> Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years.

Yeah, that would be me. Paying a King's ransom to rent a hovel in an urban desert isn't my idea of fun. It would probably be OK if I did 100% of my work on a laptop, but with hobbies / side-hustles that involve physical equipment and space, an apartment isn't just dismal, it's stifling. Renting tools is like renting an apartment: high cost, low quality.

I'm counting the days until I can escape.

This hits a nerve for me, too. I didn't particularly mind or even notice the constraints when I was renting closer to the city. But for the equivalent rent and at the cost of a longer commute, I traded up to renting a house in the suburbs a few years ago.

It's been so freeing. If I'm working on something late or at odd hours, I don't have even have to think about the the noise impact on my neighbors[1]. Same with music - if I want to enjoy it, I just can. Simple as that; no more mental triage list of precisely where I listen to it so as to have the least impact on the inhabitants of any adjoining units, scrambling if the song changes to one with far more bass and I need to suddenly adjust things, or copping out of those mental gymnastics by settling with headphones after having already had them on for most of the day at work.

I've also got similar hobbies/interests/side-hustles as you, that involve accumulation and use of physical equipment and tooling. I've been able to really dive into those areas far more since I don't have to be hyper aware of spacial efficiency. Without even being fully cognizant of it, I had spent years minimizing how much attention I gave to those areas of interests while maximizing towards things that either had minimal physical prerequisites or leveraged things that both wouldn't cause a disturbance to the others living adjacent to me while also being multi-purpose enough to justify making space for it.

Before moving, it didn't really both me as I wasn't particularly cognizant of the many mental micro-checks I had accumulated organically over the years to ensure my behavior aligned with the noise, space, and practicality constraints of urban living. But now that I've been able to let those go, there's no way I could go back unless I somehow hit it big and suddenly become able to afford the astronomical price of urban living with the suburban luxuries of space and isolation. Anything short of that would now just leave me feeling constantly stifled and constrained at home.

[1] My neighborhood is packed in pretty tightly on small lots, so still have to be somewhat conscientious of noise impact on neighbors. But sound is sufficiently buffered that I can do pretty much whatever I like whenever I like without having to even think about whether doing so would disturb the neighbors. It's worlds apart from urban living, where SFHs are rare and you're more than likely to have at least one adjoining wall with a neighbor, and potentially have five "outer" walls all adjoining different neighbors.

>I personally feel strongly in the other direction. We had the infamous "white flight" and car-centric communities and life.

Getting out of car-centrism doesn't require everyone to live in large cities. Small cities with good design can be more than enough. Living in a dense arrangement might be more tolerable for many people in a small city where the countryside is more accessible.

Thank you, that's an excellent point. We (meaning often times me) have a tendency to think about the extremes as on/off. I have personally passed through a lot of pleasant, walkable small towns in the US, mostly they were laid out in the 19th century and often along a train line or river.

Kids change mindset.

Kids love yards. They love the little creek that runs past.

I love the safety. Small neighborhood, we all know each other and look out for the kids that run around playing.

I bought into this mindset, and regret it. That's what you do when you have kids, move to the 'burbs, right?

We moved from a big city to suburban hell a few years after having a kid. In those first years, we took our kid to museums, parks, playgrounds, etc. all over the city. Now there is jack shit to do in the suburb we're in except going to the mall, cannot walk anywhere, have to use the car 100% of the time to even go to a shop. A backyard is a sad place compared to something like Central Park. I feel so sad for my kid. If the prices keep going lower in cities and remote work becomes the norm, we're moving back. (Un)fortunately my wife hates it here too, and we've often talked about moving back to a city.

I think walkable towns (as opposed to sprawling suburbs) offer a better balance. We moved from SF to Albany/Berkeley with a 1 year old and it feels like the best of both worlds. There’s a lot to do and see, great parks, interesting culture, it’s very walkable, and you can have a yard/garden, friendly neighbors, kids playing in the streets, etc.

Downsides are that it’s almost as expensive as the city (you can get a bit more space for your money, but not a lot more) and closer proximity to “urban” issues like grit, crime, homelessness, traffic that you can be more insulated from in the sprawl.

I agree. Albany, El Cerrito, select parts of Richmond, and most of Berkeley are fabulous. I looked at an apartment recently with my gf in Berkeley that would have cut my commute in half. We didn’t take it because it was too small for us and our pets, but, damn, did we try to talk ourselves into it for a bit.

C'mon over to Rockridge or Elmwood -- especially if you're thinking of having kids!

I did live in Rockridge briefly, and it was nice.

