Suburbia is very American, and redditors hate suburbia, we all want something more walkable, more dense, more urban, less boring. But a lot of people love suburbia, so lets spread some positivity, what do you love about suburban living?

28 comments

  1. Back yards are nice, tbh. I’ve missed not really having space larger than window planters to grow stuff.

  4. I have a lawn for my kid to play in and a pool and a big basement to store shit and a garage. I can walk to stores and restaurants and I’m still 20 minutes from my office.

  5. It’s a lot of times cheaper, safer, and quieter than living in the city. You can also usually get more land/bigger houses too.

    I don’t even live in a suburb, but it’s really not that hard to understand why people want to.

  6. I like the idea of having my own land, house, and family. I’d have plenty of room to park which sucks in a city. I also don’t want to share a wall with neighbors. I want space to raise a family. That’s what the suburbs offer.

    Also, somethin about having my own grass is nice. I like looking at a fresh cut lawn.

  7. I want to own my own house. I love not having to worry about having friends over but they can’t park because they’ll get towed. I love being able to set up a given atmosphere without hearing the neighbors or them hearing me.

    I love taking care of trees. I love coming home after a long day of dealing with utter BS and resetting myself from the frustrations of work by mowing the lawn. I love seeing the cycle of the seasons without having to look at the weather app on my phone all the time.

    I love cooking my own food. I love having enough storage space to not have to go to the store all the time. I love making more than one dish without staging pans and bowls on chairs as I’ve done in some apartments.

    I love making a space my own. And for me that means living in a suburban or rural area. Urban living has too many restrictions and not enough freedom.

  8. Honestly, my favorite part is how boring it is. I like routine, and I don’t want to feel guilty about spending all of Sunday laying on the couch.

    Relative safety is up there, too. Even the safest neighborhoods in the city are only a bus ride away from the worst parts.

  9. I have a condo in a city and sometimes I really miss having my own space, a bit of privacy, and room to do the things I want. If I was in suburbia I would probably have more hobbies based at home or be able to get more into the hobbies I already have. On the flip side, I really like that I have 10 restaurants within a 2 minute walk of my house, I can walk to get groceries, and I’m less than a quarter mile from a subway stop that takes me downtown in 20 minutes. My commute to work is a 15 minute bike ride. Everything in general is super close and if there’s anything I really want to do, see, or have I can probably find it within half an hour of my place. There are definitely pros and cons of each situation and I can see how a change in my own personal circumstances would change which one would be more appealing.

  10. You kind of have the best of both worlds when it comes to urban and rural living. You’re not living on top of each other like you are in the city and there’s typically less crime. You also have most of the commodities, conveniences, and infrastructure that rural areas sometimes lack.

  11. I can walk to new tennis courts and park/swimming pool complex 5 minutes away. We are a tree city with sidewalks on at least 95% of our streets. When home it’s quiet and I can sit by a second story window and look out in my backyard with 3 apple and 1 peach tree with my small garden. Over 100 feet away is the cemetery fence(entrance lane)lined with 80 to 100+ tall pine trees. I can barely see parts of other homes on the other side of the 3/4 mile entrance lane, and it’s very easy to forget there are 4000 other people in town. It’s 15 minutes to the Cincinnati airport and 25 to downtown. Crime is virtually non-existent; it was a very safe place to raise our three kids

  12. It’s close enough to enjoy the city with a reasonable commute, but far enough to generally have more space at a somewhat affordable price. Some people actually like the quiet living in some suburbs.

  13. Privacy

    Peace and quiet

    Relatively safe

    More space

    It’s easier to have the little conveniences of life that are harder in an urban setting. When I lived in NYC, I never had a dishwasher, garbage disposal, washer/dryer, private outdoor space, proper closet space or good soundproof walls.

  14. I’ll agree that I’m not a fan of culdesac snout-house “welcome to my garage”, cookie cutter development style suburbs on tiny little lots. I’m in new England, where suburbs are really just small/medium sized towns that were self sufficient places and then became “suburban” as the car allowed people to live in one place and work in another, so that’s where I’m coming from with this.

