[lolinder]

> but when people say that they usually mean "areas that follow a post-war suburban style of development". Think culdesacs and no sidewalks.

Define people?

When most people I know say suburb they mean this: You're far enough the urban core that you probably have to drive to get to shops and jobs, but close enough to the urban core that you don't pass through farmland to get there. Some suburbs are like what you describe, but most are exactly like what OP links to.

I'm not at all sure what the utility is of a using a definition of suburb that excludes most of the not-high-density but not-rural US and only counts the absolute worst-designed spaces. It just means we're all talking past each other, with some of us saying "not all suburbs are terrible" and others insisting that suburbs are by definition terrible and anything that isn't terrible isn't a suburb. It's a bit of a True Scotsman fallacy and doesn't make for very useful dialog.

[jen20]

I believe the colloquial definition has changed substantially over the last ~100 years in the US. As a concrete example, Travis Heights (part of Austin) was initially advertised as "Austin's first suburb", but is very much inside the city core today. In the UK, this is true of places like New Malden or even Wimbledon, which were as-built not part of London and were referred to as "suburbs", but are categorized that way by approximately no-one today.

[dionidium]

You're right that people in practice use the word "suburb" to talk about all these different things, but that just reinforces that the word isn't very useful. Oak Park and Naperville are both "suburbs," but this reveals nothing to us. In fact, it mostly obfuscates.

[lolinder]

A suburb is outside of the city in low density housing, typically not within walking distance of anything. That reveals plenty for a lot of purposes, and if you want to critique something more specific than that you should use a word that people will recognize as being more specific than that.

Clearly the author of TFA believed that this was the definition of suburb, because they were clearly thinking of a space where people could in fact just hang out in front of their houses and meet neighbors. So for the purpose of this conversation, this definition of suburb is the only one that makes sense.

[tptacek]

There is nobody in Chicago who would describe Oak Park and Evanston as anything other than "suburbs". You'd get laughed at if you called them "the city".

[lolinder]

Right. I'm not at all sure why some people on here think "suburb" is only meant to refer to a very specific type of housing development, rather than a description of a location's spatial and cultural relationship to "the city".

[throwaway894345]

I mean, you’re making the same sort of NTS argument here, aren’t you?

> Some suburbs are like what you describe, but most are exactly like what OP links to.

Without defining what constitutes a suburb, how can you argue that most are good? Your argument hinges on your own definition of suburb IMHO.

I’m not sure what the right answer is, but in my experience most people mean post-war development patterns when they talk about suburbs, but in any case it probably doesn’t hurt to be more precise about what we are praising or criticizing.

[lolinder]

No, I'm not, because I'm not saying that what you are identifying as a suburb isn't a suburb, I'm saying it's not representative of all suburbs. I provide a perfectly valid definition:

> You're far enough the urban core that you probably have to drive to get to shops and jobs, but close enough to the urban core that you don't pass through farmland to get there.

Since my definition is broader it's less susceptible to NTS fallacies. What you identify as a suburb is a suburb but it is not all suburbs.

> but in my experience most people mean post-war development patterns when they talk about suburbs

Even this is too broad to sweepingly say all suburbs are bad. I've lived in 5 different suburban neighborhoods as an adult, 4 of which were developed post-war, and all had sidewalks and plenty of walking around and neighborly interaction.

[tptacek]

That is a definition you're making up to suit an argument you're making. It's not the actual definition of the term. Anybody can just look it up and see that! The Oxford Languages dataset that Google uses for the definition literally uses Chicago's suburbs as an example.

And, seriously, who cares? Why would you want your argument to die on this hill? What could it possibly matter?

[lolinder]

I'm not sure why you're critiquing my definition, given that I'm trying to emphasize that your specific Chicago suburb very much does meet the typical way that people think of suburbs. So yes, I agree with Google: Chicago's suburbs are suburbs. Oak Park is not within walking distance of anything that most people I know would identify as "the city", which puts it squarely in the suburbs in my book.

Did you read me as disagreeing with you, or did I misunderstand and you were trying to say that Oak Park isn't a suburb? Or is Oak Park actually within walking distance of "the city" as Chicagoans would identify it?

[tptacek]

Oh I may just be reading the thread backwards! Sorry. Yes, Oak Park is definitely a suburb. Oak Park is also extremely within walking distance of the city; it's across Austin Blvd from it.

[throwaway894345]

Yes, both the parent and I agree that Oak Park is a suburb (and a lovely one by the way; I hit up Amerikas every time I visit)—I was pointing out that he was making an argument of the same style that he was criticizing (using his own definition of a suburb to advocate for his own definition of a suburb).

In any case, I think there are multiple valid definitions for suburb—one which talks about smaller towns on the periphery of large cities and another which emphasizes postwar design principles/philosophies. I don’t see the point in arguing for a single true definition; language doesn’t work that way.