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People on this forum like dense suburbs with pretensions of urbanity of which D.C. has a good few strewn across the landscape. A good number of them are also pretty wealthy, so meet all your generic QOL markers that many people look for.
My personal issue is that I'm not really into the faux urbanity of suburbia - if I move to the suburbs I want the suburbs, not a gentrified generic version of a city. I want space, a slower pace, fewer crowds, less mingling. If you want bars and happening nightlife districts, if you want to pick up 25 year olds for brief encounters, if you want masses of people moving around, busy public buildings and all that...that's what a city is for.
That gripe aside, structurally the problem is they rarely actually fit into the landscape and not a ton of planning has occurred to integrate these different settlements with each other. The suburban sphere is pretty much all over the place in terms of vibe but also appearance. You have some of the ugliest deserts of freeway interchanges and strip malls I've seen here, and they might be right next to a quiet SFH neighborhood, but there's a couple new apartment towers right across and a fancy new Whole Foods or Target in the ground floor. It's like an old small town got half-converted to a post-war suburb which then got half-converted into an edge city and then some new urbanism-inspired mixed use developments got added on. The different eras and stages of American 20th/21st century urban and suburban development got all piled on top of each other chaotically as the area developed in spurts of growth.
Just on the weekend I drove down Richmond Highway past all the new developments along what they now call "National Landing" and at first you see the ugly 1960s/70s brutalism of Crystal City then you hit the new apartment buildings and stores (which will look just as ugly in another 20 years once the 'new building' veneer is off) and on the other side you still got all the old garages, warehouses and stuff from when that area was just kind of a crappy low-value commercial zone on the edge of Alexandria. The D.C. area is full of that kind of ugly dissonance.
Some of the "inner suburb" (i.e. southern Arlington / Alexandria but also Bethesda on the other side of Potomac or even Silver Spring) are definitely patchwork as they are seeing redevelopments - but often time it's block by block, i.e. they tear down an ugly strip mall for a mixed-use development only to have that being next to another ugly strip mall that haven't got redeveloped yet...all these are on a main corridor (i.e. US-1 you describe...you can see the same thing along Rockville Pike in MoCo) where the next block over is older SFHs neighborhood. Some of those mixed-use development are TODs anyway.
At the end it's a result of those suburban areas being built up in the worst era of suburbia (1950s/60s) - before the advent of master-planned area (Columbia MD and Reston VA being prime example of early master planned area). Speaking from DT Bethesda perspective, it look totally different even 10 years ago compare to now anyway.
Couple more top 10 suburb lists for me (again just the ones I like the most, not necessarily the best ones to live in)
Bay Area (excl. Oakland and San Jose)
Berkeley
Daly City (basically a continuation of SF's Sunset District but more interesting ethnically --- huge Filipino population)
Palo Alto
San Mateo
Alameda
Albany
San Rafael (kinda the "downtown" of the North Bay)
Dublin (even if it's all just sprawl with no downtown, idk, I like the "unfinished" look of it, and some of the developments are surprisingly dense and well-planned, with parks and rec centers)
Burlingame
Morgan Hill (kinda interesting geographically, being where two mountain ranges gradually flatten into hills and meet)
Seattle/Tacoma
Olympia
White Center
Shoreline
Edmonds
Everett
North Bend/Tanner
Bremerton
Redmond
Buckley (those Rainier views)
DuPont (history is interesting, and the gas station there is always a useful stop on road trips)
Of the cities listed, for me, NYC and Boston have the nicest collection of suburbs.
Both areas have a large collection of historic town centers, surrounded by charming homes with mature tree covers and sidewalks with good rail connection to the core. In addition both have scenic natural settings with parks, trails, natural areas, hills, and water everywhere: rivers, lakes, seashores.
Of the other traditional urban cities, Chicago has some very charming suburbs and the lake is great, but much of the inland area is very flat. Philly also has some nice streetcar suburbs, but limited water. DC's Old Town Alexandria and Tacoma Park are both great in their own way, but much of the area is pretty generic sprawl.
The west coast is certainly on another level when it comes to natural beauty. LA has a great collection of suburbs like Santa Monica, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Malibu. But, for me personally, I don't like how the area isn't anchored with a traditional urban core (even though yes, there is transit). The SF and Seattle area also have amazing suburbs.
