Suburbs are just one of many alternatives to dense urban life--it's not a dichotomy (that's a popular misconception in this thread). Moreover, there's no law that suburbs have to be a desert of unwalkable strip malls and stroads--indeed, there's a lot of variety among suburbs. I completely favor improving our suburbs and cities--that's not incompatible with wanting to be closer to nature. :)

Suburbs are what actually trades off against pro-urban/pro—density though. No one builds a dense city in a rural area. They do build suburbs there, and then those suburbs face pressure to become denser.

I will push back a little on your claim that suburbs are different: postwar sprawl is a remarkably homogeneous product, the codes from jurisdiction to jurisdiction are very consistent, the home builders largely national chains, the businesses in the strip malls also largely national chains. I’m sure there are exceptions but really for such a big country with so many ostensibly different places and identities, it makes very little difference which sprawl-agglomeration you live in. “Local character” and distinctive building styles mostly belong to the historic walkable core districts. The suburbs could be anywhere.

> Suburbs are what actually trades off against pro-urban/pro—density though. No one builds a dense city in a rural area. They do build suburbs there, and then those suburbs face pressure to become denser.

I agree with this, but I don’t see what that has to do with our conversation.

> I will push back a little on your claim that suburbs are different: postwar sprawl is a remarkably homogeneous product, the codes from jurisdiction to jurisdiction are very consistent, the home builders largely national chains, the businesses in the strip malls also largely national chains. I’m sure there are exceptions but really for such a big country with so many ostensibly different places and identities, it makes very little difference which sprawl-agglomeration you live in. “Local character” and distinctive building styles mostly belong to the historic walkable core districts. The suburbs could be anywhere.

My claim wasn’t that suburbs are diverse, but rather that there are exceptions which suffice to prove that suburbs can be done differently. If we can rethink our cities then why can’t we also reimagine our suburbs (or at least more creatively than “make them dense and urban”)?

why does always seemed to be assumed in these discussions that alternative to cities must be suburbs? you can live in a town.

An old-school town is walkable/urban in the same way we would advocate for cities: grid layout, main street with buildings pulled up to the sidewalk, pedestrian life, apartments over the stores, duplexes and small apartment buildings giving way to to larger single family homes as you walk out towards the fringes, schools that children can walk to, etc. Good towns have a lot in common with good urban neighborhoods. Probably the main difference is they don't need transit since the whole thing is small enough to traverse under your own power.

Automobile era towns have the same forms as the suburban sprawls attached to cities: stroads, strip malls, parking lots, subdivisions containing homogeneous uses and interfacing at few points with fast arterial roads. They're just disembodied suburbs. The disembodiment if anything makes them worse.

I visit lot of auto-oriented towns on cross-country roadtrips. They're vile places. I wouldn't want to be there any longer than necessary to get gas, food, use the restroom, etc. Sometimes when I take a wrong turn I catch a glimpse of the pre-car main street rotting away, behind the gleaming cloverleaf-adjacent McDonalds. It's sad.

I visit urban towns on vacation, on the way to and from hiking, etc. Sometimes I look up the real estate listings. They're even more expensive than the big city, but without any kind of local industry to pay those prices. They're for second homes or retirement, I guess. Also sad.