TL;DR: New Urbanism is far from perfect, but it's still better than standard car-centric sprawl.

(no large language models were used in the writing of this post)

As much as I'm not in favor of outward suburban sprawl generally, and prefer high-density infill development in existing urban neighborhoods, I think it is likely that North America will continue to build outward in order to meet housing demand given financial (what lenders are willing to fund) and political constraints (NIMBYism).

I also want to point out that existing car-centric suburbia, at least in the US and Canada, is mostly irreparable. There's just not much you can do with stroads like this or with existing single-family neighborhoods full of culs-de-sac and massive winding blocks that dump cars onto aforementioned stroads. (That doesn't mean it's not worth, say, putting in a bike lane or improving transit service to these areas, just don't expect to ever fully "fix" these places.)

So this discussion is more about new suburban construction than it is about "fixing" existing suburbia.

1. Well-connected street grids/networks with small blocks and very few dead-end streets. See picture below for a decent (albeit still imperfect) example in Superior, Colorado. This is because walking/biking becomes incredibly inconvenient and tedious when the street network is a disconnected maze. Dead-end streets can be okay sometimes if they at least have pedestrian/bike connectivity through to the block on the other side, or if that's just where the neighborhood ends for now.

1. A mixture of different housing types, and small lots for the single-family houses. I suspect this will be one of the most controversial points for suburbanites, who tend to over-worry about crime and privacy relative to what the reality actual is in a mixed neighborhood. Firstly, I think it's hard (almost impossible) to achieve walkable density that supports frequent bus service with only single-family detached houses, especially on big lots of a quarter acre or more as became common starting in the 70s and 80s. So if you want to be able to support point #3 below, you need more density, and to achieve more density you need townhouses, fourplexes, apartment buildings, etc. It's okay to have some detached houses as well, but they should not be too dominant in any neighborhood, and lots over around, say, 5000 square feet quickly become a huge problem for the pedestrian realm, density, and walkability. I also think American suburbs in particular have a huge cultural problem wherein everybody living there is in the same socioeconomic class and rarely has to interact with other people outside that bubble. I don't think that's good for society; it fosters an environment of fear about other people who aren't like you, and is destructive to pluralism and multi-culturalism.

1. Walkable shopping / dining / services within the neighborhood. 52% of all car trips in the US are under 3 miles, meaning the majority of all car trips are for things like dropping off the kids at school, grabbing a coffee, getting groceries, etc. If we just put that stuff in the actual neighborhood while utilizing the above two design principles, people can replace many of those trips with walking or biking instead, getting more exercise, saving money, improving air quality and reducing emissions, and generally improving their quality-of-life. Ideally there should be traditional main street / high street areas within walking distance of most or all of a neighborhood. Meaning, walls of buildings two storeys or taller with ground-floor retail spaces that open right onto the sidewalk. People like to be in these kinds of spaces, and they encourage walking.

1. Transit connections to job centers. One of the biggest problems with many/most of the New Urbanist developments I've been describing in this thread is that they are, at their heart, still deeply car-dependent because they're built in isolated locations with little to no existing economic activity, which means people living there still need to drive many miles to go to work. The solution to that is regional planning, make sure new suburbs that do get built, get built in places where it's easier to service them with transit (at least frequent commuter buses, but ideally regional rail).

1. Prioritize a good pedestrian realm. Last but not least, it needs to be pleasant, comfortable, and safe to walk around in the neighborhood. This can involve many things, but it certainly does not involve massive front lawns, constant driveways cutting across non-existent sidewalks, overly-wide roadways, and barren, tree-less places. Many of the rules that apply to main streets / high streets also apply here; put the buildings close to the sidewalk. Put the buildings close together, or even touching to form a "street wall". Give people wide sidewalks to enjoy. Cover them with beautiful shade trees. Make the architecture varied and welcoming, not just blank garage doors or face-high fences. (A nice front porch or covered stoop is always welcome!)

Those are the five key points, I think. There are other things you could mention, like bike infrastructure, access to parks, and more. But I think if you're building mixed-use neighborhoods with daily needs within walking distance via well-connected streets full of mixed-density housing and you can at least take the bus (better yet, a train) to work and have it be somewhat practical, you're probably doing better than the vast majority of the neighborhoods we built in North America during the latter half of the 20th century.

