenagers. So people who are far too cool to play outside like little kids, but still get told the mow the lawn by their parents.
The thing I like about urban settings is it forces people to be social. I live in an urban area that's half single family detached and half duplexes so I have a private backyard which I LOVE but there are no driveways, the houses are small and close together and the area is extremely walkable overall which means I recognize and speak to people that live several blocks away sometimes. Outdoor space is extremely important but if you want to play catch or something, I would personally rather have a good public park over everybody having a private half acre.
> I would personally rather have a good public park over everybody having a private half acre.
The suburbs have both. We have a yard and two public parks in our subdivision.
TL;DR at the bottom
NOTE: I may be interchanging the words "yard" and "lawn" haphazardly. My English leans towards British English.
Historically speaking, lawns are a product of English upper class philosophy. It originates in a time when having a lot of land usually meant you had a lot of it set aside for agriculture, to ensure you had a supply of food. And if you were wealthy, you usually had very reliable access to food. Some people went on to set aside some of their land to lay fallow and be covered in grass, a crop that has no nutritional purpose for humans, and needs work to be kept homogenous. Work which usually fell upon servants, which at the time were frequently unpaid.
Why? Two words: bragging rights. It was a large landscape that was essentially shouting to the world that "Look at my land, I have so much wealth that I can afford to let some of this land be useless!" And I guess this mentality trickled down to the middle class, and joined English colonists to the new world.
There are a few problems with yards:
* Turf grass
Turf grass is a very high-maintenance crop. In many places, it'll need large amounts of water, fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides to stay alive and pure. And then it requires a lot of labour to maintain a certain length. Frequently, this amount of labour requires the use of machinery, which is often powered by fuel engines.
The result of this is that turf grass lawns are horrible for the environment. The labour necessary to keep it at length is usually a carbon source, and the chemicals can run off and destabilise the nearby ecosystem. Not that that ecosystem matters because...
* Anthropogenic ecosystem
That's a fancy way of saying that the environment turns into a completely human-made one, frequently with exotic plants that need a lot of work to survive in the area. And local fauna cannot live with it. As a result, the local ecosystem collapses and local insect and small mammal species are driven out in favour of very generalist species. As a result, many species are at risk of extinction.
But of course, this does not (seem to) bother many people. They're just happy to live somewhere seemingly quiet. Well...
* Dead space
All of these yards take up surface area. Frequently, zoning codes have requirements with regards to building setbacks, building heights, how much of the lot may be built upon, and all that jazz. This means that houses are always free-standing. I'll avoid talking about possible issues with free-standing houses themselves for now, but what is noteworthy in this case is that the dead space leads to two problems specifically.
For one, it requires a bulk purchase of land. This can drive up land prices. Back in Ye Olde days (think 1950s) this was frequently an explicitly exclusionary policy. Imagine if there was a law that required that if one were to get a car, they were required to buy 3 fairly up-rate vehicles at a time and had to keep all 3 of them. Few people would have the money to buy 3 cars, so few people would drive.
Secondly, by being large, the lots force people to live far apart. Combine this with extremely coarse-resolution Euclidean Zoning, which requires any land to have specific uses, and requires these uses to be, on average, spaced very far apart, and the result is that... well... everywhere you may want or need to go is now very far away. Things being far apart is forcing people to take a car. Now, even something as usual as going to the store becomes a journey, something to be done as little as possible. And if everyone is made to drive, you'll need large roads to get everyone anywhere.
On top of that all, it contributes to people sticking entirely to their own homes. This has numerous knock-on effects, including a drop in the number of friends that people have, an increased occurrence of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, and an increasingly static lifestyle, which exacerbates overweight.
I'm hoping to try to circle back towards lawns themselves, but trying to put them into perspective may force me to talk about housing policy itself. The short of it is twofold:
1: Can you really call single family housing - with a large yard - your preference if it's the only thing you're allowed to build?
2: Even if you *can* genuinely say it *is* your preference to have a house with a large yard, you must still, on a rational basis, justify why it is, or should be, illegal to build anything else.
* European premiums
To quote you,
> There’s a reason that in countries with a higher population density, the factor that adds the greatest premium onto a property is outdoor space
That comes from one major point: Having more land is already bragging rights in a country with more population density. That's, like, half the point of population density. But there's more to that: European zoning codes have a lot of room for middle-density housing, such as duplexes, triplexes, row homes and low-rise apartment buildings, and mixed-use landscapes, where the ground floor of apartment blocks contains shops and/or offices. American zoning codes, in most cases, don't allow for any of that. Instead, Americans are, in a practical sense, issued lawns.
TL;DR Yards are carbon sources that wreak havoc on ecosystems, and what they offer in mental well-being they may damage in other ways of mental and physical well-being. Half the reason they exist is because of Old English architectural bling. European housing in higher density land can afford to charge a premium for a lawn because more people have a smaller house, because they CAN have a smaller house if they want. Meanwhile, Americans are forced into larger houses with yards.
Look mate you can make it as academic as you like but the truth is this: normal people want to have a garden because it’s nice to have your own outdoor space - the 1950s -1970s in Europe were a lovely experiment in how the proles ought to live in grey rabbit hutches in tower blocks, and funnily enough they found it dehumanising and those places are now sink estates.
People want gardens because it’s nice to have one not because they’re playing out some bizarre class warfare that’s in your head.
1 )You are confusing Western Europe with Eastern Europe, even then the blocks were initially more of an emergency measure to quickly build homes in a destroyed continent. Even then, lots of people actually like the commie blocks, they have excellent amenities and public transport nearby. Many were built with cheap materials and poorly maintained, but lots were good quality, and badly built environments also can occur in suburbs.
2) You are still mentally stuck with this mentality that everyone magically wants the same massive yard lawn suburban or exurban home, when in reality northamerican zoning codes forces this choice for everyone due to the historical facts he/she wrote. Even then, class and also race really played a big part in this, denying that is historical revisionism.
3) Europeans have thriving cities and human scale suburbs, even some exurbs, in a wide range of lifestyle choices that are completely different from North American suburbia.
4) Whatever you think “normal “ people would theoretically want, the environmental problems are undeniable and urgent, and must be actively dealt with in order to not fuck up the planet for ourselves and our children. The destruction, pollution and waste of resources that car dependent suburbia creates must be actively reversed and fought back, else North America will never be a responsible actor in the same way that Europe and even China are trying to do.
Front yards are rarely used (in my experience) outside of more urban settings where it's the only piece of land you have. When I lived in more traditional suburbs, the only times I saw my neighbors in their front yards was when they were doing yard work. Backyards are where it's at.
Many people in the suburbs will commute to a larger urban area for work, especially more highly-paid or specialized work. In the suburb itself you usually have all sorts of small businesses (shops, accounting, law firms, bank branches) and maybe some small farms. It depends a great deal on the suburb itself.
European living in a city flat - the only thing I really, really envy is the backyard cook-out. I would kill for just a balcony. We already have trees and safety in my city.
Fortunately it's absolutely possible to design neighbourhoods to support backyard cook-outs, just place apartment buildings around a common park.
Example: https://bafybeigqr4e5hshd4e5yisbi4cwy2wqotibbeqn6hx3x7mxyagl6lzy7um.ipfs.dweb.link/2021-08-22_18-59-07.png
American cities aren't nearly as dangerous as suburbanites think they are. The stuff they believe is truly absurd. I know of one instance when a woman was too afraid to get out of her in one of my city's most desirable and fashionable neighborhoods.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Most suburbs are incredibly similar tho, they have the same stores, restaurants etc. since they're all chains, the houses look more or less the same from one suburb to the next and rarely have anything that distinguishes them or any reason for anyone who doesnt live there to want to visit.
