I'm not saying suburbs are perfect, but you've basically thrown up a stack of strawmen here.

We jokingly referred to it as "the suburban cultural wasteland", because you had to walk 2-3 miles to find anything that wasn't more houses, a grocery store with corporate specialty stores attached (Starbucks coffee, various automotive places, etc), or a school.

Most of what you could find in that radius was a mall, which was just a bigger version of the grocery store thing or various pieces of civil infrastructure (parks, community center, etc).

You had to go 4-5 miles to find anything that was even slightly not cookie-cutter, which put it at a fairly impossible distance to walk routinely.

I'm contrasting this with the city I now live in that the suburbs were around, and I'm pretty sure I could hit an oddball business with a baseball from my window.

The kinds of suburbs people are lambasting here are almost by definition places where the only things in non-driving distance are houses and some basic amenities (schools, big box/grocery stores, maybe a library). Once you're to the point of having more than a couple of restaurants in walking distance (that aren't Perkins) that's not really what we're thinking of when we blast "suburbs."

The point is, not all suburbs are the same. Some are a lot nicer to live in than others.

Suburbs frequently have wide roads that make bike riding quite easy. They are also usually flat.

I don't know what you are doing to annoy car drivers, but I've biked a lot and have never been yelled at. (Or heard others yelling.)

One of my friends has been shouted at several times cycling down a mile-road (i.e. 12-mile), that he should get out of the road.

Main roads being 3+ lanes and with huge parking lots on each side and little to no sidewalks or pedestrian lights on traffic lights. Residential roads are wide and have the houses, trees, mailboxes, etc set way back, have no street parking, and also often have no sidewalks, or sidewalks that do strange things like start and end randomly. All of this creates kind of a feedback loop where the wide spaces encourage driving fast, and the usual lack of obstacles and good bike lanes and sidewalks discourages walking and cycling. The feedback is that the faster drivers and fewer other non-drivers tends to discourage anybody else from getting around any other way. Make it so that it feels nerve-wracking to cross the street or cycle a few blocks, and virtually nobody will do it.

Of course, I wouldn't have felt comfortable riding a bike on the road there, so it somewhat mitigates how useful a bike actually is.

It's pretty obvious to everyone that the nonsensical street layout was designed to keep everyone but residents out.

Every house had huge lawns, and because the houses were all built as part of the same subdivision development, they were all roughly the same age. This created a lot of keeping up with the Joneses, where one neighbor getting a new roof meant a cascade of people getting new roofs. One house got a paint job and suddenly the whole damn fuckin' street is painting houses.

Getting anywhere without a car is nigh impossible. The neighborhood, despite being upscale, lacked sidewalks (I guess they never thought anyone would need 'em, the residents ain't poor after all), and once you leave the neighborhood you face a 5-lane arterial where the unofficial speed limit is 50mph and drivers have no conception of pedestrians. The sidewalks are wide enough for one person - if you're unlucky enough to meet someone coming the other direction you get to do a silly dance around each other so nobody has to step into 50mph traffic.

Crossing this street is also nigh impossible until well after I moved out of that place. There are pedestrian crosswalks painted in, but good luck getting any of the drivers to stop for you. Thankfully as of a few years ago they installed a real honest to God traffic signal. Small victories.

Anyways, long rant, but ufmace's "nightmare" suburb does exist. I grew up in one.

Obviously, suburbs categorically fail to accomplish the strategic goal behind creating windy streets; it's almost impossible to live in one without a car. Suburban city planners probably were not inspired by Alexander. But they are safer places for kids to play in the streets than Chicago blocks, where residents often lobby for speed bumps to deal with speeding cars.

Suburbs bad. Windy streets? Maybe not so much.

The solution (other than making things way more dense) is to make walking / biking paths at the end of cul-de-sacs to connect the suburbs for pedestrians, while still maintaining the advantages on non-grid street layout.

But a lot of newer suburbs make it somewhere between unpleasant and dangerous to walk anywhere.

