[throwaway0123_5]

I don't think there is some special physical property absent in suburbs and present in rural areas that contributes to social isolation in the former but not the later. Rather I think it has to do with the kind of person that lives in each place. My grandparents and cousins live in a rural area. They all have ancestry in that town going back to the early 1900s. So do most of their neighbors. Families live next to (where "next to" admittedly might be a few miles depending on how rural) each other for generations. This is obviously conducive to strong intra and inter-family social networks.

People who live in cities and in suburbs on the other hand seem to be far more transient. They move around for school or careers and aren't tied down to one place. I grew up in suburbs in three different cities. New neighbors frequently moved in and out of all three places, and the street where I lived from aged 5-10 has only two "original" families left.

For those people, the built environment in suburbs being conducive to social isolation (in American suburbs anyways) becomes a problem. The nearest grocery store, restaurant, or interesting venue of any kind is likely 30+ minutes away if you try to walk, and the walk is likely to be dangerous due to poor pedestrian infrastructure and poor public transit. There are few accessible third places in which to meet people, it takes a lot more intentional effort. This is even more of a problem if you're a kid, as you're now entirely dependent on your parents and their car to meet friends or go to places where you can meet friends.

I moved from upper-middle class suburbs to Washington D.C. The difference in how many people you meet who you might want to be friends with, and in how easy it is to get places where you want to go (especially without a car) is night and day. Will suburbs ever be as good as cities in this regard? Probably not. But mixed-use zoning and returning to "streetcar suburbs" would probably go a long way (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/27/in-praise-of-s...).

There's also other reasons to oppose current suburb development patterns. Suburban sprawl is highly inefficient in many ways. It takes dramatically more infrastructure to serve the same number of people that you could in a denser area. Roads, power lines, pipes for drinking water and sewage, etc. The taxes that many suburbs pay don't cover these expenses and suburbs end up being subsidized by people living in denser areas. Rural areas also suffer from this to some extent, but rural areas are a necessity for society to run, hosting farms and other resource extraction activities, so subsidizing some costs is fair. People in rural areas are also more likely to be self-sufficient, having their own septic tank, private well, etc., and aren't offloading their costs to society.

[randomdata]

> Rather I think it has to do with the kind of person that lives in each place.

This does seem to be the repeated consensus – that suburbanites choose to live in suburban areas because they want the isolation. Which, I suppose, makes sense as it is not like you have to live there. People by and large live where they want to above all else. Obviously there can be exceptions (e.g. children needing to live where their parents do), but as far as what prevails goes.

> There's also other reasons to oppose current suburb development patterns. Suburban sprawl is highly inefficient in many ways. It takes dramatically more infrastructure to serve the same number of people that you could in a denser area.

Is denser the actual alternative, though? It seems that if you took suburbs away from these people, they'd most likely try to move into more rural areas, so then you just end up with the same there (without the practical reasons traditionally associated with subsidizing rural areas).

In fact, I'm seeing more and more spreading of the so-called "15-minute city" conspiracy, which has people believing that there is some kind of organized plot out there working towards forcing people into living in dense cities. While the conspiracy itself is not particularly important here, the sentiment of people fearing that they might be forced into the city conveyed alongside it seems quite real and indicative that denser is not the direction they are willing to head.

[throwaway0123_5]

> that suburbanites choose to live in suburban areas because they want the isolation.

I don't think most of them want isolation, I strongly suspect that most people moving to suburbs are doing so for their career, as most well-paid jobs are in metropolitan areas. In a metropolitan area your options are mostly: 1) city 2) suburb w/ very little mixed-use zoning

Cities tend to be more expensive for less space. There are going to be many people who would want to live in a city with their family but simply can't afford the rent, so they live on the outskirts of the city (suburbs). Alternatively they may want the space, yard, etc. that a house provides, but this doesn't mean they want isolation. They may very well prefer suburbs with good mixed-use zoning and public transit, those are just very rare in the US.

> It seems that if you took suburbs away from these people

I'm not proposing taking suburbs away from people, nor are the vast majority of urbanists. We're proposing more ability to build denser suburbs (i.e. some multifamily housing in suburban areas), mixed-use zoning (so you can walk to stores), and better public transit in suburbs. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing. Suburbs that have these features tend to be in high-demand, they're just rare today because they're illegal to build in many places (I think there's some commentary on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0).