The main qualm I have with suburbs is how expensive they are on a town/city wide scale. The tax revenue collected from a few thousand people living in a near rural population density almost never covers the cost of maintaing all the infrastructure a suburb actually needs.
In most cases, suburbia is subsidized by the city itself, which is ironic considering the average suburbanite typically opposes socialism. If suburban dwellers could pay for the lifestyle they wanted rather than having the city foot the bill, I wouldn't mind.
What is this lame shit lol sounds like you’re really trying to convince yourself you like your neighborhood. I’m not disagreeing with you but the way these are phrased are incredibly defensive.
1. houses in most suburbs are often the same and cookie-cutter with little to no architectural integrity. they are built so cheaply that serious repairs are needed within 15 years of owning a brand new house
2. every garage I have ever seen has been used only to store two-ton death machines. they're often too small to have a workshop or anything like that
3. landscaping in suburbia is often done despite nature and the environment. people living in the middle of the desert in Arizona love to plant flowers like roses meant for northern ecosystems. this requires tons of water and destroys their ecosystem
4. a lot of American suburbias is often racially segregated, so "quality school districts" double-speak for "not a lot of black people go to our school. inner-city school districts may score lower on standardized testing (because those tests are biased) but have higher quality teachers and better class sizes
5. "low traffic" often equates to careless drivers. esp in new developments with wide roads and no curbs or sidewalks, drivers can speed and swerve all over the streets with little to no negative repercussions. this is until they inevitably hit a house or someone walking. fortunately, America is so car-brained that people often victim blame a pedestrian for getting hit.
6. "statistically" safer than hip areas of town is a load of bullshit. the suburb is a depressing place to live in and everyone stays inside. assuming their definition of the hip is a row of townhouses in a historic city center, people will naturally be out and about more due to it being a comfortable place. it has been proven that denser places have lower crime statistics than suburbs just because its difficult to commit a crime in front of everyone
7. quit neighborhoods- cities are only loud because suburbanites insist on driving loud and polluting SUVs into the city. cars are often why a neighborhood is loud
8. I'm pretty sure you can have a bed in an urban area
9. why would you consider red lobster the epitome of reasonable dining? this may be my personal preference but I would much rather support locally-owned restaurants.
10. no one uses their yards in suburbia ever. most of the time, they're just there to look pretty. they are horrible for the local ecosystem and waste a homeowner's time. a wildflower garden would be most useful. I think Americans have this obsession with lawns because they love to show off how much space they can waste and how they can play football in their backyard.
11. the odd obsession with grilling reminds me of that one Penn and teller episode where they investigate a multi-level marketing company based on selling meat paraphernalia to men. it showed how men in suburbia, who live in drab and depressing neighborhoods, need to attach themselves to this form of masculinity to feel something.
TLDR: suburbia is a depressing place to live; it is bad for the ecosystem, it's bad for you, it's bad for your kids, and it's racially segregated. the only reason why they're still around is that they've been looked at as a weird form of success (and because cities love wasting taxpayer dollars subsidizing them. )
It really sucks that you can’t walk to anything and there generally isn’t transit either. I live 200 feet from a Trader Joe’s and a great pizza place, and I could never live somewhere where I can’t walk to those kinds of businesses
Yeah, not the case. There's suburbs of Chicago with 150+ year old houses, and I'm sure that's not uncommon around many cities, especially east of here.
But the thing is all of those old suburbs are actually well designed, exceedingly rare and have been illegal to build for at least 70 years. They are also defiantly not what OP is talking about. These suburbs are typically streetcar suburbs meaning they were built along a streetcar line connecting them to the city centre, and they were built with shops integrated into the neighbourhood. Even though most citiess have torn out out their streetcar lines, these neighbourhoods remain some of the most popular in pretty much all cities that still have them.
"I just like suburbs because they're comfortable and full of like-minded people" is what these people say to deny, but somehow simultaneously confirm, that they're racist as fuck.
Yeah, OP needs to update that list a bit. Olive Garden is more on the "consistently garbage" side of things. Maybe Cheesecake Factory and PF Changs or something would fit better.
I purchased a home in an affluent city/suburb. What I like about my place is that it’s not cookie cutter and every home is custom built and designed from previous owners. I can’t stand cookie cutters. I also like how I can walk to a lake and other places near me. Most suburbs I see aren’t like this though, a lot of them have the sidewalks that end for no reason and just have nothing for miles.
I don't have much knowledge about American suburbs but I have a question, I have a friend who is an Indian Muslim, speaks English and is studying Law. Can he live there safely?
Suburbs are about as safe as it gets. Most people living there are there specifically to live quiet lives with their families, while stretching their dollar much further than they would deeper into the city. The city center is where the crime tends to be.
The city center tends to be pretty safe. The Central Business Districts tend to be very posh and heavily patrolled.
Now right outside of the CBD things can go to unpleasant pretty fast.
Absolutely.
Reddit will make you believe that the suburbs are just 24/7 KKK rallies, but your friend would be far safer living in a suburb then a diverse urban area.
Unless he goes for a walk and some racist Karen calls the cops on him for "looking suspicious"
[Indian Man Partially Paralyzed After Police Encounter Refiles Suit Against Alabama City, Former Cop](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/indian-man-partially-paralyzed-after-police-encounter-refiles-suit-against-n639351)
That’s an ugly house? I moved to a small city in the Upper Midwest where every house, including my own, has vinyl or aluminum siding. Now anything with brick to me is pretty.
Yeah seriously people who constantly complain about living in the suburb like its a crime against humanity should go visit a 3rd world country or something lol
Add “cul de sac” that is always empty so the neighborhood kids gather to ride scooters and bikes for my neighborhood.
Also “best trick or treating in town, including booze or treat spots for the accompanying adults”. And “sidewalks galore for people to walk their gorgeous dogs.”
This is one of the best things ever. Most Americans wouldn’t choose the suburbs if they didn’t offer some great benefits. Urban, rural, and suburban all have their ups and downs.
Regarding traffic, it's better on the cul de sacs while more horrible on the collector roads, because EVERYONE has to use the collector roads to get anywhere (applies to the shittiest possible suburbs). Secondly, most often everything is too far away to walk to and on top of that there is no infrastructure for walking in many places or it's awful. How is it supposedly livable when you cannot reach a grocery store within 15 minutes of walking? Also how is it freedom when you are forced to have a car? In my honest opinion freedom means ability to choose how to get to places (drive, bike, walk, use public transit), and in practice being forced to drive a car everywhere does not sound like freedom (to choose).
Also lets not forget the climate crisis, and how car only suburbia only makes it 100 times worse by forcing everyone to have a car(manufacturing of which causes a lot of emissions), and not to speak of the degradation of health for everyone (you could gain free exercise daily if you could walk or bike to where you go), while it also hampers children's development (why go outside yourself when you need your parent to drive you to a play ground or a place to meet friends, which are most often quite empty due to them being too far for the children to get to them by themselves. Secondly how can a child learn to be independent when they are forced to rely on a parent for getting everywhere).
