Truly depressing exurbs and suburbs

Cohasset, Massachusetts is dreadfully suburban.

Well?

The NYT has an article about new Exurbs emerging because many people are still working from home so they don't mind living in places that are FAR from the city center such as San Francisco.

R1- Really?? I thought Cohasset was beautiful-- Isn't it on the water too? Very pricey too.

Tewksbury/ Fitchburg are two extremely depressing choices-

Not a fan of Lynnfield/Stoneham and much of Boston's "north shore".

Woodbridge, VA (aka "Hoodbridge"). It's where families in DC flock when they can't afford to live in a 25 mile radius of DC. It's mostly a bunch of rednecks working for the government and undocumented migrants.

Antioch and Pittsburg in the Bay Area of CA, aka Shitttioch and Shittsburg.

Bland, low rent, charmless exurbs full of long-time conservative, lower middle class whites, and lately filling up with blacks who've been financially pushed out of SF and Oakland. Dry, beige landscape surrounding a freeway, with colorless tract homes, apartment complexes, and shopping centers anchored by The Dollar Store, Food 4 Less and that ilk.

Marlboro, New Jersey which is the next step for Staten Islanders-made-good is a hellscape of McMansions and topiary

Naperville (Chicago exoburb) is where fun goes to die. Say they're "from Chicago" when they travel but are scared to actually come into the Loop for dinner or a show. Everything is ten minutes old and walking gets you police attention.

If you want truly depressing and drab suburban sprawl, look to the 909, San Bernardino. It's just miles of drab, colorless desert, a soul crushing commute to LA I would imagine, and it just sucks.

R8 You take that back you cunt! Naperville is #1 at everything!

Believe it or not but the original Levittown on Long Island is not as hideous as one would think inspite of therebeing some mini vinyl side mcmansions.

Ft. Lauderdale.

An endless and rundown agglomeration of strip malls.

Nearly all of Long Island at this point, save for what's left of the North Shore.

The South Shore is endless shocking ugliness.

White Plains in Westchester is where Stepford meets Archie Bunker.

Nyack is beautiful but most of Rockland County is a dreary, tacky dump.

Suburban New Jersey is horrific.

Staten Island is gross, small-minded and full of literal trash.

The Antelope Valley (Lancaster/Palmdale) in Los Angeles County. It’s the most depressing part of the Greater LA area, it makes the Inland Empire seem like Beverly Hills. It’s like another part of the country, altogether, yet only 60 miles or so from Hollywood.

More Marlboro.

Imagine an entire town full of "Tasteful Friends" posts

[quote] Suburban New Jersey is horrific.

Clearly R13 has never left their walk-up studio in Hell's Kitchen and made it to Montclair, Maplewood, Summit, Short Hills, Chatham, Westfield or any of the other Norman Rockwell looking NJ burbs.

This despite numerous Datalounge threads on the topic

I believe there was a car in the 1950’s called the Mercury Montclair.

I am R13.

I find suburban New Jersey, including Montclair, Maplewood, Summit, Short Hills, Chatham, Westfield, depressing.

Blow me.

^At the Rt9 Adult Variety Center

[quote] Not a fan of Lynnfield/Stoneham and much of Boston's "north shore".

Stone ham is known on DL as the home of the Stone Zoo where the Christmas Moose works as a docent.

[quote] not as hideous as one would think inspite of therebeing some mini vinyl side mcmansions.

R11 = Trevor Donovan

r10's Pinterest board

[quote] there was a car in the 1950’s called the Mercury Montclair.

R17, was that your first car?

Do you favor McMansion like suburbs R13?

Despise all suburbs in general?

Only exurbs?

[quote] Nearly all of Long Island at this point, save for what's left of the North Shore.

Says someone whose never been to the North Fork or the Hamptons.

I’m sure this will elicit the usual DL “The Hamptons are over! They're all glitzy & filled with wannabes! It’s horrible! The vineyard is where everyone goes.”

Please do go to the vineyard. I’d like to keep my farm views, farm stands, pheasants, lightning bugs, little known beach areas and butterflies.

But sure yeah, Smithtown & Rocky Point are where it’s at.

The south suburbs of Chicago. All of them except the very wealthiest ones seem kind of shitty in comparison to the North, Northwest or West surburbs.

Actually, pretty much all suburbs outside of the old ones suck. The best subrubs are the ones that are more urban, like Oak Park or Evanston.

[quote]Nearly all of Long Island at this point, save for what's left of the North Shore.

I have friends who grew up in an OG coastal enclave in Glen Cove and it looks like a war zone now. What's left is in decline and surrounded by trash.

I think I misunderstood this thread. I thought depressing suburbs were shitty, gritty, ugly places. A lot of the post are more "ideallic" wealthy suburban homes that would be more "Stepford" than depressing, but I guess one person's Palmdale is another's Scarsdale.