Also - most post 1990s suburb growth doesn't use grids, so it becomes grievously difficult to easily walk/bike between areas, since it's never a straight line to achieve your goal.

/long live the grid design

We're a city of neighborhoods. The Loop is the main tourist destination, sure, but few people actually live there. We live in neighborhoods. Some have houses with (small) lots, some have apartments, some have both. There's a nice sprinkling of parks, and most neighborhoods have amenities like a few independent restaurants, maybe some chain restaurants, coffee shops, bars, CVS, and a grocery store or two. Things you might even find in a larger/denser suburb. The difference is that you can usually walk <15 minutes to a train that comes every <15 minutes to take you downtown.

Unlike Manhattan, buses are best for most short-haul trips while the rail system is best for longer rides (we don't do the "trains go north-south, buses go east-west" thing.)

Public transit is often slower than driving, even with traffic, but you can enjoy the time if you bring your smartphone and/or a book.

I live in a city, and it's kind of ugly, kind of dangerous in many places, there are random shootings of strangers. The air, thankfully, is good. The rats in the streets would be kind of awesome! :)

I find the original description absurdly accurate.

I don't drive/have a car and it is crippling.

Transportation alternates are also highly variable and make a huge difference.

Also, while prediction is a dangerous game, I foresee the combination of increased investment in public transit, and the advent of affordable driverless cars, adding up to helping suburbs remain a terrific place to grow up. As my hometown (Arlington, MA) was in the 70's and 80's, and as my new adopted town (Duxbury MA) is today.

Related tangent: IMHO quality of life is less about urban/suburban(/rural), than it is about neighborhoods. I posted about this topic earlier this year: http://www.chrisweekly.org/2014/01/22/neighborhoods-matter-h...

I'm incredibly thankful for my privileged upbringing in a similar suburban community, but none of my peers could leave fast enough.

I find the other problems more ambiguous, though. High median income is almost axiomatic: people with means will choose the nicest places to live. That doesn't bother me much at all. It correlates strongly with lower crime and a stronger focus on education. And maybe "nothing to offer young adults" is actually a feature. I think young adults as a rule should leave their hometowns, travel the world, explore and experiment and do brave and foolish things, learn from their mistakes and get some perspective.

I'm not sure any one [kind of] place can be great for families with young children, and for young adults, and be economically and culturally diverse. Absent the option of such a utopia, as the father of two young girls I'm always -- and unapologetically -- going to optimize for proximity to other families with kids, safely walkable/bikeable streets, and excellent schools.

Respectfully, Chris

edit: It's easy to know your neighbors in suburbia if you're outgoing, and things vary from street to street. But there generally is way less interaction than if you were to have a neighborhood pub at the end of your street, or side-to-side porches everyone lounges on during summer nights.

It tends to be that you know the neighbors you get along with and ignore everyone else. In city environments, it's more like you interact with everyone because, well, no choice.

I don't like to talk to everyone I meet or even be in a city for too long as it overstimulates my senses. It is the same reason why I don't like large crowds and prefer living in the suburbs.

The far more likely scenario is that you find you have some common background, and waste an evening relating stories that you would probably never dredge up again otherwise. The world really is a surprisingly tiny place.

> I don't like to talk to everyone I meet or even be in a city for too long as it overstimulates my senses.

It takes all kinds :-)

The super-outgoing will always know their neighbors, and the super-quiet never will. A little proximity and shared interests/spaces tends to help those in the middle along some.

Yes, I need a car. I love cars/motorcycles. I love driving. I always owned at least one vehicle even when I lived in the city and didn't have to. So this isn't a bad thing for me at all. Having a garage to safely park and work on my vehicles is a huge bonus.

I am far less isolated from my neighbors and community than I was when I lived in the city. Living in apartments I had essentially zero contact/communication with my neighbors other than uncomfortable elevator rides. Living in the suburbs I know all my neighbors well. We help each other clear driveways after a big snow. We BBQ together. We watch each others houses when we travel. We talk.

