[tptacek]

I don't know what you think the suburbs of Chicago are like, but they're among the highest standards of living in the world. (I assume this is the case for Philadelphia as well, but I'm less familiar with any part of the metro area other than Malvern.)

[retinaros]

https://youtu.be/MhvvxoIgNPg sure it is

[kasey_junk]

Perhaps you are using “suburbs” differently than an American would? I don’t know Philly geography but that certainly appears to be a tour of a dense part of Philly and not what I’d call a suburb.

Similarly here is a video touring some Chicago suburbs: https://youtu.be/Ngv70I82rP4

One thing I will say is that at least in Chicago there is a pretty wide divergence between suburbs (Chicagoland is nearly 30k km2 area so that’s not surprising). But for instance you’ll see pretty significantly different wealth levels in Markham than Tinley Park even though they are reasonably close to each other.