You are not incorrect R28. The thread should be renamed "Why Gay Men In Big Cities Hate Suburbia: The Long-Term Affects Of Unhappy Childhoods"

There's a general distaste among certain Eldergays for any sort of suburb from blue collar boxes to upscale "leafy" towns.

The entire city of Las Vegas Henderson etc. etc.

I live here in Lake Geneva, Wi. It's a scenic little resort community about 75 miles NW of Chicago. It's only purpose is to serve the wealthy Chicagoans who summer here. The locals are all big, blonde and of German/Scandinavian decent. The Gays are all prissy little shop bottoms who live to suck-up to the rich. I moved here a few years ago to look after my elderly parents, but there's no culture outside of eating/drinking/shopping and farming.

It's a comfortable stress-free life and I can think of a lot worse places to live, but if you're young, Gay and fun-loving spend the day and get back to Chicago and enjoy your youth

Or we could live in an area going through gentrification and have a 4 million dollar home with a crack house on one side and then on the other side, have house adorned with a washer, dryer and a recliner on the front porch. Horrors, the washer and dryer is not a matched set.

R31, have you been to the Finland Station?

St. Peters or O'Fallon, MO. Take your pick. Both are boring, bland, packed with strip malls and populated by white conservatives.

Most of Northern Virginia is filled with oversized light brick ugly McMansions, but the trees and parks are pretty.

Forest Hills, Queens is kind depressing as is the bulk of Oyster Bay, Long Island. Not Oyster Bay proper or the pretty areas, but shit holes like Hicksville.

[quote]The Gays are all prissy little shop bottoms who live to suck

Pics please.

R23- That was the first car I bought BRAND NEW.

Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Mountain View, Camden, Most of San Jose, iow the flat parts of Silicon Valley. I grew up in Santa Clara when there were orchards every other block, but even then the cheap post WW2 tract housing was spreading like a virus. Sterile, monotonous, enormous business "parks" make you long for a strip mall, of which there are plenty. One friend was showing someone from the east coast all the Sunnyvale sights. "I didn't know this place was so buck-ugly" was her wide-eyed response.

Kingwood and the exurbs of Houston are more depressing than the Northeastern or CA exurbs I think - because you can’t even drive somewhere pretty or historic. Just dated developments that age horribly for miles around. True fo most Texas developments.

^^Campbell not Camden

This is depressing R36?

Chacun à son goût and all that

Maybe not R42 - I got the part of Queens wrong.

R25 I grew up on Long Island and have been to the North Fork and the Hamptons. I don't really consider those suburbs, or they weren't when I was a kid.

But I hate them anyway. Cheap rich trash and potato farmers. Stupid cunts with swimming pools. The world's worst white wine. five hours of crawling traffic to get there from Midtown. And that BRAYING FUCKING ACCENT.

Long Island is a trash heap.

Burbs outside of Providence RI can be woeful.

Buffalo, New York - metro, suburbs, and exurbs. I don't think anyone can argue with this.

"[R31], have you been to the Finland Station? "

???

[quote] Just dated developments that age horribly

They’re bound to age horribly if they’re dated.

Montgomery county, MD. Suburb of DC. Most soulless place I have ever lived. I have never seen a place so devoid of even small pockets of character and distinctiveness. And full of nasty and bizarrely hostile people as well.

Most of North Carolina.

pretty much all of Atlanta, noisy freeways roaring through everything, endless strip malls, ticky tacky cookie cutter cul-de-sac gated communities with pretentious names, no sidewalks

[quote] I grew up on Long Island had a miserable childhood and hate everything about it

[quote] Stupid cunts with swimming pools

Omg! Swimming pools! Swimming pools! Horrors

For R47

I think places like Edgewater NJ are the most depressing because people are clearing living there because they want to live in NYC but can’t afford it. At least with the suburbs, like them or not, those who live or move there are consciously deciding to live a different lifestyle.

Really, any suburb/exurb that’s majority apartment buildings (Stanford, CT) are depressing. If you have to move to the suburbs and still have to live in an apartment building, that’s fucking depressing.

Disagree on all your points Xennial

Most of the buildings in Edgewater are fairly pricey and the people who live there seem to be a mix of empty nesters from the NJ suburbs who don't want the hassle of maintaining a big suburban house but don't want to give up their cars or ability to return to their former hometowns and likely feel they are too old for Hoboken or Jersey City.

Plus others who work in NJ and want an easier commute but still have access to the city.

I know the area fairly well as we would often drive there from the UWS to go to the Whole Foods and to the big Japanese supermarket with food stalls over there. (There used to be a really good brick oven pizza place in the same center and a Target not far away either) -- have not been since Covid, so no idea what is left.

But I guess it depends on what you consider depressing. To me it's always newly built McMansiony suburbs with no actual town center, but rather, strip mall on the side of the road, e.g., many of the suburbs of places like Atlanta, Charlotte and Dallas.

