[eweise]

"The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable." That's a problem with a limited imagination. Cars are becoming electric. There are things called towns that exist in suburbia and can be reached easily by bike or walking.

[jacobolus]

The environmental impact of suburban lifestyle is not limited to personal transportation carbon emissions. It also involves huge amounts of expensive (in land and resources) infrastructure, and individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint than other people.

[dragonwriter]

> individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint.

Suburbs have higher median personal income than urban cores; so that individual suburbanites consume more resources isn't surprising.

These people would also consume more resources if they lived in urban cores.

[jacobolus]

The same people would consume dramatically fewer resources (each, individually) and cause dramatically less environmental destruction if they lived in a smaller personal space with far less bulky/expensive per-person infrastructure and used shared rather than individual services (e.g. transportation).

[eweise]

The problem is solved in my suburbia since the county has resisted any sort of building for the past 50 years. Also, the new suburbia housing I see being built, is much more concentrated. Seems people like houses but don't care as much about big yards.

[brewdad]

My suburbia is trending the same way. Almost all new construction is on a lot of 5000 sq ft max. Most is closer to 3000 or multi-family. The trouble is that the old way of zoning still prevails and all of this semi-dense housing sits multiple miles away from the retail and job centers in the town. Everyone still needs one car per working adult, so really nothing of substance has changed.

[obstacle1]

> That's a problem with a limited imagination

Only if you examine the problem so superficially you can't think of any other cost of personal vehicles than burning gas.

Cars burning gasoline isn't the only or even the smallest problem with everyone needing to own a car. Think of the supply chain required to produce, deliver, and dispose of personal vehicles for everyone. Think of the civil infrastructure required to enable everyone to have a personal car. Think of the human cost that humans being terrible, irresponsible drivers takes on society. For starters.

> There are things called towns that exist in suburbia and can be reached easily by bike or walking.

There is a thing called weather in much of the US and world that makes this unrealistic. Further it's disingenuous to claim it's feasible to walk to a town to do your groceries from a suburb. You're going to need to walk at least 2-3 miles (best case) to a grocery store and you're not going to be able to carry more than a couple days' worth of stuff, less for a full family.

The suburban way of life is going to crash and burn, spectacularly. It is running on credit it can never pay back. At least 2 generations have covered their eyes and ears and yelled "naaa naaa we don't believe it". It's time to acknowledge that we can't carry on that "tradition'. Either we voluntarily adapt, or our surroundings will force the change.