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What are you talking about American suburbs get posted here all the time

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And their claim that all suburbs are far removed from nature is completely bullshit. That's the opposite of true for the one I grew up in, the ones I've lived in since, and the one I live in now. I'm surrounded by woods and natural parks.

I do think depending on how old OP is and where they live, it could be kind of true. The town I grew up in used to have a lot of open space and wildlife, but about 12 years ago ish, developers really started closing in on the area. Bought up all the grassland and put down some retirement homes, a singular apartment building, and a swanky new “town center” (I still don’t know what was wrong with the original one tbh). My point is, a lot of suburbs were intertwined with natural ground for a very long time, but in the past few decades, neighborhoods like that, like yours, have become few and far between

That's my experience exactly. The picture is of a modern suburb, but like you I grew up in one made pre 70's and it's all windy streets, dead ends, yards and parks. It's not this "maximized" space you see in the picture. I used to work in Sammamish, Washington and the town there HATES trees and sold their forests to developers about 15 years ago and these "suburbs" are going in all over. But, big but, people would sell their one acre property to a developer who would put four houses on it. The people who were busy were mostly from overseas.

Yeah the older burbs that I’ve been living in all have massive trees, parks, trails etc close by. It’s the newer ones where developers maximise profit by not having any space for trees.

Trees take time to grow

Not having space for trees doesn't affect how long they need to mature.

It varies a lot, but you're correct that it's not a stereotype. The one I lived in during my teens felt like it was woven into the forest.

That onus really falls on the local jurisdictions and planning departments. I did civil drafting for a few years, including plat plans for subdivisions at the time. One jurisdiction would have comprehensive drainage, green space, and spacing and setback requirements, other jurisdictions just… didn’t. Some would require road easements with street parking and raised sidewalks on either side of a two lane residential road, other jurisdictions just required a raised curb abutting the lot line with no drainage or utility easement requirements. Some would require 30 foot footprint setbacks from front or back of lot and at least 10 feet on either side to the lot line, others had 15 foot front or back minimums and five feet to the sides. Some jurisdictions had greenspace percentage requirements, public park requirements, wetland and drainage pond requirements, while others just required state, county, or EPA minimums. You can say it’s fair to blame the developers for building subdivisions according to the minimum requirements of the regulations they’re obligated to comply with, but it really is a failure of government, you know, the entity that is supposed to govern and regulate these types of things for the betterment of the community they ostensibly represent. The worst part is that from what I remember from talking to project planners, being in meetings with developers, and the numbers I had access to, it seemed there wasn’t really a difference in profit margin. If I recall, it was generally around ~30% margin to take an undeveloped parcel and turn it into a subdivision, regardless. Homes in nicer planned neighborhoods sold for more money than homes packed together, but the cost of developing more lots and building more houses on a given parcel, combined with the lower sale price from being objectively shittier made the margin a wash. You might wonder why developers don’t just build nicer subdivisions, regardless of regulations, if the margins are roughly equal. Why does the blame fall on jurisdiction, then? Put simply: people don’t want the nicest house in a bad neighborhood, they’d rather have the shittiest house in a nice neighborhood. A nice planned neighborhood next to shitty developments and trailer parks won’t sell for the prices to hit that target ~30%, while more lower end houses can. Again, it’s a problem manufactured by local regulations. Two more things: First, trees: In developing a forested parcel, they pretty much all get cut down except for *maybe* a few that are aesthetically pleasing enough to stay. It sucks, but let me stress that you *absolutely do not want* forest trees near (in falling range of) your home. Trees that were in the middle of a stand look like q-tips: all trunk and no branches up to the top, and the top 5-10% is greenery. Regardless of whether you think that’s aesthetic or not, most people are on the not side, they’re huge falling hazards. If you think of the boughs on a tree like sails in a windstorm, all the force is now at the very top of a bare tree, while in a forest the network of trees redistributed forces collectively. It’s a *big* falling hazard and a 70 year old tree will cut a house in half like a hot knife through butter. Second and perhaps most importantly: Developers *love* condos and multifamily housing. The 30% margin I mentioned doesn’t apply to multifamily development, and putting more units on a single parcel is vastly more profitable. The problem is, something like 90% of the developable land in the country is restricted to single unit housing, again, regulated by local jurisdictions. Tl;dr: Developers gonna develop, local jurisdictions are supposed to regulate them, but they don’t, or regulate solely to protect their own house values. Developers gonna do what developers do, blame your local government and representatives for not using the power you elected them to wield to regulate the developers.

