8 ms·

Barren American Suburbs

tharne 6y ago
What most academics and others like them tend to miss about the American suburbs, is that most Americans like their suburbs. The American suburbs are the Toyota Camry of housing. Kind of boring and somewhat ugly, but affordable, functional, and ultimately well-liked by the end-user.
- kemiller2002 6y ago
  You describe suburbs likes it's the Microsoft Word of places to live.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Or maybe most of them don't know better? Anecdotally, I met thousands of Americans in my life, and I'd say the vast majority of them never cease to praise the life and balance of small European cities.
  - bdamm 6y ago
    Partly I'd say it's about real estate ownership. In the US, living in a city means either spending enormous sums on real estate (suffocatingly so) or renting. But in the US, real estate ownership is incentivized as a primary way to build wealth and stability for old age and retirement. Thus, rent is viewed as a short term living situation. But, affordable real estate that acts to build wealth, especially for people who needed to spend their early career paying off student loans or don't have parents that can buy them a down payment, can only be found in the suburbs. So it seems to be more structural due to government. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I like having a big yard with dogs and a cul-de-sac for my kids to play in.
  - viklove 6y ago
    As an actual American, I've never heard anyone talk about small European cities. Are you from Europe? If you're only talking to American tourists in Europe, there's going to be some strong selection bias favoring people who like Europe and want to visit.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Well, and with respect to cities generally, there are many cities I like to visit quite a bit that I really wouldn't care that much to live in--especially if it meant giving up my ex-urban/rural home.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Let me add my own anecdote about the bubble I live in. I currently live in a Asian city where nearly everyone lives in apartments and takes very good transit (although cars are very popular despite the massive import taxes). Coming from the US, I’ve been told many times how envious they are that one can buy a single family home in the US, not share walls with neighbors and have a home over 1,000 at ft (rare to find one over 900 here, most are 600-700 2 beds). That type of single family housing is purely for the ultra rich here. Not within reach of the even the upper middle class.
- naravara 6y ago
  Though unlike the Camry, the “affordability” is a mirage derived from being heavily subsidized by state and federal tax codes, decisions about how to prioritize infrastructure spending to promote sprawl, and zoning and housing policies that discourage any other form of development.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    You couldn't be more spot-on. The affordability aspect is also subsidized by green house gas emissions, and cheap oil.
- brnt 6y ago
  Is there evidence for your claim? How many were (made) aware of alternatives? It's easy to accept local customs, so much so that you think you like them, but that doesn't really prove anything more than that habituation is a thing.
  - dismalpedigree 6y ago
    Its not Stockholm syndrome. I have lived in urban cities as well as rural settings. I like my suburban lifestyle. You like the city or rural living? Great. You do you. Don’t assume because other people choose something different than you that they must be ignorant to the other options. It just different. Not wrong.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Stockholm is a great city!
    - brnt 6y ago
      You did nothing to disprove its not Stockholm syndrome. Also you assumed things about me while asking me to not assume things about you. Make sense!
- alistairSH 6y ago
  Do they like them because of inherent qualities of US-style suburbs, or do they like them because that's all they know? Also, suburbs are only affordable because we continue to defer infrastructure maintenance. At some point, we will have to pay to maintain all the bridges, roads, etc. I'm not anti-suburb necessarily. But, I do loathe the car-based culture we've created. And the rage that any mention of alternative transport seems to elicit among many suburb dwellers (who also love to bitch about traffic problems, but only want more tarmac as a solution).
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I think a lot of the rage against alternative transit is the apparent bias among many such proponents to "First, we make car travel much, much less appealing; only after that's accomplished, then we'll hope to make alternative modes competitive with the nerfed version of private automobiles."
    - watwut 6y ago
      I had encountered unexpected hostility against cyclist on the road. No making car travel unappealing was involved, just someone existed on bike and someone else somehow took it as provocation.
    - alistairSH 6y ago
      That hasn't been my experience at all (living in the DC suburbs). Local example: I live in Reston VA. We've slowly been adding bike lanes to existing roads as other improvements are made. In some cases, this required cutting from 2 lanes to 1 lane. However, in all cases, traffic timings and accident analysis was undertaken and in all cases that I've seen, traffic flow either improved or if there was a decrease, it was on the order of 1-2 seconds per mile traveled. Additionally, in most cases, traffic accidents of all kinds were reduced. But, you wouldn't know it from listening to the anti-bike crowd. They see the reduction in lane count and immediately jump to "nobody rides bikes!", "run them over" or worse. Seriously, it's that bad. I'll also add that in some places, the bike lanes are rarely used, but that's as as direct result of poor designs created to silence the noisy motorists. Another local example - the main thoroughfare along my neighborhood has bike lanes. However, the lanes stop just prior to the two places you would want to ride your bike - the high school and the shopping center. So, of course fewer people use the lanes - they don't actually GO anywhere! It's infuriating. Edit - the sidewalks along this same thoroughfare also start/stop or switch sides. This makes it less tenable to walk to the school or shopping (the road is about 2 miles end-to-end; shopping center at one end, high school near mid-point). Lots of people are within 1 mile of either destination, but running back and forth across a 45mph busy road is simply unsafe. A pedestrian was killed a year ago running from the sidewalk on one side to his home on the other. How the heck is this even to code? Argh.
