In the UK, we don't often to have miles of suburbs without a grocery store. That's a separate choice around car centricity that the US has made.

I live in London, in a suburb, but within a 10 minute walk, I have multiple pubs, doctors, dentists, restaurants, small supermarkets, library, community garden and - most importantly - a train station that takes me into central London in about 10 minutes.

The way we structure housing here tends to be arranged around lots of smaller satellite town and villages connected to a large city centre. Big cities like London will provide trains for commuters and going "out out", but in a smaller town you often live a lot of your social life more locally and might commute to work by car.

The other thing in the UK is our houses aren't particularly large. A terrace home might not be more than 50% bigger than an apartment, but you get a garden, driveway and actually own some real land.