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In my experience, all suburbs feel like cities because they are so close to big cities they often have the same type of people living there and get the same feeling. All though, if the city has less than 100,000 population it does feel like a small town still.
Speaking for my homeland, much of NJ is considered suburban, and NJ has more than 500 towns. I think it's a fair bet that some of those towns are suburbs. To be honest I don't really "get" the question.
Speaking for my homeland, much of NJ is considered suburban, and NJ has more than 500 towns. I think it's a fair bet that some of those towns are suburbs. To be honest I don't really "get" the question.
Sorry, I'll try to explain better.
In California, we only have three actual "towns" Town of Apple, Valley, Town of Yucaipa, and one other town I forget.
Technically a town is a township, a different type of municipality by land use and government. Land in towns is in squares, and California land is not in perfect shapes because they were developed in the rancho system.
Townships and towns usually tend to be smaller than cities. In California, some cities used to be towns. In California, small cities tend to have a "small town feeling"
I am not sure if suburbs have a "small town feeling" and tend to be considered towns by having that feeling. Large suburbs like Plano in Texas or Glendale in Pasadena tend to not feel like towns anymore, but are still considered suburbs because they are mostly residential communities near a larger city.
It depends on the suburb...they certainly aren't all alike. Some are independent cities/towns that grew to be part of a larger metro area with a dominant city. Some are small towns with large populations and are mostly residential. Some are employment centers with smaller populations that are part of a metro area. There are lots of different scenarios.
I grew up in a suburb of 10,000. Most people think of it as a town though because it's so disconnected from the main city and the other suburbs. All the other suburbs are close and connected to each other. They also border the city.
There's a big difference between an exurb and a true suburb. Technically when I lived in NJ I lived in the NY metro area but right across from the high school I would see goats, horses, sheep, farms, and open fields. Most of the town is rural but since 1990 the town's population doubled and there has been a lot of suburan housing made. It really is an exurb because it still retains rural qualities, barely has stores/restaurants, and has no downtown or town cener that a lot of small towns have.
In my experience, all suburbs feel like cities because they are so close to big cities they often have the same type of people living there and get the same feeling. All though, if the city has less than 100,000 population it does feel like a small town still.
In major metropolitan areas like New York and Chicago, the suburbs stretch for 50 miles or more from the city center. Those outer suburbs look and feel very, very different from the inner-ring suburbs close to the city and they often have very different demographics. I don't know what the New York equivalent is, but here in the Chicago area nobody would confuse, say, Melrose Park with Elburn.
So would it be safe to presume suburbs with less than 100,000 population will fall with the small town feel, and ones above will have city feel? With the exception of inner-ring suburbs.
Any suburb over 100,000 population seem to develop their own urban center and not be considered a suburb. Like with Pasadena and Glendale.
^^ Naperville is 125,000 and feels every bit like a suburb -- just a giant one. Many of the larger suburbs in the Chicago area are more accurately described as "satellite cities" in that they initially developed independently of Chicago and were not reliant on Chicago's economic influence, and only became "suburbs" later on as suburbia moved out and eventually enveloped them. Aurora, Joliet, Waukegan, Gary and Kenosha are the most prominent examples.
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