Urban vs. Suburban Living

Me and my partner have just bought a house (my first time) here in Dublin and within the next few weeks I'll be packing all my stuff up and leaving the inner city for the suburbs (well inner suburbs) for the first time since I flew the roost at 18. I was just wondering where most people on here live (be it where they bought, rent or live with parents etc.).

Does anybody who has left the city for the suburbs regret the decision? For us it's not too bad because we're still only a 30 minute walk into the city centre, but still it's the furthest out I've lived in a long time and I'm a bit worried. What do you think are the relative advantages/disadvantages for each choice?

My post got eaten and it was rather long. I live in Dublin city myself after spending my whole life until about two years ago in the suburbs.

I think it depends on what you want. If you're looking to have pets or start a family any time soon then the suburbs are the place to be. The city (and Dublin city in particular) isn't a great place to raise kids. And if you're just looking for peace and quiet they're better too.

I don't know if I'd move back to the suburbs. I have everything I want in the city. My entire social life is here. All we miss is the ability to have pets. If I could afford it, I'd buy an apartment in the city and then I'd be allowed my pets anyway. I've adjusted to the noise that you get in the city and now when I go back to visit my parents it sounds too quiet or something.

Congrats on the home.

@dudeglove: Dublin is weird and small made up of a small city and the rest is made up mostly of suburban style housing estates/council estates.

@dudeglove: Depends what you're looking for. Temple Bar is a tourist region - it's for Americans, stag parties and hen nights and nothing interesting happens there really.

All the better venues are outside of Temple Bar. But even then it's kind of this big square area with some decent venues dotted along it with a whole lot of nothing in between.

@jesus_phish: Looks like we're on the opposite trajectory. I'm leaving city centre Dublin (Smithfield) for Glasnevin/Finglas (depends who's asking!). The noise in the city doesn't bother me so much, but it's the lack of greenery which gets to me. Like I know I live right next to the Phoenix Park, but like @dudeglove said, Dublin is a bit of a grey city overall! Still a bit worried about life in Finglas... We're in the nice(r) part of it, but still my partner used to work in a real rough school in the heart of the place and when I hear some of her stories it's hard not to get a bit worried. I grew up in Liverpool so I'm used to scallies and stuff, but you have proper gangsters with guns over here and that's what scares me!

Also yeah, 30 mins doesn't seem like a huge amount on paper but the distance culturally is quite pronounced!

@kmfrob: Finglas gets a worse rep than it deserves. The really bad parts of Finglas that all the trouble originates from is West Finglas, which bleeds into the Blanchardstown area which is also a bit of a melting pot. I've two groups friends who live closer to the bad side of Finglas, they've never had any issues. One of them lives in a really nice home too that they got pretty cheap because everyone at the time had the same attitude that Finglas was a warzone.

Smithfield used to be a really bad area too. If you and her where ok living there, you'll be fine in Finglas.

Most of our gangsters are nice enough to stick to murdering each other so as long as you're not a gangster you should be fine!

I grew up in a rural small town in the South (USA), only to end up living in San Deigo California for a while. I can say, going from rural to urban is...a change. So I can imagine it might take a bit of getting use to if your moving from a urban to a suburban place. It won't be as bad as say, moving from a urban to a rural place...but yeah. I wish ya'll the best on that. As for me, I now live back in the south but in one of my states biggest cities. It's not as hectic as San deigo, but it is a BIG change from where I grew up. My husband and I live in an apartment seeing as houses here are way out of our price point. I could honestly buy a 3 story house with 2+ achers of land in my home town for how much a small 2 bedroom house costs around here. I wouldn't wanna ever move back there though.

I live in Washington state and have only lived in the suburbs and for the most part in houses. So I can't compare very well to actually living in a city and because my state is so huge no city is within walking distance. My personality suits really well to the suburbs because I like peace and quiet. I like going to big events and socializing from time to time but that would ultimately burn me out. For me personally, I require alone time and I would worry being in a city that would be difficult to manage. But the suburbs is also really good at causing people to isolate, which I would think is bad but to each their own, and if you are the type of person who feeds off excitement and socializing and all that it will be difficult to meet that need.

Living in the city is great until you want to have a family. I'm in the suburbs now but my wife and I have been talking about moving outside of Dallas/Ft Worth for a little while and buying a Ranch. Country life is the way to go. Well, not too country, I still have to work.