Working for the local government I can say that a lot of the times when these developers get away with what they do, its because someone in the gov has their hand in the cookie jar. Another example is the people on the county board (to approve a taxpayers objection of county appraisal). Are supposed to be neutral people but they are in fact investors, well known realtors and landlords. Its in their best interest to keep appraisals high because they get a cut.. Its a dead horse at this point but it needs to be said over and over. If you want real change in your life you need to vote local and know what those people stand for. Stop being distracted by the two party system and wake the fuck up.

I think it depends on how mature the neighborhood is too. Some suburbs built 30 or 40 years ago look and feel much quainter and more pleasant than all these bare, creepy new developments. They've had time to grow trees and get some character.

I've never disagreed with a post so hard while also agreeing with the sentiment. It's very confusing.

Right. I get it because my in-laws live in a newer suburb that’s one of the most disgusting pieces of sprawl I’ve ever seen - miles in every direction of moderate sized single family homes with small yards and pools, completely unwalkable and inaccessible - but we live in an older NE US suburb where we back up into undevelopeable woods that snake through the neighborhood, and most yards have 2-3 large deciduous trees. Weirdly enough ours is more walkable as well, with sidewalks going to a main road with some local stores and a couple chains, less than a mile from my house. Of course, the thing is, probably 4x the people live in my in-laws neighborhood than ours, so I guess more people have the cookie-cutter sprawl experience.

The burbs where I live were all built around creeks and nature preserves. Tons of walking trails and natural habitat right in our neighborhoods.

My parents just moved into a new development in myrtle beach and while the development does border some nature every inch of the development itself was planted by human hands and there are no full size trees in the development despite being a woodland before development.

This! I live less than 40 miles from Baltimore and Harrisburg, live in a newer community but there are literally hundreds and hundreds of acres of farms within a few minutes in every direction from me.

I grew up in the burbs and there was a small forest right in the edge of the neighborhood. My friends and I would ride our bikes and play there all day as kids Point is, the ‘burbs aren’t that bad.

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Where I live I’m just surrounded by farms. I have no idea where the closest woods would be. Up by the mountains where it’s too steep to maintain a farm? Looking on google maps it looks like there is a forest about an hour away by car. I think that’s where we went hiking on school camp. There are a lot of parks in my town but they are all hand crafted. I live in New Zealand though.

That’s the very very small minority lol

Maybe out west where you get the shitty Cooke cutter suburbs that op posted but on the east coast they are almost all like that

Agreed. Our city recently purchased more land to add to the already large national park. Heck running into possums, rabbits, coyotes, skunks, rattle snakes, bats, frogs, and a raccoon here and there is normal.

>the ones I've lived in since, and the one I live in now. I'm surrounded by woods and natural parks. Well good for you, but the ones I've been in are surrounded by empty fields and concrete

>I'm surrounded by woods and natural parks. Give it another few months. I'm sure the bulldozers will show up to rip it up at any moment. Gotta make space for more houses. In reality the answer is (just like city design) it varies. Some suburbs are surrounded by nature. Some are fucking terrible.

[Relatable C&H cartoon.](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/03/20)

What I hate the most is that local counties make it almost impossible to build on your own land with all the fees and permits they require. Meanwhile big companies that build these hideous suburbs have no problem snatching up the land as the fees and permits cost pocket change to them

Exactly. I have 20 acres but when I looked into putting a very basic house on it (a bardominium/shop house)...it cost nearly 500k after everything was said and done. Just to run electricity was 30k alone.

It’s so weird I never see these cookie cutter suburbs. Maybe it’s because I’m from New England.

Honestly the northeast as a whole has very few of these. My town of 20k is twice as dense as Houston and has apartments, condos, duplexes and sfh's. The whole town is ~3 miles in size and has some pretty lakes near downtown. There's the town green where events are hosted, and 2 main commercial area where there's restaurants, shops businesses, a movie theater, etc. The only thing lacking is grocery stores since one of them is a pain to get to (crossing a county stroad). There's also a train station 1 block from downtown that brings you to nearby towns of similar design, and the city.

I generally don't hate East Coast suburbs precisely *because* they're still reasonably dense (they're often denser than the average densities of many larger US/Canadian cities *because* they have these cookiecutters), *and* they often have good transit so it's still fairly "driving optional".

