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I had a great response to this issue all written up, and just as I was ready to hit "submit", my comuter shut down to install some new updates. Oh, well.
I think we need a standard defintion of suburb for this forum. Even people that bash suburbs with abandon make exception for "streetcar" suburbs, "pre-war" suburbs, suburbs that they live in, etc. People also talk about suburbs in the city. Some use different definitions depending on their POV. They might live in an "in-city" suburb, but they bash people who live in "THE" suburbs. They talk about the difference between urban and suburban schools. This is a misnomer as well; some areas have county-wide schools, or large school districts that comprise the city and parts of the suburbs. Colorado Springs has a couple of school districts within the city. People have argued with me that I can't live in a suburban city, that there is no such thing.
IMO, the simplest definition for a "suburb" is an area, incorporated or not, outside a main city.
I think we need a standard defintion of suburb for this forum.
It's not going to happen. There way much variety of places, and backgrounds. People aren't always familiar with the country (assuming we are talking about just the US — I sometimes aren't) and often don't care about places they've barely been to. So their images of suburb will be different from someone else. But I did try to give a standard definition long ago:
IMO, the simplest definition for a "suburb" is an area, incorporated or not, outside a main city.
I agree it's the simplest, but simple doesn't mean it's useful or correct. It's misleading, people often use "city" for any part of the metro that's built up. In an urban planning context, what the discussions are about (I think) are about different built form and density. And my mental image of city vs suburb is a giant contrast between two that look, feel, and function completely different, mainly because of differences of planning, built form and density. You can keep on mentioning suburbs are based on city limits, but it seems rather useless for most of the discussions on here.
Again, what's wrong with using city vs suburb for government boundaries, and urban, suburban and rural for built form and density as in the examples shown below:
It's not going to happen. There way much variety of places, and backgrounds. People aren't always familiar with the country (assuming we are talking about just the US — I sometimes aren't) and often don't care about places they've barely been to. So their images of suburb will be different from someone else. But I did try to give a standard definition long ago:
I agree it's the simplest, but simple doesn't mean it's useful or correct. It's misleading, people often use "city" for any part of the metro that's built up. In an urban planning context, what the discussions are about (I think) are about different built form and density. And my mental image of city vs suburb is a giant contrast between two that look, feel, and function completely different, mainly because of differences of planning, built form and density. You can keep on mentioning suburbs are based on city limits, but it seems rather useless for most of the discussions on here.
Again, what's wrong with using city vs suburb for government boundaries, and urban, suburban and rural for built form and density as in the examples shown below:
The words urban and suburban don't mean the same as city and suburb (most of the time). Example: I'm not within the city but this area is very urban.
You're probably right; it's not going to happen. However, that doesn't stop ME from thinking it should happen.
What I like about my definition is that it takes a lot of the emotion out of the definition, and it also takes away all the exceptions the "committed urbanists" as one person called himself, come up with; as I said earlier, the streetcar suburbs, the pre-war suburbs (funny how we call them that when the war in question ended 67 years ago), the inner ring suburbs, and the suburbs they live in.
What's wrong with your def is that "suburb" is very close to "suburban". People don't distinguish between the two when they post. And your def excludes "suburbs in the city" which some claim to live in.
What's wrong with your def is that "suburb" is very close to "suburban". People don't distinguish between the two when they post. And your def excludes "suburbs in the city" which some claim to live in.
No, sometimes they don't. Often context can make it clear, at least in the more thoughtful posts. I don't attach much importance to city limits, anyway so I wouldn't see as much of a problem with it. In the context of this thread, it's all about built form and density.
It excludes "suburbs in the city" but not "suburban areas in the city".
Thinking about this further, why do most metros in the US have one unified government structure for the center and then more of a patchwork for the surroundings? Why should suburbs be governed differently than cities? For example London used to have 33 "boroughs" each semi-independent and a unified but weak county-level authorities. There was little government distinction between central areas and outlying areas. Australian metros are usually under one city, as well as some Canadian ones. Since in my mind, the big difference between city vs suburb is density and layout, I thought maybe because city and suburb are so far apart they require separate governments. Of course, the demographics are rather different.
What I like about my definition is that it takes a lot of the emotion out of the definition, and it also takes away all the exceptions the "committed urbanists" as one person called himself, come up with; as I said earlier, the streetcar suburbs, the pre-war suburbs (funny how we call them that when the war in question ended 67 years ago), the inner ring suburbs, and the suburbs they live in.
But your definition lots of exceptions, too. Ogre listed plenty of exceptions for Boston, and I can think of others for some other cities, but not as extreme. Many of these suburbs you listed have little in common. It makes more sense to group together based on form, the more "urban" suburbs belong more with cities.