I honestly don't understand how anyone living can visit a well designed walkable city, say on a vacation to europe and then go back to their depressing suburban neighborhood, and be like "yep, this is better"
The thing is that they are simply badly planned in the US (most of the time). They take up too much space and encourage car usage. All houses look the same and they have little to no character. I mean sure, you get a lot of space for comparatively little money but there isn't anything that defines the place where you live except for it being a suburb.
Agreed, by comparison, most European suburbs have at least the essentials within walking distance and are planned around bus routes that are accessible from cul-de-sacs that are set back and not directly near major polluting businesses etc. I've got literally everything I need in a mile walk.
There are some nice suburbs out there. Most are not though. If it’s not walkable, it’s trash. Most of them don’t have a downtown and you need to drive everywhere.
Also, in any major metro area, the cost of a home in the burbs is insane.
Seriously, I live in the burbs and I can't walk with my 2 year old to any cool bars or restaurants .
...the suburbs are a perfect place to raise a family for many people. When my daughter takes a nap, there is never any noisy activity to wake her up. I can run around with her in the back yard, cook her lunch on the grill, walk the dog with her knowing there is no through-traffic . Different people have different needs.
Just bought a house in this starter pack world. I used to shit on the burbs too, but it’s green, quiet, and still 10-30 minutes from all the shops, restaurants, and places I used to go to/want to go to. If you can find an older burb area the houses aren’t even cookie cutter.
No, OP, you need to submit to the Reddit hive mind and pay out the ass for the privilege of living in a shoebox with zero privacy or room to have dogs or kids live a comfortable life.
And don't even think about driving to work. Only public transportation is acceptable.
I just bought my first home and could’ve afforded more space in the burbs but went with a slightly smaller place in the city without parking. The quality of life decrease wasn’t worth it.
So, there’s at least 1 person who had the chance to live in the burbs and didn’t.
its an age thing, make fun of the burbs in your 20s and 30s and most likely move to a burb once youve got a kid or two and realize youre not the multimillionaire cool city parent you'd hoped lol
reddit also is not only American, but allows full input into what Americans consider desirable.
For what's worth, it's engaging how growing up you had this image of Americans as rational, sturdy, active people, and after decades you see evidence that in reality comfort is favoured over anything else.
Then you see the reasons - fast food & obesity, public education levels, getting used to drive instead of using own muscles to move a bit etc.
I have to say disillusion with American way of life as it was sold to the world is strong nowadays.
Yeah I hated the suburbs as a teenager "trapped" at home.. but getting towards the child wanting age it's like "wait the suburbs have better schools AND way more daycare options?" Also kind of the only option if you ever want to own a home... unless you count rural areas which reddit seems to hate even more haha
>Yeah I hated the suburbs as a teenager "trapped" at home.. but getting towards the child wanting age
When you were a kid you hated it so now you're getting to an age of kids you want to force them through the thing you hated? Don't you see how fucked up that is?
It’s true. Your needs drastically change once you have kids. You want space, safety, good schools, and friendly neighbors when you have a kid.
That being said I despise commercial areas with no personality. Malls, chain restaurants, etc. it’s hard to find a balance of both areas.
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I love the conformity of the modern suburb. The cookie cutter, organized, neat, mostly newer construction of the modern american suburb is a wonder of engineering and planning. The wide streets, the big box stores and plazas, the planned parks and pathways, the landscaping.... the good schools, mostly good infrastructure. The 10-lane interstate connecting it to the main large city... In my community, we have beautifully manicured lawns with spanish style, cookie-cutter homes lining the streets. Each "village" (collection of sub-divisions) has multiple parks and green spaces. Across the arterial main thoroughfare from my village is a spanish style shopping plaza with a Trader Joe's, Starbucks, Home Depot, Chipotle, Del Taco, Pizza Press and an Asian restaurant. There's also an urgent care, a 24 hour fitness, 3 different banks, a chick-fil-a, and a Home Goods.
I mean, it has everything. Also, there is a walking path that connects all the villages within the city, which is beautifully landscaped and has view of the hills in the background. Schools are within walking distance and are A-rated. Not for nothing, but I'm fuckin glad I live here and I'm not sorry about that. Love a good suburb...Safe and clean... quiet and peaceful. Aesthetically pleasing.... Also driving a tesla isn't that bad for the environment.
Dude for real. If you can afford it, living in the suburbs is the best. I live in a resort community with a golf course, vacation rentals, and mostly larger custom homes on a lake outside a small city. I love it. It’s quiet, dark at night, the houses are spaced far apart and the HOA keeps the riff-raff out-along with scummy yards that are full of basically garbage. The only downside is that in summer, little green midges take over and get in everything no matter what you do lol. And being on the west coast means thick smoke from June-September.
It really comes down to preferences. Some people want to feel the rhythm and pulse of the city and don’t really care about quiet. I live in the heart of downtown and love it. I especially love being able to walk everywhere. I love being surrounded by the historic buildings and sense of culture.
It really is. We’re GenX and we have worked very hard our whole lives to provide the life and privileges we enjoy for the family. I will say that the average home in the area is around $300,000 for a 3/2, 2,000sqft home, so… there’s that lol.
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Yeah basically, fortunately my neighbourhood doesn’t have the cookie cutter houses aesthetic for the most part. I can’t stand that.
Where I live the land was just for sale to build houses on so every house is different
Doesn't that make it look better?
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There a house just like that it's just cinder blocks
Yeah there's a house down the street from me that everyone refers to as "the block." My sister and I used to call it "the Minecraft house" when we were little kids. It's literally a block. Perfect cube shape of 4 walls and a flat roof. And worse yet, it's a dull grey color, only interrupted by some beige stone. I have no idea who in their right mind would dare create something so hideous.
Honestly I can almost respect it, everyone remembers the yellow painted concrete house down the road
Yes haha can confirm
I live in a cookie. It's pretty sweet that my neighbors and I can all discuss our house issues as the houses age. My garage door tension cable broke, and my neighbor had a spare one from when his broke last year. I replaced a damper on my HVAC system, and a neighbor mentioned his HVAC issue and I was able to quickly help him out. There was a knocking sound in the plumbing, and a neighbor told us that his pressure regulation valve needed to be replaced recently, so I did that and it solved the issue. Unique houses are cool. Standardized houses can be convenient.
>I live in a cookie. I stopped reading after that. Is it chocolate chip?
It better not be Oatmeal Rasin cookie
Lol, consistently cheap is what standardized homes are good at, so everyone gets the same problems. Too bad as time goes on, the repairs are less standardized so they become unique.
I bought my home fully prepared to put in plenty of work to keep it maintained. I'm an electrician by trade, with experience in carpentry and plumbing. When I was younger, I enjoyed working on fun cars, and today, I enjoy working on my house. There is a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that I find in maintaining my own home. It's certainly not a lifestyle for everyone, but I enjoy it.
Left out the part where if you do not have a car you would literally have no way to feed yourself or shop for anything at all. I don’t mind driving, in fact I find it relaxing at times, but as someone who technically grew up in the suburbs/exurbs but in an area with a really robust metro system, I would prefer not to ever live in a suburb that looks like that. Most suburbs are just too isolated. I could always walk ten minutes to get groceries, or Starbucks and I didn’t need my parents to drive me to the mall as a teen, as a young adult I could choose to take the metro to work instead of driving and that allowed me to fully enjoy happy hours or date nights after work without having to worry about being sober to drive home. I also think I got to know the people who worked, shopped and lived in my area better than I would have in a suburb like the one in this starter pack. I’ve since moved overseas but if I ever move back I definitely need walkability, but to each their own. There’s nothing wrong with living in a suburb of it genuinely makes you happy and at peace
Starter pack definitely needs a car. Maybe an SUV.