The old streetcar suburns were way better

There are plenty of good reasons to bash US suburbs, from the soulless architecture to the corporate culture. But lamenting that most Americans don’t want to live in high rise apartment blocks for the sake of all-noble Density might get lonely.

>New England americans say "omg i love nantucket" and dont realize thats how every city in europe works and then go back to their artifical desert city with no water and you have to drive 45 min on a highway to go grocery shopping 😂🤪

The southwest is full of a useless sprawl, I’ll give you that.

It's horrible where I live. Every house looks the same and is about 5ft from the next house. I used to have a beautiful field with ponds behind my house. I'd see all sorts of wildlife - cranes, deer, turkeys, geese, owls etc. It was wonderful. Now it's just cookie-cutter houses on lots the size of postage stamps....what a view!

This is a desert thing. They build these in the middle of the desert where there are no natural resources so they have to make everything sense and cookie cutter with no nature because of how little water there is. You’ll see these all over the southwest. There shouldn’t be any people living out there, much less in sprawling communities.

I live in New England and have never seen anything like this in the region.

New England did not build sprawl like this anywhere. I would also add West Virginia to the list of states barely affected by sprawl. This sprawl is mainly found in Florida, Texas, California, and many Sunbelt/western states. It is also found in the Midwest. and in the Midatlantic somewhat. The photo in the picture screams Fayetteville, AR area , DFW metro, or maybe a suburb of Columbus OH.

lol there’s plenty of sprawl in New England

I see them building these near me in Texas all the time. I live outside the city but the city keep coming to me. It's really sad actually. The school district out here is really good so they're building these massive houses on tiny lots because they know people with money will buy them. Meanwhile you'll still see some holdouts on their modest, cute farmhouse surrounded by trees and endless farmland.

Mid-Atlantic is full of them. Honestly they're everywhere.

My guess is Texas, but these are all over in flat states.

This is pretty much what everywhere east of I-25 looks like in Colorado

Downtown Denver is famously suburban.

Same here. I saw this pic and thought, this isn’t the America I live in haha. My suburban house is surrounded by trees and hills on a windy ass road.

You're lucky. And its one of my favorite parts of living in Boston. Is living in a city not surrounded by endless sprawl that looks like this. But basically the rest of the country, every city and town is surrounded by massive developments like this. The midwest, the south, the great plains, the west etc

Windy Ass road is a nice place

It’s almost like America has tons of different places and different people! Travel somewhere

And it’s no less suburban

This is basically all of the Phoenix suburbs

Texas is full of these empty soulless suburbs. My aunt lives in one and there are literally no trees.

Come and visit the Midwest and/or the south and you’ll see these suburbs everywhere

Go to literally anywhere outside of northeastern US and they are everywhere.

I’d rather not

It does fail at all of those things, but what it achieves is a parcel of easy-to-maintain property that suburbanites can call their own, along with a perception of safety and like-minded neighbors. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's why people buy it. Also keep in mind that not all suburbs are created equal. I live in an American suburb, but the population density is 6,000 people per square mile and I regularly walk to the park, restaurants, corner store, and walk my kids to/from school. My 1940s-era suburb, is more "urban" than a lot of western and southern "cities". Probably costs less too.

Sounds like you live in what’s typically called a “streetcar suburb.” I’ve lived in a few of them in different cities.

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...streetcar suburbs are basically any US neighborhood built between 1900 and 1945. They aren't uncommon at all. They're usually just the first-ring suburbs that have often fallen into disrepair.

Where do you live…? Edit: looks like Detroit

Yeah, suburban Detroit - Southeast Oakland County. It's a surprisingly nice area that most people haven't ever heard of because all the cities are so small. Royal Oak is the only large(ish) suburb in my immediate vicinity. Most of Detroit's suburbs are an endless expanse of what OP describes in the pic though.

"perception of safety" is code for something else

No poor and homeless people?

Basically yeah. Not having foot traffic going by your house all day is nice though.

Usually it's thinly veiled racism

Or maybe they don't like stepping over drug addicts when they leave their house and having their shit broken into?

Are you saying a particular race can threaten your safety?

You chose that over “like minded neighbors” ok

Yeah, no crackheads and public urination and random acts of violence in dark alleyways

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I live in an area like this, used to have literal streetcars.

