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Suburbs are very unfriendly for the elderly compared to cities. The ideal suburbanite is an upper-middle-class person in their 30s–50s in good health who reall

Suburbs are very unfriendly for the elderly compared to cities. The ideal suburbanite is an upper-middle-class person in their 30s–50s in good health who really likes driving their large car and has hobbies they can do individually from inside their own home (e.g. woodworking, gardening), and doesn’t mind that life is miserable* there for their kids. Everyone else is more or less a second-class citizen. * Edit: suburbs are unpleasant for kids because anyone who can’t drive is completely dependent on someone else (for kids, usually a parent) for transportation: few destinations are within walking/cycling distance, buses are few and infrequent, in general non-car transportation is discouraged by the urban design. Everything is harder to get to, and there are far fewer resources available for people with particular interests.

unexpected 5y ago
Why do you automatically assume that kids are miserable in the suburbs? My kids rather like running around in our backyard, use our pool everyday in the summer, and having tons of friends on the block. At the same time, I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment, having no yard to play in, etc. This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch. It's okay to think differently. I'm glad you enjoy living in the city! Luckily, this country is big and there's enough space for all of us!
- arrosenberg 5y ago
  It wildly varies by suburb. The one I grew up in had few-to-no kids on the block, and even if there had been, there were only a couple of small, underwhelming parks within walking/biking distance. Comparing notes with other people, this seems like the more common experience of the suburbs. The disdain (at least for me) comes when you do the math and realized how absurdly subsidized the suburban lifestyle is.
  - criddell 5y ago
    Who is doing the subsidizing? You hear about cities annexing suburbs to access the tax base. If suburbs were a drain, wouldn't they be doing whatever the opposite of annexing is?
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      A few of the wealthiest suburbs in the country are enclaves of people who rely economically on the city but don’t want their property taxes to pay for poor people’s amenities and services, so carve out a separate municipality. Cities want to re-absorb these, because the current setup is grossly unfair. This is not representative of suburbs in general. Many suburbs, especially older ones whose infrastructure construction (but not maintenance) was heavily state-subsidized, are struggling and financially unsustainable, leaving their (less wealthy) residents in deep trouble in the long term.
      - criddell 5y ago
        After asking this question I started reading more about it. The biggest subsidization is about mortgage interest tax deductions. I never thought about that as a subsidy, but I suppose it is. They should end it.
        arrosenberg 5y ago
        Yes, and in California Prop 13 is an even bigger distortion.
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  ==This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch.== It's also out of touch to assume every family in "the city" lives in a 2 bedroom apartment with no yard. Lots of families in my city (Chicago) live in 3 story walk-ups, duplex-downs or even single family homes which all have yards. Perhaps we could all be a little more open-minded about how other people live.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    A 3 story walk up is going to be a 2 br apartment in most cases, and may have a shared outdoor space but it’ll cost as much as a large house in the suburbs with a big garage and 2 big lawns.
    - long_time_gone 5y ago
      ==but it’ll cost as much as a large house in the suburbs with a big garage and 2 big lawns.== Based on what metric? Here [1] is a three-bedroom apartment in one of Chicago's nicest areas (Ravenswood/Lincoln Square), with heat/water included, right by the Brown Line for $2,100/month. Find me the large house in the suburbs that will run you $2,100/month. Don't forget to include the 20% down payment, on-going maintenance, utilities, and an additional car. [1] https://www.apartments.com/4742-n-oakley-ave-chicago-il/4d9993l/ https://www.apartments.com/4742-n-oakley-ave-chicago-il/4d99...
- jacobolus 5y ago
  > disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch Have you yourself been a child growing up in places of different density? I personally did (my time spent mostly in one of the nicest suburbs in southern California, but alternating for a couple months every year with a walkable small Mexican city), and then since then have been in cities (where my small kids are now growing up). Are you sure I am the “out of touch” one here? Have you ever tried living with kids in a 2-bedroom apartment? It’s really not a big deal (though note, there are also plenty of larger apartments/condos and single-family houses in cities, and plenty of cities around the world without outrageous housing prices). In the city you might not play in your yard, but you can play at the nearby playground or park with the many neighborhood kids.
  - criddell 5y ago
    I think you underestimate to what degree people design their life to provide what they think is the best thing for their kids. A lot of people ended up in the suburbs because of their kids, not in spite of them. Proximity to other kids, organized sports, good schools, after-school activities, etc... It can be very car-centric as you pointed out, but when there are other families on your block going to the same things, you quickly figure out how to car pool to share the burden. There's more than one way to live a great life with kids.
- obstacle1 5y ago
  Kids like suburbs just fine before they understand there's a big world out there outside the family unit. Often things fall apart after that phase. > I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment OK but that's a problem with a limited imagination, not how your kids would actually feel. Do you know that 90% of families in the world live in close quarters, in places like 2 bedroom apartments (or -- gasp! -- smaller)? Do you think all these kids really hate their lives because of the size of their apartments? Do you think young kids even realize that they "should" prefer a 3000sqft house to an apartment? > this country is big and there's enough space for all of us! Sure there's space, but space isn't really the issue. The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable. Future generations are going to look back on our settlement patterns and think we were truly insane, hundreds of millions of people each with multiple personal cars spread out from each other such that cars are necessary to do even the most minor tasks. It's taken some incredibly opaque collective blinders for us to have ended up thinking suburbs are a responsible way of living.