@jasonr86 Yeah you see it's clearly something wholly different over in the states. Like if you move to the suburbs over there then aren't you pretty much entirely cut off from the city unless you drive (bar cities like New York with their train lines)? That would really scare me because I don't drive and I could imagine myself being extremely isolated. I'm defo more of a home bird and don't take full advantage of the city when living in the middle of it, but at least I have the knowledge that it's there if I need it. Like if I want to go out for a pint then I can still walk home or, at the very least, get a taxi. Over in the states it seems like if you're in the suburbs that kinda thing just isn't really possible. This is all just my impression from film and TV though so I could be massively wrong!

@naoiko The southern states have always fascinated me. I don't know if I could cope with the isolation in the real back waters, but the old-world manners and style of the cities (New Orleans etc.) appeal to me a lot. Not because I am particularly mannered in that way, but just because it seems a real pocket of uniqueness. But yeah to be honest getting out of apartment living is a main thing for me moving out to the suburbs. It's been fine up until now, but I want to live somewhere now where we really have the freedom to put our own stamp on the place!

@horseman6 Shit man, as amazing as I'm sure it would be having all that space... Damn, if you've got your own ranch them I think I could safely say I would struggle! Do you think you will actually make that move? Leave the city behind and just raise cattle and stuff? Mental! Although saying that, I love star gazing so I bet you would get some amazing night skies!

I moved to the suburbs for sunlight and to hear birds that aren't pigeons and seagulls. Even though I live next to a busy parking lot I am not bothered as much by the early morning traffic noise as much as I was in the city. On the other hand I guess city dwellers are more active because they walk most places and can almost always find open shops, gyms etc.

You're kind of stuck without personal transport or cabs after midnight but that tradeoff is fine for an introvert like me. In fact I'd like to move to some house one day where I can blast my sound system all day without bothering anyone !nn!

Well, I don't live in Dublin, so I don't know if it's the same thing, but I will say I've always lived in the suburbs, and I think it's the best place to live, while urban and country are nice to visit, but are the two extreme's where as suburbs is a mix. The way you make it sound is as if you were going from the urban side to country side, which the suburbs are not. In the suburbs, everything is still in reach in terms of game stores, grocery stores, and what have you, so you're not going to be building a farm and growing crops on a field, ha ha. I live in Washington State, so neither the country or city is far from where I live.

@kmfrob: I've lived in suburbs in the US pretty much my whole life. I'm about a 30 drive from downtown Madison, Wisconsin, but there's a bar about a block and a half from my house, and there are a few restaurants nearby too. I only occasionally feel the need to go into the city.

Suburbs that were built around a metro center specifically as commuter communities can be rather bland and not very friendly to people who don't drive, but suburbs that were just small towns until a bigger city grew out to border them can be perfectly nice places in their own right.

@kmfrob: I've lived both places but in the US, so I don't know how much help that is to you. It's pretty different here than what I've seen in Europe.

I'd say it's easier than ever to stay connected socially in the suburbs today given the internet/smart phones and such. As long as you are willing to commute a bit longer to get to an event, shouldn't be too much of an impediment to you socially. But I imagine that depends a lot on your region's culture.

In the US I'd say it's usually cheaper and easier to live in the burbs and can actually be somewhat socially isolating to live inside the city some places. Heavily depends on where you are though. There's a lot of reasons for that, but I'll just touch on a couple.

The way the public school system funding works in much of the US (property tax), for many families the suburbs are essentially the surest way to get your kids an affordable perceived better education. i.e. low income neighborhood tend to have badly underfunded & consequently under-performing schools, which causes the wealthiest families in that neighborhood to move which further impoverishes the schools, causing more people to move out etc. It's a nasty negative feedback cycle that's politically nearly impossible to fix.

Also in the US, gasoline is relatively inexpensive here so having cars is not nearly prohibitively expensive as it seems to be in other parts of the world. The car in many places is basically a prerequisite for any life at all as most social functions, transportation infrastructure and amenities are designed around them unless you live in one of the few super dense urban centers like New York, Boston, Washington DC or San Francisco. Rail & the Bus system in most other places is infrequent, expensive and very slow due to lack of funding. The roads aren't often bike friendly either. There's certainly efforts underway to change all that, but the powerful Auto Industry lobbyists and massive prior investment in automobile infrastructure make that difficult to radically change. In the states the car-less lifestyle can be very difficult to pull off and the places you even can tend to be very expensive places to live in general.

