This seems like a long, angry argument to jump in on but I can't resist my desire to weigh in. Firstly, to be honest, I spent most of my life with negative stereotypes being my only thought of the suburbs, but have recently come to see their strengths. Second, although I have a lot of opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of both places, I am firmly in the camp of those who argue that it is perfectly reasonable for different people to choose either to live in. I'll start with income, because this stood out the most to me as lacking in the analysis above. To me, that is largest factor differentiating city living from suburban. In a city there are certainly pockets of homogeneous income: there are wealthy areas without poor people, and poor areas without any wealthy people. At the same time, three factors create more interaction within the city between people with a wider range of incomes. The first is simply that you have to go less far to move from affluence to wealth with an urban area. The second is that modes of travel, even in a low-density city like Houston, cause more interaction with strangers in the city and in the suburbs. The third is because of the greater (and constantly changing) proportion of property value composed of land (as opposed to buildings) in an urban environment, you see a greater number of neighborhoods with a mix income levels seen side by side. Many of these neighborhoods are in a process of transition and will eventually become more homogeneous, but a good deal of Houston has neighborhoods like this, with new construction alongside well-kept and poorly-maintained older housing stock. In contrast, suburbs tend to contain a number of housing built for a similar market, and all at a similar time. Although I admit to liking the idea of having a unique floor plan, I certainly wouldn't criticize anyone else for having duplicates. What you do lose in a development where every house was designed together, in my opinion, is the diversity of income that is achieved with less homogeneous housing stock. There are certainly lower income suburbs as well, but there is less heterogeneity. Is that worth it? For some people, yes. My father in law lives in the suburbs and I could not understand why when I met him. But eventually I saw that he has a really nice house with a yard and a garden, situated between a public pool and a soccer field, within an easy walk of the giant George Bush Park, and he paid less that I would have to pay for an empty lot in the Montrose. He also can (and does) bike to his job almost entirely on trails, and can easily ride west into rural land as well. How many people here live within the city limits but drive to work? I do. The stereotype of the suburbs being all wasted energy and cities being efficient is a little too simplistic. In terms of ethnic diversity, I would also question those who immediately chalk this one up in favor of urban areas. My father in law, who incidentally is not white, lives on a street where the majority of people are not white. What they have in common, as I mentioned above, is that they tend to all have similar levels of education and upper middle class professional jobs. I am not saying that there is equal ethnic diversity in cities and suburbs, but only that it is too simplistic to say the suburbs are all white and cities are diverse. As for education, I think that urban and suburban schools all have their strengths. Having spent a lot of time around all of these school systems, I would much prefer my children attend Lamar than attend any of the suburban schools. But a lot of what makes parents uncomfortable is not that urban schools don't produce good students who go to good colleges and are successful; it's that urban schools have tend to have a wider range of income students attending them. I would also argue that fears of more ethnically diverse schools also drive many people to the suburbs, despite the fact that this is not a 100% accurate description. I love the city. I live here because I'm young, I like to be around friends and activities, I go out at night, and I value the diversity of options here. At the same time, I really disagree with those who think that there is a moral imperative for everyone to live in the city and think that somehow none of what the suburbs claim to offer is real. For those focused on environmentalism, please . . . If you really wanted to lower your carbon footprint, you would need to move to a city where 1) You didn't ever use a car 2) You didn't use the kind of air conditioning that is standard here in Houston. LA, with all of it's sprawl, consistently has some of the lowest emissions per capita, simply because of the energy saved by having a temperate climate. My personal belief is that cities and suburbs are both here to stay, and both have a lot of room for improvement. I'd rather focus on making both better than some kind of contest between them.