Maybe you just chose a bad suburb (and maybe the city haters chose a bad part of the city or a bad city)

I grew up in the suburbs. I loved we had a 2 car garage with tools. My dad had a radial saw and built all kinds of stuff. We ran a neighborhood haunted house in it. We also had a pool in the backyard, all our friends came over often. We had a 20x30ft family room that was build to be sound proof so my dad could practice drum playing. It was at the far opposite side of the house from my parents bedroom and they let us use it for slumber parties often. There was a collection of hobby stores a few minutes away by bike. One neighbor had a small farm in his backyard with 4 fruit trees and various stuff in between. I loved all the neighbors. One had a go-kart that we would ride from time to time. My parents entertained often including an 80person new years eve party every other year. Could walk or ride our bikes to school where we launched model rockets and watched people fly radio controlled gliders.

That said I'm not dissing the city. I can't really imagine what its like to be in NYC as a kid but many European cities seem like great places for both adults and kids.

Riding a bike/scooter in the cul de sac, playing in the woods, driving over to the town square and wandering around for a while. There's tons of things to do in the suburbs. There's tons of things to do in the city. Really, it depends what you like.

Personally, I prefer to take my car to the shop because I don't want to carry a car load of stuff home. And Central Park is something I like to visit, but I wouldn't send a young child to play there by themselves.

"The suburbs" is such a broad category that it's practically useless. Houston suburbs, for instance, are vastly different than Chicago suburbs in terms of walkability, character, and access to nature. Even suburbs in the same metro are vastly different in experience.

With you on this. There was never a lack of things to do in new York and with a tiny apartment little incentive to stay home.

Back in the suburbs now and the kid would spend his Saturdays watching TV if I didn't stop him because the alternative is ... the one playground in driving distance? The movies? Target?

People really underestimate the volume of activity you can put in front of a young kid in a city.

Some things I’ve observed about families I know who seem to have suburban life figured out:

- regular (meaning periodic) physical activity is essential, for the adults and kids. Sports leagues, gym classes, whatever. If you’re not into sportsy physical activity, you need a physical hobby like woodworking, gardening, or literally anything to get your blood flowing

- your weekly schedule looks totally different as the seasons change. Skiing in winter, hiking and camping in the fall, beach vacationing in the summer, etc

- regular domestic vacations to escape the boredom, and to make you long for home.

- regular home improvement, to make your life in your house 1% better every month

- regular visits with nearby close friends and family. At least one visit to a close relation every two weeks. Non negotiable, and ideally tied to holidays

- overdo your holidays. Birthdays are huge, winter holiday (Christmas etc) is huge. Thanksgiving is huge. It has nothing to do with the meaning of the holiday and everything to do with getting people together.

These kinds of things are less achievable in the city because you have less money, less space, less autonomy. Just my observations from happy suburban families, I’m curious to see others’ notes.

What you've described sounds pretty suffocating to a kid. Growing up in the city my parents didn't have to force me to do a bunch of mundane bullshit, there was so much to do I was able to find cool stuff on my own.

I mean yeah, if you force your kids to do this stuff they’re going to hate it? I think you might be discounting the fact that many kids love to do these kinds of things, and also the role the kids play in deciding what to do.

The idea is to expose your kids to a wide range of activities, and support them doubling down on an evolving handful of them. Avoid setting super specific constraints (you must play a team sport), and instead try setting goals (find a physical activity you enjoy and find motivating). From my perspective, parenting is about exposing children to their options, and making some choice recommendations where you have experience.

Parents can do that anywhere, and fail to do that anywhere. I do agree that if your parents aren’t doing a good job of that in a walkable city, kids are more likely to discover those options on their own.

I do all of these things living in a city

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that they couldn't be done in a city. Depending on the city, you might even have better access to these activities (cooking classes, culture tours, etc.). However, these activities are invariably more expensive in urban environments, because you're competing with a higher volume of people for a small amount of space. And, where there are usually cheaper alternatives in the suburbs, there are typically no alternatives in the city.

For example, imagine that your kid wants to pursue rock climbing or small boat sailing, and your family lives in NYC. Or, you want to have a holiday gathering of 20+ people. The options exist but they're exorbitantly expensive.

For what it's worth plenty of kids get into rock climbing in nyc. There is a relatively high density of high quality gyms and nyc is 2 hours from one of the best climbing destinations in the country (in my admittedly biased opinion).

I was able to start a sailing team at my city high school because the park district gave us free boat and coaching time. They also had extremely cheap classes that anyone can take.

One thing that will keep me from living in the city for the rest of my life is how much I enjoy having private outdoor space. Being outside by myself is one of my favorite feelings in the world.