R49 I agree with you about Montgomery county. It’s awful and so is most of Northern Virginia. Ugly ugly ugly and the people are soulless and impressed with anything having to do with government contracting. It’s the most fucking bizarre place I’ve ever lived. Throw that in with the toads that live in DC Jesus what a shit show full of nerds and dorks

Living on the South Shore of Lawn Guyland in an apartment building I think you all are just jealous of my ocean view. Most of the South Shore IS hideous, but places like Point Lookout are cute.

Forest Hills and Forrest Hills Estates are next to each other, but they are not the same thing. The restaurants in Forrest Hills are dreadful. I’ve never had a good meal there. That’s depressing.

The area I grew up in was not a suburb or exeurb until the Pandemic hit. Now I hear Bostonites are buying homes in poor Castle Rock MA for $300,000. That’s beyond depressing.

Atlanta, beyond the Perimeter is treeless subdivisions, stripmalls and confusing office parks. Inside the Perimeter you have places like Druid Hills that should seem nice except the houses don't seem to fit together or West Paces Ferry Road where everything is ostentatious.

Outside of Pasadena and some adjacent burgs, the San Gabriel Valley is pretty depressing---some oversized new houses surrounded by 50s bungalows that often aren't aging well. The San Fernando Valley seems even uglier--no oversized semi-mansions, just depressing, declining real estate.

Outside the Beltway Northern Virginia tends to be filled with sameness and confusing traffic patterns until you get into horse country. Montgomery County splits between the affluent West and the muddling East, but either is holding up better than most of Prince Georg's County.

Pittsburgh has largely dead industrial towns through the Mon Valley to the South.

The worst are the suburbs around Pasadena and Beaumont Texas and Lake Charles Louisiana, where the terrain is flat, treeless and swampy, all the houses look exactly alike, and in the distance you can see and smell refineries. New Jersey suburbs are full of horrible people, but they aren't inherently depressing.

Serious question: what place DOES make you people happy? You bitch about both cities and suburbs so where exactly is great to you?🧐

Nothing R61

Nothing will make DLers happy

Texas doesn’t bear discussion.

But I love Bethesda, MD and the horsey exurbs of Atlanta (Oconee county, especially.)

In Bethesda, you might deal with assholes, but at least they’re all educated. Contrast with LOs Angeles exurbs, where you’re lucky if people have an 8th grade education.

If you’re going to pay a million dollars for a 1500 sq ft house, you might as well live among people you can talk to.

In Oconee county, Ga, you can get a mansion with a one-acre manicured lawn for 450k. Very close to the college town of Athens, which has its own specific charms. It’s quite lovely.

What percentage of my Oconee County neighbors will have Trump signs on their lawn R63?

It appears to be represented in Congress by Republican Jody Hice who agrees with The Big Lie and has been endorsed by Trump to take on Brad Raffensburger in the GOP primary.

And in 2020, the county voted for Trump, 66-34

Like most DLers, I'd rather live in a dumpster than on a horse farm in Trump country.

^^Provided of course my fellow dumpster divers and the surrounding area were all Democrats!

I think Bethesda is pretty as is Kensington and Tacoma Park. These are very classic, old suburbs with big Victorians and bungalows and lots of mature trees and azaleas. There are worse places.

LA is NYC’s sadder, less worthy exurb

I lived in Dallas for 3 years for work in Uptown. We made friends, many of whom lived in Plano. Plain is right. It was too depressing to go out there to visit them. Not that Dallas was amazing, but it was a lot more fun and interesting than the burbs outside of it.

R68, not sure if you are familiar with the Chicago suburbs but my friends described Plano as "Naperville but wealthier and more diverse....but just as boring". In fact, they said most of Dallas reminded them of like a bunch of Schaumburgs grouped together.

Well, dumbass r64, did you look up the stats for Athens?

Most of Oconee county is basically Athens. Which has very different demographics from uninhabited Oconee.

But I’m sure you already know all this as you’ve decided to hold forth.

I mean, you wouldn’t vomit an uninformed opinion, would you?

LA must be an exurb of... something. There’s no there there.

A very expensive, white trash, uneducated, run down, tacky exurb of... something.

Bellmore/Merrick, LI. Soul-crushing without the history of Levittown.

More Bellmore:

[quote] Most of Oconee county is basically Athens. Which has very different demographics from uninhabited Oconee.

Do tell.

So the uninhabited are of Oconee voted Trump in?

And isn't Athens a college town? So unlikely to be where you'd find a horse farm.

Try getting your story straight.

Bubba.

R74, your stupidity is stunning.

Ever heard of gerrymandering?

Georgia’s10th is huge, and encompasses rural areas as well as Athens. And yes, you can own a farm within 10 miles of UGA.

Though you were the first person to mention horse farms.

Read up, Bubba.

R74 seems to think Georgia’s 10th district is limited to one county. Which tells me she knows nothing about Georgia.

Outside of the US, a lot of suburban London is ugly and dreary. Their love of Brutalist shitboxes has a lot to do with it.

Perth in WA is sunny and clean but surrounded by "LA without all the stuff", to borrow a line from Steve Martin.

