I'm also in the suburbs. A couple of thoughts there: HOA's are far more common than they were in the 80's/90's (Google says they went from ~20% of homes in 19

I'm also in the suburbs. A couple of thoughts there: HOA's are far more common than they were in the 80's/90's (Google says they went from ~20% of homes in 1990ish to ~50% now). It really changes the risk/reward of friendship when your neighbors can arbitrarily force you to spend a whole weekend doing something dumb to please the HOA. It has happened, and I'd rather not repeat it. The explosion of culture the internet brought on has also fragmented us. Shared interests are fairly uncommon because everyone is watching something different on Netflix, doing different hobbies because they can, etc. That's not totally a bad thing, but it does tend to make smalltalk bland. Income inequality has also changed demographics. My neighbors are substantially older than me. There aren't even that many children in the neighborhood, a lot of them are retirees that presumably bought when the neighborhood was cheaper. Again, not totally a bad thing, but it means we don't even share nostalgia.