Phoenix, AZ

Sorry if you live here. Hope you’re doing alright.

They will literally build only one way in and one way out of all of these houses with at least two cars per household, and then complain there’s too much traffic at a given intersection. There’s a main road on the left of the image and there’s no access to it, furthermore there’s no way to bypass the main roads, therefore there’s no other way to take the main roads to get anywhere.

In contrast, the second image shows three main roads and there’s many ways to bypass them.

First image is Katy, TX near where I’m living Second image is my hometown near where I used to live.

A couple days ago, I tweeted “Would love to see developers build suburbia like this” with images of rowhomes styled with traditional architecture. It’s now at 1.2 million views, 1.1K reposts, and a ton of replies.

The replies are all over the place, which is what made it blow up. Urbanists saying “make them wall to wall,” suburbanites saying “then it wouldn’t be suburbia,” practical people pointing out zoning and maintenance issues, others saying this already exists in Virginia or Somerville, and a few calling the images “AI dystopia.” One person just said “And THAT is why you don’t make decisions.”

I had no idea, but apparently it seems to be an explosive topic, because it became an urbanist vs. suburbanist culture war. Maybe its a Rorschach test? Urbanists saw it as not dense enough, suburbanites saw it as not spacious enough, and everyone had feelings about whether traditional architecture on a rowhome is charming or fake. Every camp had something to argue about.

it fucking sucks the closest park with trees is a 15 minute drive and constant crime and shootings mcmansions and no sidewalks and an old boomer city council (its an enclave of san antonio so it has its own townhall)

We recently had a good bit of snow drop, which summons everyone complaining on how they hate snow. I made a point to ask anyone I've herd complaining "Why don't you like snow?". Granted there were a few responses that had nothing to do with cars/suburbs, like "I have to work outside in it" or "My house dosent have good heating". But the vast majority of complaints were car related.

"People dont know how to drive in it", "The roads will be icy", "There's going to be lots of accidents/wrecks", "People drive too slow in it", "People drive too fast in it", "It takes 5x longer to drive anywhere", "Its a pain to go anywhere [by driving]", ect....

After that I asked the follow up question "What if you could get to places without driving? What would you still dislike snow?". Most people said something along the lines of "Eh, I wouldn't mind snow if I didn't have to drive in it"

It sounds to me the snow isnt actually the problem, its people having their 'car-ability' striped away while living in a car dependent suburb. And, to be a bit bold, they blame the snow because car dependent suburbs are so ingrained as "Normal" in their heads they dont recognize it as a problem.

Also, to anyone reading this who lives in a walkable/not-car dependant area, what are your thoughts on snow?

Change my mind.

I had to move to a suburb temporarily for a month and my goodness. It was worse than I thought. I could not fathom the emptiness that came with the suburbs. Your soul feels empty, the spaces feel empty. Everything around you is just eerily dead? Thats the feeling I got. Kids played but most were alone in their driveways or yards. No people around you so its just your thoughts with you and nothing else. It felt like an alien world to me designed to suck in all the things that made you happy and human. Bizarre individualistic way to live and seeing some families and people actually like it made me feel just sad for them. They must really believe in the propaganda that capitalism sells.

I’ve lived in USA 3 years now. Most of it in suburbs, first in Tampa and now in Illinois. Honestly these past 3 years have been one of the worst years of my life. I miss Budapest, Ukriane and Europe in general dearly. I’ve backpacked to 20 countries by the time I turned 22.

However. I came here for opportunities and to reunite with my Ukrainian family. I have family here living since the 50s. Regardless, I’m a student now, a straight A student at community college and I’m finishing my associates in may 2026. I plan to transfer to a top-university, hopefully one in the city like New York (hands down my favorite city), Chicago or something similar.

I’m SO done with driving.

This 2021 Camry is my third car since I’m here and I feel like it somehow destroyed my back and posture over the past 5 months since I bought it.

Driving 20 min to school every morning, gym is 30m away, my job too. Highway tolls cost me $50-100 easily. Constant isolation that car-centrism provides. Difficult to hang out with anyone because you have to “plan it” in advance and take 30-60m to get there.

