Suburbs Voyage Tips and guide

Contents

Suburbs are planned housing districts for an increasing share of the world's population. While suburbs tend to have less appeal to visitors than old towns, traditional farms or the great outdoors, travellers might at times find themselves in a suburb, be it for hospitality exchange, second home ownership, au pair or other work, visiting a local friend or for a day trip.

Suburbs became planned on a large scale in the 19th century, as steam trains allowed people to commute into cities. The 20th-century expansion of motor traffic (see automotive history) and public transportation enabled suburbs to expand far outside cities.

The second half of the 20th century saw construction of high-rise suburban neighborhoods, many of which are affordable housing, in many cases with urban rail systems, such as the banlieues of France. In Europe, these neighborhoods tend to have a high population of low-income immigrants, with cuisine and arts typical to these ethnicities.

There are also many examples of what used to be separate cities, towns or villages that are now bedroom communities for major cities because the construction of train lines and invention of internal combustion vehicles made daily commutes over much longer distances possible. Some notable examples of this are Saitama, which serves as a bedroom community for Tokyo, and Sharjah, which serves as a bedroom community for Dubai. Other suburbs are villages that simply got absorbed into a nearby city as it expanded. Many larger Chinese cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen have this type of suburb, often dubbed "urban villages".

In some cases, suburbs may offer good shopping opportunities. If a company wants to set up a store, or a whole mall, with a large floor area, plenty of parking space, or both, the necessary land will be far cheaper in a suburb than downtown – but the malls may not be easily reachable on foot or by public transport from the housing areas.

It is hard and maybe not useful to generalize about suburbs, because there are several types. Some cities like Boston did not expand their boundaries to envelop built-up cities at their borders like Cambridge and Brookline. These cities are no more suburban than adjoining areas of Boston. Similarly, Evanston, Illinois, while separately administered, is continuous with Chicago and fully connected to it via an El (elevated subway) line, and areas of Maryland and Virginia close to Washington, D.C. such as Arlington, Virginia are often identified regionally as parts of D.C. Sometimes, each community within an inner ring of built-up suburbs surrounding a large city has a different character and identity from the central city. Some such communities are even secondary metropolitan area centers and receive significant reverse commuting.

More or less populous suburbs with a substantial, walkable downtown commercial area but only a few or a moderate number of apartment houses amid a sea of private houses are in another category.

Finally, there are the outer suburbs that may have a tiny downtown area, a legacy one from the time when they used to be far-flung villages, or none at all, strictly single-family housing, and no or very narrow sidewalks outside that downtown area.

Many prospective visitors to cities with expensive accommodations consider staying in a suburb to save money. This is occasionally sensible, but it is usually a very bad idea and a false economy. Examples in which it can make sense are usually when a suburb is either a built-up city itself or otherwise well integrated into the central city's transportation network, such as if you are willing to take about 50 minutes to an hour on the T (the local metro/subway name) to downtown Boston from a station like Alewife in North Cambridge, Massachusetts and stay in the pleasant city of Somerville, within a 20-minute walk of it. Where people make a huge mistake is to stay somewhere like Secaucus, New Jersey, which is an unpleasant area and not served by the New York City subway. With few exceptions, if you want to visit a city, stay there, on the Metro network or an excellent bus line, but not necessarily right in the center of town. So consider staying in Queens when visiting New York or in a Zone 2 or Zone 3 neighborhood like Finsbury Park when you visit London, but think very carefully before reserving a room in a suburb that requires a car, commuter train or commuter bus to access.

While many suburbs have public transportation, service is primarily for commuters and radial, with most frequent departures towards the center in the morning, and back home in the late afternoon and evening. Some networks have cross connections between suburbs, but these might be slow and irregular. Riding a bus or other transit vehicle in a suburb can also create difficulties; staff and signs might only have information in the local language, the network might be confusing, service frequency may be much lower than in the central city and not follow posted schedules, and tickets might be difficult to buy.

Low-density suburbs tend to be designed for driving. However, orientation might be difficult, and local streets may also be used by pedestrians and cyclists. Traffic congestion can get severe on highways and the inner city. Some local transportation hubs enable park and ride, driving to catch a form of public transit.

Taxis can be a convenient option to get to or from a suburb, but in high-income countries they are usually expensive. Scams are also not uncommon on taxis.

Cycling can be a practical way to get around a suburb, when the infrastructure allows. If the suburb isn't too far away, it may have a good cycleway connection to the city, or they may be allowed on public transport. See Cycling in Denmark and Cycling in the Netherlands for countries where a bicycle is in many cases the most useful vehicle. At times personal electric vehicles can be rented (although they may be restricted to a certain area)

Some suburbs are pleasant to walk in, but particularly in the case of outer suburbs in more generally car-centric areas, there may be few, overly narrow or even no sidewalks, and you may be treated disrespectfully by motorists. Furthermore, if the suburb in question is largely designed with motor vehicles in mind, distances may be too great for walking to be an efficient way to traverse the town.

