One of the chief advantages of suburban life is cost. I don't like suburbia, but I deal with it because I'm not rich enough to live close to work. Sure, I have the additional cost of maintaining and fueling a vehicle[1], and the stress of a 2+ hour commute each way, but that's far outweighed by housing being 3X cheaper, and the decent public schools (I don't have to pay for private schooling for the kid).

1: which is, really, not THAT much more in terms of cost per mile than using public transportation

> One of the chief advantages of suburban life is cost.

And that's entirely a function of bad city design. When I lived in New York, I lived in a Westchester suburb satellite city over 20 miles away from the city. I had a 35 minute commute by train right to Manhattan. There are tons of such suburbs in Westchester, because they have train lines running through the whole area.

Meanwhile, my parents live in D.C. suburbs that are similarly priced, half the distance out of the city, but where the commuting options are a 1-1.5+ hour drive. In Westchester you've got a little downtown and can walk to shops and restaurants. In the D.C. suburbs you have to drive 20 minutes just to get to the drug store.

It's all about city design.

Indeed, prewar Westchester is one of the few suburbs that isn't an utter abomination, both architecturally and land-use-planning wise. I think that's because they built them before the current bad ideas were in vogue.

And governance. The additional cost of trying to live in a city (Detroit, Baltimore, ...) that is poorly governed is quite high. Most suburbs haven't had the time to become as poorly governed as the cities, so associated costs tend to be lower.

I would not under estimate transportation costs.

Metro Vancouver recently did a study comparing affordability combining both housing and transportation costs. Once transportation was considered, Vancouver City proper dropped to one of the 3 most affordable Metro Vancouver cities, whereas outlying suburbs rose to least affordable. The gap in transportation costs between the cheapest and most expensive areas was several thousand dollars a year, possibly as high as $12k a year.

http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/Pla...

Might depend on the particular metro area. The cost difference between where I live, in the bumblefuck outer suburbs of the Bay Area, vs. a comparable (yet smaller) place closer to most usual tech businesses (either in SF or the Peninsula), is about $3-4K monthly. I've got cost/mile and cost/month records for my car(s) going back 15 years, including purchase price, insurance, fuel, and all maintenance, and it's not even close to $3K/month.

Exactly. It's similar in the Tri-State Area of the Mid-South. Most people in middle class to rich live in the suburbs. Reduces crime, headaches, property costs, etc with only a bit of commute on good Interstates and highways. I paid $550 a month plus $100 utilities for a good, 2-bedroom house that was 20 minutes away from city jobs or fun with 30-40 min away from downtown. Not a bad trade.

Oh, yeah. I definitely agree with that.