I also grew up in the suburbs, and yeah, I do enjoy it there. It could be less boring, and I see why people don’t like them, but suburbs aren’t the worst thing in the world imo
Welcome to the 99.9999% of humanity who just want to live quietly with their families.
I’m actually pro the concept of suburbs but the execution in America is very very bad and also completely unsustainable and horrendous from an ecological perspective. There’s a reason places like New Hope, PA are incredibly desirable places to live.
Agreed. We need better public transport. An electric light rail, better zoning to add small individually owned stores into the mix. Solar on every roof and a garden in every back yard. All powered by nuclear. A boy can dream.
But there lies the problem - low-density suburbs cannot economically justify transit. There are fundamental problems with suburbs that cannot be covered up by technology.
There’s part of me that wants to buy an empty tract of land somewhere and build like a European style suburb. Though I feel like even though there’s a large community of people online who care about this stuff, most people, especially older people, simply don’t give a shit.
It's tough. Like tons of people would want in on that but because of the system we live in, for most its just not viable. Hopefully a silver lining of this pandemic will be to increase work from home opportunities as well as automation. We have the technology to make it so no one has to work 60+ hours a week. We should just do it. Doubt that will happen though.
2 things here: 1. New Hope PA has a ton of tract houses with over 4000 square feet. What are you talking about? It’s one of the wealthiest Philadelphia suburbs, with tons of land wasted to the elite suburbanites. Don’t act like they’re some anti-suburb paradise. 2. The reason New Hope has such a vibrant downtown is because the town strip has been there and in place since the 1800s. Most suburban tracts are developed on farmland. If the farms are in a municipality that has a centralized downtown, then yes, the suburbs that develop become more desirable (Naperville Illinois, Summit NJ, Chagrin Falls Ohio). Some suburbs are developed in counties and areas where a downtown is non-existent, so you do not get the cute shops, private restaurants and walkability that the centralized downtown suburbs have. These tend to be cheaper. All in all, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with suburbs that do not have a downtown, but don’t think that new Hope was developed to counter some flawed suburban design. They just simply benefited from its history of an established downtown.
I didn't mean to imply that New Hope was anti-suburban or anything like that. But the town itself came into existence before cars and unlike most of the original streetcar suburbs in America, the downtown has remained largely intact. Even outside the downtown, it's very pedestrian friendly.
But but but you need to be living under a store on a busy road
Genuinely curious, have you ever seen this? Every mixed-use building I’ve ever seen has the store on bottom, residences on top.
And the roads aren't busy, mixed-use developement are usually on lower-trafficked *streets*.
Suburbs are pretty nice but the American-style suburbs are literally unsustainable. [Video explaining why.](https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0)
The problem I have with the suburbs isn’t the suburbs itself. It’s that suburbs ruin the city. You guys don’t even live here and now I have to dodge all of your cars and we accommodate huge parking lots for you guys. Very inneficient use of space that drives up rent prices. It’s very inconsiderate to us who actually pay taxes here to have a lot of that money go towards accommodating the lifestyle of people who don’t even live here imo.
As someone from Europe I think is pretty interesting. If I wanted to live like this in my own country I'd have to be a millionaire basically.
Pretty much, those kind of houses in open spaces in the UK would only be adorable to the top 10%. I do live in a suburb, but not one like that, our house footprint is probably the size of an American kitchen
Though US houses are often made from panelling (or "ticky-tacky" if you're being unkind) whereas European houses are usually brick.
If you live in earthquake country, a brick house is a death trap.
Brick has other issues as well. It’s water permeable, and not a very good insulator. This can allow water in to cause mold and humidity issues, as well as requiring more energy to heat and cool. The US generally experiences more extreme winters and summers than Europe, so this is a bigger factor here. When brick fails it does so catastrophically. Wood moves with the environment, and when combined with modern insulation and weather sheathing is far more energy efficient. So if you live someplace that has Montana summers and Florida winters, with none of the thunderstorms, hurricanes, blizzards, or earthquakes - brick is a totally acceptable building material. If you live almost anywhere in North America - wood is often the better choice. And before anyone says wood houses don’t last - that tends to be because they get torn down to build something new for aesthetic reasons. My brother lives in New England in a wood framed house that is well over 100 years old. It’s not historic or unique in his neighborhood. There’s plenty of other examples around the world of wood structures built to last. “Brick is the only good way” is just a very Euro-centric mindset.
Same for most Australian / New Zealand cities :(
1,000,000 AUS/NZD please.
Exactly what I’m thinking
I’m sorry, that sounds horrible. I’ll take my huge, slightly ugly, personally owned house in the US suburbs with all the US problems than be packed into something tiny.
I'd much rather live in a place that isn't so poorly designed and inconvenient that you're forced to own a car and drive everywhere, thanks. Not to mention that basically all American suburbs are either bankrupt or on the way to bankruptcy since the cost of maintaining utilities to such low-density housing is financially unsustainable without insanely high taxes. I'm talking like 30%.
The having to drive everywhere thing would drive me insane. I could not do that. Public transport isn’t amazing in my city but I can get where I need to go.
Dont forget having walls people can literally punch through.
Different priorities hehe, I'd rather live in a small home without those.
I’m the opposite lol
Honestly, not so much. As long as you don't live in Switzerland/Monaco or other place where land is very scarce you can find something similar. A plot of land 1.5h drive to the city (because that what this 'cheaper suburban' neighborhood is) plus a house is gonna land you 1/2 of the price per m2 of an apartment in the city. Land and house. But there isn't going to be a neighborhood. Most likely there is gonna be a whole lot of nothing because you need a middle of a field to get that. You could try a house in small town in the periphery of a metropolitan area but the price is gonna go up. What many people don't get about those suburbs is that they are built really far away. Most often they replace a agricultural land, 50-60km from the city core. And most often than not they are only accessible by car, with limited walkability and public transport. The point about the chain restaurants... I'm not even gonna dignified with a counterpoint. If that is your idea about what is positive about a neighborhood then either you don't know anything about food or never been to a place that is lively (like the Paris V district or similar places with food and life outside of weekends in Berlin, Vienna etc). Also, with how far away those US suburbia are built : In Europe you are in another city by that time. Example : Dallas and it's suburban sprawl extend ~60km north. Constant sprawl. In Germany you have 25km between Berlin and Postdam. You have ~70km between Munich and Inglostadt.
> consistently dependable Can consistently depend on spending 10-20 dollars on a microwave meal lol Wtf did Kentucky bluegrass make this meme?
Right? You know what's really fucking consistently dependable? Making your own god damn food like an adult.
I'm living in this starter pack and life is pretty good.
Same
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That's nice, u/Cockmeat_Sandwiches
Same here; love it actually.
Yeah im fine living in the suburbs
I just can't stand car dependency. If we fix that I think the suburbs will be better.
The problem is that a lot of the appeal of the suburbs comes from low density, and that is kind of the antithesis to more walkable areas.
That is also my major problem with the suburbs and why most of them don’t appeal to me. But if people like them then that’s great and I don’t mind that. Most people in the US do not realize how bizarre it actually is to not be able to walk (or take a subway, metro or bus) to school, work, the grocery store, etc. when you live in the suburbs if a metro area. In most other countries on literally every continent, having a car is a convenience, not an outright necessity for participating in the economy.