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  > most Americans like their suburbs. Nothing wrong with saying that, but it's a loose characterization based strictly on opinion. There's real and tangible problems with urban/sub-urban planning in the USA that go far deeper than whether someone "likes" something. It deserves exploration and critique. It's not merely a consumer choice.
- kgermino 6y ago
  I completely agree, most people like their suburbs. However, I do wonder if there's a connection between American suburbanization and our mental health crisis. Modern suburbs are kind of anti-community and anti-human compared to most historical cities and towns. You're surrounded by people, but miss out on a lot of the small interactions that come from being close together. You're dependent on a car, so regularly stuck in traffic and can't go anywhere on your own. The boring/ugly aspects might be uninspiring. All fo this is "normal" so you don't notice it in your day to day life, but it adds up. I'm probably completely wrong here, but when I see the massive mental health and drug issues from otherwise rich, stable, suburban families I wonder if there's a connection.
  - zdragnar 6y ago
    Mental health and drug issues pervade society. I have lived in suburbs, dense city and rural countryside. The density has no say on the quality of your neighbors or the extent to which you will interact with them. In fact, if my anecdotal experience were made a rule, it would be "the more densely you pack people together the less they function as a community". Of course it isnt true as a rule, but it has been my personal experience.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I think this has more to do with you and the local culture (like, block-by-block) than urban vs. suburban. in the suburbs, you can drive back and forth between your home garage and office and never speak to anyone. but you can do the same thing on foot in a city. in my city, people don't usually strike up conversations with random strangers on the street. or if they do, it's just a one-off; you'll probably never see that person again. in the suburbs, if you spend a lot of time on your porch, you'll probably get to know the neighbors that hang out on their porches. there's a pretty similar dynamic on the stoops of residential blocks in a city. if I had to make a general rule, I'd say there are more people who could potentially be your friend in a city, but the barrier to becoming friends with each one is higher. you bump in to more people, but less frequently.
  - cafard 6y ago
    If you are a kid, or if you have kids, you will shortly know a lot of people in your suburb, or such has been my experience.
- mint2 6y ago
  I hate suburbs. I’m American. Anyway First of all, most people simply like what they know and think is expected and do not bother thinking about the unknown or trying different lifestyles, I.e. suburbs. People settle into their lifestyle no matter how bad or good it is and do not question it, whether it’s their suburban environment or food habits or child easing or whatever. Pointing to something that is the current standard and saying people like it, that’s why it’s the standard is naive.
- spicyusername 6y ago
  What is not to like about affordable housing and good schools? I think there is too much emphasis in these discussions on 99%-invisible style urban design and not enough on the simple socio-economic calculus the average homeowner does when deciding where to live. It doesn't matter how walkable your neighborhood is, how broad the restaurant selection, how ethnically diverse the community, or how many different forms of public transportation there are, if the perception is that housing is expensive and schools are bad, many people are not going to move in, even if they would otherwise enjoy those amenities. Until urban areas can meaningfully compete on those two metrics for the average person in the U.S., the suburbs are here to stay.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    And you see this broadly in where people choose to live. It's a stereotype, which is no less true for that, that young college-educated people have been tending to move into cities especially over the last 25 years and then move out to a suburb when they get married and have kids. And really it's been going on longer than that. A bunch of people I went to grad school with went to work in Manhattan in finance and lived there. Maybe one or two of them still do.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  This is a Canadian take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYYdQB0mkEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYYdQB0mkEU The suburbs are hell if you are young and don't have a car, don't have friends, etc. If you are a bit older you might like the square footage and relative quiet of the suburbs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_from_Las_Vegas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_from_Las_Vegas are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am... are good reflections on American Vernacular architecture; that first book in particular has a collection of comments from clients such as "if I wanted this I wouldn't have hired an architect". Jane Jacobs liked the idea of cities developing organically according to what people want and the suburbs provide that in the form of a market, but the market is set very much by government standards for what kind of house is mortagable, zoning laws, etc. In the US "suburb" can mean different things. On one hand I think of the area in Santa Monica around the Mormon temple which is all beautiful small single family homes on spectacularly landscaped tiny lots. On the other I think of the diabolical geometry of Southern New Hampshire (where I grew up) where low-density subdivisions were organized around the highways like the way your lungs are organized but when your car reaches the highway it is like a demolition derby without a clear hierarchy because those subdivisions put induced demand on the highway (simply because it is efficient for motorists to live close to the highway;) no wonder people in NH just legalized flying cars!