Toronto is ringed by crud that make central Long Island look like Brookline, MA.

I was surprised that Melbourne has been having problems with suburban developments that are built with no shopping or work places nearby and no clear highway or public transport options.

The built environment is not why anyone goes to New Zealand.

Not personally much familiar with suburbs elsewhere but I have heard unencouraging things about Japan, Germany, Russia, Paris (specifically) and Spain.

Georgia’s 10th includes 25 counties. You can’t predict an awful lot about one particular county based on its House rep. Also, gerrymandering.

While I have not been to either place in a million years, I remember Oceanside NY from my childhood, and that it had one style of split level house that was EVERY HOUSE in Oceanside. And the west coast version of the same disgustingness is Daly City, CA. Every block had the same exact houses and they were split level and ugly.

[quote]If you want truly depressing and drab suburban sprawl, look to the 909, San Bernardino.

San Bernardino, Hemet, Moreno Valley ... oh, God.

Forget the fucking 10th District and gerrymandering. Oconee Co itself voted 65% for trump, so I too would take a maga-free dumpster over the qanon hellhole

Just so everyone is clear, central New Jersey is beautiful. It is cold and rainy this weekend but by Tuesday the green leafy-ness will be amazing. Like the Garden of Eden sometimes. The winter stinks, but I love green. We live in a not so rich but nice section and have eight foxes living out back. I love it here.

[quote] I love green

Yay!

I be am sure most posters understand that exurbs are usually on the conservative side. Pick your poison.

Well, r81, you might get your wish, the way things are headed.

Of course your garbage dumpster will cost you 2.5M.

Addendum to R39

Once you cross the San Francisco City/County line heading south, it's a whole lot of fuck nothing depressing bedroom communities until you hit Palo Alto. Daly City, Brisbane, South City, Bruno, Millbrae are just suicide-inducing. Nothing but miles and miles and miles of strip malls and fast food chains.

The only saving grace to it all is Hiway 280, once you get past the Hiway 92 junction down to the Santa Cruz/San Jose junction. Some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.

You remember correctly R79. Oceanside is still filled with those awful split level monstrosities. That said many of them on the water (channel, not ocean) and have nice backyards with docks and boats. And then there are restaurants like La Parma which make life just a little better.

[quote] Oconee Co itself voted 65% for trump,

Did some Bubba mumble something about gerrymandering or did I mishear?

Or maybe the county is gerrymandered and only the Republican estates are in that Congressional district?

OTOH a rural area filled with Trumpists would be "truly depressing" as the thread title suggests.

Though mostly I suspect someone is put out because we're ruining their Miss Scarlett fantasy by pointing out the MAGA signs at Tara and 12 Oaks

In 2020, Oconee County voted for Trump, 66-34

[quote] Most of Northern Virginia is filled with oversized light brick ugly McMansions, but the trees and parks are pretty.

I agree with this, but I also agree with the person who said Woodbridge, and I'd add Dale City, Dumfries and Manassas and the surrounding areas. Most of Northern Virginia (where I grew up) is made up of characterless "houses made of ticky-tacky" in sterile Stepford planned developments surrounded by strip malls and mall-malls, but the parts to the south and southwest that are still considered Northern Virginia are something very different: the houses look the same, but the areas are very industrial, and they're transition communities where NoVA gives way to Virginia-Virginia, and you start to see Confederate flags on cars and in shop windows, gun racks on cars, Civil War battlefield sites all over, the men look like Duck Dynasty, etc., and people speak with a slight southern twang. It's really interesting that there's such a clean division between the Midatlantic Northern VA accent and the pronounced Southern accent within a 10-minute drive around this area, and there's a definite correlation between the accents and the Confederate flag and gun cultures. As a gay kid who grew up in Loudoun County, I always felt sort of like driving a little too far south or west was wading into a pool of hungry sharks. I only ever went eastward. (Frederick, Maryland to the north wasn't much better—not as much Confederate stuff, but it has a potent meth-y mountain vibe.)

Do you live in Long Beach, ElderLez?

We used to go out there sometimes in high school--senior year we'd cut school and take the train out there. It's very nice

I do R91. If you have to live on Long Island it certainly one of the nicer places to be. I just got back from a walk on the boardwalk.

r58, I am a native Bostonian, and I have no idea what Castle Rock, MA is? Do you mean...Plymouth?

I spent my 20s living in VA and can very much confirm what posters upthread said -- go too far in the wrong direction and you're in the Deep South and I have never seen so many beige condo complexes in my life. The area stretching toward Dulles Airport (the toll road) is especially depressing. That said, Old Town Alexandria is beautiful, and I think Bethesda/Chevy Chase is lovely too.

I and most Americans love suburbs. Large homes, new homes, lawns, garages, lots of free parking, convenient shopping, low taxes, better schools, low crime, laid back people, and clean. It’s awesome

It’s a small town R93 so I gave a hint rather than naming it. Do you have Hulu?