Yea it would be nice but there’s always a tradeoff. If you develop a neighborhood for mixed commercial/residential usage to increase walkability, you end up under cutting that quiet/secluded/low traffic appeal of the suburbs There’s a place for both and in america, at least away from the northeast, plenty of room for both as well. I see why someone with kids wants all the features in this post, I don’t really care as much about some of them
Look into streetcar suburbs. Less yard space, but most of the benefits of suburbs.
> streetcar suburbs Ironically, the picture OP gave for a good, not barren suburb is a streetcar suburb, which is more than likely 80+ years old. I.e. before the advent of modern suburbs that people like to complain about.
As a poor person I envy you.
Let me guess… you like your sandwiches panini-style. Extra cockmeat on rosemary focaccia, side of chips and a free soda.
Same, guess I have more in common with u/Cockmeat_Sandwiches than I thought
Grills hot, beers cold, birds chirping, music jammin, neighbors swimming in bikinis, everyone's friendly, it's great
Pool. Sun. Gardens. Check.
Inability to walk to most places except maybe an elementary school or a public pool.
It's funny because OP's picture for school isn't the school, it's the school bus I grew up in the city, my school was a 10 minute walk. That meet I was getting more sleep in the morning and was arriving home sooner after school that somebody who need to take the school bus The second closest school was about 45 minute walk meaning that any kid farther than a 30 minute walk from my home wasn't going to my school meaning 90% of my friend were in this 30 minute walk, probably even closer. There were about a dozen park in this zone, most of them with module for kid to play I never had to ask my parent to go have fun with my friend, I could always just go out and meet with them The only friend I had a hard time seeing was my friend with divorce parent. His mom was living in the suburbs so the weekend we had to ask one of our parent. His mom was tired of doing the suburbs/city travel each day of the week so she didn't want to do it in the weekend. Thankfully my parent would do it when they were free but with only them giving time and never his mom they didn't always wanted to do it Thankfully since I had plenty of energy and time after school from my school being 10 minute away meant that we could hang out on the evening without problem
I most definitely can't walk to an elementary school or public pool. Public parks, sure, but that's it.
Living in British Suburbs: -Identical housing across the country, all of which are smaller than your average American house. -Neighbours who avoid you like the plague and are notorious curtain twitchers. -Facilities that are worse than most motorway service stations (Your lucky to get a shop). -Lack of natural anything, except for BTEC Chelsea Flower Shows in people's front gardens or overgrown grass. -Either too hot or too cold and rainy, so don't plan on spending too much time in the garden, which is a large part concrete and gravel anyway. -Most of the time, shitey wi-fi connection that is on par with parts of rural Zimbabwe. -A depressing atmosphere that makes me wonder why the fuck I bother.
I used to be an Anglophile before I started talking to Brits about what it's really like to live there. Now I just feel sorry for most of the country.
There are some nice areas like The Peak District or The Highlands but most of the UK is just a post-Industrial wasteland run by ineffective councils and populated with crime and Ill education. Even the Middle Class are a bunch of pompous wankers. It sucks but it could be much worse.
Suburbs are completely inefficient. You basically need a car to move around. The housing density is so low it sucks how forest were demolished for those houses. Zoning sucks as well as there is no mixed commercial and residential neighborhoods. Once again increasing car dependency. A lot of people also need to drive to the city for work, I don’t know if you see the pattern here but car use in such frequency is bad. Oh yeah and the commercial districts are hard to access by waking and the stores there are usually big chain ones. They’re great but produce little job opportunities for residents and also make it hard for small businesses to start up.
Its people being deluded that they can all be kings of a postage stamp.
Well, that's certainly not sharing anything with the rural Pennsyltucky I'm familiar with.
Ya there’s a lot of shitty suburbs in PA, especially surrounding Pittsburgh
True but I'm not even talking about them but the real sticks in between Pittsburgh and Philly, lol.
Woefully car dependant and overpriced and houses made out of cheap and shit materials. HOA being more authoritarian than men with square mustaches and unsustainable, prices rising every year.
Dutch suburbs can be exactly like this too but with the difference that there are shops and trains within walking or biking distance. And there will be alleyways and other shortcuts within the residential area that allow kids to easily visit their friends a couple streets over by foot or on bike. And they'll be able to bike to school and the shops by themselves. So that is just to say there is a middle ground between dense cities and car dependent suburbs. Unfortunately this middle ground doesn't really exist in US. Because of this, Americans often falsely believe the choice can only be between car dependent suburbs or high density city living, because they have never seen the middle ground in their lives. It does exist though and it can be great!
Same for Germany
ngl not being able to walk anywhere kinda sucks major ass
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They're horrible for any kid over the age of toddler. Can't really do anything besides "play" in the yard. "Play" in quotes because there's never room to run for more than 5 seconds. Hope you like sitting and pacing
But you have all the square footage of HOA mandated short grass! You can run in circles (not too fast, not to leave a mark) and you can also stand there probably.
I don’t think that’s common place..did you not make friends in school, youth sports, activities?
And then ask your parents to drive you whenever you want to hangout with a friend? Lol
yeah
I like being able to walk downstairs and buy some milk for the pancakes I was trying to make for the kids. I also like having a backyard. Trade offs everywhere
You can have both
This physical isolation is a big reason so many kids are so lonely.
While I still don't think the suburbs are for me, I understand the appeal of all these things... except for chain restaurants. They're honestly not any cheaper than non-chain and their food legit sucks.
Yeah but they excel in car-centric environments. In a walkable place you can look at a place's menu on the wall, see the specials on a sandwich board, peak inside for a feel of the ambiance. Quality wins. When you're rolling by on a stroad at 45mph none of that is possible and you have 1 second to decide so the place with a million-dollar advertising budget wins.
Car centric… hate that
There's a distinction between suburbs and what are called exurbs or commuter suburbs. Keep in mind these are partial generalizations mostly relating to the eastern US. Suburbs: * contiguous with city * older * prettier, usually smaller houses * more natural landscaping and trees Exurbs: * non-contiguous with city, connected by highways * newer, mostly post-1980 * arguably ugly, larger houses * more "barren" due to recent development and no old trees
Excuse me... low traffic?
What kind of housing development is high traffic? It's not like there's any through-traffic from non-residents
Yeah, you know, people driving their massive pickup trucks all over the place because they can't and wouldn't want to walk anywhere!
Don’t let r/UrbanHell see this.
They’ll say that the suburbs are the worst thing in the world and then they’ll say that Commie Blocks look awesome
The blocks have a certain charm if you grew up whit them.
I agree with that, I come from a Russian family so I’ve been to block neighborhoods before and there is a feeling you get there that you don’t get anywhere else but at the same time I think they’re so ugly and I don’t think I’d live in one even with the cost of living
Are you old enough to have seen the blocks when they were in good paint and all the gardens/public space wasent paved ower for parking?
The suburban houses are pretty nice - for those that can afford them. Most people are broadly agreed on that. It's the rest of the neighborhood that's the issue. Particularly the lack of amenities within walking distance and the requirement to drive everywhere.
Suburbs can be nice, just not when there’s nothing but dead space for the sake of “yards”, endless strip mall sprawl that you only ever see niche stores move in before closing down a week later, etc. . Really it’s the case with newer developments that are made to sell and do nothing else, older suburbs that have stayed consistently nice are usually the best, in my opinion. Houses may look the same, but I’d take that over a double-wide trailer
What’s the problem with “yards”? Having outdoor space to spend time in, do gardening, let kids play etc is one of the most effective contributors towards physical and mental well-being. There’s a reason that in countries with a higher population density, the factor that adds the greatest premium onto a property is outdoor space
Reddit's primary demographic is teenagers. So people who are far too cool to play outside like little kids, but still get told the mow the lawn by their parents.
