[mikebenfield]

To be honest this is one of those Internet comments where I feel like the commenter is in a different reality than me. None of the dozens of suburban US people I've known has ever found it feasible to walk to much of anything - yes, maybe a neighborhood playground if they're lucky. They definitely don't walk to the grocery store, to a restaurant, to a bar, to the gym, to work, etc.

Here's a suburb: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.107277,-80.6508196,3a,75y,25...

Here's another: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3137771,-121.9844666,3a,75y,...

In the latter it _may_ be theoretically feasible to walk to a couple restaurants, if you don't mind a fairly unpleasant trip. In practice I guarantee you almost no one does this.

But those are just a couple arbitrary choices; in my experience they're pretty much all like that.

On the other hand, by being selective about where I live (walkable neighborhoods are scarce in the US), I've been able to live in several places where a great grocery store, a gym, multiple great restaurants, a bar or two, and other interesting destinations were within a 5 minute walk - in some cases literally right next door. If most of the land around you is taken up by single family homes with pointlessly large lots, it's completely infeasible for anything more than a tiny percentage of people to live close to these things, short of building a grocery store for every 100 people or something absurd.

[jjav]

> To be honest this is one of those Internet comments where I feel like the commenter is in a different reality than me.

Same, but that's why I say the US is a big place. There isn't a standard US suburb.

> They definitely don't walk to the grocery store, to a restaurant, to a bar, to the gym, to work, etc.

That is alien to my experience. I can walk to all of those, with multiple instances of each one, from a suburban SFH.

On the first link near Charlotte, I have two comments: First one is that it stretches the definition of suburb. Switch to satellite view and zoom out until you see Charlotte. Those houses are in the midst of vast stretches of green, far away from the nearest urban area (Charlotte) a half hour away. That seems semi-rural to me. Are we calling that a suburb?

Even so, there is a supermarket, gym, tavern and a few other stores within 1 mile. A very easy bike ride.

The second link is definitely suburban, smack in the middle of built-up areas. Also more familiar to me since I have lived in various spots not far from there. You can easily walk to Saratoga Ave which is full of businesses.

[mikebenfield]

So there's a pretty big push for urbanism the last few years. There's lots of YouTube channels and other social media stuff dedicated to the idea that the US needs more walkable neighborhoods, more bike infrastructure, less car dependence, etc.

In your view then... what in the world is this about? If suburbs are perfectly walkable, why does anyone care about urbanism? Why does this channel https://www.youtube.com/c/notjustbikes have over a million subscribers?

Moreover, why is the suburb such a post-automobile phenomenon? If it's viable to get everywhere from a suburb without a car, why were people in 1000 BCE or 1000 CE or 1800 CE not living in suburbs?

I just find this perspective so weird... I've definitely met plenty of people who are very pro-suburb, but it's because they consider it natural and acceptable to need a car for any trip, not because they think they can get places without a car.

[jjav]

> In your view then... what in the world is this about?

I don't entirely know, that's why I ask questions and links to concrete places.

> If suburbs are perfectly walkable, why does anyone care about urbanism?

I think there are different reasons for wanting to live in a dense downtown.

20-something me wanted to live in Manhattan so I could walk to hundreds of bars and clubs. For young people looking for this scene, an ultra-dense downtown is the only way to go.

So that is one reason, and for this one I completely understand and agree that no suburb ever will be able to offer the same experience.

But I feel other reasons are based on misconceptions. I see it repeated in every housing thread on HN, that it is impossible to walk anywhere when living in a suburb. Just on this article discussion you can find multiple people making variants of that claim. Sometimes people here on HN go even more outlandish and claim that people in suburbs must drive 30 minutes to get to a supermarket.

Those are misconceptions, so I think it's worth pointing that out. I'm sure there are occasional suburbs (not rural) where you truly can't walk anywhere, but that seems like a rare exception.

In my very suburban neighborhood, we can easily walk to 3 supermarkets, many restaurants, two bars, misc services (haircuts, locksmiths, etc), assorted other stores, hardware store, movies, library, theater, post office, bike shops, car repair, multiple playgrounds, sports fields, friends houses (for adults and kids) and I can go on.

> I've definitely met plenty of people who are very pro-suburb, but it's because they consider it natural and acceptable to need a car for any trip, not because they think they can get places without a car.

I don't think I can go places without a car in my suburb, I can and I do. See list above. Unless it's freezing and raining (not so common here in NorCal), I mostly walk or bike to all of the above. I prefer to bike but the lack of secure bike parking makes me walk more often than bike. My pre-teen kid can bike or scooter or walk to these places as well, mostly friends houses. I'm not imagining this, this is how we live out here in the suburbs.

[mikebenfield]

The only additional point I’ll make is that places like Stallings (the first link I posted) are absolutely considered suburbs. For instance the Wikipedia article on Stallings calls it a “suburban town” ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stallings,_North_Carolina ).

That’s another thing I found a bit odd - it would never have occurred to me that anyone would not have considered that area a suburb.

[jjav]

> That’s another thing I found a bit odd - it would never have occurred to me that anyone would not have considered that area a suburb.

It's true that there is no agreed definition to "suburb" which confuses these discussions.

Suburbs comes from sub (under, although here basically means around) urbs (city).

To me a suburb must be connected to its city. The city center has dense tall buildings and as you move away from the center the height and density decrease and then you are in the sub-urbs but it's all still built-up area. Once you move even further away and move into forested areas, you're out of the suburbs and into the rural surroundings.

If you have 30 minutes of highway driving through mostly forested areas (very green on google satellite view) between a house and the "urbs" (Charlotte, here) I think that's quite a stretch to call that a suburb.

[mikebenfield]

> driving through mostly forested areas

Yeah, well that's just not the case at all here. The drive from Stallings to downtown Charlotte is almost entirely on Independence Boulevard, which is very much a stroad ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad ), very much developed with lots of pointless strip malls and office parks and little visible nature, and certainly not a foresty experience. The fact that you can see green nearby on satellite view has little to do with people's actual experience driving on these roads.

[bluGill]

Suburbs are not perfectly walkable. As a.crow flies there are things in range ,but often there are fences in the way so you can't get there. Even if you can, the door face the road and so you spend most of acceptable walking distance just getting around the building. And there are no or poor sidewalks on the trip so you end up mixing with cars too much.

I bike to the.grocery store, it isn't too far, but the trip is not pleasant because everything is setup or driving.