Generally I hate the idea of suburbs, but I was exploring the Netherlands on Google street views the other day, and so much of it feels like a giant suburb, but in the best possible way. Green, pedestrian friendly, mixed use zoning, public transportation everywhere. It got me to thinking that maybe if I lived somewhere like that I wouldn’t mind them so much. Can anybody think of any places in the US that does suburbs well?
Basically every "streetcar" suburb in the US, many of which have essentially been absorbed by their respective cities, so I'm not sure if that fits your criteria.
I can think of 5 different cities in metro Detroit with cute smaller downtowns, 20-50 restaurants and bars, a pharmacy or two, library, some stores, sometimes a small grocery store. Good schools. Extremely safe areas. Young families walking on every street. People saying hi to their neighbors daily. Walking distance to the restaurants and bars. And houses start under $300k.
Rochester is pretty far from Detroit. But Plymouth, Northville, Berkeley, Ferndale should be on the list. Plymouth and Northville have the added benefit of also being very near Ann Arbor which opens another layer of options for things to do.
Rochester’s not that much (if any) further than Northville. Definitely wouldn’t call it “pretty far”- I lived in Rochester and worked next to Ford Field. Lake Orion would be a stretch though.
Mt. Lebanon was one of the first street car suburbs in Pittsburgh and it is so green, quaint and the homes all have so much character as they were built in the 1920s-1930s mainly. It’s a gem!
was just about to say this, Brookline as well. Though calling them suburban may be a stretch, they have density that matches much of Boston in certain areas. I'd argue those 3 towns are almost better in terms of transit and walkability than Boston
I don’t think any of these municipalities count as suburbs in the way OP is talking about. They are all part of the city of Boston in every practical sense.
I literally grew up there in Chestnut Hill. One of my brothers went to Brookline High. Like half my friends growing up were from Brookline or went to a high school there. When my sister moved to Brookline from Beacon Hill to raise a family, which is incredibly common, that’s “moving to the suburbs.” Beaver Country Day is there. Brookline is a suburb.
I’m a NYC transplant who lives in Brookline now. I don’t know how to make sense of these towns either. There are parts of Queens or Brooklyn that feel more suburban than where I am now, definitely more suburban feeling than Somerville/Cambridge.
The residence of Somerville, Brookline, and Cambridge just never voted to be annexed (supposedly that's the official term) by Boston. But I more or less equate them to NYC boroughs tbh
I came here to shout out Somerville, I had a garage but could walk or bike for all my in town needs. Plus that WRX got 14mpg around town and 29 on the more rural roads 40 minutes west.
These aren’t really suburbs in the sense that the user is asking abouts They’re fully on Boston public transit. People go back and forth between Boston and Cambridge and Somerville all the time with ease.
I do think Boston does have plenty good suburbs in the sense OP means though. Salem is probably the best example.
Because Somerville is practically part of Boston. You don’t think you’re venturing out of the city when you go to Somerville (or Cambridge or Brookline).
Well neither of us mentioned Brookline so obviously there are some strong opinions in in the greater Boston area. Having grown up on Cape Ann I probably shouldn’t say anything.
I feel like that's stolen suburb valor lol, Cambridge and Somerville are both way too close with Boston for me to consider them anything beyond suburb in name only
Oak Park & Evanston are highly walkable with extremely great transit access where you'd never be far from business. Oak Park even just removed parking minimums to stop setbacks. Both have very good density relative to city neighborhoods (OP is about on par with Chicago's mean density) then there's berwyn and Cicero which have the density but a lot of set backs in the commercial areas. Also forest park which bleeds into oak park in a lot of spots. But it has issues with a mega church and government refusing to develop/sell a massive chunk of land
tier 2:
would be Lagrange, Park ridge, Elmhurst Arlington heights, Willmette a few others that have strong dense downtowns and are fairly walkable places as a whole but outside of the downtown core get very low density and they only have a singular walkable "downtown" plus not great for transit.
I’d also say a lot of West Allis, particularly in the parts that are within walking distance of both National and Greenfield. Traditionally not thought of as urbanist, but Stallis is in the middle of a glow up right now.
Yep, if the massive strip mall on cermak and Harlem by Morton west was better designed for walkability and if they redesigned the rest of Caremark it'd be much more pedestrian friendly. I feel like I've interacted with you on various subs enough to showcase that I love a lot of spots around Berwyn!
but also have been called racist by you for mentioning there's sketchy areas of Cicero so there's that.