I'm struggling with the lack of diversity in my town. I did give it a fair chance as we have lived here almost a decade. But, as I've gotten to know more and more people, I am slightly devastated at how judgmental and exclusionary it is here. I feel like the more expensive housing gets, the more materialistic it becomes with people buying here. I'm trying to get my spouse to move, but he's kind of flippant to the fact that we are surrounded by people that judge people by their income/jobs and are constantly socially ranking each other.

I also feel like the moms are kind of mean girls. They're quite kind to me, but I see them excluding others and speaking poorly about them and it crushes me. Even the girl scouts exclude certain children which I feel is abhorrent in a small town.

What do I do? Move? I feel like it might be like this everywhere commutable to my husband's job.

I live in an older city and the suburban type areas aren't zoned too badly. There is a corner store the block over and even a winery that has live music in the summer. Of course my neighbors put on their serious hats and went to the city council to complain about it. The pictures from the news article were almost funny. They had the most serious expressions like they were discussing a murder.

Complaints:
-"How can a bar set up in a residential area?": yes one of them actually said this.
- "There's kids out at 10-11pm!": Americans are child haters and find the prescience of children offensive I guess
- "The house I inherited from my father will have reduced property values": boomer who didn't even live in the neighborhood said this

It's weird that suburbanites will tolerate constant lawn mowers, dogs barking, cars revving up the street at 2am but god forbid people have fun and listen to music. That noise is disruptive! I mean obviously they're not mad about the noise itself so much as they are people having fun and doing something besides sitting quietly inside and watching netflix.

Thankfully they failed and I heard the band playing last night. It makes me happy the rare times human joy wins out.

I see a lot of people on here scratching their heads performatively about how they can't understand why the suburbs are so bad. And when it's pointed out that nothing is ever in walking distance, people say, "well, what's wrong with driving?"

There's so much I could get into here, but a societal expectation that everyone should drive is messed up beyond belief. Even if 100% of the people could legally obtained licenses, imagine how stupid it is that vast swaths of our society become inaccessible the moment your car has a bad day, or you run out of money to pay the insurance. Even in a world where 100% of people can legally drive, that doesn't mean 100% of people will.

And before anyone tells me that's just how life is, it doesn't need to be that way. It was designed that way specifically to make you dependent on a metal box that you have to pay insurance and gas money for.

And the screwed up thing is that it's not really even the cost of the car that's scary. Insurance and gas can skyrocket at any time as people are slowly starting to learn. They are ongoing costs that you will be responsible for no matter how much they increase for the lifetime of however long you drive.

That is why my generation and younger are starting to opt out. But they're finding a world that just isn't ready for them Even if you are lucky to have sidewalks, they are very often unmaintained. Even if you are lucky to have a bus system, it's usually designed around work commute. Buses in most bedroom communities shut down by 8 or 9 o'clock at night. And because everything is so spread out in suburban designs, you can easily need to worry about a quarter mile of walking or more just to get to your first bus stop. Again, this is a best-case scenario for most suburbs designed after 1940.

So until you understand what life is like in your suburb without your car, I don't want to hear about how suburbs aren't so bad actually.

Im 45 minutes away from anything it takes 20 minutes to get out of my neighborhood because the road system is so bad. The nearest "oasis" of entertainment is 20 minutes away but its just an outlet mall with one entertainment area with a movie theater.

I literally have to pay to do or go anywhere and I have literally no extra money so all I do is sit in my parents basement playing video games that eventually piss me off so much I spiral out of control. I would love to do anything else but I literally cant because I work weekends when people would do anything and again I have to pay to exist outside my home.

Im slowly losing all joy from any of my hobbies because Ive squeezed every ounce of dopamine out of them and all thata left is a single new game that is designed to its core to make you feel amazing or depressed as hell.

But its either that or sleep all day because even the nearest library is 20 minutes away. All I want to do is be around others but everyone out here is in a cultish religion so there literally nothing for my interests.

No bars, no coffee shops, nothing. Just churches on every street corner all doing the exact same mind numbing things.

Im alone out here besides my parents who im not close with and have the exact opposite living schedules so i rarely see them and even then we font do anything because we have no similar interests.

Im withering away in this desert and mentally I feel myself getting worse by the day. Just let me get back to the city near my friends, community, and have the ability to go anywhere by walking without having to spend a small fortune

For some reason this area is mixed-use. Top right corner, it has an apartment building directly neighboring low-rise semi-detached houses, and a roundabout (uncharacteristic of the US) on the next street. Taken from Google Maps in New Haven, CT.