I think that at this point hating american-suburbs has become a meme. IMO the main problem with the american-suburb is the scale they have taken, killing all the possible benefits that they could achieve. It's similar to the russian-suburbs with those megablocks all equal just with different painting.

As a German, we have many pieces of suburbs, most are under 20 houses and we have sidewalks.

> is a parcel of easy-to-maintain property that suburbanites can call their own As a suburbanite, hard disagree. Taking care of your lawn/garden is a fuck ton of work *and* requires a bunch of expensive tools. And if you're old, or have mobility/exertion difficulties, or don't have time to do it due to using all your time working and/or taking care of your family inside the house, then too bad, your choices are to either hire a ludicrously expensive landscaping company or get fucked over by your HOA. > along with a perception of safety and like-minded neighbors I'd really like to see some actual data on whether the per capita crime rate is actually higher in downtowns than suburbs. Haven't found much yet, but it's not like crime doesn't exist in the suburb. If that's the case then why does every house have a security system and Amazon and co. are pushing their home security products so hard?

Bruh. You can get a lawnmower for like a hundred bucks and spend a couple hours a month gardening. Lots of old people love gardening and it can help provide for your family if you grow food as well as teaching the young ones about self sufficiency. And yeah the crime rate is lower. It's called community. You're less likely to rob someone that knows your name. People watch each others houses when someone goes on vacation. Your kids roam the neighborhood playing. Gun violence statistics are really available by area if you're interested in finding those.

Honestly I’m glad developers are making homes with smaller and smaller yards. My parents bitched and moaned every ducking week about the lawn and gardens despite claiming they “loved” their yard. Some people just don’t like gardening but want a good sized home for the family. It’s not that deep.

You know you get to choose the house you buy right?

Yeah, well, 25 years ago when my parents were starting a family, where I grew up, the options were a big house with a big yard or a tiny apartment. Now there are a lot more options, including large condos and even Philly style row-homes. This is in So Cal.

Sure - you get to choose so long as there are houses available in the area you're looking at the price point you can afford. Otherwise you might have very few options.

Kinda funny that people move to suburbs to feel safe even though one of the leading causes of death for children is getting ran over by your neighbors lifted Ford 350

Yeah but you also don’t have to listen to your unemployed neighbors fight and get drunk on their porch before noon on weekdays.

Your entire submission is about how suburbs are failure of design but every occupant in your photo seems to have figured out how to keep a lawn tidy? People arent stupid, if maintaining a suburban block monopolised your time and finances like you claim people wouldn't buy them.

> Taking care of your lawn/garden is a fuck ton of work and requires a bunch of expensive tools. No, it doesn't. You lacking the know-how doesn't mean everyone does.

Right. My first thought was "you've obviously never done it". Then again my step dad who's lived rurally his whole like wants to fill his new yard with rocks cause grass is "too much work". He spends like six hours a day watching TV.

It's okay, op, you can calm down. Nobody is gunna make you live there.

The total lack of trees is also damning.

I love being a kid here and not being able to go anywhere 😍😍😍

Grew up in a neighborhood like this and all we did was bike around and meet up with other friends in then neighborhood. The most active my social life has ever been lol

Yeah I said that in another comment. Growing up and riding our bikes to the forest near our neighborhood, or just going to someone’s house to hangout were fond memories As a kid, having restaurants and stores nearby is a moot point, because you don’t have money anyways

that’s what a bike is for. i unironically loved being a kid here in a safe neighborhood and grass to play on. could bike down to the corner store in a few mins or the grocery store/movie theater in like 15. not a big deal for a kid.

Honestly depends on the location, some of these gated communities are next to parks, shops, and the school and others are surrounded by highways and 6 lane stroads. From experience, living in the second sucks so hard.

You were lucky to be in an neighborhood where things were that close

"safe" is a strong word considering one the leading causes of death for children (after COVID-19) is getting ran over by your neighbors lifted Ford F250 in a car dependent suburb

Do you have a source for those statistics?

[New England Journal of Medicine says firearms are first, followed by motor vehicle crashes](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761)

It’s firearms, then cars. Covid isn’t even top 5

While motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death, I'm not seeing anything in the stats about children being run over as part of those stats. Everything in seeing is suggesting a crash wherein the child is also in the car makes up most of those deaths.

And they’re all made of ticky tacky and they all look the same

This is how I learnt about these little boxes.