The Atlantans can always be counted-on to be ludicrously defensive and trying tomake Greater Athend into a lovely exurb is a big stretch. Once you leave the tree canopy of intown Atlanta, the place tends to be a depressing sprawlburg and even within the canopy, it can be pretty disappointing---Druid Hills is what places like Shaker Heights, Chevy Chase or Wilmette would be like if they'd been developed by people with no taste, and teh area along West Paces Ferry is even worse.

[R90] I grew up in NoVa also and the older generation in my family has Southern drawls whereas the kids talk with a generic mid-Atlantic accent. A few have that awful vocal Fry which was imported from California, but that seems to be a conscious choice since not everyone from the same school and neighborhood has it. The octogenarians actually have beautiful, eastern Virginia accents that you only hear in old movies now. I should record them talking since it’s going to be extinct in a few years as my family dies off.

The best thing about Northern Virginia are the parks and wildlife, there’s so much biodiversity in plants that there’s a lot of beauty tucked in here and there. But those beige townhouses are the pits, I would open a vein if I lived there. They should’ve planned better and had more density inside the beltway, like what they’re trying to do in Tysons now. Some of the new skyscrapers do have cool architecture but there’s still no there there.

So melodramatic and effete on this thread 🙄

[quote] The Atlantans can always be counted-on to be ludicrously defensive and trying tomake Greater Athend

It’s tomahawk!

Beaverton, Oregon. And the suburbs to the southeast of Portland.

Victorville in San Bernardo County wins this contest. Lancaster in LA County is second place.

Both are forlorn, dreary places full of exhausted commuters.

"LA must be an exurb of... something. There’s no there there.

A very expensive, white trash, uneducated, run down, tacky exurb of... something."

Oh dear, R71. Are you not aware that LA has a majority Latino population. Whites have been a minority in LA for decades.

This place...

[quote] This place...

R104, believe it or not but the original Levittown on Long Island is not as hideous as one would think inspite of therebeing some mini vinyl side mcmansions.

The DC exurbs - while depressing - are much better than the GA or TX exurbs. At least there is some pretty nature, history and culture nearby. Atlanta is basically a huge exurb.

I agree that N. VA is awful. McMansions and strip malls and zero culture. So happy we moved. Theoretically, you could drive to DC, but the traffic is a perpetual nightmare and parking at the metro parking lots is impossible to find on weekdays. As for parks, there are not nearly enough to support such a huge population, and they are constantly taking over green spaces to build more houses, golf courses, and car dealerships. N. VA is hell. Ironically, if you drive south into Virginia-Virginia, there are some lovely towns and stunning scenery, but that is, of course, the red part of the state so I wouldn't live there either.

R1: I stayed in Tewksbury for a few nights while attending a meeting.. It was forgettable but hardly depressing. I found a good candy shop, a decent carry-out and a couple supermarkets within walking distance. It wasn't like being some place like Alpharetta, Georgia or Ontario, California.

You sound so delicate and cranky r107. Where do you live?

The suburbs south of DC are horrid, Dale City, Manassas, Woodbridge all horrid

The DC exurbs like Reston, McClean and Herndon are actually nice you have views of the mountains to the west and more and more liberal.

I grew up in Sterling, Virginia and it was a mix of sterile planned developments with zero community connections and a beautiful pastoral place to run around and play in. Unfortunately, Lyme disease is terrifyingly prevalent there and it "got me" and has fucked up my life. My sister works for Loudoun County and half her coworkers either have had Lyme or their kids have; one of their kids went into cardiac arrest because of it.

Anyway, my sister moved to Herndon (Fairfax County bordering Sterling) and she loved it immediately. She lives in a quirky house that was built in the 50s with several additions over the decades, her neighborhood seems to be the perfect balance of friendliness and support without nosiness, which is something we had never known before. It's kind of weird that it's a 5-10 minute drive from where my dad lives in Sterling and such a different culture. That said, when we grew up in Sterling it was almost all white, and my dad's neighborhood is now predominantly Salvadorian and Muslim people, and they are all extremely friendly and neighborly and have been big helps to him in a lot of different ways, so the Sterling I grew up in is no longer, and for the better.

Is Roanoke nice? I knew someone who lived in Burlington VT and Roanoke VA and they loved both cities.

R109 Me? Delicate and cranky? I'm going to have to plead guilty. Traffic, lack of greenery, character, or culture makes me especially cranky. We live in Colorado now, which has its problems: mass shootings, drought, and yes, overdevelopment and traffic. But there's enough unspoiled natural beauty (so far) to keep me relatively cheerful.

Roanoke is pretty but very conservative outside of the immediate city limits. It’s Very Southern, Bojangles country

R115- Got it. That is pretty much what I figured.

She told me that in that area family was called "kin" and "kinfolk"..

Bad sign.

Alpharetta, GA is one of the rings of Hell.