I love having a huge lawn. It's not a burden, it's wonderful. I love having a nice hammock, green grass to lay in, a big space for my dog to run around in, a place to put the raised garden beds I built for my wife, etc...

I enjoy not having ugly/loud/smelly commercial buildings hemming me in.

We have good pedestrian infrastructure. Wide sidewalks that let me run, walk the dog, walk into the town forrest for a hike, or stroll into town for lunch or to grab ice cream with my wife on a hot summers day. There's no high speed traffic, and no irrational fears about kids getting kidnapped.

When I have a party, everyone can easily park in my driveway if they also live outside easy public transportation. I can play music and have 20 people over for a bonfire without bothering my neighbors.

There's a lot of things I miss about living in the city, likewise there's a lot of things I miss about living in the country. But honestly, right now, my current neighborhood and home are a great spot for me.

I abhor personal motor vehicles, refused to even get my license at 16 and have managed exceptionally well over the last 7 years. I've put several thousand miles on my bike(s) over the years as my main mode of transportation, though I do also use public transit quite often. Living near SLC, Utah our transit is fair, but stupidly expensive.

I grew up in the suburbs, and felt approximately 0 connection to those around me. Living in an apartment building I have conversations with people sitting on their porch/balcony quite often. I don't even particularly enjoy people either.

I have no opinion on the lawn to be honest, at the moment there is more than enough land for those who want it to enjoy.

I actually enjoy the close proximity of various buildings, which very very rarely can be called loud, ugly, or smelly. I don't live next to a manufacturing plant, so yeah..

Pedestrian infrastructure is necessarily improved due to the greater density of people, but this isn't really an issue that I've found in the suburbs either.

If I have a party there is more than enough parking surrounding my apartment building that it really doesn't matter. Granted I can't have a bonfire or blast music, but I've been there/done that and don't miss it.

I miss basically nothing about the suburbs. Always felt too hostile, too "fuck you, got mine." Maybe it was the people, maybe just the neighborhood, but I'd kneecap myself before I went back.

I like my suburban "not-gated but has just one entrance" for safety, a good-sized easy-maintained lawn for the kids to play in, no ugly/noisy commercial buildings, and a quick EV drive to a vast array of options that I don't want to actually live right next to. Pedestrian infrastructure is pointless as it's faster to drive to what you actually want to go to than to walk to what you don't, kids ARE monitored despite survivor bias, and anyone can get to know neighbors to whatever degree they like. Seems to me this is a whole lot better than living stacked on other people, walking being near-compulsory because simple parking is hideously expensive, and traffic is prolific and unavoidable - an unsafe environment I'd rather get away from.

I'd rather be in the country (grew up there), and will likely return.

You are talking about liking something that has tax revenues that cover mere fractions of the costs incurred. How much would you like it if your property taxes were 50% higher? 2000% higher?

The article covers sweeping statements & accusations, ignoring local realities. If a particular town made a bad deal with a developer, that's not the same category as those that made a good deal; a big screwup can skew the average when lumped in among several successes. Ranting about sewer maintenance doesn't apply to a neighborhood that doesn't have sewers (mine has backyard septic systems/fields; your offal is your problem), and likewise for public water vs private wells. It's a solvable problem: should taxes be higher? if so, raise them accordingly and look for alternate solutions like encouraging domestic self-sufficiency.

It's a paperwork problem. Much of what the article describes involves carefully negotiated & balanced deals, followed later with absurd & overbearing demands for "improvements" - no surprise the latter are "unsustainable". Build a community with suitable roads and lawns designed to balance them ... then demand a >50% increase in road width, destroying lawns and vastly altering traffic dynamics? Build a suitable sewer system, then vastly raise & over-engineer requirements, then have to accommodate normal repairs to the absurd new requirements? Yeah, that's not going to work. The problem isn't suburbs, it's overbearing overpowered know-it-alls who don't have to deal with consequences of their unilateral declarations.

