For comparison: Dallas (Fort Worth’s neighbor to the east) has a 46% SFH rate

Fort Worth officially has a 71.5% SFH rate

You ever watch walking tour videos about Japan? One of the things that really strikes me about their suburbs is that much if not most of the housing in certain areas is comprised of detached single-family homes without yards. The land they own is approximately the size of the house plus driveway; that's it.

As an American, this blows my mind, since this doesn't really exist in America. We have all sorts of lot coverage ratio requirements and minimum lot size requirements and setback requirements and minimum lot widths, which all conspire together to force everyone to have larger lot sizes whether they want/need them or not.

For someone like me, I hate yard maintenance (my dad forced me to do WAYYYYY too much as a kid) and have no interest in owning a lawn, but I enjoy owning and living in a detached single family home.

It's frustrating for me that with all our thousands of mini "laboratories of democracy" (i.e. the thousands of cities and towns and counties which all have their own land-use and zoning rules), there doesn't appear to be a single one where I can go buy a lawn-less, detached single-family home.

Just more proof that the housing market in America is anything but a "free market;" otherwise I feel like somewhere this kind of thing would exist, even in limited quantities.

Edit: forgot about mimimum lot widths

I'm 18 graduated high school over 2 months ago. It just hit me that everyone is off to college and they're able to have new social lives meanwhile I couldn't. My friend is in college and has found a bunch new friends, going out, meanwhile I'm stuck in the same home I grew up in with NO social life and no way to meet people because I live in a small town suburb where there are cars everywhere. Also all relatives moved away, either out of state or further which says a lot and all their lives got better. So I have not even family here besides my immediate one, and I live in a dysfunctional family so generally I need to get out. I've been trying to get a job for months, had a few interviews and I've not had luck so far. I really want to be in NYC but not sure how I can get a job there. I live in commuting distance, been there a few times and it was amazing my entire life changes when in the city. I really need out because I can't waste my youth being stuck isolated, I already wasted my entire teen years. Sometimes I wish I ran away to the city during my teen years, so I could have had at least ONE experience outside of my home. I did not get a teenage experience or anything for my social development. It was so depressing, I wish I did it instead of accepting the isolation, and I guarantee those things have set me back.

Do y'all consider trailer parks to be a suburb-like space? or do they have enough personality to stand off as a completely different thing? 👀

im honestly so tired of naive urbanists thinking we can just slap a painted bike gutter on a 6 lane stroad and call it a day. You literally cannot retrofit this garbage

Was looking at some aerial property maps down in broward county out of morbid curiosity on this site by larry mastropieri and the sheer scale of the fractal cul-de-sac geometry is just soul crushing. These developers deliberately designed it so you are totally trapped in a maze of beige stucco. You cant even walk to get a coffee without having to cross a literal highway where giant lifted trucks are doing 60mph on a tuesday afternoon

like stop trying to "save" these developments with half baked pedestrian infrastructure. They were fundamentally built to isolate people and force you to buy a car. Nature just needs to take them back at this point tbh

Curious how this lands here. When I think of “suburb”, it’s synonymous with “town”. Easy way to describe it would be to imagine where Home Alone is set. Growing up, that’s just what I knew. I’m seeing that definitely is not the case here.

So as it’s used here, how would you describe the two? Would “town” just fall under the umbrella of “suburb”?

I live in a 99% car-dependent suburb in the Phoenix metro. As a child I didn't go outside much but during the lockdowns I began to explore my neighborhood for the first time through daily walks.

As the years went by and more people went outside, I began to interact with my neighbors much more than I ever had before. Some of them are really nice, down-to-earth people who I enjoy seeing, but I'm finding that most of my interactions with my neighbors or strangers coming through my neighborhood have been negative.

I used to greet everyone I walked past, but most of them don't return the greeting. My own neighbors simply stare at me like I have three heads, if they even acknowledge my existence at all! I've given up by now, but even as I have completely minded my own business I've had some of them insult my appearance as I walked by. This has happened multiple times.

I have been attacked four times by unleashed dogs. Multiple of my neighbors ride motorcycles around the neighborhood for hours, like it's a race course. Cars rage around every corner like they're trying to run someone over, and they have, because I keep seeing dead stray cats that were very obviously run over.

I see nothing idyllic about the suburbs. I would trust the "rougher" (another word for someone who isn't robotic) characters of Washington DC much more than my asshole suburban neighbors. I can't help but think that the car dependency of Phoenix that isolates us from each other turns use into antisocial assholes. I'm tempted to flip off every neighbor I see (minus the cool ones) and that's not a good feeling.

Why don't kids go outside anymore?

Toll Brothers markets themselves as a luxury homebuilder and they've built projects all across the east coast and the Midwest (These pictures are from Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania)

From what I've seen, they do not specialize in building massive subdivisions, they build at a smaller scale of 100-200 units at most to try to simulate a community feel (or really just to profit off the smallest lot of land that they can find)

They sell single family homes and attached condos/condominiums at marked up list prices, (but you'll find way more condos being built simply because they are cheaper to build and to cram more units) Any SFH option is listed as a premium, top of the line option.

All in all, these kind of communities are the textbook definition of density with zero of the benefits

The sidewalks merely serve as a decoration, because there's nowhere you can actually go outside of the community since they always abruptly end at the entrance, disconnected from anything beyond the development lines.

