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