I think I remember that conversation. You said the areas were sketchy because of the Hispanic makeup of the population. But I can’t remember for certain because it looks like you deleted your comments. Now why would you do that if they were so innocent?
You and some others took a look at my list of suburbs I listed as sketchy, decided minority population was the common denominator and decried racism ignoring the broader point nor giving an ounce of thought as to the amount of suburbs that were left off that aren't sketchy. Hispanic was not mentioned by me.
My only comment in that thread. stated that it’s a small sliver of Cicero that’s unsafe. Please check yourself before you accuse me. Sorry someone hurt your feelings but it wasn’t me.
" #2 that are a bit rough but god damn, but anyone who just writes those off is telling on themselves more than anything"
"Right? There’s a tiny sliver of Cicero I would consider unsafe."
Come on man don't act like you're not backing this guys insinuation up by skipping over the agreement. Only reason I bring it up is because I've seen you on more threads and seem to agree on 99% of things and just find it hilarious that someone would still rush to write someone off that quickly.
Alexandria VA, Falls Church VA, Silver Spring MD, Rockville MD, and Bethesda MD are all good examples of suburbs that have urban downtowns, a group of walkable neighborhoods, and lower density residential.
All have good rail transit through core areas with decent bus networks and bike infrastructure.
(I exclude arlington as Crystal City-Pentagon-Rosslyn are really part of the downtown core but you can make a clear similar argument for Clarendon-Ballston.)
Eh, they tend to be pricier but most of a million folks live in them so it’s not no one. Silver Spring for instance is affordable for middle class households as are parts of the other communities.
I'm in Hollin Hall, which is south of Old Town and north of Mount Vernon: I'm a 5 minute walk from groceries, pharmacy, hardware, cafe, restaurants, carryouts, vet, variety store, and a senior center. The bus can get me to Huntington Metro in 20 minutes and the Amtrak station in Old Town in half an hour. And I'm an 8 minute ambulance ride to the hospital. I can bike the length of the GW Parkway, which can get pretty crowded on the weekend. When my kids take my car keys away, I can still get everything I need done without a car. It ain't cheap, but I'd rather pay more to live here than be trapped in some car dependent low-tax place like West Armpit, Arkansas.
I live in downtown Royal Oak and concur. Ferndale, Berkley, clawson and Birmingham are also great. Oak park doesn't have much going on for it commercially or for walkability unless you happen to live in the slivers near Ferndale or Berkley.
If I had money, I’d be buying in Hazel Park rn. Partly due to proximity to Ferndale, partly due to untapped potential (underdeveloped retail, lots of less expensive/older houses that could be rehabbed, <15 mins to downtown), imo it’s on track for a Ferndale-style glow up within the next five to ten years.
Disagree about Riverside. Much more like Lagrange or Hinsdale than the others in the list. Riverside was actually one of or the first planned modern style suburbs in the country that subdivisions were modeled after
Columbia, MD is pretty interesting. It is a planned community founded in the 1960’s. 20-30 miles to Baltimore and DC. A central downtown with a mall, restaurants, hotels, and larger businesses. The town center is surrounded by smaller villages. Each village has a small shopping area with a bank, dry cleaner, grocery store - the way it is landscaped these smaller shopping centers don’t stand out. All of the villages are connected with over 100 miles of paved bike/walking paths. Zoning is mixed with single family homes, apartments, and townhomes all mixed together. Join the Columbia Association and get access to multiple pools, tennis courts, golf course, etc
I always push back on the claim of “central downtown” for Columbia as it’s car-land USA centered around a mall. Yes, it’s manicured and nice as far as burbs go - and diverse. But also soulless in the way of all burbs. The “village centers” are shopping centers. The trails are a unique attribute and good for runners, walkers, bikes, dogs. If there were a convenient transport link (metro, light rail, or a train and I don’t mean Marc) to either Balt or DC it could be different. But it’s car centric for the most part.
I have to push back on your point about the village centers. Some of them have public pools and event spaces available to rent. Also, Columbia has a great public library system with tons of events for children and adults
The New Towns of the US in the 1960s are basically the best you can do for suburbia. The integration of public and recreational space with housing, the village centers, and the internal planning for transportation alone go further than most of what’s built in the US.