Every bad late 20th century suburban cliche--gated communities, homeowner associations, cul de sacs, everything in strip malls on the side of a highway, no public transportation, and lots of houses like the one below, where graduates of middling state colleges in middle management jobs can spend $400K to buy a generic looking house, like the one below, that would easily cost over $1MM in NY, SF, LA or DC and pretend to be Fancy.

That said, there are plenty of people for whom Alpharetta is Heaven and being able to Live Large like that is a dream come true.

^^Though in Alpharetta's defense, the have tried to create a walkable downtown district that feels a lot like something you'd find at Disney World.

Hell for some, Heaven for others.

Wow r117. I’m considering the move there

I’ve lived in several states and most metro areas have the same type of suburb: model homes in various shades of brown with few to no mature trees or even trees at all, flat, and dull. Wichita, KS is MOSTLY this, actually, with a tiny center and older neighborhoods downtown. In the Midwest, living in these neighborhoods means you’ve “made it” to the middle class. I live in California and the suburbs look the same out here, too—sprawling, brown model homes except they’re extremely expensive in my town because they made them with 4-5 bedrooms and tons of square footage.

Don't worry all you young queens who can't fathom a day without bar hopping or P&Ping or whatever it is you children occupy your time with, you'll hopefully live to see the day you'll look back on your wild exciting days and think "what did I ever see in that life". And you'll probably be remembering those days from the comfort of your Stratalounger in your 3bd/2ba suburban split level.

There is a vast difference between older Northeast and Midwest suburbs (think Scarsdale, Brookline, Short Hills, Bethesda, Lake Forest, Grosse Pointe, Bryn Mawr, Shaker Heights et al) that were mostly build before WWII and are frequently described as "leafy" due the the abundance of large old trees and tend to have actual downtowns, and the newer suburbs, particularly those found in the Sunbelt states, but also in the Northeast and Midwest, where farm fields were turned into housing developments with fairly identical houses and no mature trees and shopping is all concentrated in random strip malls on the side of a quasi-highway

This distinction is often lost on DLers in their desire to hate on the Burbs

R122 that is true—to be fair, there are degrees of depressingness in suburbs. I actually live in a “suburb” built in the 1970s but within a mile of my small town center. The houses in my neighborhood aren’t as cookie cutter as the 2000s built suburbs—they have some variation, they’re painted different colors, and we have mature trees. The “brown,” dull suburbs are farther out and were built more recently in that style of “more is better” when it comes to square footage. They try to make the neighborhood look exclusive with those neighborhood names in brick on the corners, but it’s all for show.

Cleveland is bad. The western Cleveland suburbs are worse.

r49 is correct. I've lived here for 45 years, and the people are nasty. I guess that makes me nasty too. We are certainly the worst drivers in the nation. (Well, DMV are the worst in the nation, and then MoCo are the worst in the DMV.)

Torrington, CT and Waterbury, CT. Actually, any small city in CT.

[quote] They try to make the neighborhood look exclusive with those neighborhood names in brick on the corners, but it’s all for show.

Those always crack me up R123, just the names of the developments in general that try and make one of these generic Sunbelt developments seem SuperKlassy™

The Estates At Pheasant Run

The Gables At Sherwood Village

and so on

The billboards on the side of the highway usually describe them as "Important new estate homes" or "luxury garden villas" or some other nonsense.

"Alpharetta, GA is one of the rings of Hell. "

Home of Marjorie Taylor Greene says it all. Enjoy your plummeting housing values, Alpharetta

What’s the significance of old trees to people here? I don’t get it 🤔

R127, I worked in real estate marketing. It is the same four bad ideas over and over and over again.

"Come to beautiful Cuntly Acres! Live the dream in your magnificent superb bespoke couture customized special-built unique beautiful gracious opulent luxurious exclusive new model home! Comes with a family room, a TV room, a home theater, a gym, 45 bathrooms 128 half-baths, another TV room, a 15-car garage, a gourmet bespoke customized couture kitchen, a master bedroom with walk-in dressing room, his and hers master baths, a small jail cell for the Mexican who cleans the place and a sex dungeon for the kids! Big scary gates at the only entrance and absolutely no black people anywhere and to prove it we're going to put an image of a blonde bitch jogging with her dyed hair in a ponytail - because the subliminal message is that is a place for Karen to feel secure in her racism! Only a two hour drive to anywhere interesting! Convenient to upscale bespoke glamourous exclusive gracious shopping malls and places for braying rich trash to pay $6 for a cup of coffee with whipped cream on top! Yoga centers and Pilates classes and plastic surgeons as far as the eye can see! The school all have top relations with drug rehab centers so when Tiffany turns to heroin to dull the senseless pain of her fucking life you can discreetly lock the little cooze up until she dries out! Come! All over Cuntly Acres! Be a fucking shit-eating self-fisting braying CUNT!"

^^^every single real estate brochure for the suburbs ever

Old trees are much taller R129, hence "leafy suburbs"

Compare this scene to your standard new development with just a few "topiary" trees

“Old trees” are rare and imply established neighborhoods that were built long ago to allow said trees to grow old and tall. New developments have either no trees or little trees that were just planted and will take 20 years to grow in.