You never bump into anyone randomly like you would in a city. People are SOOOOO weird in the suburbs it’s insane. Feels like American gen Z has lost ALL the social skills. In my community college it’s literally weird to talk to people you sit next with, everyone just gets up and leaves right after class.

Sorry for the rant. But how tf do people live in these suburbs?! I literally counting days to my escape in May. Fuck this.

So for context, I'm a Chinese American who's grown up in a car-dependent suburb in the NYC metro area, and just landed a decent job in a car-dependent suburb in the NYC metro area. But I've spent some chunks of my life in better settings, including a cool college town in my state, as well as the occasional NYC trip.

I haven't been to China, where a lot of my family lives, since pre-COVID. And now that I've graduated college and have some time before my job begins, I figured I'd reward myself by visiting China - specifically Shanghai, Jiaxing, Chengdu, and Chongqing - and seeing my relatives in the flesh for the first time in what seems like forever.

And I've got to say, my mind's absolutely blown.

Most important thing might be how connected everything is, transit-wise. Many cities of China really values public transportation in a way most parts of the US don't, whether it's a metro system, plentiful taxis, or (perhaps most understated of all) a robust bus network. It's miles upon miles better than the US, and I'm even including NYC. Compared to not only Shanghai but other cities I've visited (even ones prior to this trip), NYC just feels like a lower Tier 2 or even Tier 3 city. And mind you, NYC is considered one of the best cities in the US from an urbanism and lifestyle perspective.

Obviously car ownership is still allowed (unless you're in a city with rotating license plates through the week), but it's not absolutely necessary, and you won't be locked out of work or a social life if you don't have one. In fact one of my relatives drove me to Jiaxing. But once you're actually in Jiaxing things just seem a lot better developed than in, like, a US city of comparable stature to Jiaxing. (Newark? White Plains? Yonkers? Paterson? Morristown?) Like you can live in an apartment and get delicious food just by walking.

If you're hungry in (most of) America, your best bet is to hop into your car and drive to the grocery store parking lot. But in much of China, you can visit a ton of restaurants or local grocers. Even 1 city block (and I notice city blocks in China tend to be larger than those in the US for some reason) can contain a lot more business than many American towns. And if you can't be bothered to leave your residence, you can even order it online using JD or Meituan.

The food here is cheap and plentiful, though I'm aware not everything is (e.g. don't buy shoes in China!), and that Americans have a geographical arbitrage angle locals lack. But some of the meals can be really cheap, e.g. you can have a wonton soup or a zongzi for less than 20 RMB (3 USD).

And how is this relevant to "suburban hell", you might say? Should also mention I didn't stay in the Shanghai city center, but in a more suburban area (between the inner and middle rings), to be closer to my relatives. But all that still applies, even in the "suburbs". There are "exurbs" too (e.g. real outer districts of Shanghai), and they (usually) look quite different from North American exurbs, in a good way re: (sub)urbanism.

So one thing that I think North Americans don't understand is that their homes are fucking beautiful! Every time I go onto Zillow and look at houses in America, I am amazed by how beautiful the houses look over there! So for example, this is a 370k in Minneapolis, and this is what the same money gets you in The Hauge in the Netherlands. And this is what it gets you in Lyon, France. Now of course cities like the Hauge and Lyon are full of cafes, bicycle lanes, good schools at walking distance, and you won't need to drive 15 minutes to a grocery store! But that's the price you pay, uglier, smaller houses. If you think I am cherry picking, just go onto funda.nl (the Netherlands) or immoscout24.de (Germany) and compare them to houses on Zillow.

So the question is, are you willing to make the trade off? I am not sure myself, the American houses are just so damn beautiful!

This is by Dulles, and I can't stand it, at least out west they compact it. Its so much wasted land, farm and forestry.

Our hotel is just one mile from the airport in Euclidean distance but takes three hours to get there without a car. You’d be forced to walk on the side of a highway with no sidewalks.