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >Jane Jacobs liked the idea of cities developing organically according to what people want I like a lot of Jacobs' ideas. I'm also somewhat amused when a lot of people (not saying you) praise her because she fought back against NYC highway plans. But the fact that she liked cities to develop along the lines of what the community wants sounds a lot like NIMBYism which many of the same people oppose as well.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > What most academics and others like them tend to miss about the American suburbs, is that most Americans like their suburbs. Is income taken into account? > Like published happiness research, the State of the City survey shows that reported satisfaction is highly correlated with income. Some 88 percent of those with incomes over $75,000 said their community was excellent or good; only 66 percent of those with incomes of less than $30,000 said the same. It’s worth noting here that the impact of income is larger than the impact of location in influencing satisfaction (a 9 percent difference between city and suburb as opposed to a 22 percent difference between high and low-income groups. These data suggest that the real headline finding of this survey should be “higher income people are more satisfied with the places they live.” * https://cityobservatory.org/are-suburbs-really-happier/ https://cityobservatory.org/are-suburbs-really-happier/ Survey in question: * http://www.citylab.com/politics/2014/08/overall-americans-in-the-suburbs-are-still-the-happiest/378964/ http://www.citylab.com/politics/2014/08/overall-americans-in...
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> what me and perhaps many other Europeans think about the American suburb is simply not apparent to a lot of Americans. I share this sentiment a lot. Especially given my 30+ years growing up and living in Italy, and 8+ years in the San Francisco Bay Area. I liked how this article provided clear examples of what's different, and what's important, about a city. A great book I'd recommend is Happy City, by Charles Montgomery. [0] It will most likely change your perspective on how a city should be, but often isn't. [0]: https://thehappycity.com/the-book/ https://thehappycity.com/the-book/
readflaggedcomm 6y ago
The page won't load, but this does (with Javascript disabled to prevent medium's script from breaking the archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20210323150321/https://erik-engheim.medium.com/barren-american-suburbs-a8749bd56f1 https://web.archive.org/web/20210323150321/https://erik-engh... --- Maybe he should have used a map that indicates parks.
- Brendinooo 6y ago
  >The character encoding of the plain text document was not declared. The document will render with garbled text in some browser configurations if the document contains characters from outside the US-ASCII range. The character encoding of the file needs to be declared in the transfer protocol or file needs to use a byte order mark as an encoding signature. Weird.
alistairSH 6y ago
Warning: Site attempts to download something on load. No HTML there.
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ghaff 6y ago
I won't really dispute the general point but you can certainly find small cities and suburbs that have a walkable core with residential buildings within walking distance. There are quite a few in Silicon Valley and outside Boston. Do you still need to drive a lot of places? Certainly. But the suburbs aren't all cookie cutter houses distant from strip mall retail.
zepto 6y ago
“American suburbs is a study in endless repetition. Houses lined up after each other in repetitive patterns.” There is an innuendo that this is fundamentally bad, but surely this is true of many urban environments. Think of london for example - streets are generally rows of identical looking houses repeated, and this is true whether we’re talking about the suburbs or the fanciest parts of central london.
- onorton 6y ago
  I think the difference being is that you don't have to get in the car just to leave it. I myself live about 5 minutes walk from a major train station in London whose trains go past my flat and it only takes me another five minutes walk in the opposite direction to find a completely different area. Now, some of the commuter towns of London are a different story. Edit: Making it clear I'm not using the train which I realise could be misconstrued from my previous wording. The train station was just a reference to how busy my local area can be.
  - zepto 6y ago
    > I think the difference being is that you don't have to get in the car just to leave it. Again there is an innuendo that this is fundamental bad. In my experience (having lived in London for decades), for most people who live within 5 minutes of a major train station, which is not most Londoners, it’s not even practical to have a car at all, and even if you do, just getting out of the city can take an hour. London is great if you like urban environments and don’t like cars. But I don’t see why that should be a universally held preference.
    - onorton 6y ago
      I don't mean leaving the city by public transport or whatever. I mean leaving the monotony of a particular area which I thought you meant in your OP. Streets in London typically aren't the same for literal miles, whereas they can be in the case of some American suburbs where you need a vehicle like a car to escape it. To be clear, my reference to the train station was to indicate how busy my local area can be. But despite that, you don't have to walk very far to find somewhere a bit more tranquil.
neogodless 6y ago
What might not be apparent to this author is that lots of Americans dislike American suburbs, too. At least this one does. I also had a hard time telling the photos from Norway from places I've seen in the United States. It's quite large and diverse, unlike those suburbs! > Norway is approximately 323,802 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km, making United States 2,937% larger than Norway. There is, of course no doubt that the automobile enabled lifestyle is predominant here. And I also don't have any expectation of anyone emigrating from Norway to move to a boring American suburb! But if they wanted scenes like those photos from Oslo, there are places in America that look like that. Of course, the author and I probably share some of the same feelings - we do not think our country is perfect, but we do hope to see the good things our country has, and perhaps feel some draw to defend what people think of our country when the merits are questioned!
listless 6y ago
We have exactly the kind of suburbs he’s describing. See Franklin, TN or even Palo Alto. The problem is that it’s ludicrously expense to live close enough to all the action. My guess is far more expensive than Nordic countries.
- ghaff 6y ago