>I bought into this mindset, and regret it.

I feel you. We did the same, but that's because our son has ADHD and public or private schools in the city weren't cutting the mustard. We all miss the city and our friends there, and I miss walking everywhere. It was an awesome place to raise a child, but circumstances forced our hand.

Suburbs suck, mind-numbing pits, I don't know why people with families love them. I think they all secretly hate them, it's just that they want you to share their misery by convincing you to move.

> mind-numbing pits

What's so bad about a nice suburb? By nice, I mean "with parks, and nearby mountains, and community centers", not just cookiecutter crap from horizon to horizon.

Sure, there's no live jazz around, but it's not like the city is so far away that I can't go and get some of that when I want it, and meanwhile I can leave my kid's bike on the lawn overnight and it'll be there in the morning.

My definition of suburbia is the endless rows of cookie-cutter houses within gated communities, where the closest grocery store is 5 mi away and the eating options are TGIF or Ruby Tuesday. What you describe is where I live, its 15 min from downtown and I've great parks nearby, lots of mom and pop restaurants, hiking and biking trails.

You understand why those suburbs were created, right? It's not because people don't want to live in the city close to everything, it's because the city core has decayed and become a criminal hellhole, where the nice areas are unaffordable and the affordable areas are not safe to raise a family in.

Autonomous Zones are only going to make this worse.

You are talking like either the movie RoboCop or as if the 1980s crack epidemic were still in swing. A lot has changed since violent crime started declining rapidly in the mid 90s.

I'd point out that there are plenty of areas that are neither urban or classic suburbia. But I'm guessing you don't like more rural areas either.

I don't think I could live permanently in a rural area, but I would love to have a place where I could go down once every couple of weeks, with a big backyard, am sure my kids would love it.

I loved seeing 10 year old kids riding their bikes around the parks of Stockholm after dark in the summertime. Hell, I see the same thing in the recently-fixed Snow Park in Oakland.

There's no natural law that says kids can't play safely in nature in an urban environment. Plus the added benefit of meeting and interacting with other kids from all different walks of life.

We just have to prioritize it - and unfortunately the "got my own piece of nature and I'll drive everywhere else" suburban mindset is part of what forces our cities (and suburbs) to remain dangerous asphalt wastelands.

Our street in North Oakland (Colby St.) is now a "slow street": parents push strollers, kids are learning to bike, teenagers are skateboarding, techies commute to BART on bikes, oldsters walk in the street chatting. Wonderful change!

I'm very excited by the fact that cities around America are slowly waking up to the idea that providing more spaces for cars instead of people makes living in them so much better.

Everyone says this, as if none of us who advocate for urban life understand having kids. I have two kids.

Also, they raise plenty of kids in other countries where they haven't oriented life around suburbs.

Also, this was more true in the United States before white flight, and the US raised plenty of healthy kids then.

So I don't think the kid thing makes as much sense as they say. But the state of US school systems does make the urban kid raising thing needlessly expensive for many.

Violence and distracting behavior in schools are bad. But school scores, prestige, etc. don't matter as much as most people think. Your home environment matters more than the school. High achieving magnets and wealthy suburban schools are that way because of the selection profile for students, not because the school itself is transformative.

Having exposure to high status schools in my own childhood, I agree 100% with your last sentence, that was one of the most important lessons I learned growing up, to completely ignore pedigree. I was in a well regarded school where pretty much everyone was an idiot. But they were born to successful people and most of them are now successful adults. Firm a proof as any that merit is either not the norm or completely doesn't exist.

Still, I think more of an effort should be made to improve US urban public schools. I don't know what the answer is. It's surely very complex. I am not a specialist.

The big difference is in other countries schools are not as bad as they are in cities in the US. Not a lot of countries have this huge divide of urban vs suburban culture. In America, you move to the suburbs to die.

I have a kid. And a cat. My neighbour has two kids and a dog. Their neighbour has a kid. Across the hall from them, two kids. approx 80 sqm apartments each.

I might as well just copy your last paragraph.

Additionally, we love the parks, the playgrounds, the gardens, we walk to childcare, walked to work before this whole pandemic thing. We all have memberships with the museum and the zoo that give us unlimited visits. And since the pandemic, my son often rides in a Thule transport behind my bike. we've got a creek along the bike trail, and one in one of the gardens. we've even got a children's farm down the road.

