> Suburbia is literally characterized by being boring.
Not by everyone.
Suburbia is bad for bar crawls, but after my 20s that wasn't a priority. Suburbia is great for access to mountain biking, road biking, playgrounds for the kids, sports fields, walking to friends houses, having space for a yard and BBQs, having friends over (plenty of parking) and countless other activities. It's really pretty awesome.
The mountains are where the mountains are. Being the suburbs or cities changes nothing.
> road biking
I would never dare road bike on American roads. If anything, cities have more protected bike lanes.
> playgrounds for the kids, sports fields
Playgrounds are about having 22 people to play a game of football. Cities have both sufficient fields and sufficient people. Suburbs struggle with the latter.
> walking to friends houses
?? More like, being forced to be friends with the 5 families on the block, because no where else is walkable.
> having friends over (plenty of parking)
Hah, solving a problem of your own creation ? Cities don't need parking. You can have plenty of friends over using transit, who can safely have a couple of beers, because they don't need to drive back.
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When people explain suburbs like this, I have to wonder what shaped their opinions of cities. Surely you must have a specific perspective on cities, which would lead you to believe that cities struggle to accommodate these exact things. To a degree, We are in agreement. No one wants to live in cities in the way the US has built them.
IMO, Chicago, SF, NY, Boston, DC & Philly are the proper cities (as a non-American would recognize) in the country. Of those, SF & Philly refuse to deal with their public safety issues. Chicago has peculiar weather. Boston and DC are great, but are confusingly limited to oddly shaped and tiny city boundaries. This leaves NYC as the only city that is allowed to leverage its full city-ness. The issue with NYC is that most people do the FiDi -> Times Square pilgrimage and come out disappointed, having experienced the touristiest and therefore the worst that NYC has to offer.
> I have to wonder what shaped their opinions of cities
By far most of my city-time has been in the #1 densest city in the US, NYC (specifically in Manhattan). I'm on the record (in HN comment history) on how much I loved time in Manhattan when I lived in the east coast in my 20s. In middle age now my hobbies and lifestyle and family commitments are quite different and I'd hate living in Manhattan now.
The second city I've spent most time in is the #2 densest in the US, San Francisco.
> lead you to believe that cities struggle to accommodate these exact things
Cities do struggle to accommodate these things. Cities do come with pros & cons, it's good to be open about that. Pretending there are no compromises at all to make with living in a city is not a good way to promote city life. Some people love it some don't, all depends on the priorities. Sometimes the same person (like me) will love it at one stage of life and then want nothing to do with it in a different stage, because life priorities change.
> The mountains are where the mountains are. Being the suburbs or cities changes nothing.
Despite the name, mountain biking does not require mountains. It is off-road biking in forests, open fields and sometimes actual mountains. Clearly being in the suburbs vs cities changes everything. It is difficult in a city to ride out your front door into a forest or the mountains in reasonable time (Central Park doesn't count, as much as I've enjoyed tons of time cycling there, it's not mountain biking). In many suburbs this is easy. In the suburbs I'm less than a mile away from forest land where I can ride for hours (or even all day). Such places rarely exist within a city.
> I would never dare road bike on American roads. If anything, cities have more protected bike lanes.
Yeah, no. I did spend a lot of time road biking in Manhattan but I was much younger and foolish. As a road cyclist (more than a mountain biker) I don't really want to risk my life road biking in any city. Out here in the suburbs, I can ride out my door into rarely-used mountain and rural roads where I'll see a car maybe once or twice an hour. It is prime territory for road cycling. If I was living in a city I'd have to put the bike in the car (but what if I don't have a car?) and drive out to the suburbs to look for safe cycling roads.
> Playgrounds are about having 22 people to play a game of football.
Playgrounds means for the kids. These exist in cities but out in the suburbs they are larger and easier to access, cleaner and safer.
> Cities have both sufficient fields and sufficient people. Suburbs struggle with the latter.
Suburbs don't struggle with this. Surely the term soccer-mom is familiar as an archetype of suburban life? Because it is so common. I have several soccer fields just across the street and the kids take full advantage. I don't have time to research how many people in Manhattan live within a block of a soccer field but it's a tiny percentage.