  - eweise 5y ago
    "The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable." That's a problem with a limited imagination. Cars are becoming electric. There are things called towns that exist in suburbia and can be reached easily by bike or walking.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      The environmental impact of suburban lifestyle is not limited to personal transportation carbon emissions. It also involves huge amounts of expensive (in land and resources) infrastructure, and individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint than other people.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint. Suburbs have higher median personal income than urban cores; so that individual suburbanites consume more resources isn't surprising. These people would also consume more resources if they lived in urban cores.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  I grew up in the DC suburbs. The closest pool was a few miles away, so required a car. The schools were all miles away, so required car/bus. By the time I got to high school, most of my friends lived miles away, so for a few years, seeing them required transportation. Grocery store required a car. Heck, even the closest corner store required a car. Fortunately, my mom was able to stay home for many years, and when she did return to work, she went into teaching, so that transport was readily available. For kids with 2 working parents, getting around kinda sucked - it impacted their ability to get to/from school off-hours, get to sports, etc. I still live in the DC suburbs, but picked an area with a lot more walkability. Walkable grocery store (plus pharmacy, coffee, dining). Schools are walkable. Bike paths and walking trails everywhere. Golf course out my back door. Walk to work. Walk to Metro. But, the median home price is higher here than my parents' area, and that's in an area that's already expensive.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    When I was a kid in a suburban/rural area I used a bicycle to solve all those problems, besides groceries, which my parents took care of.
    - alistairSH 5y ago
      When I was old enough, I did as well. Didn't help for some things... middle school was ~7 miles from home and across several major arterial roads - making that ride in winter wouldn't have been safe (would have been in the dark on way to school).
- namlem 5y ago
  Fwiw, I hated growing up in a suburb precisely due to the inability to get anywhere without being driven. I had to rely on my parents any time I wanted to see my friends. Having a back yard to play in wasn't much of a consolation.
- damon_c 5y ago
  I raised (or rather shared in raising) a kid in a 2BR apartment in Manhattan with no yard. We also happened to have a weekend/summer cottage in the suburbs. It was near the beach and had a yard and bikes and all those wonderful suburban pleasures. He absolutely begged us every weekend to let him stay in the city where he could see his friends by subway/walking, didn't need us to drive him anywhere, had freedom etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 5y ago
  > having no yard to play in You don't need a yard as much when you have parks :-) Or neighborhood play areas, where they can play with class mates.
UnpossibleJim 5y ago
Evidently it's somewhat odd, but the suburb we bought in has an elementary school and middle school built right in the middle of it. It's very walkable for a large portion of the neighborhood (though, it's the outer Seattle area - so the rain does keep many from walking for a large portion of the year, anyway). I certainly don't think we put our child's mental health second. I'm not sure how to quantify that for a stranger on the internet, nor do I feel the need to... I am in the 30-50 range, though. The thought of living in Seattle, personally, is abysmal. It smells of piss, all of the time. The homeless have taken over and there are no decent programs to help them out, nor do there seem to be any effective programs on the horizon. City corruption seems to take care of that. Business is taking a nose dive. There are no grocery stores. Food deserts are a very real thing. Rent is unimaginable. You can buy in the suburbs for a fraction of the cost of renting in downtown, easily. People in the area are not the most outgoing in the first place (the colloquialism is the Seattle Freeze), but add into that the normal distance of city dwelling and you are almost robotic to each other. While public transport is lacking (to say the least), it is there and available from these horrible suburbs you have warned us about. The dream of city living seems, honestly, to be for the VERY rich or the young and naive, to be honest =/ EDIT: spelling
- mypalmike 5y ago
  Have you ever actually lived in the city of Seattle? Your description is a caricature that doesn't really exist. Particularly amusing is the idea of food deserts here. What parts of the city suffer from this? Where I live, I can walk to 3 major supermarkets, a produce market, a weekend farmers market, countless cafes, bakeries, delis, restaurants... And somehow I manage to breathe over the constant smell of piss. Lol.
eweise 5y ago
My kids love the suburbs. There's almost no crime. They can bike into the hills, forests, lakes, downtown, friends houses, the mall. Schools are great. One of my friends raised his kid in SF before finally moving out to suburbia when she was a teenager, stayed in the house most of the time. Now she's got a great circle of friends and is never in the house. Cities are for single adults trying to find a mate.
- oblio 5y ago
  Are all American cities so crime ridden that kids can't just bike around the neighborhood?
jjav 5y ago
> Edit: suburbs are unpleasant for kids because anyone who can’t drive is completely dependent on someone else You're operating on some limited/different definition of suburb. We stay in the suburb precisely because my kid has multiple friends within walking distance.