  It varies. There are smaller cities that are quite nice and not too expensive in the Southeast for example. What you don't have is much of the way of public transit. However, in general, living near the center of a walkable small city or town is probably going to cost you more than a cookie-cutter suburb a bit more off the beaten track. (And once you get ex-urban or rural, there's usually a town center but probably not much in the way of commerce there.) The suburbs like this around Boston that pop to mind are relatively expensive.
jasode 6y ago
There are many comments claiming that "walkable" neighborhoods are better for everyone which is why mixed-use neighborhoods should make the most sense. But with southern hot cities like Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, etc, walking anywhere outside for more than 10 minutes will leave you a dripping sweaty mess. I think this is why the USA doesn't see a tidal wave of walkable neighborhoods. Thus, suburbs requiring cars (with air conditioning) still rule. Even in Florida retirement communities where there's a "planned" walkable neighborhood with a nearby fitness center and small grocery store, most use motorized golf carts instead of walking. Unlike coastal cities with ocean breezes like San Francisco, walking is very uncomfortable in many places. Another issue with grid street neighborhoods is that many don't like thru traffic and noise. Thus the dead-end cul-de-sacs that many academics hate are loved by residents who prefer the reduced car noise and extra privacy. American suburbs is one of those topics where mainstream media misleads their readers. If you only read from New York Times, New Yorker, or even the topmost upvoted threads on HN, you'd miss out on the "dark matter" of residents who genuinely prefer American style suburbs. [EDIT] : I want to add some more comments for those think many Americans are unaware of the advantages of dense living and their choice of suburbia is from ignorance. The counterpoint to that is many Americans follow this life timeline: - early 20s (single no kids) : going to college in a city or working at a downtown firm so they enjoy the dense city living like Manhattan, Chicago, etc... walking to restaurants and bars, museums, cultural things - mid-life with kids: they enjoyed cities in their younger years but they want to raise a family so they move out to the suburbs. They want the better schools, yard, garage to putz around in etc. - retired and kids are grown leaving an "empty nest": some senior citizens might sell the suburb house and move to a city condo and walk to museums again. My point is that many people who live in suburbs are quite informed by real life experience to the advantages of "walkable cities" but the still prefer suburbs for its advantages as well. This aspect is underreported by the mainstream media.
- duxup 6y ago
  I'd love to live downtown and have access to so much. At the same time my suburban street is pretty isolated and quiet, and I can just send my kids outside to do whatever unsupervised without a second thought ... there's a bunch of fairly wild reserved area bordering and near my house.... I see it as a tradeoff and I'm not sure I'd make that trade for the city right now.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
Most of the Middle East, Africa, southeast Asia, and India have hotter temperatures and yet still manage to have old-style walkable cities. A lot of the architecture is designed to minimize heat and trap cold air. See riads in Morocco, for instance. The truth is that Americans are just a bit lazy. (I am American, so this is self-criticism.)
- xapata 6y ago
  And they've designed their cities poorly.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > The truth is that Americans are just a bit lazy. Seems like a bit of a stretch. Especially since your argument includes things like building architecture. It's more likely that it's less profitable to create such architecture, naturally discouraging the creating of walkable cities in the summer months. It's worth remembering that unless it's required by code, it's usually not done when it comes to many professional builders.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    So not "lazy" but "cheap"?
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Your average commuter has no input on city design or the minutiae of the cost/profit ratios involved in building the city. The blame should instead lay with those who incentivize profit over city improvement.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    Then it just means we are too lazy to care about anything other than profit. Subsequently we suffer for it.
    - falcolas 6y ago
55555 6y ago
If an American developer wanted to, can they mix commercial zones into suburbs/residential zones? Can you put a shop every 10 houses? I'm honestly not even sure how this works legally. Because you never see it. It's a grid of neighborhoods with strips of shops along the biggest connecting roads.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  there's not much you can say about zoning in america as a whole. every locality has its own set of complicated rules. some places make a hard distinction between residential (and even types of homes) and commercial zones. some allow certain types of businesses in an otherwise residential area. some are actually pretty lax about zoning.
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TYPE_FASTER 6y ago
You can't really put all American suburbs in a single category. We moved from one suburb to another a few years ago. The first involved a 60-120min commute each way, no matter if you drove, used the commuter boat, or train, and required a car for everything. The suburb we moved to is a 5 mile drive or bike on separated path, I can bike to stores, bike to school with the kids to school then continue on to work, etc. We have half the land we used to, and our neighborhood probably looks more like the American suburb satellite view in the parent article, but having bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and proximity to the things that we want to do makes a big difference.
adamcstephens 6y ago
This Ted talk is what I think about when I visit many places in the suburbs. Places nobody likes. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ
jaredcwhite 6y ago
Amen! That's why I love living in Portland. Most areas of Portland, and even some of the surrounding towns, look far more like those images of Norway then the American examples. I came here specifically to escape the soul-crushing car-focused culturelessness of the suburbia I grew up in. Happy to wake up here every day!

