[bombcar]

It’s not a suburb/urban thing (though that could be correlated).

It’s an area thing. I think the biggest thing that leads to it is age stratification in a neighborhood - when every family is in the exact same “place” something weird happens.

But looking at a neighborhood on Halloween might be a great way to check.

[alamortsubite]

While I don't deny there are pockets of abnormality like you suggest, having grown up on a dirt road in rural America and spent most of my adult life in cities, suburbia comes across as the antithesis of community. It was founded on the very promise of insularity. Obviously, that's not everyone's agenda, but it's beyond debate that its defining principle was segregation (followed by uniformity and convenience). I want to be sympathetic but I don't understand how people buy into it without accepting this. We've made some progress as a society, but having visited a lot of suburban neighborhoods all over the U.S., the remnants of the original mindset still come across loud and clear.

[bombcar]

I think a key component is that “suburb” has multiple meanings - and which one comes to mind when it’s mentioned depends on where you were raised/lived.

Some suburbs are the stereotypical miles and miles of identical homes with no sidewalks.

Others are actual older rural towns that have been consumed by the nearby metropolis - and these ones feel quite different.

There’s a kind of “suburb” that is usually quite lively - the rural suburb, often a pocket of relatively dense homes in a sea of wheat.

One of my indicators is lemonade stands. If they appear regularly, the area is alive.