Walks? The suburbs are terrible for walking. The pedestrian permeability of suburban streets are low, so walking to the store or to school often means going far out of your way, or crossing an arterial highway. This forces suburban residents to depend on their cars, even to places that should be a 5 minute walk.

If suburbs were redesigned to encourage walking, this wouldn't be a problem. The question is, how do we design an area equally suitable to walking and driving?

Last time I was in the US, back in May, I found myself staying in Murfreesboro (Civil War buff here!). But I wasn't right in the city center, such as it is, but rather on the outskirts, the suburbs. There were about 50 restaurants within half a mile of the motel, but to get to them, you either had to take your car, or take your life into your own hands walking across a six lane highway, which was the major access road to the Interstate. Of course you cross at the lights, unless you're completely suicidal, but here's where it all goes bad.

There were no pedestrian lights at the intersection.

There were no islands in the middle of the intersection.

At any given moment for the half of the road that was leaving the intersection, there was nearly always traffic flowing (no pedestrian lights you see)

That meant that you could cross the first half of the road, whilst that half was stopped waiting to get into the intersection. Tricky, what with turn right on red after stop, turn left on arrow and so on, but it could be done. But now, when you go to cross the second half, you have to watch behind for cars turning left into your road, as well as watching forwards for cars turning right. Both need to be clear, both rarely are. There is often not a gap between those cars running the amber light, and the cars from across the intersection starting, which means that a pedestrian can find themself stuck in the middle of a six lane highway with flowing traffic going passed on both sides of them. Fun!

Even after having run the gauntlet, you get to the other side, the one with the shops and restaurants, only to discover that there are no sidewalks - you either walk on the unpaved verge, unlit, with holes dug by groundhogs and rabbits, and metal stakes put into the ground for some long forgotten reason but never pulled out, or you walk on the road.

So much for walkability in the suburbs.

But are there? I mean, worldwide? Seems to me that there actually aren't that many, they're just concentrated.

Some people like the hustle and bustle and meeting new people every minute. Others like a life of semi-solitude and private pursuits. The attraction of controlling what happens on your own patch of dirt is so strong it has to be inbuilt.

But are you actually more alone in the suburbs? I mean, except for the airgap that makes up for the shitty sound proofing that american homes seem to have, you're still surrounded by neighbors.

What we do here in my corner of Europe when we want to control our patch of dirt and be more isolated is that we buy a house in the countryside. This [1] is isolated, not a cul-de-sac with six houses.

[1] http://casa.brick7-pt.com/media/pt/93001_93100/93081_50beb62...

The bummer about suburban sprawl is, even if the answer that first question is "no" right now, you'll need to move in a decade or two if you want to maintain that level of quiet. Eventually your suburb will develop every square foot as densely as it can.

This is why suburban sprawl is so wasteful - it spreads out, but never up.

This is a very badly thought out statement. The only way a suburb could not increase in density over time would be if it were to spring from the head of Zeus fully formed and populated at its inception.

The way reality works is, a bunch of land is owned by whoeverthefuck and is just green space and farmland until people start building on it. They don't fill up the entire suburb all at once. They'll build a few houses or a development, people who appreciate all the green space will move there, and the process repeats until the amount of green space starts to dwindle, the nature of the buildings themselves might change as land's value changes and the roads change, apartments are built instead of houses, etc. etc. The suburb's density increases.

I've witnessed this enough that your denial strikes me as strange. If you want to argue that the end result of such a process isn't great, I happen to agree...

It's only wasteful if you have laws and regulations that prevent it from changing. Areas, and sometimes entire cities, re-invent themselves in different ways. In a normal, free environment as the needs arise the density will change appropriately.

On a side note, take a few hours off and try find some old photographs of cities (or towns if you go far back enough). Compare those to what the city looks like now, and you'll know what I mean. Everyone can be an arm-chair critic and talk about what's wasteful or not according to their beliefs. But things have evolved to this point over many generations, and many individual choices.

I'm tired of this myth that young families obviously want to move to the suburbs. My young family certainly doesn't. And all our peers with similarly young children talk about is wanting to stay, despite the temptation of cheaper square footage out in suburbia.

Because just like you're saying of suburbs, among cities there are "bad ones and great ones". I think many Americans have never actually experienced good cities, because we don't have that many of them, and the tourist parts of many of the good ones are not actually the nice places to live.

> coffee shops and cinemas mean nothing

My three year old would certainly disagree. This morning, like many mornings, it was he who suggested we should walk together down to our favorite neighborhood coffee shop. Naturally, we saw friends we know along the way, and played in our favorite park.

> parks, walks

Both of these are vastly better here in my city than in any of the surrounding suburbs. It's not even remotely a contest. You can't walk out in the suburbs, other than in tiny little circles that don't go anywhere. When we visit the suburbs for a week, my kid starts asking why we can't walk to X instead of getting in the car again.

Children especially suffer from this, because they're completely dependent until they can drive. There's no gradual ramp-up in their scope of freedom. And old people likewise suffer, because once they can't safely operate high-speed machinery, they're as dependent as children.

And the health statistics are obvious. The biggest statistical threat to your children's long-term well-being are metabolic diseases, all of which are lower in cities than in comparably affluent suburbs. Our suburban relatives tend to lose a few pounds when they visit for a week, without even trying.

> schools

This again comes down to "bad ones and great ones". We live Somerville, MA on the edge of Cambridge. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a scientist. The level of intellectual stimulation, educated role models, general bookishness, and community commitment to art is nearly impossible to beat. We have our pick of educational options, including respected public schools, a constellation of private schools, and a deep and vibrant homeschooling community full of the aforementioned scientists and other assorted PhDs.

So while I don't expect everyone to want to live in the same kind of place, and I'm happy that other people are happy in suburbs, having kids is orthogonal to the question. For me, being a parent makes me more thankful to be living in a vibrant city.

I'm sure some people actually prefer suburbs. But many others would admit that they would choose to raise their kids in a city if they could afford to. It's obviously extremely desirable to very many people, otherwise it wouldn't cost so much.