What most academics and others like them tend to miss about the American suburbs, is that most Americans like their suburbs. The American suburbs are the Toyota Camry of housing. Kind of boring and somewhat ugly, but affordable, functional, and ultimately well-liked by the end-user.

kemiller2002 6y ago
You describe suburbs likes it's the Microsoft Word of places to live.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Or maybe most of them don't know better? Anecdotally, I met thousands of Americans in my life, and I'd say the vast majority of them never cease to praise the life and balance of small European cities.
- bdamm 6y ago
  Partly I'd say it's about real estate ownership. In the US, living in a city means either spending enormous sums on real estate (suffocatingly so) or renting. But in the US, real estate ownership is incentivized as a primary way to build wealth and stability for old age and retirement. Thus, rent is viewed as a short term living situation. But, affordable real estate that acts to build wealth, especially for people who needed to spend their early career paying off student loans or don't have parents that can buy them a down payment, can only be found in the suburbs. So it seems to be more structural due to government. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I like having a big yard with dogs and a cul-de-sac for my kids to play in.
- viklove 6y ago
  As an actual American, I've never heard anyone talk about small European cities. Are you from Europe? If you're only talking to American tourists in Europe, there's going to be some strong selection bias favoring people who like Europe and want to visit.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Well, and with respect to cities generally, there are many cities I like to visit quite a bit that I really wouldn't care that much to live in--especially if it meant giving up my ex-urban/rural home.
- refurb 6y ago
  Let me add my own anecdote about the bubble I live in. I currently live in a Asian city where nearly everyone lives in apartments and takes very good transit (although cars are very popular despite the massive import taxes). Coming from the US, I’ve been told many times how envious they are that one can buy a single family home in the US, not share walls with neighbors and have a home over 1,000 at ft (rare to find one over 900 here, most are 600-700 2 beds). That type of single family housing is purely for the ultra rich here. Not within reach of the even the upper middle class.
naravara 6y ago
Though unlike the Camry, the “affordability” is a mirage derived from being heavily subsidized by state and federal tax codes, decisions about how to prioritize infrastructure spending to promote sprawl, and zoning and housing policies that discourage any other form of development.
- ericmay 6y ago
  You couldn't be more spot-on. The affordability aspect is also subsidized by green house gas emissions, and cheap oil.
brnt 6y ago
Is there evidence for your claim? How many were (made) aware of alternatives? It's easy to accept local customs, so much so that you think you like them, but that doesn't really prove anything more than that habituation is a thing.
- dismalpedigree 6y ago
  Its not Stockholm syndrome. I have lived in urban cities as well as rural settings. I like my suburban lifestyle. You like the city or rural living? Great. You do you. Don’t assume because other people choose something different than you that they must be ignorant to the other options. It just different. Not wrong.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Stockholm is a great city!
  - brnt 6y ago
    You did nothing to disprove its not Stockholm syndrome. Also you assumed things about me while asking me to not assume things about you. Make sense!
alistairSH 6y ago
Do they like them because of inherent qualities of US-style suburbs, or do they like them because that's all they know? Also, suburbs are only affordable because we continue to defer infrastructure maintenance. At some point, we will have to pay to maintain all the bridges, roads, etc. I'm not anti-suburb necessarily. But, I do loathe the car-based culture we've created. And the rage that any mention of alternative transport seems to elicit among many suburb dwellers (who also love to bitch about traffic problems, but only want more tarmac as a solution).
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I think a lot of the rage against alternative transit is the apparent bias among many such proponents to "First, we make car travel much, much less appealing; only after that's accomplished, then we'll hope to make alternative modes competitive with the nerfed version of private automobiles."
  - watwut 6y ago
    I had encountered unexpected hostility against cyclist on the road. No making car travel unappealing was involved, just someone existed on bike and someone else somehow took it as provocation.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    That hasn't been my experience at all (living in the DC suburbs). Local example: I live in Reston VA. We've slowly been adding bike lanes to existing roads as other improvements are made. In some cases, this required cutting from 2 lanes to 1 lane. However, in all cases, traffic timings and accident analysis was undertaken and in all cases that I've seen, traffic flow either improved or if there was a decrease, it was on the order of 1-2 seconds per mile traveled. Additionally, in most cases, traffic accidents of all kinds were reduced. But, you wouldn't know it from listening to the anti-bike crowd. They see the reduction in lane count and immediately jump to "nobody rides bikes!", "run them over" or worse. Seriously, it's that bad. I'll also add that in some places, the bike lanes are rarely used, but that's as as direct result of poor designs created to silence the noisy motorists. Another local example - the main thoroughfare along my neighborhood has bike lanes. However, the lanes stop just prior to the two places you would want to ride your bike - the high school and the shopping center. So, of course fewer people use the lanes - they don't actually GO anywhere! It's infuriating. Edit - the sidewalks along this same thoroughfare also start/stop or switch sides. This makes it less tenable to walk to the school or shopping (the road is about 2 miles end-to-end; shopping center at one end, high school near mid-point). Lots of people are within 1 mile of either destination, but running back and forth across a 45mph busy road is simply unsafe. A pedestrian was killed a year ago running from the sidewalk on one side to his home on the other. How the heck is this even to code? Argh.
crispyambulance 6y ago
> most Americans like their suburbs. Nothing wrong with saying that, but it's a loose characterization based strictly on opinion. There's real and tangible problems with urban/sub-urban planning in the USA that go far deeper than whether someone "likes" something. It deserves exploration and critique. It's not merely a consumer choice.
kgermino 6y ago