I tend to try to refer to "modern stereotypical suburbs" when talking about the suburbs people who prefer suburbs love to hate -- I could be wrong, but I assume most people know what I'm talking about. (the cul-de-sacs, highly segregated uses, lots of big box stores, car-dependent). It all depends on context of discussion, though; often on this forum there's not much reason to discuss things in terms of official municipal boundaries (which can be fairly pointless, especially when discussing urban areas on a national or international level) -- when talking about urban versus suburban form actual boundaries are mostly irrelevant.
The term "postwar suburb" (the war in question being World War II) is used because it is an enormously important breakpoint between two very different types of urban design. The changes weren't just in technology but in financing (FHA and VA loans, accelerated depreciation) and design (Euclidean zoning in full flower, infrastructure costs paid for by government program) and massive demand (pent-up postwar housing demand) along with supply (expanded American industrial capacity, enormous wealth and ability to deliver this new housing form.) The result is that something like 80% of the built environment in the United States was built after World War II.
Suburbs aren't all alike, which is why it is wildly inaccurate to try to categorize suburbs in a way that doesn't have anything to do with their physical form. It's also a bit silly to try to create a single definition for all suburbs while simultaneously accusing other people of generalizing about suburbs--either we can lump all suburbs together or not, right?
Trying to lump them together is not accurate. Suburbs have different physical form--and their role changes over time, regardless of whether or not they are in a city limit.
I suppose we could use the term "sprawly" instead of "suburban" to refer to the autocentric low density neighbourhoods both inside and outside city limits, although that has pretty negative connotations.
There are also some small cities have most of the suburban neighbourhoods within city limits in the USA.
City Population/% of urban area within city limits
Honolulu, HI: 953,207 / 118.79% (consolidated city-county (island) government)
Corpus Christi, TX: 305,215 / 95.36%
Anchorage, AK: 291,826 / 129.27%
Lincoln, NE: 258,379 / 99.87%
Laredo, TX: 236,091 / 100.15%
Lubbock, TX: 229,573 / 96.72%
Amarillo, TX: 190,695 / 96.97%
Sioux Falls, SD: 153,888 / 98.16%
Many bigger cities have well above 50% of the urban area population within city limits, especially out west (San Antonio, Colorado Springs, Wichita, etc) but not the vast majority of the urban area (>90%).
I think that Andres Duany's transect is a pretty good classification, it's mostly based on density rather than walkability though. The transects go from T1 to T6 (T stands for transect I suppose).
T1 = natural land
T2 = agricultural land
T3 = sub-urban, basically single family houses on relatively large lots, but it doesn't have to be totally auto-centric, it can have some sort of main street or neighbourhood centre, even if it will only have 5 businesses and a church or something like that. It can also have "small scale agriculture" like vegetable gardens, vinyards/orchards and chickens. The more autocentric version of T3 would be more use segregated with large commercial areas that contain more or less every kind of business you need but is not within walking distance of most people, and of course some sub-urban neighbourhoods in the USA would not allow small scale agriculture, especially not chickens.
T4 = general urban... someone from Shanghai or Paris might not consider this urban, but basically the single family homes are on small lots and there can also be attached and multi family housing mixed in. The higher density allows for a main street or neighbourhood centre that has most of the businesses one would need within walking distance. Sometimes this potential is not utilized though, as is the case with many Canadian suburbs which have T4 density but the retail is not organized in the most pedestrian-oriented manner. Often Canadian suburbs have big box retail so that you can choose between 50 kinds of toilet paper, which means few big stores far apart (even though you could have more small stores closer together with 5 kinds of toilet paper).
T5/T6 = both are predominantely multi-family, dense enough so that many buildings can have retail at grade, it seems that the main difference is that T6 is denser. This might qualify as T5/T6: Bramalea City Centre, Brampton, ON, Canada - Google Maps
However, it's layed out in an auto-centric fashion.
So basically you can categorize each density according to density and whether it is auto or pedestrian centric. New urbanism doesn't really advocate for the auto-centric model though, at least they're not supposed to, they allow for cars but they are supposed to push for designs that are good for walking too.
And for the poster who said the inner city is poor and/or nonwhite people Kind of stupid to say.
Only if you haven't been paying attention. That is exactly the connotation generally intended. To that matter, outside of interest sites like this one, that is often the intended meaning of "urban". Urban is very often (but not always like inner city) code language for black and less often Hispanic. If you ever hear or see the expression "urban youth" you know they don't mean Asians or whites even if they live in midtown Manhattan.
Now that we've each defined City and suburban, how about Inner City? That is the part of the City with all the urban problems but few or none of the attractions. In Chicago it is generally the West and South sides with a few exceptions (such as where the President's home is). New York, Harlem and South Bronx. Houston, by the Hobby airport. New Orleans, the lower ninth ward.
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