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I think one of the issues is how we typically define suburbs. It’s pretty much just a catch all for any city outside the dominant urban centers of a metro. In actuality, places like Bellevue have suburban features, but are very much different from the standard bedroom communities that would people define them as.
Personally, I believe that is the next evolution of american cities. Larger suburban cities in the metro will designate urban centers, focus on building density with 15 minute cities, and be better connected to the regional transit network.
I think it’s great that in the Seattle metro, you have options for urban living outside of just Downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill. With Bellevue and Tacoma already very much established urban cores (and growing). And with places like Kirkland, Renton, Everett, Bremerton, and Kent trying to build up their urban cores, the variety and hopefully unique identities will add to the overall vibrancy of the area.
The Seattle area has dozens of urbanizing, pedestrian-friendly cores focused around transit, though most are still lowrise and many will remain limited to buses.
Cities have defined a bunch of additional cores not listed here, including a lot of the larger and more urban ones (in-town like West Seattle Junction or Columbia City, suburban ones like Downtown Mercer Island, Downtown Edmonds, etc.).
All counties and signficant cities are required to allow and plan for substantial growth, and most focus their growth into urban or urbanish nodes. So none of the obstruction you get in the SF area for example.
Seattle Eastside burbs show us the way for transforming our country’s ubiquitous strip malls and unwalkable suburbs. Wellesley meanwhile is like a living museum for WASP culture. That’s great if you’re into that and assimilate completely, it’s hell if you’re a minority and not in that social scene.
Again with the Wellesley comparison. Bellevue was founded in 1953, and has a population of nearly 150k. Wellesley was founded in 1660, with a population of 29k.
It's just one suburb in a very large metro. A metro, mind you, that is more diverse than the one Bellevue falls in.
Again, a more reasonable comparison would be Cambridge or Somerville. Cities that sit alongside the core city, that have been reinvigorated and reinvented by new idea over the last few decades.
Again with the Wellesley comparison. Bellevue was founded in 1953, and has a population of nearly 150k. Wellesley was founded in 1660, with a population of 29k.
It's just one suburb in a very large metro. A metro, mind you, that is more diverse than the one Bellevue falls in.
Again, a more reasonable comparison would be Cambridge or Somerville. Cities that sit alongside the core city, that have been reinvigorated and reinvented by new idea over the last few decades.
IMO, neither Cambridge nor Somerville are properly understood as Boston "suburbs" — they're more extensions of the core city that just never got annexed to it.
BTW, since someone mentioned Brookline upthread: Its northern half is an extension of the core city while its southern half is truly suburban; Boylston Street (MA 9) and Boston College are the rough dividing lines. It was Brookline's no vote on annexation to Boston in the late 1880s that brought the wave of annexations there to an end.
Seattle Eastside burbs show us the way for transforming our country’s ubiquitous strip malls and unwalkable suburbs. Wellesley meanwhile is like a living museum for WASP culture. That’s great if you’re into that and assimilate completely, it’s hell if you’re a minority and not in that social scene.
Wellesley was about 15% Asian in the 2020 census and also has a large Jewish population. Many very established communities even in slow growth metro areas are evolving significantly these days.
Doesn't about 75% of the population live in a suburban or suburban like area? So basically we are talking about attributes of the regions themselves. Northeastern suburbs, as are their inner cities are more historic and better connected via public transportation etc, etc, etc. How about the likelihood that your governor will make a proclamation that will cost you money or your freedom...that's where I don't trust the Northeast anymore.
Maybe Quincy could be a good comparison? Slightly urban and attached to Boston but removed from downtown with its own, more suburban CBD?
Bellevue is massively more economically powerful than Quincy, so very little resemblance to Quincy except that there are large Asian communities there. From an economic standpoint it's more like Cambridge, but from an urban core standpoint it's not really Cambridge. I can't walk from downtown Seattle to downtown Bellevue like I can with Boston to Cambridge. To me Cambridge is not a suburb, it's just an extension of Boston core. Boston without Cambridge really wouldn't be the Boston in our imagination. It would be a far less exciting and interesting city.
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