I completely agree, most people like their suburbs. However, I do wonder if there's a connection between American suburbanization and our mental health crisis. Modern suburbs are kind of anti-community and anti-human compared to most historical cities and towns. You're surrounded by people, but miss out on a lot of the small interactions that come from being close together. You're dependent on a car, so regularly stuck in traffic and can't go anywhere on your own. The boring/ugly aspects might be uninspiring. All fo this is "normal" so you don't notice it in your day to day life, but it adds up. I'm probably completely wrong here, but when I see the massive mental health and drug issues from otherwise rich, stable, suburban families I wonder if there's a connection.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Mental health and drug issues pervade society. I have lived in suburbs, dense city and rural countryside. The density has no say on the quality of your neighbors or the extent to which you will interact with them. In fact, if my anecdotal experience were made a rule, it would be "the more densely you pack people together the less they function as a community". Of course it isnt true as a rule, but it has been my personal experience.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I think this has more to do with you and the local culture (like, block-by-block) than urban vs. suburban. in the suburbs, you can drive back and forth between your home garage and office and never speak to anyone. but you can do the same thing on foot in a city. in my city, people don't usually strike up conversations with random strangers on the street. or if they do, it's just a one-off; you'll probably never see that person again. in the suburbs, if you spend a lot of time on your porch, you'll probably get to know the neighbors that hang out on their porches. there's a pretty similar dynamic on the stoops of residential blocks in a city. if I had to make a general rule, I'd say there are more people who could potentially be your friend in a city, but the barrier to becoming friends with each one is higher. you bump in to more people, but less frequently.
- cafard 6y ago
  If you are a kid, or if you have kids, you will shortly know a lot of people in your suburb, or such has been my experience.
mint2 6y ago
I hate suburbs. I’m American. Anyway First of all, most people simply like what they know and think is expected and do not bother thinking about the unknown or trying different lifestyles, I.e. suburbs. People settle into their lifestyle no matter how bad or good it is and do not question it, whether it’s their suburban environment or food habits or child easing or whatever. Pointing to something that is the current standard and saying people like it, that’s why it’s the standard is naive.
spicyusername 6y ago
What is not to like about affordable housing and good schools? I think there is too much emphasis in these discussions on 99%-invisible style urban design and not enough on the simple socio-economic calculus the average homeowner does when deciding where to live. It doesn't matter how walkable your neighborhood is, how broad the restaurant selection, how ethnically diverse the community, or how many different forms of public transportation there are, if the perception is that housing is expensive and schools are bad, many people are not going to move in, even if they would otherwise enjoy those amenities. Until urban areas can meaningfully compete on those two metrics for the average person in the U.S., the suburbs are here to stay.
- ghaff 6y ago
  And you see this broadly in where people choose to live. It's a stereotype, which is no less true for that, that young college-educated people have been tending to move into cities especially over the last 25 years and then move out to a suburb when they get married and have kids. And really it's been going on longer than that. A bunch of people I went to grad school with went to work in Manhattan in finance and lived there. Maybe one or two of them still do.
PaulHoule 6y ago
This is a Canadian take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYYdQB0mkEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYYdQB0mkEU The suburbs are hell if you are young and don't have a car, don't have friends, etc. If you are a bit older you might like the square footage and relative quiet of the suburbs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_from_Las_Vegas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_from_Las_Vegas are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am... are good reflections on American Vernacular architecture; that first book in particular has a collection of comments from clients such as "if I wanted this I wouldn't have hired an architect". Jane Jacobs liked the idea of cities developing organically according to what people want and the suburbs provide that in the form of a market, but the market is set very much by government standards for what kind of house is mortagable, zoning laws, etc. In the US "suburb" can mean different things. On one hand I think of the area in Santa Monica around the Mormon temple which is all beautiful small single family homes on spectacularly landscaped tiny lots. On the other I think of the diabolical geometry of Southern New Hampshire (where I grew up) where low-density subdivisions were organized around the highways like the way your lungs are organized but when your car reaches the highway it is like a demolition derby without a clear hierarchy because those subdivisions put induced demand on the highway (simply because it is efficient for motorists to live close to the highway;) no wonder people in NH just legalized flying cars!
- ghaff 6y ago
  >Jane Jacobs liked the idea of cities developing organically according to what people want I like a lot of Jacobs' ideas. I'm also somewhat amused when a lot of people (not saying you) praise her because she fought back against NYC highway plans. But the fact that she liked cities to develop along the lines of what the community wants sounds a lot like NIMBYism which many of the same people oppose as well.
throw0101a 6y ago
> What most academics and others like them tend to miss about the American suburbs, is that most Americans like their suburbs. Is income taken into account? > Like published happiness research, the State of the City survey shows that reported satisfaction is highly correlated with income. Some 88 percent of those with incomes over $75,000 said their community was excellent or good; only 66 percent of those with incomes of less than $30,000 said the same. It’s worth noting here that the impact of income is larger than the impact of location in influencing satisfaction (a 9 percent difference between city and suburb as opposed to a 22 percent difference between high and low-income groups. These data suggest that the real headline finding of this survey should be “higher income people are more satisfied with the places they live.” * https://cityobservatory.org/are-suburbs-really-happier/ https://cityobservatory.org/are-suburbs-really-happier/ Survey in question: * http://www.citylab.com/politics/2014/08/overall-americans-in-the-suburbs-are-still-the-happiest/378964/ http://www.citylab.com/politics/2014/08/overall-americans-in...

