An article written by a young person talking about the structural barriers enforced by pedestrian-unfriendly suburban development patterns. This kind of perspective is interesting because of how...
An article written by a young person talking about the structural barriers enforced by pedestrian-unfriendly suburban development patterns.
This kind of perspective is interesting because of how commonly adults/parents make comments to the effect of, "Yeah, there's nothing for miles, it's not walkable, and you never see anyone out on the street, but by golly it's a good place to raise a family." Maybe for the parents, but not for the kids.
Walkable, mixed-use planning is the key to getting young people outside again and enabling their independence.
Lack of mobility coupled with large distances means that kids are far from the places where they want to hang out. As described by Ray Oldenburg, “third places” are locations where locals can meet, interact, and relax in a place that isn’t their home or place of work. In these locations, kids get the chance to socialize and develop intellectually. American suburbs don’t have these places.
In England, housing is often characterized by closely situated semi-detached or terraced structures built under flexible zoning regulations. This environment allows small businesses to coexist harmoniously with residential areas, in contrast to the rigid industrial zoning common in the United States. Notably, green spaces and corner stores are thoughtfully incorporated into English neighborhoods, encouraging residents to step out of their homes. This foot traffic contributes to enhanced safety, aligning with Jane Jacobs' observation that more eyes on the streets cultivate secure environments. Parents are sometimes scared to let their kids go out in non-walkable environments, especially in America.
To some extent this aligns with my memories of childhood. As a kid who liked to walk around, I remember being irritated by the challenges presented by very wide and high-speed arterial roads, disconnected/inaccessible cul-de-sacs (limiting car access is the whole point, but limiting pedestrian access is pointless...), and the general spread-out-ness of places for the sake of providing too much parking. Lots of strip malls. My legs were shorter so that distance was really magnified (which I think adults in my life did not really understand?). I would have cycled more as a kid but it was a bit dangerous and scary/unpleasant. I tried a few times and was too intimidated by the cars and pressured off the road. There was a lot of irony in having a parent drive me to a bike path 0.5 miles away because it was unsafe to get to the bike path on a bike.
I remember the school district trying to figure out how to stop kids from getting hit by cars on the main thoroughfare in front of the building. The obvious answer was to slow down the cars, but somehow it took them 15 years to figure that out, and even then they kept seeing collisions because their implementation was more focused on posting speed limits than narrowing the road or installing speed humps. :(
This is a big topic that I don’t think gets enough discussion. I grew up in one of these suburbs. Large properties, wide roads, etc, and literally nothing of interest within an hour walk. As a...
This is a big topic that I don’t think gets enough discussion. I grew up in one of these suburbs. Large properties, wide roads, etc, and literally nothing of interest within an hour walk. As a result, I only ever hung out with friends outside of school a handful of times, usually for some event like a birthday. Getting dropped off and picked up from somewhere was always such an ordeal that I just never bothered much.
I think it probably did have a pretty negative impact on my social life. I remember all my other class mates hanging out after school which I wasn’t able to do since the bus back home only came once.
Now in my 20s I live in an inner city apartment with great public transport. It’s been life changing. I kinda wish I always had access to this level of freedom but I’m glad I do now.
I remember as a kid reading the Babysitter's Club books from the 80s and feeling super jealous whenever they'd describe being able to walk or bike to a mall or movie theater because of how...
I remember as a kid reading the Babysitter's Club books from the 80s and feeling super jealous whenever they'd describe being able to walk or bike to a mall or movie theater because of how impossible that was for me. I too rarely got to hang out with friends outside of school or church, and when I did it was a big event in a way it probably shouldn't have been. The fact that I attended private school and thus many of my friends lived longer than 30 minute drives away was a factor, but even my friends who lived near me and I never had any good third spaces -- with the exception of my next-door neighbors, since we could use our backyards and the sidewalk for that purpose.
This article sums up some of my own feelings and observations about American neighborhoods. A majority of them are planned and built to have just housing. Some will have parks or a neighborhood...
This article sums up some of my own feelings and observations about American neighborhoods. A majority of them are planned and built to have just housing. Some will have parks or a neighborhood clubhouse or pool, but... That's it, if they even have that.