Culturally many Australians are like Americans: the refrain is "you need to move to suburbia once you've got kids" and "kids need a back yard to run around in" and "you can't raise a kid in an apartment". To the point that half of them never move into the city in the first place or reflexively move out without an actual thought or goal. And it IS frustrating to lose friends (so far everyone I've talked to that has moved out regrets it or at least looks back wistfully) , and knowing that this belief is the viscious circle that stops people improving cities.

But while I will admit that rural areas have something we can't replicate in the inner city (we all have trade offs after all), I WANT my child to have the opportunities afforded in the city and will actively fight the forces trying to set suburbia as a default. judging by the number of childcare centres, prams and scooters showing up in my neighbourhood, we might finally be on the verge of a generation that will try to stay.

the pandemic has changed things, but as I've said to my wife and has been echoed by other posters, maybe this will clear the way for people who want to be here...

Oh man, please allow me to do my best to offer some subjective validation of your life choices.

I grew up in one of the small, very coastal Australian towns that stayed beautiful but got expensive and boring (alternative seems to be: grew big and turned awful, not much middle ground here).

This was a ride your bike to school at 6 years old, spend one third of your life in the ocean, "just try to be home for dinner" town.

Then I spent some time in some of the nicer, central suburbs of a second tier Aussie city.

Then some small, blue collar northern European industry towns, then a major southern European city.

Of those, and given the chance/choice, I'd raise children in the tiny coastal village and the dense European city (within 100m of my apartment - pedestrian streets - there were two small playgrounds, a market, a school, a library, a park, the beach was a 15min walk). Anywhere between those two extremes and adventure turns into a thoroughly planned outing, with a strict time limit on the paid parking if you got lucky and found a spot.

The moderate densities are (or become) sprawling nothings with one coles/woolies/liquorland/bws/bunnings "hub" and long commutes to anywhere. Like you, many of my friends who plan to become young families seem to gravitate towards these starter-package lives, and although I'm probably listening for it, I hear the same regret and resignation from them that you do.

Older relatives live in more expensive versions of the same thing, with a better quality finish on the bathroom and a glass fence on the pool they never use, and an 80k SUV for the just-as-long commute. There might be a flashy bowls club filled with pokies instead of a shitty tavern filled with pokies.

Keep fighting the good fight. We build these 5 bedroom homes in the suburbs so that we're comfortable staying home. Because there's nothing to do outside, because we spent so much energy building nothing suburbs.

The problem with suburbs is they don’t allow kids to get any amount of independence because they must be driven everywhere by their parents. I moved from a US suburb to a small city in Europe when I was 12 and it was liberating. I could suddenly walk or bike downtown alone.

"Suburb" is such a broad term so difficult to compare what it means.

Your description sounds the exact opposite of suburb to my experience.

A suburb area is optimal for young kids as they can go everywhere. Parks, playgrounds, forest trails, movie theaters, everything is within a 10 minute walk or 3-5 minute bike ride. That's what the suburb experience means to me and the life we live right now.

In a city (SF/NYC) I couldn't possibly let my <10yr old go anywhere without extreme supervision given the crime, drugs, abusive cops, prostitution, crazy homeless, etc in every corner.

Actually you possibly could. Just because you think that's what NYC is like doesn't mean it's actually that way. I won't comment on Sf since I've never lived there.

FWIW, I spent my 20s mostly in NYC (although living across the river in NJ) so I'm not unfamiliar with the area. Granted, it's been a while.

Downtown of our small 130k town is a mile walk.

We can walk to many things. We are still considered suburban.

Further out and walking to shops is less plausible. But then you have lots of nature to wak around

It's funny because my first thought was "a mile is around a 20 minute walk; that sounds really nice!" But if you have young kids, a 20 minute walk just to get somewhere can be torture.

suburbs are different then rural? I grew up in a suburb and walked and rode my bike everywhere. ran around the streets with friends and got into plenty of trouble skateboarding around town. population between 20-30k.

Need to make a distinction between car-dependent postwar suburbs and suburbs with train connections to the city. The latter are older and often have walkable neighborhoods.

Many HOAs have rules that require children under the age of 13 to be supervised by an adult when outside the home.

Technically this is policy and not law but you could rack up huge fines if you do not supervise your kids. Often times parents trade off and coordinate but it’s still a hassle.

  Many HOAs have rules that require children under the age of 13 to be supervised by an adult when outside the home.

Not remotely the case in the US. There can be common-area usage restrictions (e.g. pool and spa), but they can't constrain anything done off property.

I see this expressed a lot, but from my personal experience growing up in a small rural community, I always wished I lived in the city.

Maybe it’s just a “grass is always greener” thing, but I always wonder why people assume kids really want the suburban life.