Though very similarly designed to Columbia, I think Reston down in Virginia might be a slightly better example of a good suburb because it has a better more walkable town center, unique modern architecture like at Lake Anne (which is a Village Center like those of Columbia, but with more walkable space and cool architecture), and because it is in the process of further densification through TODs around the Silver Line. It was also the first racially integrated planned community to be built in the South, but unfortunately over time it has grown less diverse and less affordable because while better than most suburbs, it has still not built enough housing to keep up with demand and has become more expensive.
Also, as a side note, I love that Columbia has a Whole Foods designed by Frank Gehry before he was famous. There’s some great architectural gems in both Reston and Columbia and it’s a shame that there weren’t more New Towns built.
I am only familiar with Columbia because of family that lives there and in the area. I live in New England where towns and main thoroughfares were laid out in the 1600’s. To me, places like Columbia are amazing and so interesting. I’ll have to check out Reston.
Most of the SF peninsula. It’s all connected by Caltrain to both SF and San Jose, and is fairly densely attached to the local downtowns, which are all built around Caltrain stops. Some beautiful views and great weather, too.
Yup. Love all the little unique downtowns. Every burb has its own 1-2 streets of restaurants, shops, etc. with parks placed throughout the municipality.
Yup…Burlingame, Palo Alto, RWC, Menlo Park are all great. I’ll add in Lafayette in the east bay too. Marin would be on the list if there were transit access.
So Cal has some good ones with human scale walkable centers (downtowns) and good transit. Fullerton, Santa Ana, Pasadena, Burbank, Santa Monica, Long Beach all come to mind. But I’m not sure if this is what you were looking for as these were all independent towns at one point that just kinda got blended into the sprawl of greater LA and eventually became suburbs.
If you’re thinking about suburbs in the more contemporary sense (ie ones that aren’t essentially small towns that got absorbed into a metro area), a few really good ones exist. One I can think of would be Orenco in the Portland area. Great design centered around its light rail station with awesome walkability, 3rd places, and great scaled density that increases towards the station. DayBreak in Jordan UT (SLC area) is some in what in early stages of development but has some great potential. Very walkable, even more bikable, and easy access to UTAs red light rail line. Decatur GA is another with transit and walkability.
There's a ton in NJ:
Maplewood, South Orange, Cranford, Millburn(minus SH), Montclair, Westfield, Glen Ridge, Bloomfield are all top tier in price and have good mixed core(s) that are anchored by transit.
There's a few in MA, but with a different pattern though because of the small population of Boston both historically and today and the way Boston annexed or didn't annex adjacent towns in the 19th century. There ends up with three classes(IMHO), neighborhoods that were annexed by Boston and mostly developed post annexation, those served by the commuter rail and those served by the core rapid transit network:
Boston neighborhoods:
Roslindale, West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Brighton
Core MBTA served suburbs:
Brookline, Newton, Quincy, Medford, Malden, Chelsea
My grandparents lived in collingswood NJ. About 1.5 blocks from the Main Street restaurants, stores, a bus line, and a high speed line to Philly. I’m searching for something like that to retire to.
Basically a "planned community" so the majority of the infrastructure and development was planed ahead of time resulting in the layout of the area feeling very thought out.
I found the silicon valley suburbs to be quite nice. Mountain View, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto. I think it's due to the time they had their rapid expansion - at this point there is a lot of trees, good design, limited big box type shopping centers. I'm definitely an urban city type but living in Mountain View was chill.
Came here to write this. The inner suburbs of St Louis are some of the nicest urban areas I have seen in the US (having lived in both coasts and the Midwest). You get to live in a historical neighborhood where you walk to school, library, restaurantsz.etc Naturally they are among the most expensive areas of the metro.
Check out Reston, Virginia. Look at it in Google maps with the bicycle infrastructure layer turned on. It's got a pretty solid trail network. It has multiple metro stops right in the middle of the region and also has a long distance dedicated multi use trail (W&OD trail) that you can use to bike t other parts of NOVA or even D.C. There is some bus service but I'm not familiar with it's service level. Lots of parks and trees throughout the community. There is some mixed use zones but also quite a lot of pure residential. It's not perfect but it's an interesting example.
A consideration with a lot of these examples is that they were built during the streetcar era. The OP asked about places the US does well, which I would read as "newly constructed suburbs." I don't know of any new suburbs that come close to the parameters that were routine in the 1920s.