My neighborhood, which is very nice, certainly doesn't. There's a park technically in walking distance, because the entrance to my neighborhood is on a big street and there's a park at the next turn. However, it's also a big neighborhood. I estimate it'd take maybe two to three minutes of walking just to get from the house closest to the entrance to the road itself? My house is half a mile from the entrance, so just walking to the park would take longer. And it requires walking along a major road, which a lot of parents wouldn't be comfortable without adult supervision, so that also cuts into children's independence.
Otherwise, you need a car to go pretty much anywhere. The nearest group of stores would take about 50 minutes to reach on foot according to Google Maps. Not good if you're running errands such as grocery shopping, and there isn't anywhere kids could really hang out there besides the restaurants. And again, parents would absolutely want to go with the kids because it involves walking along a major road and crossing said major road, so kids can't go there alone.
Basically, the biggest activity kids can do outside is go on walks or play in their yards. I was the only kid in my age range on my direct street, and there were no places I could go to really meet other kids in my neighborhood. That heavily cut down on opportunities to make nearby friends my age. In college I found out a girl in my year lived far down the street from me, and we had no idea the other existed.
At least my neighborhood has sidewalks though. The neighborhood where we lived before didn't, which was one of several reasons we moved. It still feels small and isolating though.
One interesting side-note: these sorts of neighborhood and subdivisions seem to be pretty uniquely American. First found out when someone on my Discord server linked a Tweet about a Slovakian on...
One interesting side-note: these sorts of neighborhood and subdivisions seem to be pretty uniquely American. First found out when someone on my Discord server linked a Tweet about a Slovakian on Reddit being confused after seeing a video about suburbs. This is the tweet, and if you don't want to open Twitter, the direct link to the screenshot about it is here.
Honestly, it feels kind of silly to be linking a screenshot of a reddit post taken from Twitter, but... Here we are. Until I saw that though, it never occurred to me how unusual that setup might be. Thinking about it, a lot of other countries have housing sprout more naturally around areas with social hubs, whether it be urban cities or small villages. I don't think many go out of their way to build residential subdivisions the way the US does.
There's a sort of rigidity to these neighborhoods that are strictly planned and zoned to only have houses, and a bit of loneliness too.
Do you seriously think the majority of people who like and desire suburb life are just racists?
When people talk about their perceived safety or desirability of suburban hellscapes, what they really mean is they're free of Other People™️ who have the wrong ethnic background or don't fit into their churchy WASP bubble.
Do you seriously think the majority of people who like and desire suburb life are just racists?
The author is a high school student from Fremont, CA and it would have been interesting to hear about what problems they have there. (A nit: the picture is from Breezewood, PA and has nothing to...
The author is a high school student from Fremont, CA and it would have been interesting to hear about what problems they have there. (A nit: the picture is from Breezewood, PA and has nothing to do with the article.)
I don't think talking about suburbs in very general terms is helpful. Some suburbs are really quite pedestrian-friendly and I would include where I live. There are many quiet streets, and there's a library, playground, and grocery store within walking distance. (There are also some very busy streets and too many cars, but that doesn't mean it's not walkable.)
I've also spent some time in a much more dense residential area in Queens with high-rise apartment buildings. In theory, that's more pedestrian-friendly (with lots of shops and easy access to the subway, too) but I don't like it nearly as much. It's not a food desert, but the grocery stores are small and, well, adequate. There are bicycle racks and bike lanes, but biking seems rather scary there, so people mostly walk. And from a housing perspective, you pay more and get less. I could get a better haircut, though, and Halloween was pretty fun with all the kids out.
I don't really see why people like bodegas? They seem to be overpriced convenience stores, like the nearby 7-eleven we never go to, but will pass on the way to better stores.
In contrast, the rural area where I grew up is really not pedestrian-friendly; it was a half hour ride or more on the school bus and you had to drive anywhere else. As kids we all had bikes, but you couldn't get very far that way and we mostly just visited other kids on the same road. Having easy access to the outdoors is a pretty big compensation, though.
