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Because municipal definitions vary, there can be some criteria where anything outside of the central city of a metropolitan area is considered a suburb. In that case, Oakland can be a contender.
Interesting take. Personally I can’t imagine why anyone wanting to move to Santa Monica would move to Carmel Indiana instead. They can’t have much in common at all.
I'm sure there are some people who move to Carmel, Indiana but would actually rather be moving to a more exotic location such as Santa Monica, California, but instead move to Carmel because of affordibility and/or strong family ties to Carmel, Indianapolis and Central Indiana. The one thing that all the money in Santa Monica can't buy is the security in one's heart and the peace of mind one feels knowing there are close family members and long time close friends who have known you since grade school are nearby. Those roots run deep.
I think people are pretty much the same everywhere you go. It's easy to find commonality and common interests with people regardless of where a person lives or which region of the country a person comes from or their politics, income, or religion or lack there of.
I'm surprised nobody has said Carmel, Indiana. I hear it's often voted near the top on many of the more prestigious "best of" lists. I think Carmel could give Santa Monica a run for it's money when you consider what you pay for what you get. Carmel is as high quality as Santa Monica but without the high cost. What Santa Monica has that Carmel will never have is a good beach on the Pacific Ocean and rugged looking mountains in the background with a Mediterranean type climate, and a high profile. Everything else, as far as quality goes, Carmel can compete with Santa Monica in just about every kind of way. With the money a person would save by living in Carmel, they could take weekend trips to Santa Monica every weekend. It would almost be like living there but not having to pay for it. What a person would save in property taxes and state taxes by living in Carmel rather than Santa Monica would be a small fortune.
Carmel is largely cookie cutter. More similar to Naperville than to a Evanston or an Oak Park or a Grosse Point.
Seems like the general consensus on C-D (me included) is for the latter style, and not the former.
MetroWest Boston, North Shore Chicago, Main Line Philadelphia, Westchester NY all come to mind. Some great suburbs in SF, Seattle, Detroit, DC, Cleveland areas too.
A few that come to mind right away: Winchester, MA
Wellesley, MA
Marblehead, MA
La Grange, IL
Winnetka, IL
Scarsdale, NY
Chevy Chase, MD
East Grand Rapids, MI
Grosse Point, MI
Penn Wynne, PA
Kirkland, WA
Pasadena, CA
Sausalito, CA
Oh come on you can't find a Winchester anywhere? seriously did you grow up there or something. And Wellesley I guess they have a college and are wealthy enough to discourage chain stores.
Just adding based on where I have lived...Clayton, MO and to a lesser degree University City, MO and Maplewood, MO. I’d also say Oak Park, IL as well as Evanston.
I totally agree with Clayton as well, Winter Park in Orlando. Santa Monica is definitely a suburb its, its own city 15 miles west of DTLA, even though it is surrounded by LA on all sides its ranked the best suburb of LA. lol
Oak Park is to west suburbia what Evanston is to north suburbia.....first city past Chicago city limits, combining elements of city and suburb, extensive (CTA el and Metra....Ev and OP are the only suburbs to have both CTA and Metra stop in their downtowns) public transit into the city. Similar major shopping districts (with Evanston and Oak Park having virtually the exact same old Marshall Field's buildings), a notable increase in downtown residential construction (Evanston leads, Oak Park now on the way), liberal communities, intellectual, integrated (admittedly with bumps) two blue and orange high schools (ETHS, OPRF, once in the same league). Both were once the major retail centers for their respective (Ev:N, OP: W) suburban regions that hit the same wall when the malls were built in the 1960s and 1970s (as you noted with OP in the 80's which lost ground to Oakbrook Center, which was developed by the same company that built Old Orchard in Skokie and hurt DT Ev retail (which came back through speciality stores, loads of restaurants, theaters and really catering to NU students).
They differ, of course...Oak Park gets FLW and prairie style architecture while Evanston gets a lakefront and Northwestern. Evanston is bigger, Oak Park denser befitting its location that borders Chicago on two sides and surrounded by rather tightly packed suburbs. Evanston is a bit more "open", really fades more into real suburbia in its north end which is basically very much akin to the other North Shore towns further along the lake.
What are the parameters? Please define what constitutes the best "urban suburbs".
In my mind there are only a handful of big urban suburbs in the US today.
Bellevue, WA is huge outside of Seattle and has become quite urban.
Irving, CA is also large from a highrise standpoint, though I'm not sure about housing downtown there.
Buckhead outside of downtown Atlanta is technically not a suburb, but feels like one, even though they are inside the city of Atlanta.
Arlington and Alexandria Virginia are up and coming.
Speaking of Arlington, Texas also has one that is pretty impressive in many ways.
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