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I must sound like an alien, but what is suburbia? How do I know if I live there?

• johan_larson 10y ago
  To a first approximation, if you are living in an area where most people live in separate single-family homes, but you are not surrounded by fields or orchards, you are living in a suburb. If you are surrounded by fields, you're in a rural environment. If people around you live in multi-family structures, you are in an urban environment. I'm sure there are more formal definitions, too.
  • amyjess 10y ago
    Mind you, there are apartment complexes in the suburbs, too. It's just that suburban apartments are large campuses with over a dozen buildings either two or three stories tall, not high-rise towers. A good rule of thumb is that if buildings taller than 3-4 stories are few and far between, you're in the suburbs.
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
    Ok I am in them, and it doesn't suck that much. Sometimes I wish there were more fields though, and other times I'm glad to have a grocery store nearby.
• justanotherbody 10y ago
  Another question - how do we differentiate between suburbs? I grew up near Kent, WA in a suburban area as described in the article (windy non-grid roads, houses with 2 or 3 car garages, no bus service except a single commute bus at a park and ride accessible only by car or walking on the shoulder) Now i live North of Seattle in an area with single family homes, grid streets, public facilities, busses, bike trails. You know the... Suburbs These two places are nothing alike to live in. They need different names... Fwiw the article only spoke of tearing down the former to me, though with an overloaded term who knows for certain