unexpected 5y ago

Why do you automatically assume that kids are miserable in the suburbs? My kids rather like running around in our backyard, use our pool everyday in the summer, and having tons of friends on the block. At the same time, I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment, having no yard to play in, etc. This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch. It's okay to think differently. I'm glad you enjoy living in the city! Luckily, this country is big and there's enough space for all of us!

arrosenberg 5y ago
It wildly varies by suburb. The one I grew up in had few-to-no kids on the block, and even if there had been, there were only a couple of small, underwhelming parks within walking/biking distance. Comparing notes with other people, this seems like the more common experience of the suburbs. The disdain (at least for me) comes when you do the math and realized how absurdly subsidized the suburban lifestyle is.
- criddell 5y ago
  Who is doing the subsidizing? You hear about cities annexing suburbs to access the tax base. If suburbs were a drain, wouldn't they be doing whatever the opposite of annexing is?
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    A few of the wealthiest suburbs in the country are enclaves of people who rely economically on the city but don’t want their property taxes to pay for poor people’s amenities and services, so carve out a separate municipality. Cities want to re-absorb these, because the current setup is grossly unfair. This is not representative of suburbs in general. Many suburbs, especially older ones whose infrastructure construction (but not maintenance) was heavily state-subsidized, are struggling and financially unsustainable, leaving their (less wealthy) residents in deep trouble in the long term.
    - criddell 5y ago
      After asking this question I started reading more about it. The biggest subsidization is about mortgage interest tax deductions. I never thought about that as a subsidy, but I suppose it is. They should end it.
      - arrosenberg 5y ago
        Yes, and in California Prop 13 is an even bigger distortion.
long_time_gone 5y ago
==This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch.== It's also out of touch to assume every family in "the city" lives in a 2 bedroom apartment with no yard. Lots of families in my city (Chicago) live in 3 story walk-ups, duplex-downs or even single family homes which all have yards. Perhaps we could all be a little more open-minded about how other people live.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  A 3 story walk up is going to be a 2 br apartment in most cases, and may have a shared outdoor space but it’ll cost as much as a large house in the suburbs with a big garage and 2 big lawns.
  - long_time_gone 5y ago
    ==but it’ll cost as much as a large house in the suburbs with a big garage and 2 big lawns.== Based on what metric? Here [1] is a three-bedroom apartment in one of Chicago's nicest areas (Ravenswood/Lincoln Square), with heat/water included, right by the Brown Line for $2,100/month. Find me the large house in the suburbs that will run you $2,100/month. Don't forget to include the 20% down payment, on-going maintenance, utilities, and an additional car. [1] https://www.apartments.com/4742-n-oakley-ave-chicago-il/4d9993l/ https://www.apartments.com/4742-n-oakley-ave-chicago-il/4d99...
jacobolus 5y ago
> disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch Have you yourself been a child growing up in places of different density? I personally did (my time spent mostly in one of the nicest suburbs in southern California, but alternating for a couple months every year with a walkable small Mexican city), and then since then have been in cities (where my small kids are now growing up). Are you sure I am the “out of touch” one here? Have you ever tried living with kids in a 2-bedroom apartment? It’s really not a big deal (though note, there are also plenty of larger apartments/condos and single-family houses in cities, and plenty of cities around the world without outrageous housing prices). In the city you might not play in your yard, but you can play at the nearby playground or park with the many neighborhood kids.
- criddell 5y ago
  I think you underestimate to what degree people design their life to provide what they think is the best thing for their kids. A lot of people ended up in the suburbs because of their kids, not in spite of them. Proximity to other kids, organized sports, good schools, after-school activities, etc... It can be very car-centric as you pointed out, but when there are other families on your block going to the same things, you quickly figure out how to car pool to share the burden. There's more than one way to live a great life with kids.
obstacle1 5y ago
Kids like suburbs just fine before they understand there's a big world out there outside the family unit. Often things fall apart after that phase. > I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment OK but that's a problem with a limited imagination, not how your kids would actually feel. Do you know that 90% of families in the world live in close quarters, in places like 2 bedroom apartments (or -- gasp! -- smaller)? Do you think all these kids really hate their lives because of the size of their apartments? Do you think young kids even realize that they "should" prefer a 3000sqft house to an apartment? > this country is big and there's enough space for all of us! Sure there's space, but space isn't really the issue. The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable. Future generations are going to look back on our settlement patterns and think we were truly insane, hundreds of millions of people each with multiple personal cars spread out from each other such that cars are necessary to do even the most minor tasks. It's taken some incredibly opaque collective blinders for us to have ended up thinking suburbs are a responsible way of living.
- eweise 5y ago
  "The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable." That's a problem with a limited imagination. Cars are becoming electric. There are things called towns that exist in suburbia and can be reached easily by bike or walking.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    The environmental impact of suburban lifestyle is not limited to personal transportation carbon emissions. It also involves huge amounts of expensive (in land and resources) infrastructure, and individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint than other people.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint. Suburbs have higher median personal income than urban cores; so that individual suburbanites consume more resources isn't surprising. These people would also consume more resources if they lived in urban cores.
alistairSH 5y ago
I grew up in the DC suburbs. The closest pool was a few miles away, so required a car. The schools were all miles away, so required car/bus. By the time I got to high school, most of my friends lived miles away, so for a few years, seeing them required transportation. Grocery store required a car. Heck, even the closest corner store required a car. Fortunately, my mom was able to stay home for many years, and when she did return to work, she went into teaching, so that transport was readily available. For kids with 2 working parents, getting around kinda sucked - it impacted their ability to get to/from school off-hours, get to sports, etc. I still live in the DC suburbs, but picked an area with a lot more walkability. Walkable grocery store (plus pharmacy, coffee, dining). Schools are walkable. Bike paths and walking trails everywhere. Golf course out my back door. Walk to work. Walk to Metro. But, the median home price is higher here than my parents' area, and that's in an area that's already expensive.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  When I was a kid in a suburban/rural area I used a bicycle to solve all those problems, besides groceries, which my parents took care of.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    When I was old enough, I did as well. Didn't help for some things... middle school was ~7 miles from home and across several major arterial roads - making that ride in winter wouldn't have been safe (would have been in the dark on way to school).
namlem 5y ago
Fwiw, I hated growing up in a suburb precisely due to the inability to get anywhere without being driven. I had to rely on my parents any time I wanted to see my friends. Having a back yard to play in wasn't much of a consolation.
damon_c 5y ago
I raised (or rather shared in raising) a kid in a 2BR apartment in Manhattan with no yard. We also happened to have a weekend/summer cottage in the suburbs. It was near the beach and had a yard and bikes and all those wonderful suburban pleasures. He absolutely begged us every weekend to let him stay in the city where he could see his friends by subway/walking, didn't need us to drive him anywhere, had freedom etc.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
oblio 5y ago
> having no yard to play in You don't need a yard as much when you have parks :-) Or neighborhood play areas, where they can play with class mates.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago

