Large houses on large lots, quiet neighborhood, good schools, low crime. Essentially people raising kids. It's a paradise for some, pure hell for others. It's a shame that some, such as the author, believe their opinion is somehow superior. The reality is that is more about where someone is in their life (age, kids) that might drive where they might choose to live
"Choose" is an interesting word. School funding is largely based on district property values in the US, so when you build enclaves of $400k homes that ends up being where the only good schools in the area are. Hard not to choose that if you have kids. Mortgage interest deductions also encourage the choice. The development model for suburbs also passes along the cost of infrastructure, so that it isn't necessary for buyers to pay for it in the form of property taxes. Local governments just approve more suburbs to pay off old infrastructure debt, until they eventually default and leave the state with the debt. It's easy to choose infrastructure someone else pays for. Roads into and through suburbs are paid for out of states' general funds to the tune of 70+%, again, easy to choose that.
I grew up in the suburbs and have as an adult lived in everything from traditional suburbs to a dense inner city. If I had the choice, I'd happily move back to the suburbs. Suburbs are easy to get around (assuming you have a car) and there's plenty of privacy. There's little of the cheek-by-jowl cramming together of people that you find in dense cities.
I don't really know what people mean when they say suburbs are dull. There always seemed to be plenty of options everywhere I lived, conveniently accessible by car. Are the people who complain about this stuff real oddballs who need weird stuff you can only find in the biggest of cities, or are they congenitally hostile to driving?
> There always seemed to be plenty of options everywhere I lived, conveniently accessible by car. Are the people who complain about this stuff real oddballs who need weird stuff you can only find in the biggest of cities, or are they congenitally hostile to driving?
What's funny is that, in Dallas, all the interesting restaurants in the suburbs.
Want an authentic Sichuanese restaurant? Looking for a Cantonese barbecue joint? Or maybe an Indian place that serves real chaat? Or how about a nice steaming bowl of pho? In Dallas, you'll find all of these in strip malls in the suburbs (in fact, we have a pho joint on almost every street corner in some parts of the burbs), while food in the city core consists of a mixture of yuppie bars, restaurants that only appeal to white hipsters, and fast-food joints aimed at the people who commute to downtown.
Every single Asian demographic in the Dallas area has chosen the suburbs over the city, leaving Downtown and Uptown to white yuppies and hipsters.
"Suburbs are easy to get around (assuming you have a car) "
So, not really, then.
"I don't really know what people mean when they say suburbs are dull."
There's very little going on in them. Most of the culture options are in the cities. Most of the live music is going to be in the cities. Suburbs tend not to attract the new, experimental restaurants, preferring instead the safe predictable chain restaurants. Suburbs tend not to attract museums or traveling Broadway productions.
"There always seemed to be plenty of options everywhere I lived, conveniently accessible by car"
And where are they? Usually in the city. And you have to have a car.
"Are the people who complain about this stuff real oddballs who need weird stuff you can only find in the biggest of cities, or are they congenitally hostile to driving?"
They like new things. They like experimental things. And they don't always want to deal with the pain of driving (traffic and parking).
The article goes on about how the problems are mainly caused by government regulation. You don't have a choice. Zoning laws forbid living close to businesses, forbid streets that are too small for cars, mandate space for parking, forbid spacing houses to close together, forbid housing for the poor, etc.
If we eliminated these rules and people still chose to live in suburbs, that's fine. Choice is great. Let others live differently.
Those rules (which vary from suburb to suburb, and are by no means a hard rule) are, more often than not, a large part of WHY people choose the suburbs.
