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1. Low density, often mix of old rural homes and “what are those doing way out here” McMansion developments.
2. The furthest out suburbs that aren’t an established satellite city, usually with gaps of land between the consistently developed suburbs and the outer housing/businesses.
All 4 look exurban to me, just from a quick look. Its not always easy to tell from a picture, but newish roads, lots of undeveloped, or recently/ in development land with big setbacks.
Agree. To me all 4 looked exurban/borderline rural based on the street view snapshots.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Borntoolate85
Woodbridge, Dale City, and Manassas are suburban (albeit "outer suburbs"), while I'd call places like Buckland, Nokesville, Woosley, and Triangle the later. PW doesn't have as much transit as the counties where the Captial Beltway passes through, but the first two are surrounded by a huge mall along with several other shopping centers and the lack of any real rural patches that are more associated with exurban development that you'll see in the other places I've described. Haymarket is right on the border between suburban and exurban nowadays with all the new development, including commercial and some multifamily housing development taking place. But cross over into Faquier County and its strictly exurban, quickly becoming rural as you go west of US 15.
But of course, the larger the metro, the longer it will take to go from urban to suburban to exurban to ultimately rural development due to higher congestion and development. A city like Lancaster, PA or Hagerstown, MD has a clear urban section in its core, but quickly transitions into the others in a hurry as opposed to an I-95 corridor city.
Yea I was pretty much implying that PW County is that border line of suburban/exurban. Once you get South of there into Stafford and beyond its more "exurban". North of there and many parts of PW County included are very suburban.
That is completely wrong. Many people live an hour outside the city in suburbs of the core city. No satellite cities, not exurban, they are suburbs an hour (or more) from the city. Where does your comment even come from????
An hour commute into the core from the suburbs is extremely short. You are considered very lucky if that is your commute.
An hour commute is NOT short. Maybe for LA? Not for most US cities. I used to live in Denton which is a far northern suburb of Dallas. A little further north and you're no longer in the DFW area. It would take 45 minutes to get into downtown Dallas and thats considered a long (though not terrible) drive for the DFW area. An hour may not be the worst thing ever in commute but its not considered even a little short, let alone extremely. Dallas has bad traffic but whenever the freeways are actually moving everyone's going like 80 so you can get from Arlington to Garland in 45 minutes or so. And that's crossing a good chunk of the metro, and DFW is big and sprawly to boot.
I'd see 1 as eeking into suburban territory, due to the sidewalk shown and the big box store across from a multi-story community chapel along with the Walgreens and Wendy's at the corner. As it is, its near a major highway intersection that is just a 20-25 minute commute into the busiest suburban development in the metro area, and as a result, this enabled suburban development to leapfrog outward,being built in an '80s-'90s sprawly pattern with no logical street pattern with lots of curves that's typical of newer suburbs.
2 is tricky as the intersection of two multi-lane divided highways implies a good amount of development nearby, but of course this is sunbelt-style development that's a different animal than up north where exurban almost always means two-lane roads. One of the roads happens to become the core city's main drag, and Google Maps has a darker gray shade indicating development, and its only a few miles far from the largest mall in the suburbs. If could easily be a commuter rail suburb as a railroad track is nearby. I'd say exurban now, but in a matter of years with infill development, it will be fully suburban.
3 is the most exurban feeling of them all, with no sidewalks and two-lane roads, with the only commercial development about a mile away right off of a major Interstate. Although the housing development present looks dense enough to be suburban, they are isolated by undeveloped gaps.
4, like 2, has notable suburbanish features like sound walls on the freeway, a sign for a shopping center visible in the distance, and isn't too far from a railroad stop and some multi-family development, but there are still quite a few undeveloped patches. Due to the state's high cost of living and a transit option, I expect this to become firmly suburban before long like No. 2.
I currently live in a transitional suburban/exurban area. IMO it's my favorite in terms of settling down, close enough to get the feel that a big city is nearby, but close enough to feel that natural life is at hand. It can also be a good place to invest as these areas are prone for infill development.
An hour commute is NOT short. Maybe for LA? Not for most US cities. I used to live in Denton which is a far northern suburb of Dallas. A little further north and you're no longer in the DFW area. It would take 45 minutes to get into downtown Dallas and thats considered a long (though not terrible) drive for the DFW area. An hour may not be the worst thing ever in commute but its not considered even a little short, let alone extremely. Dallas has bad traffic but whenever the freeways are actually moving everyone's going like 80 so you can get from Arlington to Garland in 45 minutes or so. And that's crossing a good chunk of the metro, and DFW is big and sprawly to boot.
Sure it is. Most people in suburban New York (that is the key) who commute into the core of Manhattan have commutes over an hour. Since this thread is about exurbs/suburbs, I was talking about that specific commute. Sure, for most of the country, 1 hour is not short, but I will say it again: an hour commute is short for suburban New York into Manhattan (there is no denying that!)
Depends on the city. In Atlanta the exurbs and suburbs look a lot alike, the difference between the two is the distance from city center.
In LA they also look similar. And our exurbs aren’t so much surrounded by open land. Places like Moreno Valley are totally suburban. Maybe even cities in their own right. Moreno Valley has nearly 200,000 people.
The whole Coastlines of the US have small cities everywhere that make it hard to distinguish what metro they can be a part of.
The ones away from the coast are more definitive. But yeah...
Going east in L.A. you can see where suburbs end. But up and down the coast, it's just town after town, so it doesn't really count.
For example, in the Coachella Valley, all of the main desert cities (Palm Springs, Indio, La Quinta, etc.) are connected to each other (except Desert Hot Springs, which sits entirely north of the 10 FWY), and the 10 FWY slices right through most of them. In addition, a lot of people out here commute to their jobs in either the Inland Empire, LA County, Orange County, or SD County; therefore, the Coachella Valley cities are all suburban in nature and are also essentially exurbs (and are not surrounded by open land for the most part).
Any amount of wilderness (that isn't a discrete forest preserve) or farmland separating it from other towns = exurb. Has nothing to do with urbanity or car-dependence or raw distance (taxicab or as the crow flies) from the core, though certainly those all correlate with it.
At least that's my definition - I thought that was just how the term was used universally.
Small towns 50 miles away surrounded by cornfields and cow pastures are exactly that, small towns surrounded by cow pastures and cornfields.
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