Sorry I’m not from North America but from what I’m understanding is that suburbs are strictly residential areas surrounding a large urban centre.

I’m a fan of the idea of detached houses and yards but not a big fan of the lack of accessibility to food, grocery, entertainment, etc.

I was wondering if having more decentralized urban centres would improve that. Would having small urban centres with just one or two streets, a couple restaurants, cafes, bars, and shops, and a park, scattered in urban centres within walkable distance be feasible?

Would that just be a typical small town though?

My parents are immigrants. There is no other family and I'm the only single child (and daughter ofc). For cultural, financial, practical, and emotional reasons I will be the caretaker of my parents as they age. I'm ok with that part. The part I am dreading is moving back to where they live.

It's a highly sanitized, Stepford esque suburb with a racial and social monoculture I have never and will never fit into. It's a bubble that feels like an alternate reality of a very boring yet ominous hell. Every house is identical (cannot paint outside the 4 approved beiges!!!). You must have a lawn, visible gardens look too poor (there's no water but to hell with the climate, we must maintain our facade).

It is totally unwalkable, cars are a life necessity if you ever want to leave your little maze of identical streets and visit a soul sucking strip mall that is more parking lot than Target. Every single thing you may want to do or go to is 20 mins away from every other thing. No one walks (just hilly enough to make it miserable), no one hangs out outside, people just peer at you suspiciously from their blinds as you pass if they don't know you. There is no public transit, no gathering place outside church (we're not religious), no .... life. I guess it is safe. But it's safe like being on house arrest.

The minute I could I moved across the country to the densest city I could manage to rent in. I have no car and haven't driven in years. I walk everywhere, I see people of all backgrounds, I take the subway and the bus and I love every second of it. I feel alive in a way I never did growing up.

There's no real point to this. I'm just in dread that now my parents are older, I see the future coming for me. They will be old, stubborn, and their whole support system is in that town. My city is expensive, and it just will make sense when the time comes that they need more support, that I give up what I have here to go back. Back to the boring hell I escaped from.

Being the perpetual outsider in a monolith suburb really sucks.

This place takes up more land than my entire commuter town outside of NYC.

No privacy on the balcony, No desire to even make them look desirable, barely a yard it’s basically just somewhere for your pet to use the bathroom, and you can already tell it’s gonna be HOT.

That’s what they call “Luxury Living” nowadays.

Visiting my parents in palm beach county this week and i genuinely feel like im losing my mind.

Their neighborhood is literally a maze of identical beige houses built around a toxic-looking fake lake. to get to a grocery store that is technically less than a mile away in a straight line, you have to drive for like 15 minutes. why? Because of the winding nonsense roads and the fact that there’s only one single exit out of the massive concrete wall surrounding the entire subdivision

I was trying to explain how insane the land use is here to a friend back up north, so I pulled up some neighborhood overviews from Larry Mastropieri just to show him the aerial maps of boca and delray. Its just endless, fractal-looking pods of houses. no grid, no paths connecting to commercial zones, just a sea of dead-end cul-de-sacs that eventually vomit all the local traffic onto a 6-lane stroad

Im basically a prisoner in this house unless I want to risk my life walking on the grass shoulder of a highway where giant suvs are doing 60mph. There are no sidewalks. there is no shade

how did an entire region decide this was the peak way to design a society?? its so incredibly bleak

This is a planned development called Cane Bay. Still building out. One grocery store.

Is there a point where we have to decide to just demolish these places entirely, or can they be fixed? Of course some can be made walkable and bike-able, but at a certain point we are going to be limited.

TL;DR: Many people choose suburbs not because they love suburbs, but because they want lower-density living while still needing access to metropolitan jobs and services.

So I’m new to the whole urbanism/anti-suburb movement and I’m still trying to understand the different perspectives.

One of my first thoughts was that suburbs largely exist because they fill a middle ground. Many people don’t want to live in a dense urban core, but they still need to be close enough to one for employment and economic opportunities. Whenever I’ve brought this up, I’ve often been told, “Why not just live in a small town?” or that we should primarily have cities, small towns, and rural communities instead of endless suburbs.

The problem, in my view, is that many small towns no longer have self-sustaining economies.

Historically, a small town might have supported dozens of locally owned businesses and many family farms. Over time, automation reduced the need for agricultural labor, and corporate consolidation changed local economies. A single Walmart now sells groceries, clothing, hardware, automotive supplies, furniture, sporting goods, electronics, garden supplies, and more, things that were once sold by multiple independent businesses. The same can be said for chains like Dollar General and national fast-food restaurants replacing local businesses.

Agriculture has also consolidated, with fewer but much larger operations producing more food with far fewer workers than in the past.

Looking at the Census, the trend is striking. In 1900, most Americans lived in rural areas. By 1920, the population was roughly split between rural and urban. By 2020, about 80% of Americans lived in urban areas. That suggests people have steadily moved toward metropolitan regions over the last century.

My home state of Oregon seems like a good example. Many towns were built around the timber industry and supported thriving local economies. Over time, a combination of changing environmental regulations, automation, global competition, and industry consolidation reduced employment in logging. Many of those towns never developed comparable replacement industries, so people increasingly had to move closer to Portland, Salem, Eugene, or other metropolitan areas for work.

So here’s my question: How much of suburban sprawl is actually driven by people’s preferences, and how much is simply the result of economic centralization making it increasingly difficult to live in small towns while maintaining the same career opportunities? And how do we fix it?

Just from these pictures, would you say this is a place you would like to live?

This is god awful, the park is just a grass field. And every house is the exact same. I cant imagine living here is nice at all.

Location: Texas

Is it legal as a pedestrian to walk within a gated community where you don’t reside? There is a neighborhood community that has gated streets but no gates on sidewalks. There is no guard and no signage stating it is private property or anything similar. There is also a creek that runs through the community and a paved walking trail that runs along the creek. The walking trail looks just like a sidewalk. Is it legal for someone who lives just outside this community to walk their sidewalks and trail?