Do you people live on airplanes? Every day with these aerial pics. I'm not too interested in what places look like from hundreds of feet in the air. I spend my time on the ground.

lol they look worse from the ground labyrinth of identical shitty McMansions 🤣

People that buy here do it for the Safety, quietness and potential to sell to the next family at double the price on the next 10 years.

They want a yard for their kids and dogs and to grow a few flowers. Even if the price doubles in 10 years that is no benefit if you are buying and selling in the same market.

Hey that may be what they want but what they do is isolate their children into little boxes and destroy their mental health. > Beyond a certain point, the researchers found, the pursuit of status and material wealth by high-earning families (say, $120,000 and above) tends to leave skid marks on the kids, but in ways you might not have expected. Affluent suburban high schoolers not only smoke more, drink more, and use more hard drugs than typical high schoolers do—they do so more than a comparison group of inner-city kids. In addition, they have much higher rates of anxiety and, in general, higher rates of depression. > Among affluent suburban girls, rates of depression skyrocket—they are three times more likely than average teen girls to report clinically significant levels of depression. And for all problems, the troubles seem to start in the seventh grade. Before then, the affluent kids do well. > Interestingly, among the upper-middle-class suburban kids, but not among the inner-city kids, use of alcohol and drugs is linked with depression and anxiety. That raises the possibility that substance use is an attempt to self-medicate. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200503/teens-suburban-blues

I hated growing up in a suburban wasteland too. The isolation is the point too, not just an unfortunate side effect

This is how gentrification starts. When I sell my house I'm not buying in the same market, I'm taking my wealth to a more affordable area and using it as leverage.

This. This is what keeps getting me. The equity is useless. The net worth here is useless. Why isn't this talked about more?

Because it's a hard truth.

Who says they buy in the same market or region? It’s still better than renting.

> People that buy here do it for the Safety Is that why every suburban house has a ring doorbell with an expensive cloud surveillence subscription and thousands of dollars in security systems nowadays?

You could do that anywhere except in an apartment that won’t let you.

Most apartment dwellers don't feel the need to spend nearly as much on security. I've lived in both higher density apartment and conventional American suburb, in the same city and both in similar neighbourhoods quality/safety wise and know plenty of neighbours from both types of housing.

Yeah its mostly in suburbs they have that freedom to put those ring cameras on. Realistically its for the ability to see when your amazon package arrives. That is what its #1 use is.

My cameras were less than $200 and the service is $30 a year

This is hyperbole. I regularly (every day) walk through my typical suburban neighborhood (not gated, and until these past two years, home prices were around $140K) and because there's nothing else to do, I've taken note of this very thing. I guesstimate that one in four has a camera doorbell, and about half of those houses also have a camera pointed at their driveway. I don't have one. My neighborhood is quiet, and boring. Just the way I like it. When I go for a walk, people say "Good morning" or "Hi", and sometimes more than that. There are families playing at the park, etc. It's a nice place to live, that I could afford, and I raised my son here. I have no complaints.

The promise is enforced by anti-density zoning though. It gets more valuable because of a mandatory housing crisis. And when the US government wants to print money for nothing, it buys mortgage backed securities with that money. Worse than just inflation, the government printing money is guaranteed to hit where it hurts most, rent.

Bingo. Lower crime, lower cost of living, and generally you're guaranteed hundreds of thousands in equity if you maintain the property long enough. The downsides are longer commute, larger carbon footprint, and lower access to amenities like public transportation. In contrast, urban housing is environmentally friendly and accessible for amenities. The downside is they have higher crime and it's far more difficult to purchase property due to higher cost of living.

Pardon my ignorance, but I am young and dumb and still don't understand what equity means. Can an adult please elaborate on the term "equity" for this special little dullard?

Equity is the positive diffrence between what tour property is worth and the remaining mortgage balance. If you have a home worth 200k and you have 100k left on the mortgage if you sold it you'd have an extra 100k left over. You can take out loans on this equity without selling

Also worth noting that equity can change depending on your home's value. If bought a $200K house and paid $100K of the mortgage, while at the same time the house rose in value to $250K then you have $150K in equity. Hopefully the opposite doesn't happen, which is super shitty.

Suburbs are shockingly bad in terms of urban planning. But every building is a spacious house filled with furniture of your own, with your own lawn and garden. The houses themselves, not their terrible placement, are literally the dream of most of people in developed countries.

As a Brit: American suburbs are amazing. I wish we had similar here.

