I live in a city, not a suburb, but they seem to be grouped with suburb-talk as there is a larger city nearby, and I find it strange that ‘walk ability’ isn’t mentioned since that is best part of living in a neighborhood of single family homes. People are out walking all the time. There are parks to walk to as well, but those are getting removed as they are being replaced with 3 story apartment buildings. Not sure how it came to pass that high density housing and less parks are the ideal.
Not really directed at you, but more at the general topic which causes all the stereotypes to appear and I don’t see them in the real world. Everyone I’ve met in an apartment living space wishes for a home. I know I did.
Are you claiming that suburbs are more "walkable"? What destinations are you walking to? Or are you describing a kind of pastoral pleasantness that is present in suburbs but not in denser areas?
I think what confuses some people about this topic is that their mental image of "suburbs" is a quiet street surrounded by lawns & trees, with minimal traffic, while their mental image of cities is of noisy, stinky, dangerous streets with lots of traffic.
I would argue that the "pleasant" qualities that we associate with taking a walk are orthogonal to the density of the neighborhood itself, and that the negative qualities people see in cities are really a problem of their car-centric design in the US. For example, see a neighborhood like Sunnyside, NY, just a few subway stops from Manhattan:
Highly dense row-housing, but with ample green spaces and many pedestrian-only pathways. Has enough density to sustain many local businesses within walking distance, features a number of subway stops easily reachable on foot--it's very possible to live in this neighborhood without driving.
It would be impossible to build a low-density neighborhood that works as well without a car, because there won't be enough people to sustain the businesses required to serve them within a walkable distance. And once you start assuming that everyone will own a car and will use it for every errand, then you inevitably get sprawl + congestion + traffic.
Generally people use "walkable" to mean that errands can be done without a car. I presume the people in these suburbs are using a car to get their groceries.
> Not everything has to be centered around consumption/consumerism
If you're arguing for a completely non-consumptive lifestyle in which you grow/forage all of your own necessities, then I concede that my argument doesn't apply to you, but I think most suburb-dwellers are not at your level. Suburbs are typically much more resource-intensive to maintain than denser neighborhoods.
Suburban neighborhoods are clearly less resource intensive since they don’t have a high density population to maintain with equally high levels of consumption
Not really directed at you, but more at the general topic which causes all the stereotypes to appear and I don’t see them in the real world. Everyone I’ve met in an apartment living space wishes for a home. I know I did.