I think this is a bit disingenuous. In the American context, "suburb" or "suburban development" refers to the type of low-density, usually single family urban sprawl that has been built post-WW2....
I think this is a bit disingenuous. In the American context, "suburb" or "suburban development" refers to the type of low-density, usually single family urban sprawl that has been built post-WW2. Yes, there are examples of older streetcar suburbs from the prewar years. But those aren't what people are talking about when they refer to suburbs. Even outside of urban planning contexts, if someone says, "I grew up in the suburbs," they're using that as a shorthand to say they grew up in a car-dependent low-density neighborhood. Yes, some "suburbs" are so old and redeveloped that they have city-level densities. But that is not the cultural meaning of the word.
In fact, it's telling that we have to use modifier to describe any type of suburb other than postwar low-density suburbs. You have to use the term "streetcar suburb" if you want to refer to the types of inner-ring suburbs, dependent on street car networks, that sprung up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This perhaps is just one area where the cultural and technical definitions of a word clash. Yes, technically, a suburb is a separate municipality on the outskirts of a larger city. But that is a technical definition that really doesn't capture what people mean by the word "suburb." Instead, the cultural definition for a suburb would be a community, adjacent to a larger city, that is built to be heavily auto-dependent, where walking is difficult, densities are low, and single-family homes predominate.
Really, the cultural definition of "suburb" is so well entrenched in American culture at this point, that it really strains credulity that someone would think it has no real definition. The cultural definition is quite clear and has been established for decades.
The real enemy is and always has been low density single family zoning without thought put into making sure essential services are within walking distance. The cities based on this (the urban...
The real enemy is and always has been low density single family zoning without thought put into making sure essential services are within walking distance. The cities based on this (the urban sprawl cities around the bay, thinking like Fremont or Milipitas, or most Midwestern smaller cities) are pretty overwhelmingly awful in these regards because not only are they miles and miles of single family bullshit but services are spread so sparsely that you have to drive to get to anything.
I usually use the word "streetcar suburb" to refer to the denser, more walkable, pre-war towns if I feel I need to make the distinction. The way I would describe that a little more technically is...
I usually use the word "streetcar suburb" to refer to the denser, more walkable, pre-war towns if I feel I need to make the distinction. The way I would describe that a little more technically is a "centrally dense town." I don't know what single word can describe that. The key is that it is a community as opposed to a development of residences that just happens to have a name attached to it. To me, that is still a suburb, but when I say suburb I usually mean the less stellar examples. Sometimes I have used the word "exurb" to refer to suburbs that aren't connected to transit and exhibit the worst walkability of all suburbs, but that is maybe misleading because there are plenty of suburbs geographically close to urban areas which still have terrible walkability. If you have better terms in mind, please share them!
Very tangential to your comment but a friend of mine used to live in Scarsdale so I have spent a decent amount of time there. I thought it was a cute town, too affluent for young people, but nice enough. I would still call it really car-dominated, and the major roads weren't pleasant for cycling. It has been years since I was there, but I don't remember any bike lanes. There was a nice bike path by the Bronx River, and one by the Saw Mill, but getting to either would have been a decently long ride through traffic without any protected lanes. You'd think they could put a bike lane on 22 at least, or whichever road was by the school and the library, but apparently not. Anyway while it does have a decently walkable downtown area by the station (if a bit small), it's kind of a bubble surrounded either by excessively residential areas or stroads/highways. Central Ave (?), where most of the actual commercial properties are, is a miserable stroad. My friend used to go to the HMart often... nice store but really awful landscape of parking lots. The Bronx River Pkwy is also a bit of a barrier with few east-west crossings. I would have loved if it were easier to get to the nature center in Greenburgh by bike. My friend used to volunteer there and there was a chinchilla.
I have never been to Fremont so I can't comment on it. But as a child I would have felt a little bit left behind in Scarsdale too. I'm not sure it really has so many "third places" in the sense the author seems to be asking for, largely because of the above inaccessibility of many actual destinations. My friend didn't have kids but most of her neighbors did, and they didn't really give them much independence. When they were 16 they got cars, but as children they could never just go out by themselves because the parents were mortified they'd be hit by a car. I think one of them was hit.