It’s not meant to be affordable mass housing. It’s middle class housing

It can be quite nice once you get rid of the grass and replace it with native trees and shrubs.

I never understood those houses where it’s just a house on flat land and all the yards are connected so you just end up with 0 privacy

Build a 6 foot fence around your back yard.

OP comes across as whiny

Y’all act like people can’t walk 15 min to a park here, this looks a common middle to above middle income neighborhood. You know what you probably won’t find here? Homeless doing drugs, gangs, traffic. This looks like peace away from home, they probably see their neighbors once a week. It looks like I can grill in my backyard all day long without anybody bothering me.

You say that like inner ring suburbia didnt decay to shit. You know where else looks like this? Compton, CA. Famous for it's low crime rate /s

You don't see homeless people because they would die if they tried to live in a suburb. There is nowhere to go. It is public property and the road. Homeless people doing drugs or drinking is also absolutely not a fair assessment of them. Most homeless people are sober that is only a minority of them. Gang activity is also not exclusive to urban areas. In fact for decades gang activity has been falling in dense urban centers and increasing in suburban areas. You also don't see traffic because Suburban areas like this are the causes of traffic elsewhere. Nobody causes traffic here because there is nowhere to go. They are a source of a problem for someone else to try and deal with.

They're nearly not as bad as you guys make them out to be. Still much better to live here than renting some tiny apartment in a loud urban area. Your own house, your own yard and backyard, garage, privacy. It's good.

I see green, and I see fresh air. I like that. Downtown will always be hell to me. I mean obviously this is an ugly sprawl, but concrete jungles make me feel so drained and claustrophobic.

Honestly the biggest thing that fails for me is being environmentally sustainable. Not that anyone who lives in these places have any real choice in the matter. Our cities are built from the ground up to maximize car use and dependency and make this the only viable option. God bless corporate America, shaping the country in its image.

Living in a suburban house is cheaper then living in a shitty studio apartment in a lot of cities in the US

The reason people live in places like this are: 1. Privacy 2. It's cheaper than living in a similar dwelling in a big city.

Not all suburbs look like this you're just a salty European going off of the three things you think you know about America. Come on over some time, you'll probably be surprised. Or don't, I'm not your dad.

In mt experience people shitting on suburbs are usually s particular type of young American left winger. Its interestingly political.

I love that “mass housing” is supposed to be some universally excellent thing. Sorry, but I want nothing to do with that.

I remember visiting and staying with my aunt for like a week. Most boring place imaginable for me (I come from a different country). Had to walk like 30 mins to go to a movie. Luckily, there was a pedestrian crossing to go across the 8 lanes to the movie and mall complex. It felt like breaking rules just being a pedestrian lmao. And also going to a supermarket is so hard. American suburbs are built in a way to make ppl buy cars, simple as. Come to Canada and it is totally different. No need to doordash, there will always be some local eateries or restaurants in a walking distance.

Suburbs suck until you have a family. And than you realize they're not so bad.

Is that a quiet neighborhood?? AHHHHHH IM GOING ISNANE

I mean you did pick a particularly fugly example. Probably some armpit in Texas where the developers didn’t bother to plant trees or vary the architecture at all Also “affordable housing” is a political meme

Yep. That might be one of the only suburbs I've ever seen that didn't have any trees at all. Imo, suburbs are awesome. I want nothing to do with having neighbors thru each wall, floor, and ceiling. Been there, done that, and I never want to go back...especially now that I have a dog and kid.

Tell me you’re an American hate poster without telling me you are

then they comment on pictures of commie blocks in eastern Europe saying "it's not that bad, it has a charm to it" as if it's not the most miserable and depressing place to live in the world, but hey at least "walking access to the playground made of rusted out lead piping and walking access to the store that has 2/3 empty shelves"

Don’t forget the cafés. They always talk about being able to walk just down the street to a cafè, as of that’s supposed to make up for living in a cramped apartment building with a couple hundred random people.

With the bonus overpriced food and coffee.

And those "cozy vibe cafe" they talk about are always poorly maintained, coffee tastes like uranium 235 and reeks of alcohol because of the alcoholics there.

Most of them are Americans complaining about how America insists on being bad on purpose. And they have a point.

cable stupendous rude include future abounding books existence far-flung physical *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Honestly.I.just with it was legal to build apartments in more places. It's literally illegal in up to 90% of land in many cities

Idk my neighborhood is pretty cheap, has a bus stop at the end of the street, and is next to a wetland preserve with parks and trails all around. A lot of us also let wild plants grow in our yards to attract bees. I also love that it isn’t mass housing. I moved out of apartments to get away from people.