> More like, being forced to be friends with the 5 families on the block, because no where else is walkable.
There are more than 5 families in a suburb. In particular, all the kids from all the nearby suburbs go to the same few schools, so they can all walk to each others houses which is very awesome at that age.
> Cities don't need parking. You can have plenty of friends over using transit
Yes you can, as long as everyone lives in the same transit. If you live in Manhattan and everyone you know does as well, it's perfect. There's even Seinfeld episodes about how people move out to Queens never to be seen again due to this dynamic. It's a tradeoff.
Dense cities can be really awesome, particularly in young adulthood. But it's not honest to pretend that there are no drawbacks. City living comes with a stiff set of tradeoffs, you gain many conveniences but you lose access to many activities as well. Whether it's paradise or hell really depends on what each person enjoys the most.
> You don’t need parking if you live in a city with nice transit
As long as you only ever want to see people who also live in the same transit route.
I have some friends that moved to an apartment in San Francisco, it is nearly impossible to visit them since there is no parking anywhere nearby.
> Low density means you are unlikely to live a walkable distance from a friend, so suburbia sucks for that too
This morning my elementary school age kid walked to a friends house in a different neighborhood (10 min walk). As I'm typing this, one of his school friends just walked over from his house (3 min walk) to play. Being able to walk (particularly the kids) to friends is one of the prime reasons people like the suburbs.
> Honestly the only thing you said that is true is the big yard
And the road biking, mountain biking, playgrounds, sport fields and so on.
> everything else is worse in suburbia than cities
Clearly a matter of activity preferences, so it is not an objective truth to say one or the other is worse. Dense cities are great for bars, clubs, museums, that kind of thing. Suburbs are great for outdoor activities, sports, hobbies that needs space (e.g. woodworking, try that in an apartment), walking to friends, forests, etc.
> Man I’m sorry nothing you said is impressive in most developed countries cities
I didn't say anything with the intent to be impressive. I'm describing differences between dense urban and suburban pros & cons. Neither is objectively better, they are different.
> No transit doesn’t need to be in the same route, there are bus terminals and metro line connections
Sure. So now you need to spend a lot of time traveling in the wrong direction just to get to a central terminal and then take another bus to the intended direction. It's all tradeoffs.
You can't make that statement without looking at a specific case where someone is, where they want to go and how the transit lines run. It often is the wrong direction, which consumes time.
I was staying by Columbia in Manhattan recently and wanted to go to the upper east side (straight east). Subway doesn't go that way. Need to take one south to 42st, then east to grand central then north to my destination. Easy example of having to go away from the destination. That one is not so bad as the NYC subway is pretty quick.
Close to home if I want to visit a shopping area two miles west, I need to take a bus 6 miles south to a central terminal and then another 7 miles north. Adds about two hours to the trip. Easier to bike there.
That's always going to be the nature of mass transit because it can't possibly be point to point for everyone.
> You are not describing differences between urban & suburban
I don't know what to make of this statement, since I'm specifically describing the different pros & cons of urban vs. suburban.
Nah, you're right. My friends all live in the same "suburbia" as me. 50 minute drive one way. We still just hang out online, cause no one wants to spend their life on the highway. Wish we lived in a place with real transit / density.
Heck, even in Tokyo, you can hop on a bus to go do outdoors stuff easy.
> My friends all live in the same "suburbia" as me. 50 minute drive one way.
Please post the name of the suburb and city, I really want to look at it on google maps. I can't begin to imagine a housing development that takes 50 minutes to drive from one end to the other (assuming you both live at opposite edges).
> on the highway
Highway? Ok so you live in different towns probably, not the same suburb.
Not by everyone.
Suburbia is bad for bar crawls, but after my 20s that wasn't a priority. Suburbia is great for access to mountain biking, road biking, playgrounds for the kids, sports fields, walking to friends houses, having space for a yard and BBQs, having friends over (plenty of parking) and countless other activities. It's really pretty awesome.