For what it's worth, I think this article is referring more to strictly residential neighborhoods and subdivisions. You know, the classic collection of houses with nice yards and a white picket...
For what it's worth, I think this article is referring more to strictly residential neighborhoods and subdivisions. You know, the classic collection of houses with nice yards and a white picket fence and cul-de-sacs. It's how I typically picture "suburbs," and that seems to match up with what the writer describes.
I left another comment detailing my own experiences growing up in a subdivision, and it lines up with what's described. I've always felt a bit physically trapped here since there's not really anywhere to go in walking distance. It's technically pedestrian friendly and not as remote as rural areas, but there's still too much distance to really go anywhere without a car.
As someone who lives close to Fremont, it's very much a city where there's lots of freeways around/going through it and cars are generally driving at high speeds, even when there is a more...
As someone who lives close to Fremont, it's very much a city where there's lots of freeways around/going through it and cars are generally driving at high speeds, even when there is a more city-zoned area. The streets are wide and not pedestrian friendly. Most of the places to hang out are strip malls or business parks, or a "park" abutted to a bunch of houses with backyards.
I grew up in the residential-centric suburbs and loved it. There were 100-200 single-family homes with yards, plus a park, in the development. It bordered undeveloped forest. Quiet and cozy. There...
I grew up in the residential-centric suburbs and loved it. There were 100-200 single-family homes with yards, plus a park, in the development. It bordered undeveloped forest. Quiet and cozy. There was hardly any traffic, mostly the residents and visitors, so we had the run of the street for games. Groups of kids would gather and play and roam outside every day and we’re rarely bored. We really took advantage of the large space.
Plus the perks of a single family home and plot - no shared walls, personal vegetable and herb gardens right outside the window, backyard for playing and bbqs and gatherings, private patio to relax outside, garage for cars and DIY, etc.
I’ve lived in apartments and various levels of urban during my adult life. It’s got it’s upsides, but I’m hoping one day to get back to a single-family home suburb one day.
As far as residential-centric areas go, this is the dream. If there's no traffic, it's safe. If there's adjacent woodland, there's space for the kids to play safely and without being watched like...
As far as residential-centric areas go, this is the dream. If there's no traffic, it's safe. If there's adjacent woodland, there's space for the kids to play safely and without being watched like a hawk by parents. It sounds like you had a lot of fun in that town and that you were able to foster a great sense of community.
I can think of a little utopian community near my city that's similar to what you describe. I don't think I would want to live there because it doesn't have a train station and it's basically impossible to get to a restaurant by walking. But it is a really unique, friendly town with a lot of great community amenities.
Unfortunately this doesn't really scale beyond a couple hundred families. In a town of more than a few thousand, if you have enormous swaths of residential-only areas, and especially if everyone drives and there is no transit, the roads get widened because there is too much traffic, and then it kind of devolves into a stroady nightmare.
For that area, it scaled by having multiple of these residential-only developments. Each one has the same benefit of only being meaningful to drive to/through for the residents, while driving out...
For that area, it scaled by having multiple of these residential-only developments. Each one has the same benefit of only being meaningful to drive to/through for the residents, while driving out puts you on various connecting roads and retail/commercial areas (strip malls, full malls, massive grocery stores, etc). The town is technically about 4k, but part of a larger township of 40k (30 sq mi). Sure, it wasn’t the safest to make those external journeys on foot/bike, but it wasn’t until we were later in high school that we even wanted to go hang out at A Venue, and by that point at least a few of us could drive and everything was within 10-15 minutes or less with easy parking.
An article written by a young person talking about the structural barriers enforced by pedestrian-unfriendly suburban development patterns.
This kind of perspective is interesting because of how commonly adults/parents make comments to the effect of, "Yeah, there's nothing for miles, it's not walkable, and you never see anyone out on the street, but by golly it's a good place to raise a family." Maybe for the parents, but not for the kids.