> they'd most likely try to move into more rural areas

Unlikely IMO because again I suspect that many/most have moved to suburbs for their careers. There aren't nearly as many jobs in rural areas.

> 15-minute city

Anyone claiming this is bad is just being disingenuous IMO. ~Nobody promoting 15 minute cities wants to force people to live in cities, they want cities where you can meet most of your needs by walking or cycling or taking public transit. If you don't want to live in a city or want to live in a city and spend 10s of thousands of dollars on a car you still can. I don't think we can extrapolate much about what the average American wants based on those who believe that conspiracy theory, because the people who believe it are either woefully uninformed about what it actually is or are just being malicious reactionaries.

[randomdata]

> I strongly suspect that most people moving to suburbs are doing so for their career

Doubtful. Moving somewhere for a career is fairly abnormal. There is good reason why job search places always lead with: "Location". The vast majority of the population choose where the want to live first – in fact, the majority of the population still live within a small radius of where they were born! – and then figure out what they want to do for work.

Yeah, there is a small segment of the population who will chase work at the cost of where they live. Let's say this is who ends up in the suburbs. Perhaps that's the problem? As in they end up being comprised of people focused on their career, and thus don't prioritize community? Perhaps want isolation is too strong, but how about doesn't care about isolation?

> We're proposing more ability to build denser suburbs (i.e. some multifamily housing in suburban areas), mixed-use zoning (so you can walk to stores), and better public transit in suburbs.

Does that actually appeal to the people of the suburbs, or are you projecting? Presumably these people are constituents of a democratic government, and therefore can already have anything their collective hearts desire. Why isn’t this already the reality?

> Anyone claiming this is bad is just being disingenuous IMO.

Are you unfamiliar with what a conspiracy theory is...? Regardless, it resonates precisely because a lot of people don't want to live in cities. If the listener was all "Hell, ya! Get me out of this hellhole into the dense city!" it wouldn't garner any attention at all, but that's not the reality.

[throwaway0123_5]

> The vast majority of the population choose where the want to live first – in fact, the majority of the population still live within a small radius of where they were born!

I wouldn't call it a vast majority, apparently 59% of people live in the state where they were born and most states are pretty big places (https://www.test.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/...).

> Moving somewhere for a career is fairly abnormal.

I think you're probably right on a job-to-job basis, most people aren't picking up and moving across the country for each new role. But it only takes one move to another city for the "several multi-generational families in close proximity" dynamic of many rural areas to be disrupted. Even short moves could easily make someone much more socially isolated. Move 50 miles away from your hometown and now you're seeing your former neighbors once a month or less instead of a few times a week.

> there is a small segment of the population who will chase work at the cost of where they live. Let's say this is who ends up in the suburbs. Perhaps that's the problem? As in they end up being comprised of people focused on their career, and thus don't prioritize community?

Not sure this is the right way to frame it. It isn't necessarily about "ending up" in the suburbs when a huge percentage of the country was born in the suburbs or in a city, never having had a tight-knit multigenerational community to begin with. 80% of the US is urbanized (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...). Most people are moving from generic suburb to generic suburb (or city). A kid born in some suburb isn't choosing to focus on their career over community, but nevertheless economic migration was likely the force that caused them to end up there.

> Does that actually appeal to the people of the suburbs, or are you projecting?

Somewhat remains to be seen, but my gut feeling is yes. I think that most suburbanites haven't deeply considered other alternatives given that they've mostly only been exposed to "default US suburbia." That was the case for me until I got into urbanist YouTube and moved to a more urbanist location. When I share urbanist material with friends and family that haven't been exposed to it before, they tend to be pretty receptive. Anecdotes yes, but I'm not being disingenuous.

> constituents of a democratic government, and therefore can already have anything their collective hearts desire. Why isn’t this already the reality?