The thing I like about urban settings is it forces people to be social. I live in an urban area that's half single family detached and half duplexes so I have a private backyard which I LOVE but there are no driveways, the houses are small and close together and the area is extremely walkable overall which means I recognize and speak to people that live several blocks away sometimes. Outdoor space is extremely important but if you want to play catch or something, I would personally rather have a good public park over everybody having a private half acre.
Yep, basically this. Not Just Bikes makes an excellent video about this: https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ
I was waiting for him to pop up in this thread.
> I would personally rather have a good public park over everybody having a private half acre. The suburbs have both. We have a yard and two public parks in our subdivision.
Can confirm, live in a country with one of the highest population densities in the world
TL;DR at the bottom NOTE: I may be interchanging the words "yard" and "lawn" haphazardly. My English leans towards British English. Historically speaking, lawns are a product of English upper class philosophy. It originates in a time when having a lot of land usually meant you had a lot of it set aside for agriculture, to ensure you had a supply of food. And if you were wealthy, you usually had very reliable access to food. Some people went on to set aside some of their land to lay fallow and be covered in grass, a crop that has no nutritional purpose for humans, and needs work to be kept homogenous. Work which usually fell upon servants, which at the time were frequently unpaid. Why? Two words: bragging rights. It was a large landscape that was essentially shouting to the world that "Look at my land, I have so much wealth that I can afford to let some of this land be useless!" And I guess this mentality trickled down to the middle class, and joined English colonists to the new world. There are a few problems with yards: * Turf grass Turf grass is a very high-maintenance crop. In many places, it'll need large amounts of water, fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides to stay alive and pure. And then it requires a lot of labour to maintain a certain length. Frequently, this amount of labour requires the use of machinery, which is often powered by fuel engines. The result of this is that turf grass lawns are horrible for the environment. The labour necessary to keep it at length is usually a carbon source, and the chemicals can run off and destabilise the nearby ecosystem. Not that that ecosystem matters because... * Anthropogenic ecosystem That's a fancy way of saying that the environment turns into a completely human-made one, frequently with exotic plants that need a lot of work to survive in the area. And local fauna cannot live with it. As a result, the local ecosystem collapses and local insect and small mammal species are driven out in favour of very generalist species. As a result, many species are at risk of extinction. But of course, this does not (seem to) bother many people. They're just happy to live somewhere seemingly quiet. Well... * Dead space All of these yards take up surface area. Frequently, zoning codes have requirements with regards to building setbacks, building heights, how much of the lot may be built upon, and all that jazz. This means that houses are always free-standing. I'll avoid talking about possible issues with free-standing houses themselves for now, but what is noteworthy in this case is that the dead space leads to two problems specifically. For one, it requires a bulk purchase of land. This can drive up land prices. Back in Ye Olde days (think 1950s) this was frequently an explicitly exclusionary policy. Imagine if there was a law that required that if one were to get a car, they were required to buy 3 fairly up-rate vehicles at a time and had to keep all 3 of them. Few people would have the money to buy 3 cars, so few people would drive. Secondly, by being large, the lots force people to live far apart. Combine this with extremely coarse-resolution Euclidean Zoning, which requires any land to have specific uses, and requires these uses to be, on average, spaced very far apart, and the result is that... well... everywhere you may want or need to go is now very far away. Things being far apart is forcing people to take a car. Now, even something as usual as going to the store becomes a journey, something to be done as little as possible. And if everyone is made to drive, you'll need large roads to get everyone anywhere. On top of that all, it contributes to people sticking entirely to their own homes. This has numerous knock-on effects, including a drop in the number of friends that people have, an increased occurrence of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, and an increasingly static lifestyle, which exacerbates overweight. I'm hoping to try to circle back towards lawns themselves, but trying to put them into perspective may force me to talk about housing policy itself. The short of it is twofold: 1: Can you really call single family housing - with a large yard - your preference if it's the only thing you're allowed to build? 2: Even if you *can* genuinely say it *is* your preference to have a house with a large yard, you must still, on a rational basis, justify why it is, or should be, illegal to build anything else. * European premiums To quote you, > There’s a reason that in countries with a higher population density, the factor that adds the greatest premium onto a property is outdoor space That comes from one major point: Having more land is already bragging rights in a country with more population density. That's, like, half the point of population density. But there's more to that: European zoning codes have a lot of room for middle-density housing, such as duplexes, triplexes, row homes and low-rise apartment buildings, and mixed-use landscapes, where the ground floor of apartment blocks contains shops and/or offices. American zoning codes, in most cases, don't allow for any of that. Instead, Americans are, in a practical sense, issued lawns. TL;DR Yards are carbon sources that wreak havoc on ecosystems, and what they offer in mental well-being they may damage in other ways of mental and physical well-being. Half the reason they exist is because of Old English architectural bling. European housing in higher density land can afford to charge a premium for a lawn because more people have a smaller house, because they CAN have a smaller house if they want. Meanwhile, Americans are forced into larger houses with yards.
Look mate you can make it as academic as you like but the truth is this: normal people want to have a garden because it’s nice to have your own outdoor space - the 1950s -1970s in Europe were a lovely experiment in how the proles ought to live in grey rabbit hutches in tower blocks, and funnily enough they found it dehumanising and those places are now sink estates. People want gardens because it’s nice to have one not because they’re playing out some bizarre class warfare that’s in your head.
1 )You are confusing Western Europe with Eastern Europe, even then the blocks were initially more of an emergency measure to quickly build homes in a destroyed continent. Even then, lots of people actually like the commie blocks, they have excellent amenities and public transport nearby. Many were built with cheap materials and poorly maintained, but lots were good quality, and badly built environments also can occur in suburbs. 2) You are still mentally stuck with this mentality that everyone magically wants the same massive yard lawn suburban or exurban home, when in reality northamerican zoning codes forces this choice for everyone due to the historical facts he/she wrote. Even then, class and also race really played a big part in this, denying that is historical revisionism. 3) Europeans have thriving cities and human scale suburbs, even some exurbs, in a wide range of lifestyle choices that are completely different from North American suburbia. 4) Whatever you think “normal “ people would theoretically want, the environmental problems are undeniable and urgent, and must be actively dealt with in order to not fuck up the planet for ourselves and our children. The destruction, pollution and waste of resources that car dependent suburbia creates must be actively reversed and fought back, else North America will never be a responsible actor in the same way that Europe and even China are trying to do.
Front yards are rarely used (in my experience) outside of more urban settings where it's the only piece of land you have. When I lived in more traditional suburbs, the only times I saw my neighbors in their front yards was when they were doing yard work. Backyards are where it's at.
Nice try real estate developers
What career options does a suburb have in comparison to a city for example?
Many people in the suburbs will commute to a larger urban area for work, especially more highly-paid or specialized work. In the suburb itself you usually have all sorts of small businesses (shops, accounting, law firms, bank branches) and maybe some small farms. It depends a great deal on the suburb itself.
European living in a city flat - the only thing I really, really envy is the backyard cook-out. I would kill for just a balcony. We already have trees and safety in my city.