Evidently it's somewhat odd, but the suburb we bought in has an elementary school and middle school built right in the middle of it. It's very walkable for a large portion of the neighborhood (though, it's the outer Seattle area - so the rain does keep many from walking for a large portion of the year, anyway). I certainly don't think we put our child's mental health second. I'm not sure how to quantify that for a stranger on the internet, nor do I feel the need to... I am in the 30-50 range, though. The thought of living in Seattle, personally, is abysmal. It smells of piss, all of the time. The homeless have taken over and there are no decent programs to help them out, nor do there seem to be any effective programs on the horizon. City corruption seems to take care of that. Business is taking a nose dive. There are no grocery stores. Food deserts are a very real thing. Rent is unimaginable. You can buy in the suburbs for a fraction of the cost of renting in downtown, easily. People in the area are not the most outgoing in the first place (the colloquialism is the Seattle Freeze), but add into that the normal distance of city dwelling and you are almost robotic to each other. While public transport is lacking (to say the least), it is there and available from these horrible suburbs you have warned us about. The dream of city living seems, honestly, to be for the VERY rich or the young and naive, to be honest =/ EDIT: spelling

mypalmike 5y ago
Have you ever actually lived in the city of Seattle? Your description is a caricature that doesn't really exist. Particularly amusing is the idea of food deserts here. What parts of the city suffer from this? Where I live, I can walk to 3 major supermarkets, a produce market, a weekend farmers market, countless cafes, bakeries, delis, restaurants... And somehow I manage to breathe over the constant smell of piss. Lol.

eweise 5y ago

My kids love the suburbs. There's almost no crime. They can bike into the hills, forests, lakes, downtown, friends houses, the mall. Schools are great. One of my friends raised his kid in SF before finally moving out to suburbia when she was a teenager, stayed in the house most of the time. Now she's got a great circle of friends and is never in the house. Cities are for single adults trying to find a mate.

oblio 5y ago
Are all American cities so crime ridden that kids can't just bike around the neighborhood?

jjav 5y ago

> Edit: suburbs are unpleasant for kids because anyone who can’t drive is completely dependent on someone else You're operating on some limited/different definition of suburb. We stay in the suburb precisely because my kid has multiple friends within walking distance.