What’s an American suburb you actually like?

38 comments

  2. The outer suburbs of Boston are nice to visit. I grew up there and it’s good, just too busy for me.

  4. North Jersey, specifically towards nyc. good density, no sprawl, old towns, good public transport

  5. Do you mean suburbs of major cities, or do you mean something like towns that are kinda their own thing?

  7. the one i live in is awesome. everything’s close by. not overly populated. people have money and houses so they’re not all angry all the time. we all know each other. party on the weekends.

    go a couple miles north where all the apartments are and it’s a shit show. but here’s awesome. plan to die here.

  8. I live in the San Gabriel Valley, which is a group of suburbs of Los Angeles, and I enjoy it. Close enough to LA, Orange County, and the Inland Empire.

  10. Any middle class suburb. I just got a house in a decent suburb with good schools and low crime and I can’t wait to be the family man my dad was.

    90% of the hate for suburbs boils down to “I want to get piss drunk nightly and it’s harder to do that in the suburbs”, the backlash against anything perceived as traditional, and the natural urge to explore outside of where you grew up.

  12. Most Americans like suburbs — there wouldn’t be so much demand for them otherwise.

    I like the suburbs of Dallas, Houston, Austin, Birmingham, Boston, and Virginia-DC. I am unimpressed by the suburbs of New York (where I lived for a while), Seattle, Orlando, Fort Worth, Maryland-DC, and Las Vegas.

    We’ll see what I think about the Memphis suburbs next week.

  14. I will preface this with what I always have to preface it with in these sorts of discussions. I live in a small town of 30k people in new England. We have a small downtown, and then it spreads out as houses becoming more rural the farther you go from town. It spent most of it’s history as a self sufficient town with its own industries. During the 20th c it became a suburb as rail and cars made it commutable to nearby cities.

    It’s nice. I live a 1 minute drive from town. Have a half acre lot. People are friendly but not overly so. People keep theor things nice. We have lots of local businesses and restaurants that are frequented. It’s very, very safe.

  15. Most middle to upper middle class suburban neighborhoods in America are generally nice places to live.

    You might not be able to walk to a city town center and purchase a baguette but you can have a nice cookout and a fire in your 1/4 acre lot with trees and fence.

    Pick your poison, Pierre.

  17. SE Houston: Clear Lake, Webster, League City, Seabrook, Kemah.

    It’s pretty, tropical, kinda seaside, with the amenities of an extremely big city to the north and the gulf coast to the south.

  18. I like older, streetcar suburbs. Brookline, MA and Oak Park, IL are good examples. Lots of single homes, but still easy enough to get around.

  20. The SF peninsula between Palo Alto and SF is mostly really lovely suburbia, especially the parts closest to the Santa Cruz mountains.

  21. The suburb i grew up in in Augusta. Built in the 50, and 60s. A massive neighborhood with streets everywhere. None of this one entry one exit crap they’ve built for the last quarter century. We had a big baseball park at the back. Two elementary schools. An Olympic size pool that we could just walk to.

  22. Newtown, PA – suburb of Philadelphia. Doylestown, PA is a close second, but a tad remote.

  23. Long Island has a lot of really nice small towns, great places to live and raise a family

  24. Los Angeles’s South Bay and Long Beach area have things to do and good food.

  25. The idea that the areas where most people live aren’t desirable places is interesting. Suburbs are generally very safe, convenient, and affordable. Most people don’t need to live walking distance from bars, theaters, dancing, etc. We want to go to work then come back to a comfortable home and that’s why most people live in them.

    Anyway, yeah I’ve lived in a number of great suburbs. Des Moines and Edmonds Washington were great and were surrounded by lots of other desirable communities like Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, Bothell, Redmond, Kent, Kirkland, etc.

  26. The idea that people hate suburbs comes from the fact that new development doesn’t have a lot of trees, so it’s a stark, barren sea of grass and concrete.

    But I’m from a midsize city in Indiana with tons of areas zoned for residential only, and they’re all *wonderful.* The neighborhood I grew up in has *so many trees,* it’s like driving into a forest. It’s so shady, and green, and cool. On top of all the squirrels and raccoons, we even get deer wandering all the way up from the river behind the neighborhood.