To some extent this aligns with my memories of childhood. As a kid who liked to walk around, I remember being irritated by the challenges presented by very wide and high-speed arterial roads, disconnected/inaccessible cul-de-sacs (limiting car access is the whole point, but limiting pedestrian access is pointless...), and the general spread-out-ness of places for the sake of providing too much parking. Lots of strip malls. My legs were shorter so that distance was really magnified (which I think adults in my life did not really understand?). I would have cycled more as a kid but it was a bit dangerous and scary/unpleasant. I tried a few times and was too intimidated by the cars and pressured off the road. There was a lot of irony in having a parent drive me to a bike path 0.5 miles away because it was unsafe to get to the bike path on a bike.
I remember the school district trying to figure out how to stop kids from getting hit by cars on the main thoroughfare in front of the building. The obvious answer was to slow down the cars, but somehow it took them 15 years to figure that out, and even then they kept seeing collisions because their implementation was more focused on posting speed limits than narrowing the road or installing speed humps. :(
This is a big topic that I don’t think gets enough discussion. I grew up in one of these suburbs. Large properties, wide roads, etc, and literally nothing of interest within an hour walk. As a result, I only ever hung out with friends outside of school a handful of times, usually for some event like a birthday. Getting dropped off and picked up from somewhere was always such an ordeal that I just never bothered much.
I think it probably did have a pretty negative impact on my social life. I remember all my other class mates hanging out after school which I wasn’t able to do since the bus back home only came once.
Now in my 20s I live in an inner city apartment with great public transport. It’s been life changing. I kinda wish I always had access to this level of freedom but I’m glad I do now.
I remember as a kid reading the Babysitter's Club books from the 80s and feeling super jealous whenever they'd describe being able to walk or bike to a mall or movie theater because of how impossible that was for me. I too rarely got to hang out with friends outside of school or church, and when I did it was a big event in a way it probably shouldn't have been. The fact that I attended private school and thus many of my friends lived longer than 30 minute drives away was a factor, but even my friends who lived near me and I never had any good third spaces -- with the exception of my next-door neighbors, since we could use our backyards and the sidewalk for that purpose.
This article sums up some of my own feelings and observations about American neighborhoods. A majority of them are planned and built to have just housing. Some will have parks or a neighborhood clubhouse or pool, but... That's it, if they even have that.
My neighborhood, which is very nice, certainly doesn't. There's a park technically in walking distance, because the entrance to my neighborhood is on a big street and there's a park at the next turn. However, it's also a big neighborhood. I estimate it'd take maybe two to three minutes of walking just to get from the house closest to the entrance to the road itself? My house is half a mile from the entrance, so just walking to the park would take longer. And it requires walking along a major road, which a lot of parents wouldn't be comfortable without adult supervision, so that also cuts into children's independence.
Otherwise, you need a car to go pretty much anywhere. The nearest group of stores would take about 50 minutes to reach on foot according to Google Maps. Not good if you're running errands such as grocery shopping, and there isn't anywhere kids could really hang out there besides the restaurants. And again, parents would absolutely want to go with the kids because it involves walking along a major road and crossing said major road, so kids can't go there alone.
Basically, the biggest activity kids can do outside is go on walks or play in their yards. I was the only kid in my age range on my direct street, and there were no places I could go to really meet other kids in my neighborhood. That heavily cut down on opportunities to make nearby friends my age. In college I found out a girl in my year lived far down the street from me, and we had no idea the other existed.
At least my neighborhood has sidewalks though. The neighborhood where we lived before didn't, which was one of several reasons we moved. It still feels small and isolating though.
One interesting side-note: these sorts of neighborhood and subdivisions seem to be pretty uniquely American. First found out when someone on my Discord server linked a Tweet about a Slovakian on Reddit being confused after seeing a video about suburbs. This is the tweet, and if you don't want to open Twitter, the direct link to the screenshot about it is here.
Honestly, it feels kind of silly to be linking a screenshot of a reddit post taken from Twitter, but... Here we are. Until I saw that though, it never occurred to me how unusual that setup might be. Thinking about it, a lot of other countries have housing sprout more naturally around areas with social hubs, whether it be urban cities or small villages. I don't think many go out of their way to build residential subdivisions the way the US does.
