Apart from their energy intensiveness, what is wrong with the suburbs?

I grew up in suburbia, and I remember fresh air, open spaces and low crime. I get that suburbs can be boring for some people, but a lot of people I knew growing up chose to return to the suburbs after living in bigger cities, or never left.

I have read that it is a form of guilt and sour grapes. I order to not admit their privilege, people who grew up in suburbs say they are bad. And people who couldn't afford suburbs say they are bad. And rich people who can afford a comfortable life in a city, they are right but jerks.

Not necessarily - in America yes that is the way things work at the moment, but not all over the world. There are may suburbs with good public transport where having a car is less necessary.

It's very difficult to have sustainable/economical public transportation with the population density existent in the suburbs.

It's not necessarily impossible.

Some big Australian cities work reasonably well with 'cars optional' suburb. They have an overall feel and lifestyle that I imagine would be familiar and comfortable enough for most American suburb dwellers.

For a quick and dirty snapshot: Suburbs are considered similar to small 'urban towns.' They typically have a train station (some Sydney suburbs have cool ferry stations) at the centres and the suburb stretches for a 1-2 mile radius from there. They are usually denser and have a more town center feel near the center. Inner city suburbs feel more urban. The really distant suburbs are more car centric and often have a semi-rural feel. Suburbs on the Dandenong foothills in Melbourne are a cool example of this.

Basically the nearer the city centre and suburb centre you live, the less cars are necessary or convenient. It's not extreme though. Most people have cars everywhere but the level of use varies. I would estimate that >50% live someplace where car free living is possible without too many trade offs.

Realistically though, the way to prevent cars is to make them unaffordable. That's an option, but I don't think you can call it a victory for quality of life by itself if it's achieved by making something people want unaffordable.

You are talking about something that has very little to do with the population density and zoning of an American midwestern suburb: What we mean is something like this, where having no car makes you a second class citizen.

https://goo.gl/maps/U5qhh

What you call a suburb is more like what in Spain are called 'ciudades dormitorio': Small towns with a much higher population density than the american suburb, and that have good communications with downtown. People live less than a mile away from a train station that drops them in a public transportation hub in downtown Madrid. It's still a suburb, but it has absolutely nothing to do with what an American describes.

They are called the same in English: bedroom town.

There are lots of high population density suburbs outside the United States.

Two examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

What s sustainable and economical public transport? And what is that population density? Are US suburbs less dense than European ones? Or is there less Will to publicly finance public transport? Funding road construction with tax money but not having a public transport system on those roads with 50-100% tax funding is just asking for congestion, sprawl and pollution.

I live in a smallish suburb with mostly single family houses 30 minutes by bus from the city. Buses leave every 10 minutes, and every 2-3 minutes during commute hours. I would never commute by car, especially since the buses use bus lanes.

If it's dense enough to support good public transit, it's probably an urban residential neighborhood rather than a suburb.

I think this is really about the decline of miles driven in cars, not the decline in cars made or owned (although that connection surely exists). I live in a suburb and have a car, because having a house almost requires a car; hauling paint and wood and plants and things doesn't really work in public transport. That said I commute by public transport simply because it is faster (bus lanes and subway instead of traffic jams) and parking in the city would be over $100/day. So I'll likely never get rid of the car as long as I have a house, but commuting with it is just not an option.