The tree thing is very American I think. My European relatives don’t get the tree obsession we have. I have bought houses because of the huge old trees on the property. It’s a rarity and IMO a beautiful complement to an older well landscaped house.

Beautiful mature trees offer shade, flowers (depending on the type of tree), fall foliage colors and architecturally tie neighborhoods together. A suburb of non-descript houses can be beautiful if the plantings and sidewalks are given some thought.

The older neighborhoods in LA, for example, are very garden-like and therein lies the bulk of their appeal.

R132, I agree that most Europeans don't really "get" trees as a urban/suburban feature. This leaves their less architecturally distinguished districts (of which there are plenty) looking baldly ugly IMO.

[quote] Home of Marjorie Taylor Greene says it all. Enjoy your plummeting housing values, Alpharetta

Check your facts before you post. MTG no longer lives in Alpharetta. She lives 50 miles northwest in Rome, Ga..

And as far as the property values in Alpharetta plummeting, you can forget that. That area has some of the highest property values in greater Atlanta.

Rome, GA, struck me as an attractive place with an intact historic downtown that they have committed to restoring.

MTG was not what I would think of as a typical resident.

I’m not from Naperville, though my brother lived there briefly. It’s nicer than most of the outer suburbs of Chicago. An actual downtown with street life. He also lived in Plainfield where old farms have been converted into suburban housing developments and the only places to shop are strip malls.

Even some older subrubs in the sunbelt, you get treeless and soulless, as well as carbound---the San Gabriel Valley burbs in LA, much and the parts of DeKalb, GA away from Atlanta proper. Suburbs often have subsumed old railstop/market towns and county seats that gave them character and functional downtowns. But a lot of suburbs really are just ugly, endless sprawlburgs and the kind of cheap, unimaginative kind of development common in the Sunbelt just adds to that.

Georgia DLers are very loyal to their state and will not be messed with!

Fiddle-dee dee!!

R134: Alpharetta did go through a bad patch when the local tech sector evaporated in the '00s. Then the real estate market in greater Atlanta collapsed. I'm guessing that prices have shot up in the past few years as elsewhere in the Atlanta area, but I'm also getting that Alpharetta still looks like an ugly carbournd sprawlburg, Bless Your Hearts.

R129: You must have spent your life in some treeless dystopia like the places we've been mocking. Mature trees provide shade and help reduce a/c bills. They also give character to otherwise bleak, cookie cutter subdivisions.

Every time this subject comes up, I think of that soulless, characterless suburb where DL's favorite murdering heartthrob, Chris Watts, and his victims, I mean family, lived.

Neighborhoods ostensibly meant for young families that are without parks for kids to play in or big trees for them to climb just seems odd for this 80s kid that was lucky enough to have both. But hey, the houses have 3-car garages!

Again R139, mature trees are rarely found in cookie cutter subdivisions as those subdivisions are fairly recent developments.

They're usually found in older suburbs where the houses were all built before WW2 and are not identical, though they are all likely some form of Tudor or Colonial or Cape Cod--no split levels, splanches or whatnot.

The mature trees blend in with the older houses and make the area feel more established.

The area around Alpharetta, Ga. is quite beautiful. And the city center is very nice too.

[R140] I thought that hellhole of a development was the perfect backdrop for that weird crime. Our poor Chris had to drive fifty miles or something to meet up with his mistress at the sports bar. I couldn’t live anywhere where you can’t easily walk to cheat, or murder or sell MLM powdered drinks.

R136, the downtown is nice....for a sprawling suburb. But unfortunately, downtown Naperville is a very very tiny portion of Naperville. And frankly, Naperville is wayyyyyy to Southwest from Chicago.

I still haven't heard a lot of answers to the question about which suburbs you do like.

On the North Shore of Long Island amongst the non-super wealthy places that are still within commuting distance I think Northport is adorable and super dog friendly. And Huntington has a vibrant downtown and a great movie theater. Amongst not on the water south shore communities Malverne is kind of charming with its art house theater.

I have a friend from high school who has lived in both Arlington and Belmont Mass and they seem lovely and also convenient.

I am partial to Bethesda, Maryland just cause you know NIH.

Rome, GA, struck me as an attractive place with an intact historic downtown that they have committed to restoring.

MTG was not what I would think of as a typical resident.

maybe they're committed to restoring it to the 1860s. Floyd Co, of which Rome is the county seat and pop. center. voted 70% for Trump, so the Qanon cunt is very typical of these racist morons.

Suburbia?

Trouble In......

Interestingly, literary works dealing with the deleterious effects of suburbia on the human condition, and specifically marriages, often occur in "leafy, established, beautiful and older burbs

Trouble in New Canaan (The Ice Storm) Trouble in Westchester (The Swimmer, or any Cheever story) Trouble in the Main LIne (Revolutionary Road, or many Updike tales)

Sothebys has some "luxury real estate" in Moreno Valley. Trust me, it's worth the click.