    They’re nice, if you like that sort of thing. People have preferences so obviously it’s not for everyone, but I like it a lot.

    I have the downtown area 1.5 minutes from me, but I have my own quiet house and land where I don’t have to deal with the noise and smells from lots of people. I can go out to restaurants and bars when I feel like, and then come home when I feel like. There’s also a state park that’s like 30 seconds from me. My yard connects to open space (not the state park, this is town owned), so I can just walk from my yard into it. I like the animal life around me. We have families of all sorts of animals that I watch come and go, grow and develop. We had a skunk family last year, they were adorable and momma walked around with her six fluffballs following her everywhere.

    Your life isn’t as dominated by a bad neighbor if you end up with one. I lived in apartments for years before we bought the house, and yeah I’m not gunna do it again if I don’t have to lol.

    I really like having my own yard that I can choose to do whatever I want with. Similarly, I have a lot of hobbies that really are best done outside due to mess and chemicals, which becomes nearly impossible to do without a yard. I refinished our nightstands last summer, that’s tough to do in a house. I’m refinishing our antique kitchen door right now and that would be almost impossible without a yard.

    It’s nice, quiet, and very, very safe.

    The greenery is a big one for me, you just get more of it here. That and pollution are big ones that are supported by data, overall people in more rural areas have fewer mental health issues and fewer health effects from pollution.

  15. Redditors hate suburbia because most Redditors are very young. Suburbia is not much fun when you’re a single young adult.

    Suburbia is great for raising families. Since that’s the bulk of someone’s life (if they have kids), most people eventually move to suburbia. It’s safer, cleaner, better for kids, more nature than cities, cheaper for the same space, and better schools.

  16. (I realize this is a generalization; not true in every case)

    Compared to urban areas: more house and property for the money, lower crime, good schools, cleaner, convenience (especially if you have small children).

    There are downsides.

  17. >we all want something more walkable, more dense, more urban, less boring.

    Walkability isn’t really the biggest factor for me. I hate density. Why would I want that? I dislike heavy urban environments. Boring is subjective.

  18. Our neighborhood is in a heavily wooded area and it’s beautiful. We live on a lake and we are on a cove so it’s a quieter, less travelled part of it. We live in a very up and coming mountain bike area so we can just walk out our front door and hop on a trail. We have a beautiful waterfall/creek that is a 5 minute walk from our house if we use the trail entrance from our neighborhood. Our street is still off of the main road in our town and the highway is like a two minute beautiful drive drive through the trees. The grocery store/fire and police department/bank/restaurant/cute boutiques and post office are all on that same 2 minute drive and so is the library. We have a very mixed neighborhood of people from all backgrounds and beliefs yet we have block parties and get along great. I can sit out on my porch and have coffee in the morning and see a crap ton of wildlife, a fox regularly just chills in the yard with me while I’m doing yard work and I feel like a freaking Disney princess. If we hope on the highway we are just 15-20 minutes to a more dense collection of cities that have a ton of stuff to do. My sons elementary school gets to do things like go on trail walks, walk to a veteran memorial by the lake, go explore caves for recess and PE and they also learn how to ride bikes and go over different types of terrain and yes it’s the public school, they just have a location that allows for a lot of outdoor exploration. I also feel super safe, my neighbors are always looking out for us, there isn’t a high crime rate.

    Now, when we bought our house just 6 years ago, it was less than 200,000. It sits on almost an acre, is two stories and lake front. No one wanted to move here because it’s in Arkansas and of course no one wants to move to Arkansas. However, the area we live in is it’s own little bubble and pretty different from the rest of the state, and right now it’s experiencing a huge surge of people moving here for recreation and houses cost a fortune.

    But basically I love our suburb because it’s beautiful, safe, there is actually tons to do and see. But I know not every neighborhood looks like ours and we lucked out

  19. It’s a literal compromise between urban and rural living. Some people don’t want to live in cities, but don’t want to have to drive 300 miles to find an Indian restaurant.