Many of the world's suburbs tend to have repetitive cookie-cutter design that lack architectural significance. The uniformity might even be regulated to the extent of paint colors and lawn management. In those suburbs, even houses decorated for Christmas or a flower garden can be seen as spectacular.

Old villages which have become suburbs in modern times tend to have architecture and traditional events typical to old towns (or to villages of yore), without the costs and crowds of historic centres of large cities. Some of them have had most of the original architecture demolished for modern buildings.

Some suburbs are renowned for their conceptual urban planning, for being built for an exhibition (in Finland there is a yearly housing fair, resulting in neighbourhoods showing trends expected that year), for individual buildings of spectacular architecture, or as home of the rich and famous, in some cases with a celebrity museum.

Even an unremarkable suburb might have something interesting to see nearby, be it a religious building, an archaeological site, or an unusual natural formation, rarely as over-exploited as more famous attractions.

• 52.033333-0.7666671 Milton Keynes (England). A planned city built in the 1960s with emphatically modernist architecture.  
• 40.74-73.581 Levittown, New York, United States. A mass-produced planned suburb founded in 1947, which came to inspire similar suburban neighborhoods across the country.  
• 59.362817.872931 Vällingby Centrum (T Vällingby), Vällingby torg 32. Vällingby was planned as an "ABC" town, for arbete, bostad, centrum ("workplace, housing, centre"); a revision of the mono-functional suburb to include multiple functions to avoid lengthy commuting. While Vällingby's shopping centre has indeed grown over time, the idea to attract offices and other workplaces has seen less success. 
• 55.67513.1347222 Jakriborg (Staffanstorp, south of Lund, Sweden). A historicist neighbood built in the 1990s in Hanseatic style.  
• 59.3630318.150963 Lidingö, Sweden. A suburban island of Stockholm home to an embassy row, the Milles Art Museum, and a leg of the Swedish Classic Circuit; see Lidingö history tour.  

While suburbs have a generalized reputation to be boring, many have opportunities for leisure activities such as sport and some have beautiful large parks or great views. In many cases, the activity is beyond walking distance, and requires a vehicle.

Suburbs often have generic shopping malls to serve the daily needs to the residents, usually with some mid-ranged clothing brands, restaurants and supermarkets. Affluent suburbs often have large upscale shopping malls where you can find the usual international luxury brands.

In the worst case, a neighborhood of detached houses might have zero places for shopping within walking distance; in a good case, there will be at least one grocery store if not a historic downtown that still functions as such. High-rise suburbs tend to have a local shopping centre, while mixed-use suburbs will usually have a mix of storefronts and residential areas. There are many suburban areas where shopping required a drive or bus trip to the mall until online shopping gathered steam. Many shopping malls have shut down, leaving online shopping as more or less the only option in some areas.

Suburbs tend to have few restaurants and nightlife venues per capita; in remote towns, a much smaller population warrants at least a local pub, but that varies a great deal by area. Suburbs also tend to have few young adults to staff and patronize these venues, and restaurants are likelier to have mainstream range of food than in the central city, and at worst, you may find only chain restaurants (see chain restaurants in the United States and Canada).

That said, there are many exceptions, in particular for ethnic neighborhoods, of which many have great cuisine representative to the population. For example, suburban areas like the Alhambra area in L.A. County, Northern Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., or Eastwood in Sydney are known to have the best selection and quality of Chinese food in the area, Richmond and not Vancouver is considered the best place to get Chinese food in British Columbia, and probably the best and widest selection of Indian food in the United States, particularly Southern Indian, is to be found in the Edison, New Jersey area. There are also many suburban areas known for their diners, barbecue places, trattorie, etc. In addition, more affluent suburbs tend to have at least one venue for fine dining.

Suburbanites tend to go out to party in the city. Staying out late creates a logistical challenge, though: if you miss the last train or bus back and there is no night bus, you need an expensive taxi or a designated driver, or you have to arrange accommodations in the city.

If you want to enjoy some music while staying in a suburb, inquire about jazz brunches on weekends and the like.

Much of the appeal of suburbs, and a reason for them to be planned in the first place, is the perceived relative lack of dangers such as crime, dangerous traffic, and air pollution. However, banlieux (suburbs) in countries like France and Belgium are often neglected poor working-class areas heavily populated by immigrants and their descendants who are suffering from high unemployment, and may be much higher-crime than the central city. Other suburbs that are densely populated may have problems similar to those in central cities. Also watch out for collisions in shared-space streets. Drive carefully and be careful when crossing streets as a pedestrian.

Low-income suburbs tend to have the issues typical to low-income societies, with crime, scams and begging targeting people who appear to be outsiders with money.

Suburbs are made to be places to sleep peacefully, to the extent that they are called "bedroom communities". Affordable hospitality exchange can often be found here, as well as occasional hotels.

People in certain types of suburbs tend to have moved there for privacy, and dislike trespassing, loud noises, photography, and other disruptive behaviour. In many jurisdictions you have a legal right to photograph from public streets, sidewalks and public footpaths, but some people may still sharply question you for doing so, and at worst, it may open you up to threats of violence. Make sure to respect the right of privacy for people – including celebrities – in and around their own homes.