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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 Toyot

• 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...