There's a sort of rigidity to these neighborhoods that are strictly planned and zoned to only have houses, and a bit of loneliness too.
Do you seriously think the majority of people who like and desire suburb life are just racists?
The author is a high school student from Fremont, CA and it would have been interesting to hear about what problems they have there. (A nit: the picture is from Breezewood, PA and has nothing to do with the article.)
I don't think talking about suburbs in very general terms is helpful. Some suburbs are really quite pedestrian-friendly and I would include where I live. There are many quiet streets, and there's a library, playground, and grocery store within walking distance. (There are also some very busy streets and too many cars, but that doesn't mean it's not walkable.)
I've also spent some time in a much more dense residential area in Queens with high-rise apartment buildings. In theory, that's more pedestrian-friendly (with lots of shops and easy access to the subway, too) but I don't like it nearly as much. It's not a food desert, but the grocery stores are small and, well, adequate. There are bicycle racks and bike lanes, but biking seems rather scary there, so people mostly walk. And from a housing perspective, you pay more and get less. I could get a better haircut, though, and Halloween was pretty fun with all the kids out.
I don't really see why people like bodegas? They seem to be overpriced convenience stores, like the nearby 7-eleven we never go to, but will pass on the way to better stores.
In contrast, the rural area where I grew up is really not pedestrian-friendly; it was a half hour ride or more on the school bus and you had to drive anywhere else. As kids we all had bikes, but you couldn't get very far that way and we mostly just visited other kids on the same road. Having easy access to the outdoors is a pretty big compensation, though.
I think this is a bit disingenuous. In the American context, "suburb" or "suburban development" refers to the type of low-density, usually single family urban sprawl that has been built post-WW2. Yes, there are examples of older streetcar suburbs from the prewar years. But those aren't what people are talking about when they refer to suburbs. Even outside of urban planning contexts, if someone says, "I grew up in the suburbs," they're using that as a shorthand to say they grew up in a car-dependent low-density neighborhood. Yes, some "suburbs" are so old and redeveloped that they have city-level densities. But that is not the cultural meaning of the word.
In fact, it's telling that we have to use modifier to describe any type of suburb other than postwar low-density suburbs. You have to use the term "streetcar suburb" if you want to refer to the types of inner-ring suburbs, dependent on street car networks, that sprung up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This perhaps is just one area where the cultural and technical definitions of a word clash. Yes, technically, a suburb is a separate municipality on the outskirts of a larger city. But that is a technical definition that really doesn't capture what people mean by the word "suburb." Instead, the cultural definition for a suburb would be a community, adjacent to a larger city, that is built to be heavily auto-dependent, where walking is difficult, densities are low, and single-family homes predominate.
Really, the cultural definition of "suburb" is so well entrenched in American culture at this point, that it really strains credulity that someone would think it has no real definition. The cultural definition is quite clear and has been established for decades.
The real enemy is and always has been low density single family zoning without thought put into making sure essential services are within walking distance. The cities based on this (the urban sprawl cities around the bay, thinking like Fremont or Milipitas, or most Midwestern smaller cities) are pretty overwhelmingly awful in these regards because not only are they miles and miles of single family bullshit but services are spread so sparsely that you have to drive to get to anything.
I usually use the word "streetcar suburb" to refer to the denser, more walkable, pre-war towns if I feel I need to make the distinction. The way I would describe that a little more technically is a "centrally dense town." I don't know what single word can describe that. The key is that it is a community as opposed to a development of residences that just happens to have a name attached to it. To me, that is still a suburb, but when I say suburb I usually mean the less stellar examples. Sometimes I have used the word "exurb" to refer to suburbs that aren't connected to transit and exhibit the worst walkability of all suburbs, but that is maybe misleading because there are plenty of suburbs geographically close to urban areas which still have terrible walkability. If you have better terms in mind, please share them!