@kmfrob: I've mostly lived in the country or suburbs most of my life, but recently moved into the city for the first time since forever. "suburban vs. rural" is far different in the U.S. than in Europe or many other parts of the world (I also lived in a town in Germany for a while as a kid so I'm somewhat familiar with that too). I think the key difference here is that in America, unless you live in one of a few cities, you drive, or else. Your driver's license IS your ID, so it's practically taken for granted that you are at least somewhat competent at driving. Typically if you live in a suburb you don't go "downtown" to the city too much, you drive to other suburbs, maybe more citified ones, to have fun. Even living in the city most people I know would rather drive (even with the annoying traffic), compared to taking a bus (which is the only kind of public transit in my city). Mostly I've lived in suburbs where it takes a 20-30 minute drive to get anywhere, but I've also lived in the country where you drive longer to get anywhere.

Here pretty much everyone who can afford it lives out in the suburbs (not me at this point; though you could argue whether this is the city or very citified suburbs). Most Americans if they're able to prefer big things: big houses, big tracts of land (yes, I said that). They like having spacious rooms and big yards and room for pets. Not everyone, but it's largely what I've seen so far from what people desire in a place to live (though most my age can't afford that).

I've lived in three very different places. You got where I was born--Bogalusa, Louisiana. A small town far north of New Orleans with a steel mill, ten thousand people, and not much else. It was as rural and southern as you can get. My grandparents' back yard was just a large clearing cut into a small forest that was too thick to even walk through.

My mom and dad separated when I was young so I didn't live there for very long, although I went back during summer vacation for many years. My mom took me back to live with her family in a suburb in the very northwest corner of Indiana. Not much to say about it. It's a suburb with 80k people and is as close to Chicago as you can get while being in Indiana.

Now, and for the past few years, I've lived in Chicago proper. The far north side, in Jefferson Park, in a one bedroom apartment I share with my girlfriend. We don't have a car. Don't need one. I never want to live in a suburb again. We live in a pretty boring neighborhood, all things considered. A lot of old people live here, and it's not super "hip" like, say, Logan Square. We're far from downtown, but it's still faster to take a train from where I am than to drive into downtown from anywhere outside the city. This puts what I'm about to say in context, because even a boring Chicago neighborhood offers a lot. Every Wednesday I walk fifteen minutes to my neighborhood theater and see hilarious improv comedy for 5 bucks, and sometimes hang out with the entertainers at a bar across the street after the show. Our neighborhood had a festival in the park with live music and an entire block's worth of food and merch stands. If I named every store and restaurant I could walk to in fifteen minutes or less this post would be far too long, but I'll just say it includes the following: vet, doctor's office, two dentists, hardware store, grocery store, library, two pharmacies, two head shops, upholsterer, tailor, etc.

Why anyone would choose to live anywhere but a large city is a mystery to me. I understand if you can't afford it, but if you can, why the hell wouldn't you? And Chicago is incredibly affordable.

Most of the people I know have followed the same path. Growing up in the suburbs -> move into the city -> move back out to the suburbs when they're starting a family.

It seems fairly logical, when you are in that sweet middle spot the city makes sense because it's closer to everything and most jobs are in the city. But it's pretty cramped to raise a family in an apartment, and you get a house with a lawn in the suburbs for the same price as a 2 room apartment downtown.

I guess I would call where I live rural. But there is no inner city here you either live in a suburb or the woods.

Haha, no, raising cattle sounds awful. I mean, I would love to have a couple horses, cows, chickens, goats, etc. But we want a semi self-sustained ranch and want to purchase wild game, specifically South African (my wife is from South Africa). So basically it would be a small game reserve and farm. Her dad lives on a game reserve and works on game farms, and her brother in law owns a game farm although they don't allow hunting yet. So it's kind of in her blood and I loved it when I visited South Africa. Basically I would live how Ted Nugent is living; and even though he's kind of crazy in an endearing sort of way, you should check out info on his ranch, it's amazing.

Schools are one of the most important things I'm looking into before a move. Anything up until 7th grade is fine basically anywhere but after that, I don't want to be terrified my kid is going to be shot, stabbed, raped, etc. You have to live in an extremely expensive part of almost any major city, especially in California if you want a good education there, and even then, it's not guaranteed. Although that may change in Los Angeles soon because they are introducing massive amounts of charter schools over the next few years because the school system is awful (the unions hate the idea though of course).