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

> what me and perhaps many other Europeans think about the American suburb is simply not apparent to a lot of Americans. I share this sentiment a lot. Especially given my 30+ years growing up and living in Italy, and 8+ years in the San Francisco Bay Area. I liked how this article provided clear examples of what's different, and what's important, about a city. A great book I'd recommend is Happy City, by Charles Montgomery. [0] It will most likely change your perspective on how a city should be, but often isn't. [0]: https://thehappycity.com/the-book/ https://thehappycity.com/the-book/

readflaggedcomm 6y ago

The page won't load, but this does (with Javascript disabled to prevent medium's script from breaking the archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20210323150321/https://erik-engheim.medium.com/barren-american-suburbs-a8749bd56f1 https://web.archive.org/web/20210323150321/https://erik-engh... --- Maybe he should have used a map that indicates parks.

Brendinooo 6y ago
>The character encoding of the plain text document was not declared. The document will render with garbled text in some browser configurations if the document contains characters from outside the US-ASCII range. The character encoding of the file needs to be declared in the transfer protocol or file needs to use a byte order mark as an encoding signature. Weird.

alistairSH 6y ago

Warning: Site attempts to download something on load. No HTML there.

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ghaff 6y ago

I won't really dispute the general point but you can certainly find small cities and suburbs that have a walkable core with residential buildings within walking distance. There are quite a few in Silicon Valley and outside Boston. Do you still need to drive a lot of places? Certainly. But the suburbs aren't all cookie cutter houses distant from strip mall retail.

zepto 6y ago

“American suburbs is a study in endless repetition. Houses lined up after each other in repetitive patterns.” There is an innuendo that this is fundamentally bad, but surely this is true of many urban environments. Think of london for example - streets are generally rows of identical looking houses repeated, and this is true whether we’re talking about the suburbs or the fanciest parts of central london.

onorton 6y ago
I think the difference being is that you don't have to get in the car just to leave it. I myself live about 5 minutes walk from a major train station in London whose trains go past my flat and it only takes me another five minutes walk in the opposite direction to find a completely different area. Now, some of the commuter towns of London are a different story. Edit: Making it clear I'm not using the train which I realise could be misconstrued from my previous wording. The train station was just a reference to how busy my local area can be.
- zepto 6y ago
  > I think the difference being is that you don't have to get in the car just to leave it. Again there is an innuendo that this is fundamental bad. In my experience (having lived in London for decades), for most people who live within 5 minutes of a major train station, which is not most Londoners, it’s not even practical to have a car at all, and even if you do, just getting out of the city can take an hour. London is great if you like urban environments and don’t like cars. But I don’t see why that should be a universally held preference.
  - onorton 6y ago
    I don't mean leaving the city by public transport or whatever. I mean leaving the monotony of a particular area which I thought you meant in your OP. Streets in London typically aren't the same for literal miles, whereas they can be in the case of some American suburbs where you need a vehicle like a car to escape it. To be clear, my reference to the train station was to indicate how busy my local area can be. But despite that, you don't have to walk very far to find somewhere a bit more tranquil.

neogodless 6y ago

What might not be apparent to this author is that lots of Americans dislike American suburbs, too. At least this one does. I also had a hard time telling the photos from Norway from places I've seen in the United States. It's quite large and diverse, unlike those suburbs! > Norway is approximately 323,802 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km, making United States 2,937% larger than Norway. There is, of course no doubt that the automobile enabled lifestyle is predominant here. And I also don't have any expectation of anyone emigrating from Norway to move to a boring American suburb! But if they wanted scenes like those photos from Oslo, there are places in America that look like that. Of course, the author and I probably share some of the same feelings - we do not think our country is perfect, but we do hope to see the good things our country has, and perhaps feel some draw to defend what people think of our country when the merits are questioned!

listless 6y ago

We have exactly the kind of suburbs he’s describing. See Franklin, TN or even Palo Alto. The problem is that it’s ludicrously expense to live close enough to all the action. My guess is far more expensive than Nordic countries.

