There is no bubble, only a lack of desire to seek out knowledge about other lifestyles. The problems with car culture were not surfaced until the rise and dominance of the internet.
When people are accused of living in a bubble, it's usually because they show a strong universalist desire to expand their lifestyles to others, without consideration for the others' preferences. The opposite of humanist liberalism that was foundational for Western liberal democracies, or 'live and let live'.
If we taxed suburbs what they actually cost us as a society, no one would want to live in suburbs. The land use is abysmal compared to cities. Suburbs are effectively subsidized by the cities they are near, and those living in suburbs get off way too easy. That's a good thing if you have an extractivist, individualist mindset, but if we are to continue functioning as a whole society, something needs to give.
We love our farmers. Keep the fields going. But this business with allocating half-acre lots per 4 people (lots which are empty for literally 1/3 of the day) has got to end, or else local utilities should stop servicing those far-flung places. You want to be without the burdens of living in a society -- fine! Figure out water and power for yourself. It's easier than ever and there's still federal- and state-level rebate programs for renewables.
Farmlands and suburbs are completely different things, especially in the context of urban development.
Industrial zones are also a completely different category entirely.
Living in Germany, most German cities do not have anything that is comparable to a U.S. "suburb". Building codes demand a quite high density, even for single family homes for new developments and older developments have the tendency to get denser as the demand for housing in a city rises.
German planning law specifically aims to concentrate development as much as possible, to limit encroachment on agricultural lands and nature. Doesn't always work out, but we have very little of the "urban sprawl" that is so characteristic of U.S. urban planning.
Except that in most German towns outside the tiny center where almost everything closes between 4 and 6 pm with exception of supermarkets, everything else seems to require a car or at least 30 minute cycling, with most buses ending at 8pm.
Nonsense. Farms obviously predate suburbs, for one thing: nothing resembling the modern suburb could exist without steam power or something newer than that. There's never really been heavy industry in the suburbs: the modern suburb exists because people didn't want to live near the heavy industry in the cities.
The North American suburb, which is what we're discussing here unless I misunderstand, more or less came about in the post-war era. It would really be an extraordinary claim that farms and heavy industry couldn't exist in North America until the 1950s...
The poorer denser city centers (in America) subsidise the wealthier, less dense suburbs. "Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math [ST07]" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
I knew before watching it that it was Strong Towns propaganda.
They keep ignoring that without those suburbs you won't have rural farms. Without those suburbs those "productive" cities will have nothing to eat, and nothing to buy.
They measure productivity in terms of dollars - but all cities do is services, they don't produce goods. That's left to those places Strong Towns hates.
If people actually implemented what Strong Towns wants, people would starve.
Try the math again, but completely exclude services and let's see where you end up.
Suburbs are the places where what used to be productive farms are paved over with asphalt. Few cities rely on them for anything except maybe cheap labour.
Please think about this a big more - cities do not have industry or agriculture in them. They need those suburbs to provide that. You can't just dismiss it as "cheap labor" - what exactly do you plan to eat or buy?
Although you didn't imply a preference one way or the other, this made me think: if policy that is driven by suburbanite lifestyles leads to the destruction of the planet, is it truly "live and let live"? A more accurate description of the US ideology as someone who has lived in both ultra-rural and urban environments in the midwest and west coast is: "I want to do whatever I want/believe is best, regardless of the impact it has on people outside of my circle."