In theory yes, but in reality these are changes that will take a long time. There's a lot of red tape when it comes to building and zoning, and vocal minorities (NIMBYs) can often block or delay efforts that have popular support through lawsuits (recently near my area: https://www.arlnow.com/2024/09/27/breaking-judge-overturns-m...). Consider that there are plenty of issues that have wide bipartisan support among US voters as a whole but haven't been implemented for political reasons. Even when there is popular support and policy is implemented, whole areas can't simply be rebuilt overnight.

[randomdata]

> 80% of the US is urbanized

The US definition of urban includes towns with 2,000 people, though. Not exactly density city. Only around 60% of the population live in places with >100,000 people, and of that it seems a significant portion of them live in the suburb portion. So it seems that most of the population live in what is colloquially considered "rural". I'm not sure that is a coincidence. It seems most people would much prefer to live on farms (how often do you hear I want to give it all up and become a farmer around here?) – but most can't afford farmland (the same reason we ended up with the urbanization movement in the first place), so they settle for pretend rural as a compromise.

> But it only takes one move to another city for the "several multi-generational families in close proximity" dynamic of many rural areas to be disrupted.

While I think it is fair to say that rural dynamic was already disrupted generations ago, was that not already rebuilt in the urban areas? With housing affordability being a hot topic of late, the idea of having to leave one's friends and family behind to build a new life in a more affordable place was met with shock pickachco face, as if these were the first group of people to ever have to do such a thing. Suggesting that multi-generational family dynamics had been built elsewhere once urbanization had been settled. Otherwise it would have been considered normal to leave.

> When I share urbanist material with friends and family that haven't been exposed to it before, they tend to be pretty receptive. Anecdotes yes, but I'm not being disingenuous.

How do they react when you present your vacation slide show, for sake of comparison? Do you get a "that's nice, honey", are they booking a vacation to the same place, or "thanks for the invite, but I am not interested" People can be quite good at faking being receptive.

But, regardless, you don't have to sell me. It all does sound like good ideas. I'll not disparage that. But at the same time, I'm not sure it is better that what could be, more of a "we're stuck with this, so how do we improve upon it?" Improve it does, seemingly (but that is ultimately for the people who live there to decide), but then if you are the type of person who wants better, wouldn't you go for where the best can be found?

> I think that most suburbanites haven't deeply considered other alternatives given that they've mostly only been exposed to "default US suburbia."

That's intriguing. When I was a kid, albeit not from suburbia, we spent a lot of time talking about different lifestyles and which were to our tastes. Some were happy with what they had, others were ready to escape as soon as possible. What do you think it is about suburbia that kills that zest to consider the world around you?

> There's a lot of red tape when it comes to building and zoning

Only if the constituents want there to be red tape, of course. There is no magical deity in the sky that created this. It only exists because the people want it to exist.

> (NIMBYs) can often block or delay efforts that have popular support through lawsuits

Which, again, exists only through recognition of the very same population (albeit probably a larger one, granted). Clearly the majority are, at very least, not bothered by this or it would have been done away with long ago.

> whole areas can't simply be rebuilt overnight.

Absolutely, but we've been talking about this for at least 20 years! It was never going to happen overnight, but when we're still saying the policy – never mind the actual work – needs to change decades later...

While I do not live in a suburb, I do live in a place that had similar goals to what you are describing. The policy literally did change overnight as soon as the people decided that is what they wanted, and the work started underway soon after. It takes no time at all to do away with the red tape, if that's what the people want. If that hasn't already happened, one has to look at why the people don't want it to change.

[zknow]

yeah the transiency thing is huge. I think a big part of that is young people moving away from their home city for university and then for a job. It really breaks up the social fabric at an important stage and replaces it with uni friends and work friends. I find there is a bit less of that here because people are a bit more likely to get into the trades/small business so schooling doesn't uproot them as much. The difference walking makes is interesting to me because rural communities are obviously not that walkable, though I guess as a kid I could bike to my friends' place (2km). I really don't get the appeal of suburbs, I think they might just be a reaction to failures in cities, and companies inability to set up shop where their workers/customers are. I've heard of people who drive in 1:30 - 2:00 to their workplace in a major urban center, why wouldn't the companies just move out to where they live, drop their wages by 10% and everyone would have more time/money. So yeah, true suburbs make no sense, the only reason people choose them is because cities get expensive and/or scummy.