Are we talking about the same thing when we talk about suburbs? Here's the Oxford dictionary's definition: an outlying district of a city, especially a residen

Are we talking about the same thing when we talk about suburbs? Here's the Oxford dictionary's definition: an outlying district of a city, especially a residential one. There are always outliers and exceptions to the rule but modern suburbs are a pretty simple yet flawed idea. They allow residential single-family zoned lots with very few exceptions and they look like clusters of anywhere from 1 to hundreds of housing development projects connected together by roads. Can you physically walk from your suburb to a grocery store? Absolutely! But for hundreds of millions of Americans, almost none of which would ever take on that task by choice, this looks like walking a few miles at least round trip and crossing at least a couple of highly-dangerous multi-lane roads around the stores they are heading to. This is just how things work in suburbs, everything is so spread out that cars turn out to be the only feasible transportation method. If cars are the only way to get around, roads need to be made wider and faster especially around those areas people are trying to get to--like stores. This is all part of why there's growing concern around building practices that promote suburb-like development.