"Here’s what he means. The way suburban development usually works is that a town lays the pipes, plumbing, and infrastructure for housing development—often getting big loans from the government to do so—and soon after a developer appears and offers to build homes on it. Developers usually fund most of the cost of the infrastructure because they make their money back from the sale of the homes. The short-term cost to the city or town, therefore, is very low: it gets a cash infusion from whichever entity fronted the costs, and the city gets to keep all the revenue from property taxes. The thinking is that either taxes will cover the maintenance costs, or the city will keep growing and generate enough future cash flow to cover the obligations. But the tax revenue at low suburban densities isn’t nearly enough to pay the bills; in Marohn’s estimation, property taxes at suburban densities bring in anywhere from 4 cents to 65 cents for every dollar of liability. Most suburban municipalities, he says, are therefore unable to pay the maintenance costs of their infrastructure, let alone replace things when they inevitably wear out after twenty to twenty-five years. The only way to survive is to keep growing or take on more debt, or both. “It is a ridiculously unproductive system,” he says."

Taken in context, the quoted sentence is specifically talking about the development/expansion of a town beyond its current financial means. In other words, the town builds out its infrastructure and is banking on an influx of new homeowners (taxpayers) to help with the maintenance of the infrastructure. When that doesn't happen, that's when the tax revenue/liabilities ratio dips below 1.

Also, if you go to the Strong Towns[1] website that Charles Marohn helped start and read the Mission Statement and their Quantification of a Strong Town, nowhere does it talk about population density or converting suburbs/towns into cities.

[1] http://www.strongtowns.org/

You mean like these?

http://www.strongtowns.org/the-cost-of-auto-orientation/

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/4/the-lost-opportu...

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/11/adding-insult-t...

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/18/residential-mat...

He absolutely is talking about density. The tax bases of low density suburbs, compared to the maintenance costs that they require, are inherently disparate.

The costs of building greenfield infrastructure is low...low enough that developers willingly pay the infrastructure development fees in exchange for the right to build. But the taxes used to maintain the infrastructure do not cover the costs, and by that time the developer is off the hook. So they bring in new developers, which bring with them new taxes and more deferred maintenance, which brings solvency in the short term and bigger problems in the long term. Suburban-density development is a ponzi scheme, inherently unsustainable, and it is a theme that he refers to extensively in his writing.

As for the last article, that one does talk about residential housing. I will agree that the article does talk about urbanization as the natural progression of town maturation. However, note that the article talks about progressions/increments (i.e. going from a house to a duplex, from a duplex, to a row of houses, from a row of houses to an apartment building) and not skipping those progressions (going straight from a house to an apartment building). In fact, the article specifically outlines that the changes must be natural, be compatible with the neighborhood, and must fit in. Overall, Marohn's more concerned with adding value to properties than increasing population density. He even goes as far as to specifically address our topic of discussion. I quote:

"I am going to pause now before going on to the next step and reiterate something important. I know there are those of you reading this right now, sitting at the kitchen table of your nice single family home, saying, "There is no way on God's green earth that I'm going to allow a set of row houses across the street from me. Who does this Strong Towns guy think he is?" Fair point, and the reality is that most neighborhoods will not grow beyond the single family stage. That's okay too, at least as long as the public infrastructure and services stay scaled to that investment level." Emphasis mine.

He states that what's tantamount is responsible spending.

Really it sounds like the whole article could be sumarised by saying many suburbs have taxes that are too low. The article's author worked in a town with poor planning; there are plenty of large cities with poor planning.

This is really a non-story playing up to many of the prejudices common to HN.

In some areas of Minnesota this could most certainly be the case.

This is completely unfair. I can tell you that from living in my suburban home over the past 10 years that over time I have come to know every single person who lives on my street. You have children that play together, that goto school together (and you may serve on the PTO together with those same neighbors), you have trees that you plant, fences that are built together. You see each other at garage sales. If you have an HOA, you likely maintain a common area together (maybe a pool)

On the other hand, there are those who complain how "up in everybody's business" the neighbors are.

