When I visited America I went to suburbs like these. It seemed nice at first but you could not feasibly get anywhere without a car, it was obnoxious too because I like to go for walks and there wasn’t even any fucking sidewalks. I saw a some lard asses get in their car, drive about 600m within viewing distance to the shop and drive back. It’s really baffling that I got looks for wanting to walk to places that were literally across the streets, like I was some kind of heathen performing and unspeakable act.
I would not understand how children get around either. In my country driving age is older but I know in the US it’s still 16. The burden is put on the parents or someone else to chauffeur them around if they want to do anything, it honestly sounds really unpleasant.
Not too much freedom of movement in the land of the free either. I was with my American friend and wanted to go somewhere, and there was a supposed bus stop in about a 15 minute walk from their house. He looked at me like I just suggested that we go jump off a cliff, apparently it takes 1hr - 1.5hrs for one bus (wtf?) to come by, if at all. So I guess if you don’t have car you are fucked with a reliable means of moving yourself quickly.
I also happened to visit a few big US cities including Chicago, Philadelphia, NYC, Houston, and Atlanta, which is what made me kind of understand why people would live so far. These disgusting shitholes were deteriorating fast (especially NYC), and I had never seen such a stark difference between rich and poor. Homeless were just wandering around tweaking out like it was normal, it was really disturbing.
It’s too bad too, because some areas looked really cool with their architecture and have lots of potential to be even more thriving and prosperous. The thing is though, American cities are shit, cities themselves aren’t. It's the morons who run the circus that think they can fix everything and end up making things worse, plus propaganda fed by certain media outlets that cities are inherently bad and dangerous, when again, it’s American cities themselves which are shit.
That’s just my experience and opinion though, I’m sure there are smaller cities that are nice enough, and suburbs that are more vibrant. However my conversations with others who visited America made me conclude that the experience I had was not unique. Those sprawled suburbs were nice on the outside, but for me it was also hollow and a bit depressing.