R137. Have you been to the San Gabriel Valley? I grew up in Pasadena surrounded by old trees, and the Arroyo Seco nearby. San Marino? Full of trees. South Pasadena? full of trees. Altadena? Full of trees. And so on.

@r134, God you're stupid. MTG bought the house in Rome so that see could run from the 14th district. She still claims the Alphretta house as her homestead and is in a lot of trouble for it. Greene's father, Robert Taylor, founder of Taylor Commercial, a construction company based in Alpharetta, Georgia, sold the company to Greene and her husband, Perry, in 2002. The couple are vice president and president, respectively, of the company.

MTG belongs to Alpharetta, own it and deal with it you phony little suburban Atlanta bitch

don't have a dog in the buckhead/alpharetta spat, but if i was looking a place to live i would look at how the citizens voted, not what crazy psychos may live or have lived there

Alpharetta voted marginally for Biden, so I doubt the Qanon cunt would carry that town. Rome however is MAGAt central and would he a shithole to live in

Alpharetta has been a punchline for every Atlanta suburb joke for the last 30 years. It's where northern whites settled because Atlanta was a little too dark to be comfortable. It's a commuter's nightmare with 2 hour drive times to downtown Atlanta. It's where the Greene family lives and does business. Take it for what it's worth

Dear "God You're Stupid" Troll (an insult worthy of the best 5th grader!)

According to this Politico piece, Greene is Alpharetta-Adjacent

[quote] They lived in tony Milton, adjacent to Alpharetta,

So there. We're rubber, you're glue, whatever you say goes back to you!

PS: Smart People know the lyrics to Pet Shop Boys songs.

So there! Now who's stupid???

"So there! Now who's stupid??? "

Oh, honey, as always it's YOU!

Again, MTG no longer lives in metro Atlanta. She fled to Rome, Ga. some time ago. Let those hillbillies up there have her.

Are you a Trumper? Stupid and proud of it

"Marjorie T Greene Age 46 (May 1974)

[No email address]

Married to Perry C Greene (49)

(770) 772-7120 - Home/LandLine Phone

[No cell or wireless phone]

16083 Old Henderson Rd Alpharetta, GA 30004-2724 "

[quote] MTG belongs to Alpharetta, own it and deal with it you phony little suburban Atlanta bitch

Pardon me Mr. or Miss Buckhead snot, I've lived in Morningside and Midtown my entire life except for the first 2 years of my life spent in Buckhead. But then you probably came from some shithole town in middle Georgia and think you've made it to the big time because you live in Buckhead. 😆

^ No you don't, you're too stupid to live in a nice neighborhood. You live in a trailer park up in Kennesaw

[quote] "So there! Now who's stupid??? "

[quote] Oh, honey, as always it's YOU!

[bold][italic] We're rubber

You're glue

Whatever you say

Goes back to you!!!

Yankees provide links when we post information we found on the internet.

Just sayin'

@r161, Now... now, just because r160 smells like red clay and kudzu doesn't mean he lives in a trailer park, he lives here next door to MTG

[quote] ^ No you don't, you're too stupid to live in a nice neighborhood. You live in a trailer park up in Kennesaw

How old are you, 13? If you're a grown man I'm embarrassed for you. Whatever the situation, you're clearly mentally stunted and I'm not qualified to deal with special education students. It's still early so you still have time to get yourself ready for day care. The short bus should be pulling up at any minute.

^ You type fat

"^ You type fat "

Did the caftan give him away?

Night time in Georgia now?

^ I guess the lights went out in Georgia

Best Twin Cities suburb? Roseville?

The best suburbs are around Boston, Westchester County, Philadelphia Main Line. Thread closed. You can throw in Bethesda too.

R151: The San Gabriel Valley is places in the valley which mostly are depressing places like San Gabriel, Rosemead, the Covinas, Industry, the GI Bill house part of Arcadia, Temple City, etc.

Downtown Alpharetta looks depressing--basically a grid superimposed over a lifestyle center.

"Downtown Alpharetta looks depressing"

It is depressing, the whole thing is a fake urban landscape designed to give people too frightened to go into Atlanta a sense of city that doesn't exist. Alpharetta is nothing more then a series of connected white gated communities designed to keep the "real world" out. A cultural and political wasteland

Sounds like my kind of place

^ Yes, Mickey, you and Minnie Mouse would enjoy the real world experience of Alpharetta. Just like home back at DisneyWorld

I'm surprised the Inland Empire hasn't gotten more 'love' on this thread.

Chevy Chase has more pre-war houses than Bethesda.

The Inland Empire is basically a newer version of much of the San Gabriel Valley and people here never see it, beyond Ontario Airport or driving the 10 to palm Springs.

Any neighborhood where above ground pools are the norm is trash.

Fuck you, r179!

R236 Yes there were quite a few posts about the Inland Empire. I nominated Victorville as the worst anywhere.