    If you go downtown, there’s pockets of residential areas that are just as leafy, though the yards are much smaller. But Indiana has a surprising amount of great architecture, and there’s a bunch of neo-Victorian houses, and really quaint little homes nestled between the trees.

    I live in a major city in Asia now, and it’s a bleak, barren, cement hell compared to where I grew up, and I would trade it in a heartbeat if I could go back. Even my wife, who’s from here, dreams of having a home in Indiana with a grassy front yard where we can raise a mini horse (that’s her thing, she wants a mini horse).

    I’m sure you got the idea that American suburbs suck from some stupid anti-car YouTube channel, but, nah, the leafy green neighborhoods of the Midwest are wonderful.

  27. Sherwood, Oregon is a burb I loved so much I made it home, Tinley Park, IL is pretty cool IMO, and only because I have some ties there Alton, IL.

  28. Westchester NY, more so southern Westchester. I moved to New Rochelle from Queens as a teenager and loved it. I found most of the towns and cities in Westchester County to be very walkable and nothing was ever too far away. This was similar to my experience growing up in northeastern Queens. Public transportation is decent, Metro North I’d say in my experience is better than Long Island Railroad. I’ve never taken NJ transit but I’d imagine it’s better too.

    The towns here are older and very charming. Some have a lot of old money like Bronxville, Scarsdale, Rye,and Larchmont. Other towns and neighborhoods have more of a middle class vibe but still are also charming. These areas are still pretty expensive but not as expensive as the other towns I mentioned. This would include places like Mamaroneck, Tuckahoe, Pelham, Tarrytown and certain neighborhoods in White Plains, Yonkers and New Rochelle.

    Unlike most suburbs, Westchester also has some cities with very built up urbanized downtowns. Just about every town has some kind of construction going on, but in recent years White Plains and New Rochelle have seen a ton of new construction and now even have their own small skylines.

  29. I used to be a city person when I was single (more stuff to do, public transportation, close to essential things like doctors). But now that I have kids the suburbs are a lot more appealing. More space for the kids to play, and good public school districts.

    Here in Michigan I like Plymouth/Northville/Novi.

  30. It might be a stretch to call Northeastern Queens a suburb since it’s a part of New York City, but technically this area is suburban. There’s more single family houses, co-op and condominium complexes and car centric infrastructure than most of the rest of the city. It’s essentially a more walkable version of Long Island.

    I grew up in Bayside and the nearby neighborhoods like Whitestone, Douglaston, Beechurst were similar. They all felt more like suburban towns than urban neighborhoods. I didn’t have any subway access, but we had LIRR and the buses were reliable enough. There was a whole lot of parks too. Only downside of the area is that you might encounter some racists.

    I also like neighborhoods like Forest Hills and Kew Garden Hills in Queens, Dyker Heights in Brooklyn and Riverdale in the Bronx. These aren’t really suburbs but they have suburban style developments and some really nice houses.

  31. Upstate NY has some really beautiful suburbs. The neighborhood I grew up in was basically in the woods, so in the summer the whole sky was bright and green. Then you’d have fall when you’d get the whole canopy of orange and brown and yellow. Deer were always coming up to the windows, lots of birds, not to mention to nice privacy aspect of the trees. No one had fences except maybe two houses, and no one really needed them

  34. Pretty much any historic, first-ring suburb (or “streetcar suburb” that has been annexed in to the main city) is the stuff my dreams are made of.

    Oak Park, IL; Clayton, MO; and Bronxville, NY are three good examples.

  35. When I lived in Miami, I enjoyed Coral Gables quite a bit. Lots of places to eat and drink at there, while mostly remaining in a bubble outside of Miami’s craziness.

    Now that I live in Orlando, I’m a big fan of Winter Garden (the downtown area) and Winter Park.

  38. Richardson, Texas. Suburb of Dallas. Great food, diverse population, location is so good the really old houses sell for way too much. The school district is run by sane people compared to most other Texas school districts.

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