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OHIO?! How? I'm genuinely curious. Having grown up in Northern Virginia those are two completely different worlds. My vote is NY/NJ. Second choice would be California.
The American dream was a marketing ploy. Let’s get around that. We are one of if not the most geographically diverse country in the world. You can get “Americana” everywhere. Let’s stop acting like the best place to get Americana is in the part of the US that mirrors Moscow for climate. I can get Americana in Phoenix. I can get it in Georgia. I can get it in Boston and I can get it in the swamplands of Louisiana. Or the mountains of Colorado. It’s all America so let’s stop being divisive on this issue. The Midwest is not inherently more “American”. This is why this country has problems.
For me, California still comes to mind first. I acknowledge that it is no longer an affordable dream for most, but so many 80's sitcoms were based in suburban CA that it has a familiar feel whether you've been there or not. I'm thinking shows like The Wonder Years and the like. When people started moving west en masse, that's what they were seeking.
Now, you can of course find suburbia all over. Long Island & NJ have large swaths of it that aren't too dissimilar from CA in terms of layout. Surely my idea of what the suburbs is is dated to my youth - realistically it's probably somewhere outside Atlanta or Dallas today. But the CA suburban dream from the 60s/70s/80s is permanently etched in my brain and I can't move past it for a modern update.
For me, California still comes to mind first. I acknowledge that it is no longer an affordable dream for most, but so many 80's sitcoms were based in suburban CA that it has a familiar feel whether you've been there or not. I'm thinking shows like The Wonder Years and the like. When people started moving west en masse, that's what they were seeking.
Now, you can of course find suburbia all over. Long Island & NJ have large swaths of it that aren't too dissimilar from CA in terms of layout. Surely my idea of what the suburbs is is dated to my youth - realistically it's probably somewhere outside Atlanta or Dallas today. But the CA suburban dream from the 60s/70s/80s is permanently etched in my brain and I can't move past it for a modern update.
I chose California as well, with the similar reasoning as yours.
For a kid who was born outside the U.S, who grew up watching so many American movies and later studied films in college, CA suburbs came in mind when you thought of American life. Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist, for example, was this generic, soulless and booming California suburb where every house looked the same. (That’s the whole point.) The suburbs were expanding like weed therefore the developers dug out the cemetery to build new houses-hence the plot. Spielberg’s another classic, E.T, told a story of another typical California suburban family in their typical suburban house where it was easy to have a secret (guest) without anyone knowing it. Think about all the teen movies from the ‘80s, Valley Girl, The First Times at Richmont High, Back to the Future, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Ron Howard’s Parethood and Michael Keaton’s Mr. Mom….-So very Southern California suburbs. Good or bad, they are quintessential American movies and the representative of American life to many people.
1990s was also a busy era for Hollywood big studio productions to film movies based in CA, on top of my head:
For me, California still comes to mind first. I acknowledge that it is no longer an affordable dream for most, but so many 80's sitcoms were based in suburban CA that it has a familiar feel whether you've been there or not. I'm thinking shows like The Wonder Years and the like. When people started moving west en masse, that's what they were seeking.
Now, you can of course find suburbia all over. Long Island & NJ have large swaths of it that aren't too dissimilar from CA in terms of layout. Surely my idea of what the suburbs is is dated to my youth - realistically it's probably somewhere outside Atlanta or Dallas today. But the CA suburban dream from the 60s/70s/80s is permanently etched in my brain and I can't move past it for a modern update.
Funny, I thought of New Jersey, in a positive way. A Nickelodeon show from the early 90's called The Adventures of Pete & Pete was shot in Leonia, and it had a distinct NJ suburban feel because of all the Dutch Colonials and oak trees on the streets. Not many places have that look (the Green Ridge section of Scranton PA could pass for an Essex or Bergen County town).
NJ has embodied this for longer on a statewide basis like no other state in the country IMO. As already mentioned NJ has been the ultimate suburban and boardroom bedroom community for generations.
You can drive from the Northeastern corner of the state (bordering NYC) to the Southwestern corner of the state (bordering Philly) and it's literally one giant suburb. Obviously sprinkled in between this are the old, rust beltish Industrial cities from yesteryear and the Shore and some country and rural parts. Yet even with all of these areas in mind, NJ really personified Suburbia since it became a thing in the USA post WWII.
What's made it unique through the years are that the suburbs come in all shapes and sizes. From the old, charming, walkable, railroad main streets to the "pre-sunbelt" sunbelt-like planned sprawl communities and everything in between that started popping up in the 70's and 80's. It really wrote the book on many different forms of Suburbia.
I was raised in my childhood in New Jersey, in the late 70s and early 80s. I think New Jersey is easily the most suburban state as a whole, and therefore gets my vote by a mile. If you were to encapsulate metropolitan areas this becomes a lot more difficult, because every one of these other states has quite a bit if not the majority of land area as rural. New Jersey doesn't. You have 566 muncipalities and many of them are clustered around NYC and Philadelphia.
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