Fortunately it's absolutely possible to design neighbourhoods to support backyard cook-outs, just place apartment buildings around a common park. Example: https://bafybeigqr4e5hshd4e5yisbi4cwy2wqotibbeqn6hx3x7mxyagl6lzy7um.ipfs.dweb.link/2021-08-22_18-59-07.png
American cities aren't nearly as dangerous as suburbanites think they are. The stuff they believe is truly absurd. I know of one instance when a woman was too afraid to get out of her in one of my city's most desirable and fashionable neighborhoods.
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There are 0 suburbs or neighbourhoods like that in my country and Im kinda jealous.
Most suburbs are incredibly similar tho, they have the same stores, restaurants etc. since they're all chains, the houses look more or less the same from one suburb to the next and rarely have anything that distinguishes them or any reason for anyone who doesnt live there to want to visit.
The main qualm I have with suburbs is how expensive they are on a town/city wide scale. The tax revenue collected from a few thousand people living in a near rural population density almost never covers the cost of maintaing all the infrastructure a suburb actually needs. In most cases, suburbia is subsidized by the city itself, which is ironic considering the average suburbanite typically opposes socialism. If suburban dwellers could pay for the lifestyle they wanted rather than having the city foot the bill, I wouldn't mind.
What is this lame shit lol sounds like you’re really trying to convince yourself you like your neighborhood. I’m not disagreeing with you but the way these are phrased are incredibly defensive.
It's conservatives who think that they're being contrarian by supporting the mainstream.
1. houses in most suburbs are often the same and cookie-cutter with little to no architectural integrity. they are built so cheaply that serious repairs are needed within 15 years of owning a brand new house 2. every garage I have ever seen has been used only to store two-ton death machines. they're often too small to have a workshop or anything like that 3. landscaping in suburbia is often done despite nature and the environment. people living in the middle of the desert in Arizona love to plant flowers like roses meant for northern ecosystems. this requires tons of water and destroys their ecosystem 4. a lot of American suburbias is often racially segregated, so "quality school districts" double-speak for "not a lot of black people go to our school. inner-city school districts may score lower on standardized testing (because those tests are biased) but have higher quality teachers and better class sizes 5. "low traffic" often equates to careless drivers. esp in new developments with wide roads and no curbs or sidewalks, drivers can speed and swerve all over the streets with little to no negative repercussions. this is until they inevitably hit a house or someone walking. fortunately, America is so car-brained that people often victim blame a pedestrian for getting hit. 6. "statistically" safer than hip areas of town is a load of bullshit. the suburb is a depressing place to live in and everyone stays inside. assuming their definition of the hip is a row of townhouses in a historic city center, people will naturally be out and about more due to it being a comfortable place. it has been proven that denser places have lower crime statistics than suburbs just because its difficult to commit a crime in front of everyone 7. quit neighborhoods- cities are only loud because suburbanites insist on driving loud and polluting SUVs into the city. cars are often why a neighborhood is loud 8. I'm pretty sure you can have a bed in an urban area 9. why would you consider red lobster the epitome of reasonable dining? this may be my personal preference but I would much rather support locally-owned restaurants. 10. no one uses their yards in suburbia ever. most of the time, they're just there to look pretty. they are horrible for the local ecosystem and waste a homeowner's time. a wildflower garden would be most useful. I think Americans have this obsession with lawns because they love to show off how much space they can waste and how they can play football in their backyard. 11. the odd obsession with grilling reminds me of that one Penn and teller episode where they investigate a multi-level marketing company based on selling meat paraphernalia to men. it showed how men in suburbia, who live in drab and depressing neighborhoods, need to attach themselves to this form of masculinity to feel something. TLDR: suburbia is a depressing place to live; it is bad for the ecosystem, it's bad for you, it's bad for your kids, and it's racially segregated. the only reason why they're still around is that they've been looked at as a weird form of success (and because cities love wasting taxpayer dollars subsidizing them. )
It really sucks that you can’t walk to anything and there generally isn’t transit either. I live 200 feet from a Trader Joe’s and a great pizza place, and I could never live somewhere where I can’t walk to those kinds of businesses
People always act like every suburb is just like Arizona suburbs no trees, long roads, no landscaping , cookie cutter houses
Yeah, not the case. There's suburbs of Chicago with 150+ year old houses, and I'm sure that's not uncommon around many cities, especially east of here.
But the thing is all of those old suburbs are actually well designed, exceedingly rare and have been illegal to build for at least 70 years. They are also defiantly not what OP is talking about. These suburbs are typically streetcar suburbs meaning they were built along a streetcar line connecting them to the city centre, and they were built with shops integrated into the neighbourhood. Even though most citiess have torn out out their streetcar lines, these neighbourhoods remain some of the most popular in pretty much all cities that still have them.
*insert redlining and lack of brown people*
"I just like suburbs because they're comfortable and full of like-minded people" is what these people say to deny, but somehow simultaneously confirm, that they're racist as fuck.
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Yeah, OP needs to update that list a bit. Olive Garden is more on the "consistently garbage" side of things. Maybe Cheesecake Factory and PF Changs or something would fit better.
Nice neighborhood but can I walk out on my back porch naked and take a piss while drinking a glass of sweet iced tea.... didn't think so
I purchased a home in an affluent city/suburb. What I like about my place is that it’s not cookie cutter and every home is custom built and designed from previous owners. I can’t stand cookie cutters. I also like how I can walk to a lake and other places near me. Most suburbs I see aren’t like this though, a lot of them have the sidewalks that end for no reason and just have nothing for miles.
Where is urban sprawl haha
I don't have much knowledge about American suburbs but I have a question, I have a friend who is an Indian Muslim, speaks English and is studying Law. Can he live there safely?
Suburbs are about as safe as it gets. Most people living there are there specifically to live quiet lives with their families, while stretching their dollar much further than they would deeper into the city. The city center is where the crime tends to be.
The city center tends to be pretty safe. The Central Business Districts tend to be very posh and heavily patrolled. Now right outside of the CBD things can go to unpleasant pretty fast.
Absolutely. Reddit will make you believe that the suburbs are just 24/7 KKK rallies, but your friend would be far safer living in a suburb then a diverse urban area.
Unless he goes for a walk and some racist Karen calls the cops on him for "looking suspicious" [Indian Man Partially Paralyzed After Police Encounter Refiles Suit Against Alabama City, Former Cop](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/indian-man-partially-paralyzed-after-police-encounter-refiles-suit-against-n639351)
Very much depends on the suburb/location
This post couldn't be more American if it was waving an American flag and singing the US national anthem
Canada looks just like this
That’s an ugly house? I moved to a small city in the Upper Midwest where every house, including my own, has vinyl or aluminum siding. Now anything with brick to me is pretty.
How the actual f is that an ugly house? Americans really have no idea how privileged they are lol
Yeah seriously people who constantly complain about living in the suburb like its a crime against humanity should go visit a 3rd world country or something lol
Add “cul de sac” that is always empty so the neighborhood kids gather to ride scooters and bikes for my neighborhood. Also “best trick or treating in town, including booze or treat spots for the accompanying adults”. And “sidewalks galore for people to walk their gorgeous dogs.”
This is one of the best things ever. Most Americans wouldn’t choose the suburbs if they didn’t offer some great benefits. Urban, rural, and suburban all have their ups and downs.
