[ars]

> anything except maybe cheap labour.

Hmmmmm. And that labor does?

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?

[jodrellblank]

Farms aren't sub-urbs, farms are rural. Suburbia "lesser-urban" is housing estates. Nothing productive happens there.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suburbia - "the outer parts of a town, where there are houses, but no large shops, places of work, or places of entertainment"

[ars]

People live there. And they create business nearby.

And those business are closer to the rural areas than the cities are.

And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist.

[Karrot_Kream]

Most American incorporated cities are subject to zoning. In the US, most zoning codes define the following: minimum setbacks (how far from the edge of the lot the building line begins at, aka the buffer between the home and the street for residential zones), minimum lot sizes (what's the minimum size a lot can be parceled out into), and maximum FARs (Floor-to-Area ratios, the maximum amount of floor space buildable in a given area.) This is true in most zoning codes across Residential, Industrial, Agricultural, Commercial, and other zones.

The "suburbs" are generally Single Family Home (SFH) zoned areas (the name of the zone differs per-city) defined by a requirement to have a single dwelling, a large minimum lot size, large setbacks, and low maximum FARs. Nothing mandates that SFH zones need to be adjacent to agricultural areas. In fact most zoning codes detail a long list of uses allowed within the zone and a buffer between zones. For example, most zoning codes require a larger buffer between industrial or agricultural zones and residential zones. By definition how much "closer to the rural area" suburbs are is defined purely by how much SFH housing there is, nothing more.

The reason why most US suburbs abut dense inner cities is that historical US city development occurred densely before the automobile and then postwar development happened according to zoning codes which carved most new residential areas into SFH zoned areas. Cities were grandfathered into the new zoning codes. The codes themselves developed slowly and only started mandating huge minimum lot sizes in the last 30 years or so. This is why suburban development tends to form around a city.

[kitkat_new]

> And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist.

this is exactly what suburbs are.

You live there, nothing else. You wake up then you drive to work somewhere else

[plumarr]

That's maybe a cultural difference. For example I know of no such place in Belgium even if I'm quite well travelled in it. So it's a least really not common to have suburbs as you describes.

[femiagbabiaka]

You haven't seen the Central Valley of California I guess LOL.