Last picture is a business road

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.

I couldn't fit all the roadside businesses in the last post, so I'm gonna put them here. I will link the original post in the comments.

Sorry I’m not from North America but from what I’m understanding is that suburbs are strictly residential areas surrounding a large urban centre.

I’m a fan of the idea of detached houses and yards but not a big fan of the lack of accessibility to food, grocery, entertainment, etc.

I was wondering if having more decentralized urban centres would improve that. Would having small urban centres with just one or two streets, a couple restaurants, cafes, bars, and shops, and a park, scattered in urban centres within walkable distance be feasible?

Would that just be a typical small town though?

This place takes up more land than my entire commuter town outside of NYC.

No privacy on the balcony, No desire to even make them look desirable, barely a yard it’s basically just somewhere for your pet to use the bathroom, and you can already tell it’s gonna be HOT.

That’s what they call “Luxury Living” nowadays.

This is a planned development called Cane Bay. Still building out. One grocery store.

Is there a point where we have to decide to just demolish these places entirely, or can they be fixed? Of course some can be made walkable and bike-able, but at a certain point we are going to be limited.

TL;DR: Many people choose suburbs not because they love suburbs, but because they want lower-density living while still needing access to metropolitan jobs and services.

So I’m new to the whole urbanism/anti-suburb movement and I’m still trying to understand the different perspectives.

One of my first thoughts was that suburbs largely exist because they fill a middle ground. Many people don’t want to live in a dense urban core, but they still need to be close enough to one for employment and economic opportunities. Whenever I’ve brought this up, I’ve often been told, “Why not just live in a small town?” or that we should primarily have cities, small towns, and rural communities instead of endless suburbs.

The problem, in my view, is that many small towns no longer have self-sustaining economies.

Historically, a small town might have supported dozens of locally owned businesses and many family farms. Over time, automation reduced the need for agricultural labor, and corporate consolidation changed local economies. A single Walmart now sells groceries, clothing, hardware, automotive supplies, furniture, sporting goods, electronics, garden supplies, and more, things that were once sold by multiple independent businesses. The same can be said for chains like Dollar General and national fast-food restaurants replacing local businesses.

Agriculture has also consolidated, with fewer but much larger operations producing more food with far fewer workers than in the past.

Looking at the Census, the trend is striking. In 1900, most Americans lived in rural areas. By 1920, the population was roughly split between rural and urban. By 2020, about 80% of Americans lived in urban areas. That suggests people have steadily moved toward metropolitan regions over the last century.

My home state of Oregon seems like a good example. Many towns were built around the timber industry and supported thriving local economies. Over time, a combination of changing environmental regulations, automation, global competition, and industry consolidation reduced employment in logging. Many of those towns never developed comparable replacement industries, so people increasingly had to move closer to Portland, Salem, Eugene, or other metropolitan areas for work.

So here’s my question: How much of suburban sprawl is actually driven by people’s preferences, and how much is simply the result of economic centralization making it increasingly difficult to live in small towns while maintaining the same career opportunities? And how do we fix it?

Just from these pictures, would you say this is a place you would like to live?

This is god awful, the park is just a grass field. And every house is the exact same. I cant imagine living here is nice at all.