    All the bad things about the ‘burbs are accurate, too, of course. But if you have kids, things like good schools, green space, safety, and nearby cultural opportunities all matter a lot. Not the choice for everybody, but it makes a lot more sense to me at 40 than it did at 20.

  20. Compared to urban areas: More greenery; more space for gardening; less noise, less crowds; more pleasant paths and trails for pleasure walks, runs, or bike rides; better access to natural landscapes

    Compared to rural areas: Better access to travel infrastructure; better access to shops; better access to a variety of restaurants; better access to cultural centers; more variety of people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds; easier travel by foot or bike; better access to jobs

    Overall, I would say there is no one attribute where suburbs are the number 1 place to live, but they balance a wide variety of attributes (I only listed the first ones that came to mind, there are many more). Different suburbs are going to balance them differently and different people place value on the different aspects differently. So, for *some* people they aren’t going to find the right suburb for them to feel comfortable. But, some people are going to overall feel more comfortable living in suburbs than anywhere else.

  21. I have my own private yard to relax in, next to nothing but other houses. No apartment towers next door blocking the sun and invading my privacy or a bar, coffee shop or grocery store generating noise, light, traffic, and odor.

    I have a garage with a car to take me from my garage to any address in the city or the country, at any time, with heat, air conditioning, and shelter.

    Crime is much lower than the cities.

    You get a lot more house for your money than living in the city.

    The police out here actually respond to calls and take crime seriously. I’ve known more than one person victimized by criminals when their car was broken into in Minneapolis and the police treated it liking a parking fee for visiting the city instead of a crime to investigate and prosecute the scum that did it to the fullest extent of the law. By contrast my neighbor car was broken into and the suburban police sent two squad cars out and knocked on my door asking me to review my security camera footage.

  22. It’s nice to have a yard for privacy and a place for your dogs to go outside, especially in the winter or in bad weather. Gardening and maintaining a yard can be very relaxing. A lot of people spend a lot of time on it so neighborhoods are typically lovely. Parks are abundant, there’s tons of preserved green space, seeing trees and grass and nature is awesome.

    There’s *tons* to do. Movie theaters, arcades, parks, public recreation centers, trampoline parks, hobby stores, restaurants, bars, shopping of all kinds, golf courses, trails for running or biking, dog parks, all kinds of business catering to families and children, etc. No nightclubs? Who cares, I haven’t been to a nightclub in 20+ years.

    It’s very quiet. It’s very safe. It’s convenient, everything you need for daily life is within 15-20 minutes of driving and the driving is mostly easy. You could make one trip on a Saturday morning and do all of your errands for the week in a few hours. I’d much rather do one large grocery/personal needs trip every 7-10 days than be burdened with frequent stops and hand carrying everything.

    There’s no way I’d live in an urban area. I need quiet, I need nature, I need privacy. I go to a museum once a year, a concert a few times a year. Not everyone is 24 and looking to walk to the new Korean taco place on a Tuesday night. On Tuesday night I want to watch my dog walk around the back yard while I grill a steak on the deck and then go for a run on a greenway and not listen to traffic when my windows are open.

    Suburbs are great to live in, that’s why so many people live there.

  23. It’s a nice quiet place to raise a family that isn’t far away from the amenities and opportunities of a larger city.

    And no not all of us want something more urban and more dense. Lots of people like having their space.

  24. # **LEAVE ME ALONE!**

    —-

    That’s my best argument in favor of suburbia: it allows more people to have a small plot of land and a small house they can call their own, so they can live their lives without being intruded on by noisy neighbors or intrusive landlords.

  26. I love suburbia — having the activities/amenities of the city, while also being closer to nature (vs. a concrete hellscape).

    Though I’d love it more if there were more accessible and frequent public transportation between the suburbs and the main city.

    I don’t live in Minnesota anymore. But they’re really trying to push commuter rail transportation in the Twin Cities. Good. The problem is that they have such a limited service schedule that it’s impractical unless you can fit your day around them. If you’re going to do public transportation, you need a robust and reliable service schedule and not some half-assed effort.

  28. “We” definitely do not all want something more dense and urban. That’s the exact opposite of what I want.

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