Again and again, I hear urbanists declare that the suburbs are lonely and isolating. It certainly sounds logical. In a city, you’re walking past other people constantly — on the street, on the train, in cafes and restaurants. In suburbia, you’re shut at home inside your giant house or alone in the metal shell of your car. How could suburbia not be more lonely than the big city?
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Why doesn’t the simple intuition work here? Probably because people aren’t just like particles bouncing around in a chemistry experiment — they don’t simply form human connections and bonds just because they happen to walk past each other. A few relationships form from random urban conversations, but most form through work, or friends-of-friends, or shared hobbies, etc.
And while meeting a ton of new people is fun, what really gets rid of loneliness is repeated interaction with people you know and care about. Imagine going to ten parties filled with strangers versus having two close friends over for dinner. Which of those is more likely to leave you feeling lonely? What about 100 Hinge dates versus having a relationship? Remember that Japan has the world’s best cities, but struggles with widespread loneliness.
In fact, suburbs have some features that make it easier to interact with the people you really care about. Those big houses aren’t just for walking around all alone and going “Wow my house is so huge”. They’re for entertaining guests. It’s harder to have a dinner party or a TV night or a game night at a tiny little Manhattan apartment than at a big suburban McMansion. Cars help too; those short travel times make it easier to just pop over and hang.
This doesn’t mean cities are socially inferior to suburbs. Constantly meeting new people is exciting. There’s more fun stuff to go out and do with your friends in a city — restaurants, parties, and so on. It’s just a different lifestyle.
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Why are Millennials moving out? Part of it — the part that urbanists and YIMBYs will emphasize — is that they’re being pushed out by higher rents, which are a result of cities failing to build more housing. But that’s not the whole story. Millennials are also being pulled to the suburbs, because suburbs are generally better for raising kids.
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Anyone with kids can easily rattle off the reasons why suburbs make it easier to raise kids. A big house means more room for kids to have their own bedrooms, space to play, and a back yard to run around in safety. A car makes it a lot easier to ferry kids around to school, or soccer practice, or wherever. Cars also make it much easier to do large grocery shopping trips — try taking a week’s worth of food for a family of four home from the store on foot or on a bike and you’ll quickly understand.
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But it’s simply a mistake to frame the question of urban form as “Which is better, cities or suburbs?”. The answer is that they’re good for different things, and they appeal to different sets of people. Instead of fighting flame wars over whether the whole country should look like Manhattan or the Inland Empire, we should aim for a country that has room for everyone. We should build great city centers for the same reason we should build great suburbs — because Americans deserve to have great places to live, no matter what kind of place they want to live in.
From the article:
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