Because it's what is pictured in almost every movie/TV show ?

Crime stuff in cities, nice family comedies in the suburbs.

Yeah, and then you have to drive them to and from school, they have not much to do unless you drive them and one of you two have to stay home due to all that driving.

I spent my entire childhood in the suburbs and literally never was I driven to/from school except for medical/dental appointments. I walked/biked from first grade until I bought my own car. My experience was typical in my peer group.

It is not acceptable nowadays to have your 7 years old to bike to school without adult. People overreact on 10 years old playing outside without adult nearby.

Walking to school requires school/daycare/extracurricular center in walking distance walkable city. The spread in suburbs means that distances are higher then in the city.

Were you a private school kid? School buses or walking were the norm for most people I know who grew up in the suburbs.

It is the experience of parents who complained about that.

I loved living in the city as a kid. Going to the suburbs to see my grandparents always showed me how miserable it was out there. The parks in the city are better, the food and culture is incomparable, and the diversity was incredibly important to who I am today.

You’re spot on about the diversity. I did not grow up in a very diverse place and it’s one thing I feel that I really missed out on.

But parks? In the NYC suburbs (maybe exurbs is more accurate) where I grew up, I had like 5 beautiful state parks within walking distance from my house. I could walk through my friend’s backyard to a pair of beautiful lakes where we could swim, fish, kayak, whatever.

It’s interesting. I’m not trying to be argumentative, but when I go to the city (any American city, at least), I find it to be really dirty, loud, and I find the people to be generally rude. I also don’t like the complete and total lack of outdoor space that isn’t public. Nothing beats a backyard to me.

I live in Chicago which has the entire lakefront as park space and is filled with tons of other parks too. The suburbs are all off the lake so they don't have any beaches. Unfortunately there aren't any national parks or mountains in the midwest so the suburbs don't really have anything that the city doesn't other than some more empty space I guess.

You should check out the forest preserves. The Chicago suburbs really got it right there.

I really enjoy the forest preserve. Love biking the north branch trail. Especially nice how easy it is to get to it by going up Milwaukee.

Yeah until those kids are teenagers and they're bored out of their minds with nothing to do.

Here's the thing about suburbs and exurbs: Even if everyone loved them, the problem is few people can afford to move into them. They discourage construction of rental supply and prefer either single family homes or... higher-end condominiums. So if you want to live in these communities you need to be able and willing to buy property.

People aren't typically at this stage until they're secure in their careers and have partnered up. These days that's people well into their 30s (and maybe 40s).

The notion that a bunch of 28 year old single people making $30,000-$50,000/yr while paying down student loans are going to be rushing out to the suburbs to buy homes[1] because of COVID or "social unrest" seems unlikely.

[1] Which, incidentally, tend to be fairly large since municipalities discourage smaller "starter home" construction.

> Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years.

What would they be bitter about?

The suburbs of "thriving" cities are "thriving" in basically exactly the same way as the city centers are. Even in the extreme examples like the Bay Area, the crazy SF prices haven't stopped prices in Mountain View from also going nuts.

The Bay Area is a bit of a special case in that a lot of the big tech employers (especially) are in the 'burbs--which, sorry, is what SV is. Yet you don't really escape urban housing pricing anyway.

By contrast, the Boston area for example you can get to significantly cheaper (though not exactly cheap) housing out where a lot of the, especially local, tech employers are. Things have shifted more towards the city in recent years but a lot of tech is still 30-45 minutes outside the city.

What pendulum swing? The suburbs and exurbs aren't emptying out.

Does denser living really matter if most of the business and professional jobs go remote? The traffic in my city (Austin) has plummeted dramatically since before Covid.

I’ve been a remote worker far longer than Covid and live in a dense (for the US) area. For me the density value comes from things that specifically can’t go remote.

Having parks, beaches, produce shops, restaurants, schools and friends in walking distance is the value.

Covid has proven those things can’t be replicated online.

If you have children it's not as if you can move anywhere even if your job allows it. Moving is traumatic for children and the places you can move to are those with adequate schools.

The benefits of remote working are largely lost on those with children.

I have a child. I live where I live specifically for the school and I don’t want to move.

Remote work dramatically increases my opportunities in my current location.

Right remote work can increase opportunities, but I should have said the mobility advantages are mostly lost on families.

I believe there is economic research that says increases in density are correlated with larger increases in productivity.

I also think the environmental cost is lower, for example if you're not burning fossel fuels in single occupant SUVs in order to do everything. My personal experience is also that avoiding that last part is good for your health, physical fitness and stress.

How does the pendulum affect you?