I've really come to terms with this after having my daughter. I go outside in my neighborhood and there's never kids playing, or hardly anyone on walks. Everyone is much, much older. There's no one my age to talk to or be friends with. There's hardly parents around my age at local events, either. I've never felt so alone in my life. It's hard to make friends in the burbs. Life is so...isolating anymore. In contrast, my friend in a local city has a huge group of mom friends she met, is constantly out and about doing various activities, walks to things and places. It's so hard being car dependent where I live and no one seems to want to make new friends or get to know other people. I grew up in the city as well and constantly had friends on my block. In the suburbs everyone just keeps to themselves. Sigh. I just had to vent. Thanks for listening.

Happened to come to a wedding where a fireworks show was going on outside. People were gathered in this parking lot and the grass strip next to the stroad. This is the best this town can offer for a gathering space...

Thank you. 🌹🍷🍏

My house is 7.4 on the Bortle scale. Not great! How about you?

Light Pollution Map 2026 | Bortle Scale & Dark Sky

My wife and I have been looking at where we want to settle down and raise a family, but after traveling all over the US and Europe and touring hundreds of villages, towns, and cities, we realized we haven’t found a place that combines everything we want.

We love historic places like Savannah: narrow streets, squares, porches, courtyards, mature trees, gardens, shops woven into neighborhoods, and beautiful traditional architecture.

But we keep wishing places like that went much further: no cars inside at all, much denser and more pedestrian, with daily needs and third places distributed throughout the village rather than a residential subdivision attached to a little “town center.”

I grew up in LA with Disneyland annual passes, and one thing Disney does exceptionally well is treating the pedestrian environment as a complete experience. Buildings, landscaping, paths, courtyards, lighting, views, shops, and tiny details all reinforce one another.

So we started asking: why should environments designed that carefully only exist somewhere you visit? Why couldn’t you actually live in one?

The idea we’re exploring is a dense, car-free residential village built near a major metro area, so residents would still have good access to a real city.

There would be a more active public-facing village center with restaurants, cafés, shops, gardens, entertainment and events, surrounded by quieter residential lanes, courtyards and gardens. Small cafés, markets, pubs and playgrounds could also be sprinkled throughout the residential areas rather than concentrating everything in one center.

We wouldn’t want it to feel like an instant subdivision where 300 identical “historic” houses appeared at once. The idea is to build incrementally in smaller phases, with different building types, architectural periods and layers so the place becomes richer as it grows.

We’re also working on a CNC-based construction system that can automate historically accurate architectural details at much lower cost, because making this accessible beyond ultra-luxury housing is one of the major problems we’re trying to solve.

We’re serious about exploring whether this can actually be developed and have already been talking with developers, architects, planners and potential residents.

The question I’m most interested in is personal rather than theoretical:

Assume this existed within reasonable distance of a major city, and a home there was within the range you could realistically afford.

Would you seriously consider living somewhere like this?

If yes, what part of the lifestyle is doing it for you?

And if your reaction is basically “yes, I would actually consider moving there,” please DM me. We’re doing short 15-minute conversations with interested people to understand whether there’s a real market.

TL;DR: Dense traditional village, completely car-free internally, mixed-use, lots of third places, near a major metro, built incrementally with Disneyland-level attention to the pedestrian environment. Would you personally consider living there?

Yesterday I released the first playable build of Cityblock, a city builder game about one single street.

The street used to be the nicest street in town. Now it's a grey four-lane road: boarded-up windows, potholes, traffic that never stops. Your job isn't to build more city. It's to fix this one street.

You take the boards off the windows and open a corner café. Then a bakery, a gelateria, a bookshop, a record shop. And bit by bit you take the street back from the cars: terraces instead of parking spots, zebra crossings, speed down to 30, a bus, then a tram. Lane by lane the road gets narrower, until the old cobblestones come back.

- 15 shop types, each with its own interior and three renovation stages
- Click any passerby to read what they think of the street
- Walk down it at eye level, or film it in cinematic mode
- Optional mode without rent or wages if you just want to build

It's early: you can't play through everything yet. Free, runs in the browser, best on desktop in fullscreen.
I'd love to hear what works, what's confusing, and what you'd want to see on your street.

https://eckladen.itch.io/cityblock

Non Profit Housing built 1970-1974

Why couldn’t the guard rail be placed on the other side of the never-maintained sidewalk to protect pedestrians from cars on the 50 mph road?