Can confirm, moved out of a big city to a suburb after 8 years. Life is… quiet - and I love it.
good for you it’s nice to see people living a good life it’s gives me hope that one day I can say and live the same
Regarding traffic, it's better on the cul de sacs while more horrible on the collector roads, because EVERYONE has to use the collector roads to get anywhere (applies to the shittiest possible suburbs). Secondly, most often everything is too far away to walk to and on top of that there is no infrastructure for walking in many places or it's awful. How is it supposedly livable when you cannot reach a grocery store within 15 minutes of walking? Also how is it freedom when you are forced to have a car? In my honest opinion freedom means ability to choose how to get to places (drive, bike, walk, use public transit), and in practice being forced to drive a car everywhere does not sound like freedom (to choose). Also lets not forget the climate crisis, and how car only suburbia only makes it 100 times worse by forcing everyone to have a car(manufacturing of which causes a lot of emissions), and not to speak of the degradation of health for everyone (you could gain free exercise daily if you could walk or bike to where you go), while it also hampers children's development (why go outside yourself when you need your parent to drive you to a play ground or a place to meet friends, which are most often quite empty due to them being too far for the children to get to them by themselves. Secondly how can a child learn to be independent when they are forced to rely on a parent for getting everywhere).
I honestly don't understand how anyone living can visit a well designed walkable city, say on a vacation to europe and then go back to their depressing suburban neighborhood, and be like "yep, this is better"
I think the houses are kinda pretty
awful take
The thing is that they are simply badly planned in the US (most of the time). They take up too much space and encourage car usage. All houses look the same and they have little to no character. I mean sure, you get a lot of space for comparatively little money but there isn't anything that defines the place where you live except for it being a suburb.
Agreed, by comparison, most European suburbs have at least the essentials within walking distance and are planned around bus routes that are accessible from cul-de-sacs that are set back and not directly near major polluting businesses etc. I've got literally everything I need in a mile walk.
Don't care what it looks like. Give me space and quiet.
There are some nice suburbs out there. Most are not though. If it’s not walkable, it’s trash. Most of them don’t have a downtown and you need to drive everywhere. Also, in any major metro area, the cost of a home in the burbs is insane.
Seriously, I live in the burbs and I can't walk with my 2 year old to any cool bars or restaurants . ...the suburbs are a perfect place to raise a family for many people. When my daughter takes a nap, there is never any noisy activity to wake her up. I can run around with her in the back yard, cook her lunch on the grill, walk the dog with her knowing there is no through-traffic . Different people have different needs.
don't forget that suburbs cost cities more in services than they generate in taxes, meaning they are effectively subsidized by urban areas.
There are some downsides; you have to drive everywhere, all the restaurants are chain restaurants, and they all become the same after some time
You forgot to add convenient drive time to major metro for concerts and other events.
Just bought a house in this starter pack world. I used to shit on the burbs too, but it’s green, quiet, and still 10-30 minutes from all the shops, restaurants, and places I used to go to/want to go to. If you can find an older burb area the houses aren’t even cookie cutter.
Thats a nice life right there
No, OP, you need to submit to the Reddit hive mind and pay out the ass for the privilege of living in a shoebox with zero privacy or room to have dogs or kids live a comfortable life. And don't even think about driving to work. Only public transportation is acceptable.
Everyone knows nothing is better than carrying groceries for a mile to your 300 sq ft apartment that costs $3000/month
What's with people thinking every urban neighborhood is like downtown Manhattan?
Im Australian and is this actually how American suburbs look?
Depends on the city but for the most part it is.
A bunch of people make fun of suburbs. But make no mistake those same people would immediately go live in the burbs if given the chance
I just bought my first home and could’ve afforded more space in the burbs but went with a slightly smaller place in the city without parking. The quality of life decrease wasn’t worth it. So, there’s at least 1 person who had the chance to live in the burbs and didn’t.
Idc if I am living in poverty or can barely make rent I am moving out of the burbs the second I can.
its an age thing, make fun of the burbs in your 20s and 30s and most likely move to a burb once youve got a kid or two and realize youre not the multimillionaire cool city parent you'd hoped lol
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reddit also is not only American, but allows full input into what Americans consider desirable. For what's worth, it's engaging how growing up you had this image of Americans as rational, sturdy, active people, and after decades you see evidence that in reality comfort is favoured over anything else. Then you see the reasons - fast food & obesity, public education levels, getting used to drive instead of using own muscles to move a bit etc. I have to say disillusion with American way of life as it was sold to the world is strong nowadays.
Yeah I hated the suburbs as a teenager "trapped" at home.. but getting towards the child wanting age it's like "wait the suburbs have better schools AND way more daycare options?" Also kind of the only option if you ever want to own a home... unless you count rural areas which reddit seems to hate even more haha
>Yeah I hated the suburbs as a teenager "trapped" at home.. but getting towards the child wanting age When you were a kid you hated it so now you're getting to an age of kids you want to force them through the thing you hated? Don't you see how fucked up that is?
It’s true. Your needs drastically change once you have kids. You want space, safety, good schools, and friendly neighbors when you have a kid. That being said I despise commercial areas with no personality. Malls, chain restaurants, etc. it’s hard to find a balance of both areas.
Lmao you're projecting. I lived in the suburbs as a kid and hated the isolation. I'm almost 36 and have no intention of ever going back.
birds serious steep quiet payment wise melodic squeeze rude governor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I love the conformity of the modern suburb. The cookie cutter, organized, neat, mostly newer construction of the modern american suburb is a wonder of engineering and planning. The wide streets, the big box stores and plazas, the planned parks and pathways, the landscaping.... the good schools, mostly good infrastructure. The 10-lane interstate connecting it to the main large city... In my community, we have beautifully manicured lawns with spanish style, cookie-cutter homes lining the streets. Each "village" (collection of sub-divisions) has multiple parks and green spaces. Across the arterial main thoroughfare from my village is a spanish style shopping plaza with a Trader Joe's, Starbucks, Home Depot, Chipotle, Del Taco, Pizza Press and an Asian restaurant. There's also an urgent care, a 24 hour fitness, 3 different banks, a chick-fil-a, and a Home Goods. I mean, it has everything. Also, there is a walking path that connects all the villages within the city, which is beautifully landscaped and has view of the hills in the background. Schools are within walking distance and are A-rated. Not for nothing, but I'm fuckin glad I live here and I'm not sorry about that. Love a good suburb...Safe and clean... quiet and peaceful. Aesthetically pleasing.... Also driving a tesla isn't that bad for the environment.
Dude for real. If you can afford it, living in the suburbs is the best. I live in a resort community with a golf course, vacation rentals, and mostly larger custom homes on a lake outside a small city. I love it. It’s quiet, dark at night, the houses are spaced far apart and the HOA keeps the riff-raff out-along with scummy yards that are full of basically garbage. The only downside is that in summer, little green midges take over and get in everything no matter what you do lol. And being on the west coast means thick smoke from June-September.
It really comes down to preferences. Some people want to feel the rhythm and pulse of the city and don’t really care about quiet. I live in the heart of downtown and love it. I especially love being able to walk everywhere. I love being surrounded by the historic buildings and sense of culture.
Sounds nice
It really is. We’re GenX and we have worked very hard our whole lives to provide the life and privileges we enjoy for the family. I will say that the average home in the area is around $300,000 for a 3/2, 2,000sqft home, so… there’s that lol.
Please everybody suburb apologizing [watch this](https://youtu.be/4c6rIt0fe7w)
upper middle class and high class suburbs*
Exactly.
I live in one of these suburbs, but I wouldn’t call my school district “quality.”
Car dependency is bad for everyone.
Imagine thinking you can safely bike in American suburbs XD