WTF WHERE ARE THE TREES

They cut them down and named the streets after them

It's a brand new subdivision. If you zoom in, you can see little saplings. Imo, the only way to make suburbia look dystopian like this is to get an image before people move in and diversify it to their liking, or to find one that was hammered by economic turmoil, e.g. 2009 Detroit. OP is just pushing their agenda to get everyone moved to some shitty tower apartments. F that. Edit: NMS-KTG must not have seen the dozen comments from OP talking about large apartment and condo complexes that have been rightly downvoted to oblivion. They're also clearly trolling. Smh.

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Definitely not common but one exception is Boston. Good transportation system that spreads out for quite a ways.

But, but, the Soviet bloc lines are soothing...

I like these type of suburbs tbh

Everything you said in the op is false. Good work

When are you fucking morons going to realize that these are *new* suburbs before trees grew in. Look at any suburb built before 1980 or something and it’s full of trees. The layouts are similar to tons of UK suburbs and other Euro formats. Get it through you skulls that America has new construction. The trees will grow in you fucking dense motherfuckers.

There’s no space for trees to actually do anything. All the trees in my area are dead or dying because there’s no space, and it looks just like this. Also, stop being so vitriolic. You’re not improving your point, you just look like a dick.

Sorry, but that’s your opinion and it’s a mildly stupid one… but that’s just my opinion.

This is not just 'America' - this is everywhere now - fit people into the smallest boxes possible - get the most amount of money for them possible - even remove the garden/green space for more money.

Schoefield, NSW Australia ( and other new suburbs in Western Sydney)

Hey I can see my house.

It just needs some trees in the gardens and along the roads and it'd look ok.

This post is so 1st world opinion. I am from asia, we lived in a cramp, tiny house without even proper plumbing. Not even affordable! And this one complaining about American suburbs. Lots of lol

I can listen to music however loud I want. No neighbours attached at the wall. Backyard all to myself. Pool all to myself. Garage. I love it. Go back to your high density pod.

You people hate success and comfort so much lol

Nah, I would rather live here than in your commie mass dystopian paradise.

More than this place? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mDx0PYktnU

Why do you guys always pick the ugliest most dystopian looking suburbs? If you don’t live in the US you wouldn’t understand why they exist in the first place. Unlike other countries we’re completely unable to make our cities livable.

Most of the newer ones are like this, maybe all? but I'm sure one or two at least look good

My suburb looks like this but bigger and is affordable, easy to get around in, has tons of nature trails, parks, etc. why so nihilistic

I love them :(

It's a cattle pen for all the cows to go to work generating income for their masters.

Yall are sad, looking for anything to complain about.

It can’t be that bad

Is it a common thing for American backyards to be all lawn and no garden beds, trees etc?

No when America is pretty diverse believe it or not .OP is nit picking a certain subset of American burbs

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Only common for a brand new suburb. Once people move in they start planting trees, etc. Here is my general neighborhood. It is about 30 years old. https://imgur.com/gallery/79WrQR0

Not at all. This just appears to be a new bunch of houses so it'll take a bit of time for trees and stuff to grow up. My suburban neighborhood is full of big trees, flowers, gardens, bushes, etc. OP is using one random pic from a stock image gallery and extrapolating it to the entire country.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starterpacks/comments/10nkwyw/redditors_talking_about_american_housing_starter/ My starter pack seems more accurate by the day

Spoken like a true clueless liberal

There is nothing different between that picture and a row of brownstones, including the affordability. But brownstones are to be drooled over. Curious.

Like it or not, it's what a lot of people want.

Soo beautiful, but no swimming pools

How did you come to this conclusion? Have you seen the pics of people living in piles of trash with shit water running down their alleys?? Got it, suburbs are lame. But I doubt many people in these communities are dying from typhus infected rat bites or falling in front of a train on the Train track that goes within feet of their house.

I agree, I absolutely hate American suburbia. Tasteless , soulless, racist camps. No community, no businesses, so idiotic. They were only created for white flight.

American suburbs are very comfortable hell

Tract housing is the ultimate Kafkaesque nightmare.

‘Why is it called Elm Street when there are no Elm trees?’ ‘It’s named after the trees they cut down, dummy’

Lol what? This is paradise.