Very tangential to your comment but a friend of mine used to live in Scarsdale so I have spent a decent amount of time there. I thought it was a cute town, too affluent for young people, but nice enough. I would still call it really car-dominated, and the major roads weren't pleasant for cycling. It has been years since I was there, but I don't remember any bike lanes. There was a nice bike path by the Bronx River, and one by the Saw Mill, but getting to either would have been a decently long ride through traffic without any protected lanes. You'd think they could put a bike lane on 22 at least, or whichever road was by the school and the library, but apparently not. Anyway while it does have a decently walkable downtown area by the station (if a bit small), it's kind of a bubble surrounded either by excessively residential areas or stroads/highways. Central Ave (?), where most of the actual commercial properties are, is a miserable stroad. My friend used to go to the HMart often... nice store but really awful landscape of parking lots. The Bronx River Pkwy is also a bit of a barrier with few east-west crossings. I would have loved if it were easier to get to the nature center in Greenburgh by bike. My friend used to volunteer there and there was a chinchilla.
I have never been to Fremont so I can't comment on it. But as a child I would have felt a little bit left behind in Scarsdale too. I'm not sure it really has so many "third places" in the sense the author seems to be asking for, largely because of the above inaccessibility of many actual destinations. My friend didn't have kids but most of her neighbors did, and they didn't really give them much independence. When they were 16 they got cars, but as children they could never just go out by themselves because the parents were mortified they'd be hit by a car. I think one of them was hit.
For what it's worth, I think this article is referring more to strictly residential neighborhoods and subdivisions. You know, the classic collection of houses with nice yards and a white picket fence and cul-de-sacs. It's how I typically picture "suburbs," and that seems to match up with what the writer describes.
I left another comment detailing my own experiences growing up in a subdivision, and it lines up with what's described. I've always felt a bit physically trapped here since there's not really anywhere to go in walking distance. It's technically pedestrian friendly and not as remote as rural areas, but there's still too much distance to really go anywhere without a car.
As someone who lives close to Fremont, it's very much a city where there's lots of freeways around/going through it and cars are generally driving at high speeds, even when there is a more city-zoned area. The streets are wide and not pedestrian friendly. Most of the places to hang out are strip malls or business parks, or a "park" abutted to a bunch of houses with backyards.
I grew up in the residential-centric suburbs and loved it. There were 100-200 single-family homes with yards, plus a park, in the development. It bordered undeveloped forest. Quiet and cozy. There was hardly any traffic, mostly the residents and visitors, so we had the run of the street for games. Groups of kids would gather and play and roam outside every day and we’re rarely bored. We really took advantage of the large space.
Plus the perks of a single family home and plot - no shared walls, personal vegetable and herb gardens right outside the window, backyard for playing and bbqs and gatherings, private patio to relax outside, garage for cars and DIY, etc.
I’ve lived in apartments and various levels of urban during my adult life. It’s got it’s upsides, but I’m hoping one day to get back to a single-family home suburb one day.
As far as residential-centric areas go, this is the dream. If there's no traffic, it's safe. If there's adjacent woodland, there's space for the kids to play safely and without being watched like a hawk by parents. It sounds like you had a lot of fun in that town and that you were able to foster a great sense of community.
I can think of a little utopian community near my city that's similar to what you describe. I don't think I would want to live there because it doesn't have a train station and it's basically impossible to get to a restaurant by walking. But it is a really unique, friendly town with a lot of great community amenities.
Unfortunately this doesn't really scale beyond a couple hundred families. In a town of more than a few thousand, if you have enormous swaths of residential-only areas, and especially if everyone drives and there is no transit, the roads get widened because there is too much traffic, and then it kind of devolves into a stroady nightmare.
For that area, it scaled by having multiple of these residential-only developments. Each one has the same benefit of only being meaningful to drive to/through for the residents, while driving out puts you on various connecting roads and retail/commercial areas (strip malls, full malls, massive grocery stores, etc). The town is technically about 4k, but part of a larger township of 40k (30 sq mi). Sure, it wasn’t the safest to make those external journeys on foot/bike, but it wasn’t until we were later in high school that we even wanted to go hang out at A Venue, and by that point at least a few of us could drive and everything was within 10-15 minutes or less with easy parking.