His beautiful wooden house stands on ten times the area as mine, with a very nice garden and ample parking space. It looks very nice. But my concrete/brick house is bigger inside, and much better constructed. Parking space for visitors can be an issue with me.
Our kids go to school by bike. His kids can't. Although the school is not far, biking is too unsafe. They go by bus. The school even closes when there is snow, because that would make even the bus too unsafe!
Our kids play in the street with their friends, they walk up to each others houses spontaneously when they want to play. My friends' kids had fewer friends, had to set playdates, and played more online.
The conversation we had confirmed many more things from the article.
The article brings up many good points, but the suburb outlined in the article describes a very specific kind. Having lived in a metropolitan US area for 19 years, I relish the lack of noise, the extra space (1 acre) and suburban life in general.
PS It's a little disingenuous to mention the bus/snow situation. Snow days here (5 max) are rare and typically well-warranted. You really cannot compare a 5cm "snowstorm" in The Netherlands with the 1+ feet (40cm) that fell overnight last winter.
Still, if your house is on an acre of area, that must have consequences. It makes infrastructure more expensive and increases distances. Do the roads in your neighborhood have walkways? How many college/middle schools can your kids choose from? Is there community life / sports clubs / shopping / restaurants other than pizza and burgers reachable without car?
I mentioned the bus/snow situation because my friend told me the school had closed for something like 20 days last year and had to extend classes into summer to make up the time. And both of us have fond memories biking to school for 10km in -admittedly Dutch- snowstorms, having fun. The US attitude towards risk still feels silly to me.
Roads do have more potholes than I'd like, indeed expensive to fix/maintain. We do have walkways (this is not Atlanta/Midwest). One middle school, one high school, colleges are elsewhere (ie plenty). Loads of community/sports stuff (too much). Shopping nearby, but some requires a car (you get used to it). Note: it's actually a myth that the burbs have bad food (at least in relatively wealthy towns on the East Coast). Better than anything offered in my old home town in Holland (I do miss my 'patatje oorlog'). Obviously happy as a clam here. Don't think I could ever get used to living right next to my neighbors again ('rijtjeshuis')
Totally agree with you on the perception of risk. It's a shame. It wasn't always like that. I blame cell phones and helicopter parents.
PS I don't miss biking 10km in my rain suit (regenpak) Gezamenlijk afzien? ;-)
But if you relax the public transportation constraint, I agree: the list of Chicago suburbs that defy most of the characterizations in this post is pretty large.
We also have a lot of walkable, tree-lined suburbs without huge setbacks and, with the exception of blighted commercial drags like Butterfield and Roosevelt, few of the traffic setbacks and parking lot hells that this post talks about.
Population density doesn't always tell the whole story. Portland, OR has a lower population density than Beaverton (one of the surrounding cities that is basically a suburb).
You seem to be confused. The article is saying that American suburbs are particularly poorly designed, not that suburbs as a general rule are terrible.
Here is Gröbenzell, a suburb just west of Munich that's surrounded by farmland: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gr%C3%B6benzell,+Germany/@...
In the states, such a suburb would be super-low-density and car-dominated, with all the negative features the author describes. There in Germany, Gröbenzell actually has a population density 30% higher than Seattle, and the whole town is within easy walking or biking distance of an S-Bahn station that gets you to the center of Munich in 20 minutes.
It's possible to have suburban towns that are still walkable, that still allow kids some measure of independence, that do not kill any sense of place. In the US, we've just chosen not to create them.