The rail and bus system is most cities except the ones you mentioned are awful and will never change due to cost, environmental issues, and willingness. The Los Angeles city council is going through with a plan to take away car lanes and adding bike lanes soon. Think about how fucking stupid that is. There are going to be a lot more road rage incidents against bikers here and the traffic is going to be even worse. Every time I hear someone say, just take public transit, I want to punch them. Even though traffic is awful, it would take probably an hour to get somewhere in LA with a car but probably 1.5 to 2 hours with public transit, so what's the point?

I grew up in what I guess people would call a suburb of San Francisco, although the town itself has over 100,000 people so its really more of an extension of the city outside of downtown. I now live in rural Northern California. It has it's pros and cons. It's pretty and quiet, but if it's 8:00 and you have no food in the house it's a bummer to know you have to drive minimum 20-30 minutes to get anything good.

I've been living in Germany's Rhine-Ruhr district for my entire life. Lived in the more suburban areas during my youth but moved straight to the city after that and haven't looked back since.

The way I live my life at this point in time I wouldn't have it any other way. It's such excellent "free" access to direct contact with all kinds of different people, cultures and activities. Finding a calm, green place isn't too hard either If you know what you're doing.

Hey guys thanks for all the responses. It's interesting to see the range of where people live on here!

As @scrawnto said, I think it the situation will be different depending on whether you are moving to a purposefully built suburb or moving to a town that has been caught in the over-spill of the city. Where I am moving is kind of a mix between the two in that up until the 50s it was just a small village on the outskirts of the traditional old city heart, but then huge swathes of public housing was built there to house the poor who were still living in city centre tenements at the time. I doubt I'll be too isolated though as it is just a 30 mins walk into town and there's a bus every 10 mins that stops right outside my house as well. Also, we are just 5 mins walk from Glasnevin which has some nice places to eat, a couple of nice coffee shops, and one of Ireland's greatest pubs!

Listening to some of the comments on here though, it really makes me feel that if I ever were lucky enough to land a job in the states I would really have to learn how to drive. How about the cities in the North West like Seattle and Portland? They always seem like pleasantly European-style cities in character so maybe they have decent public transports systems as well?

I currently live on the suburbs of a 19th century village in the US. (Yup, such things exist in the US especially in the North East.) So, there is no really heavy urban area just a compact village, unless you go off island.

If you're a 30 minute walk from the center of the city, that sounds like the perfect place to be. You can get to the city really easily but you don't have to live there. That's basically what I'm trying to find for myself right now.

You must be a fast walker. A 30 minute walk would take me...about 30 blocks, so not even out of the next neighborhood over. If you're 30 minutes from the city center is there anything worthwhile in your city that's out of walking distance?

@hamst3r@mavs

Yeah I know it must seem daft to moan about a 30mins walk, but it's not so much the actual distance that is worrying me, more the cultural aspect. Dublin is a small city and where we're moving to is kinda of like a huge self contained bubble of housing (containing everything from some of the city's roughest spots and families to some pretty nice parts) away from where everything takes place. I guess it's something like living in Brooklyn and complaining that you don't live in Manhattan (only without the vibrancy of somewhere like Brooklyn). So yeah it's more the cultural isolation I'm worried about than actual distance.

I miss being 10 minutes from Newcastle city centre. I like being near stuff.

I read this entire thing thinking he was moving from San Francisco to Dublin, CA (a city about 30 mins east of SF)

A 30 minute walk from downtown and be in a suburban community sounds like the perfect place to be.

Suburbs outside of Philadelphia. I would not have it any other way. City living sucks. Crime, Philadelphia is really Philthadelphia and nowhere to park a car,

I've lived in both, I honestly think inner suburbs is the best of both worlds. Your close enough to get to work/events/fun quickly but you have your own space probably your own home with a yard of some kind. You sound like you're in a good spot.

Inner city apartment living is cool but at some point you want a subwoofer, maybe a dog, a yard for a proper BBQ, the best solution would be a house in the city but they essentially don't exist in my city any more.

There is nothing positive about outer suburb living. Of course depending on the suburb, maybe its near something environmental that's great (beach, mountains). I've never felt as bored as I did when I moved back to my home suburb for 6 moths when returning from living overseas, and at least they had an old town centre a few nightclubs and some awesome beaches. New suburbs don't event have those things.

Rural and singular towns have their own pro's and cons.