ghaff 6y ago
It varies. There are smaller cities that are quite nice and not too expensive in the Southeast for example. What you don't have is much of the way of public transit. However, in general, living near the center of a walkable small city or town is probably going to cost you more than a cookie-cutter suburb a bit more off the beaten track. (And once you get ex-urban or rural, there's usually a town center but probably not much in the way of commerce there.) The suburbs like this around Boston that pop to mind are relatively expensive.

jasode 6y ago

There are many comments claiming that "walkable" neighborhoods are better for everyone which is why mixed-use neighborhoods should make the most sense. But with southern hot cities like Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, etc, walking anywhere outside for more than 10 minutes will leave you a dripping sweaty mess. I think this is why the USA doesn't see a tidal wave of walkable neighborhoods. Thus, suburbs requiring cars (with air conditioning) still rule. Even in Florida retirement communities where there's a "planned" walkable neighborhood with a nearby fitness center and small grocery store, most use motorized golf carts instead of walking. Unlike coastal cities with ocean breezes like San Francisco, walking is very uncomfortable in many places. Another issue with grid street neighborhoods is that many don't like thru traffic and noise. Thus the dead-end cul-de-sacs that many academics hate are loved by residents who prefer the reduced car noise and extra privacy. American suburbs is one of those topics where mainstream media misleads their readers. If you only read from New York Times, New Yorker, or even the topmost upvoted threads on HN, you'd miss out on the "dark matter" of residents who genuinely prefer American style suburbs. [EDIT] : I want to add some more comments for those think many Americans are unaware of the advantages of dense living and their choice of suburbia is from ignorance. The counterpoint to that is many Americans follow this life timeline: - early 20s (single no kids) : going to college in a city or working at a downtown firm so they enjoy the dense city living like Manhattan, Chicago, etc... walking to restaurants and bars, museums, cultural things - mid-life with kids: they enjoyed cities in their younger years but they want to raise a family so they move out to the suburbs. They want the better schools, yard, garage to putz around in etc. - retired and kids are grown leaving an "empty nest": some senior citizens might sell the suburb house and move to a city condo and walk to museums again. My point is that many people who live in suburbs are quite informed by real life experience to the advantages of "walkable cities" but the still prefer suburbs for its advantages as well. This aspect is underreported by the mainstream media.

duxup 6y ago
I'd love to live downtown and have access to so much. At the same time my suburban street is pretty isolated and quiet, and I can just send my kids outside to do whatever unsupervised without a second thought ... there's a bunch of fairly wild reserved area bordering and near my house.... I see it as a tradeoff and I'm not sure I'd make that trade for the city right now.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

Most of the Middle East, Africa, southeast Asia, and India have hotter temperatures and yet still manage to have old-style walkable cities. A lot of the architecture is designed to minimize heat and trap cold air. See riads in Morocco, for instance. The truth is that Americans are just a bit lazy. (I am American, so this is self-criticism.)

xapata 6y ago
And they've designed their cities poorly.
falcolas 6y ago
> The truth is that Americans are just a bit lazy. Seems like a bit of a stretch. Especially since your argument includes things like building architecture. It's more likely that it's less profitable to create such architecture, naturally discouraging the creating of walkable cities in the summer months. It's worth remembering that unless it's required by code, it's usually not done when it comes to many professional builders.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  So not "lazy" but "cheap"?
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Your average commuter has no input on city design or the minutiae of the cost/profit ratios involved in building the city. The blame should instead lay with those who incentivize profit over city improvement.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Then it just means we are too lazy to care about anything other than profit. Subsequently we suffer for it.
  - falcolas 6y ago

55555 6y ago

If an American developer wanted to, can they mix commercial zones into suburbs/residential zones? Can you put a shop every 10 houses? I'm honestly not even sure how this works legally. Because you never see it. It's a grid of neighborhoods with strips of shops along the biggest connecting roads.

leetcrew 6y ago
there's not much you can say about zoning in america as a whole. every locality has its own set of complicated rules. some places make a hard distinction between residential (and even types of homes) and commercial zones. some allow certain types of businesses in an otherwise residential area. some are actually pretty lax about zoning.

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TYPE_FASTER 6y ago

You can't really put all American suburbs in a single category. We moved from one suburb to another a few years ago. The first involved a 60-120min commute each way, no matter if you drove, used the commuter boat, or train, and required a car for everything. The suburb we moved to is a 5 mile drive or bike on separated path, I can bike to stores, bike to school with the kids to school then continue on to work, etc. We have half the land we used to, and our neighborhood probably looks more like the American suburb satellite view in the parent article, but having bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and proximity to the things that we want to do makes a big difference.

adamcstephens 6y ago

This Ted talk is what I think about when I visit many places in the suburbs. Places nobody likes. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ

jaredcwhite 6y ago

Amen! That's why I love living in Portland. Most areas of Portland, and even some of the surrounding towns, look far more like those images of Norway then the American examples. I came here specifically to escape the soul-crushing car-focused culturelessness of the suburbia I grew up in. Happy to wake up here every day!