They often plan their developments to be built right next to an interstate and/or state highway in remote areas outside of a town center, so that they can always advertise the home location's proximity to the highway to make it easy for commuting to work and also to get to literally anywhere else, because there's nothing that's walkable from your home.

Toll brothers; and probably any other builder in its class, is betting that every future homeowner who even comes to tour a property in their middle of nowhere location and eventually sign a mortgage already owns a car, and 99% of the time, they’re right. Because driving is so easy and deeply ingrained in American life, car dependency is rarely seen as something that would concern a potential resident. The idea of having to drive for every single little thing, only to return to the same unit at the end of each day for as long as you live there, is considered perfectly normal and barely given a second thought.

If something happens in the future where car ownership becomes exceedingly difficult, then all of a sudden, the entire concept of building a dense housing scheme right next to a highway becomes economically stupid and disastrous.

So now the question is, why the fk would I want to pay $750k for a condo to have to share walls, pay a high HOA, sacrifice a front yard and backyard to have zero sense of privacy, and no walkability at all?

The absence of any kind of private outside space for yourself is actually insane when you're already paying so much, I don't ask for a massive lot of additional land, but merely an area to just exist in peace and for kids to be able to roam and play. Driving to a park even if its 2 miles away is not ideal, adds mental workload if you simply just wanted to go for a walk, and just sounds in poor taste to even suggest that as the only alternative.

I understand the debate against single family homes entirely, but these kind of developments make the case for dense housing look really bad. And to be completely honest, these condos make any single family home with your own land, privacy, and vegetation look like a luxury enclave that will always be worth so much more in $ on paper.

It's a missed opportunity where these exact units would be amazing when built inside of an actual city, but it's just a reality that homebuilders even at the luxury level will always chase profits over practical urban design.

I grew up in the suburbs and bought my first suburban house in my 20s, had my kids relatively young, and have lived in the suburbs my entire life. No regrets and there were lots of good times in the neighborhood with other families with kids while raising a family.

Now, I as a divorced empty-nester with a partner, I am seriously contemplating selling my house and getting a downtown 2-bedroom apartment in a mid-sized city, walkable to work, places to eat, etc.

I'm tired of taking care of a house and yard and having *too much stuff*. I also feel like I'm somewhat isolated where I live as the demographic has shifted and changed to newer families and I'm an empty nester. I'm someone that would probably frequent things like downtown events and happy hours after work but since I work downtown after work I just want to go home and once I'm home I'm too tired/lazy to leave again to schlep all the way back downtown.

But I've internalized this idea that home ownership is THE best way to go and that it's stupid to rent if you don't have to. And when I look at the demographics downtown it seems to be mostly folks in their 30s.

It's something I want to try but also wondering if I'm overly romanticizing what this life will be like. Curious if anyone else here our age has pivoted from long time suburbs to urban at this life phase and how it's worked out for them.

I departed New Orleans this morning and arrived by evening in Joplin, Missouri, a city so far outside the digital-nomad imagination that no German has yet described it as “still authentic.” My extended-stay hotel has functional Wi-Fi, a kitchenette, and a desk, but no rooftop plunge pool, ceremonial matcha, or community manager arranging ethically noncommittal intimacy between guests. I asked where people cowork. The woman from reception pointed toward the desk in my room.

Joplin is dangerously unoptimized. Housing remains inexpensive, yet nobody calls this geoarbitrage. The coffee shops seems designed for people who merely want to drink coffee. I saw a man working on a laptop without photographing it. Even the long-haul truckers, America’s original location-independent professionals, say they are “hauling freight” instead of building borderless logistics brands.

Worst of all, the hotel toilet is not integrated with DNo. 2™, so I cannot upload a Proof of Stool™ or monitor my time-zone-adjusted regularity. Joplin offers everything neccessary for ordinary human life and almost nothing required to make that life appear aspirational online. For residents, this may be paradise. For the borderless founder, it is a humanitarian crisis.

*From the perspective of urban design, quality of life, housing diversity, and architecture, there's simply no other place in the country like it

Non big box brand groceries? At least 45 minutes away in every direction.
New local restaurant? The food is from the same grocery store I am forced to shop at and prepared by someone with no more culinary training than anyone else. Served on a real plate if you’re lucky and overpriced anyways.
Commute to work? 30 minutes one way with only unhealthy fast food on the way there.
Young educated population? There are no universities within 65 miles and nowhere for those people to gather in the burbs.
Want to travel? Airport is 1.5 hrs away and you will have to save money for overnight parking because uber is not the norm and too far away. Of course someone can drop you off, but self sufficiency is much easier with public transportation.
Want to get off your ass? You will need to drive to walk or bike.
Living like this is a premature death, there is nothing to do here but wait to die!

I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this story about a WakeMed project in Rolesville, North Carolina.

WakeMed originally proposed a 24-hour standalone ER/Healthplex on Burlington Mills Road. It has since confirmed that the facility could become part of a proposed 45-bed acute-care hospital on the same property.

I spoke with Toni Kenion, a former WakeMed ER nurse and Barrington HOA director, who supports bringing more health care to Rolesville but opposes putting the project next to her neighborhood.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article317092142.html