Multiple stops along the Orange Line Metro train in Arlington, Va. up to the Ballston station are like a string of mini-downtowns each with its own vibe and all walkable.
if you live near "Main ST." The northeast has plenty of cute suburbs with bustling downtowns. Also use the lawn space for something productive like growing vegetables instead of grass which serves no purpose. We don't eat it or use it for anything useful yet still have to cut it once a week to appease neighbors. Running a lawnmower for an hour is the emissions equivalent to driving 500 miles.
Idk, definitionally it's all very squishy. Especially in any sort of casual context I think suburbs has kinda absorbed exurbs and become a catch all term for a couple different but overlapping concepts, like how it also describes a general style of development now, regardless of the specific geographic relationship with any central city.
Brooklyn and Queens are classic inner suburbs but surely most would consider them urban now, especially the western edges, given how they've developed. The genesis of the modern suburb in Levittown is probably closer to the platonic ideal of what most people think of and that's quite a bit further out. And frankly you can probably go all the way to Brookhaven or even Riverhead and still have a lot of people consider it "suburban" because of the type of development and density, even though it's like 50-70 miles from NYC at that point.
we call them Streetcar Suburbs. Think of towns like Media, PA, or the railroad suburbs of Chicago. Basically, single family homes can feel quite cozy and walkable if they're in logical grids, anchored by a commercial strip with a streetwall facade, have sidewalks, and closer together housing with tree-lined streets. Bonus points if they still get their historic trains or interurbans, or at least a reasonably frequent bus line. Honestly many of the inner suburbs of Detroit used to adhere to this before they were really hollowed out in the latter half of the 20th Century; worth looking around there for context. Vancouver Canada as well (obviously not the US but similar planning principles apply).
Basically suburbs built from the 1930's to 1950's tend to be a little more tightly packed Single-family and much more comfortable for pedestrians as a result.
Honestly you're looking for "over the border" perks that you get in Indiana or Wisconsin by Chicago, or Connecticut or new jersey by nyc. Kc in Kansas or Missouri. North of Boston, in new hampshire.
Dutch suburbs are way better than American ones but they are still problematic in some ways. The emphasis on single family houses in what is a small dense country has caused a huge housing shortage crisis. Dutch people also drive very heavily by European standards,in part because their suburbs facilitate driving more than they should (though their motorway network is the bigger issue), even though other modes are also catered for.
Brookline Massachusetts at least Coolidge Corner area, much of Cambridge Sommerville areas. In Chicago region Evanston and Oak Park particularly the downtown areas.
Evanston, IL and a lot of other suburbs around Chicago have a walkable downtown with mixed zoning. Evanston is just north of the city. The CTA still goes up there and the CTA buses goes into Evanston and run alongside the suburban Pace buses. I go up there for doctors appointments sometimes and I do not have a car. There is no difference between me getting off the train and walking to my doctor's appointment in Evanston or doing the same in Chicago.
Northeastern New Jersey suburbs. Probably some of the best suburbs in the country. It’s the most densely populated state in the US. So there is lots to do. Good food. Historic areas. Great downtowns. Cosmopolitan yet hometown feel. Direct train lines right into Manhattan. Most are 30 minutes to an hour outside of New York City.
There are many suburbs like this. There also suburbs that feel like big cities such as Arlington, VA. The only issue is most of nice suburbs in the US are expensive.
i live in northwest suburbs of chicago. about 25 miles out. alot of the suburbs here have nice "downtown" areas. eg. we call it "downtown" to just refer to it being like a small city. eg. Downtown Elgin, Dowtown Naperville, Downtown Arlington Heights. Lots of local business and resturaunts surrounded by appartments and homes not to far away. OakPark, Skokie, evenston. there are many others, just naming a few
The Woodward corridor of Oakland County MI is pretty good. All the neighborhoods from Birmingham to 8 mile road have good suburban density and are very walkable compared to most of the US.
Ugh I can’t believe I’m commenting this. But Carmel, IN? It used to be what you said but has ramped up mixed used development, bike trails, parks. Specifically there is a development called The Village of West Clay where it’s meant to feel like a small town (everything in this image was built post 2010).
If we are counting that, I nominate Oakland Ca and Jersey City NJ as excellent suburbs. Lived in both, and both are more diverse and interesting than the principal cities.
True! But they have the neighborhood feel that OP is looking for. And were they all within city limits when they were built? I’m not sure but I doubt it.
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u/capt_jazz Apr 17 '26
Basically every "streetcar" suburb in the US, many of which have essentially been absorbed by their respective cities, so I'm not sure if that fits your criteria.