All I can say is that everywhere is different, perspective is everything. I've live in major cities and talked to people who in major cities and "knowing your neighbors" is more reflective of who your neighbors are than it is of the geographical layout. (I also have neighbors who I have little interaction with, and that's just fine)

In Suburbia, you know a lot of your neighbors, but there's almost always some sort of reason or structure. The social network is the same size, but lots of those relationships are somehow not intrinsic (which isn't to devalue them, even comparatively, but imho there is a qualitative difference).

The latter works great for family life because there are so many more structural incentives to interact; the former is probably preferable for younger or non-child-raising people.

I like the city for exactly the opposite reason. In my experience, it is difficult to both ignore others and be ignored in the suburbs. On the other hand, finding privacy in a city is easy. There are too many people in cities to do the small-town/suburbs "everyone knows everyone, and everyone sticks their noses in everyone's business" thing.

But most suburbs are entirely unlike that.

Most aren't gated. Only in very wealthy areas are lawns "huge", and most are minutes with an electric mower. There are sidewalks, and indeed most modern suburbs intermix commercial space such that, at my old suburban house, a giant grocery store was a five minute walk.

And where does this "discouraged from knowing about your neighbours" argument keep coming from? In the suburb I knew everyone within several hundred feet of my house. We had street parties, many friendly conversations, and so on. Downtown, in contrast, I knew a couple of people from nodding at them in the lobby.

It's interesting to read that many suburbs may also be logistically unsustainable.

With working at home patterns, suburbs may just be the most sustainable. Heck, I actually live in a rural location now given that I work in my home office 90%+ of the time. The most Earth-friendly commute you can make is no commute at all.

The "people tried before" argument is never convincing. Enormous industry changes have occurred (for instance my home has a rock-solid, 100% reliable, 100/10Mbps internet connection, which is better than many whole office buildings had a few years ago), and work at home practices have been exploding.

I once was a unique butterfly. Now I can name dozens of people who operate just like I do.

As to YCombinator -- I don't know. I am not a startup under the tutelage of Paul Graham. I don't particularly care or need to heed what his opinions on work practices are.

Perhaps, but "it'll happen Real Soon Now" isn't either, really.

> I once was a unique butterfly. Now I can name dozens of people who operate just like I do.

You've grown your network! :)

It is happening for me right now: My commute is to walk down my stairs. A moment ago I finished a teleconference with a group of distributed people thousands of miles away.

Even just looking at tools -- we once went to a central location because it had the tools necessary for work, and even as we computerized we had the desktop on the corporate LAN, etc. Communications was limited and often very expensive.

Now we all roll around with mobiles and laptops, with mobile workability that allows us to work virtually anywhere with equal ease.

It is happening for many other people right now. The "giant office" model is one that some companies still pursue, but many others are going to flexible or work at home models. And for people like me it means that I can live on acres in the countryside.

Yes, but for 90+% of the working population it is not happening right now, nor real soon.

> The "giant office" model is one that some companies still pursue

For values of "some" approaching "vast majority".

It's great that some people are able to work remotely now, and more will be able to do later. It will help the environment and generally be a good thing. But in most companies in most industries, this will not happen any time soon. It just isn't happening. Neither the hippest everything-aaS startups nor the most staid dinosaurs are eschewing coming into a common office en masse. There's no inflection point. Internet connections are faster and more reliable than ever, but so are the traffic jams at rush hour.

We've had more adoption rolling out whole new models of housing with 2.0 "walkable" suburbs than with working remotely.

But as someone who works remotely, and who works with a large number of people who work remotely a good portion of the time, and an increasing number who work remotely the vast majority of the time, I will say that you are simply wrong. I mean, completely wrong. Even staid old corporations like banks and insurance companies are introducing multiple days of working at home policies for all level of employees. This is not some strange new thing, it is simply happening.

It also appears our discussion has ended up as generalizations vs anecdotes. Sorry about that.