The sunbelt has some nice ares. Atlanta has beautiful tree cover and rolling topography. But, for me, I would ding it for: lots of poorly planned modern sprawl and I love water. And so forth.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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2023 Best Cities to Live in America:
1. Cambridge, MA
2. Arlington, VA
3. The Woodlands, TX
4. Naperville, IL
5. Columbia, MD
6. Berkeley, CA
7. Irvine, CA
8. Ann Arbor, MI
9. Overland Park, KS
10. Bellevue, WA
The full 2023 list can be seen on niche.com, there's a few more California, DC, Texas, and ATL suburbs there.
1. Cambridge, MA
2. Arlington, VA
3. The Woodlands, TX
4. Naperville, IL
5. Columbia, MD
6. Berkeley, CA
7. Irvine, CA
8. Ann Arbor, MI
9. Overland Park, KS
10. Bellevue, WA
The full 2023 list can be seen on niche.com, there's a few more California, DC, Texas, and ATL suburbs there.
This is interesting in light of the distinction we make between "city" and "suburb" hereabouts.
While all 10 could technically be called "suburbs" of a nearby core city, none of them really fit the image of a "suburb" as we have come to know it, though many of them are more suburban than urban in form.
Most Bostonians would say that #1 Cambridge is more properly considered an extension of it. I would say the same thing for Arlington, Va., relative to DC. (Besides, Arlington County was originally part of the District itself before the Feds gave it back to Virginia in 1846.)
Cambridge, Berkeley and Ann Arbor are all college towns close to metropolitan centers, although Ann Arbor is the core city of its own metro and thus technically not a suburb at all. Whether Irvine can be considered a "college town" because it has a University of California campus is debatable; I'd put it in the class of "planned cities" that includes Columbia, Md., and The Woodlands, Texas.
The remaining three not mentioned yet — Naperville, Ill., Overland Park, Kan. and Bellevue, Wash. — contain edge cities.
I think that for purposes of this particular discussion, the Niche list that fits better is its "Best Places to Live in America" list. Here are the top 10 of those communities:
1. Chesterbrook, PA (Philadelphia suburb)
2. Colonial Village, Arlington, VA
3. Ardmore, PA (Philadelphia suburb)
4. Hyde Park-Spanishtown Creek, Tampa, FL
5. Penn Wynne, PA (Philadelphia suburb)
6. City Center, Santa Monica, CA
7. Cambridgeport, Cambridge, MA
8. North Quarter, Orlando, FL
9. Devon, PA (Philadelphia suburb)
10. Great Neck Gardens, NY (New York City suburb on Long Island)
I will, however, note that this list is evenly split between suburbs and core-city neighborhoods (counting Arlington and Cambridge as core-city extensions as mentioned above and also throwing Santa Monica into that camp).
Note also that Philadelphia's suburbs are very well represented in that top 10 list. All but Chesterbrook lie on the storied Main Line (Penn Wynne is a neighborhood in Wynnewood). Edited to add: Chesterbrook, which is also a master-planned community (exclusively residential save for a shopping center on its edge) — built in the 1970s and looks it — has topped this list every year since at least 2018, when I started paying attention to it. I've gotten tired of writing the annual "Chesterbrook Named Best Place to Live in America" story, and at least this year, I will have some other suburbs to mention in it.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 03-23-2023 at 05:48 AM..
Note also that Philadelphia's suburbs are very well represented in that top 10 list. All but Chesterbrook lie on the storied Main Line (Penn Wynne is a neighborhood in Wynnewood). Edited to add: Chesterbrook, which is also a master-planned community (exclusively residential save for a shopping center on its edge) — built in the 1970s and looks it — has topped this list every year since at least 2018, when I started paying attention to it. I've gotten tired of writing the annual "Chesterbrook Named Best Place to Live in America" story, and at least this year, I will have some other suburbs to mention in it.
Yeah, it's interesting to see Chesterbrook topping the list perennially, but I agree that it would be nice to see some "switching up."
I think what makes the Philadelphia suburbs so prominent on the Niche ranking--and this is something surprisingly that hasn't been discussed much in this thread in an age of insane housing costs and never-ending inflation--is that the Philly 'burbs are still an incredibly good value, especially by East Coast standards.
Dare I say that the Philadelphia region has amongst the best (along with Chicago) income-to-COL ratio amongst the other comparison cities in this thread, which really boosts relative wealth?
The choice of "Colonial Village" in Arlington discredits that list and its methodology pretty much instantly. It's essentially a bunch of middling to bad apartment complexes and office buildings off a commercial strip (and by no means a particularly high end one) with a tiny number of SFHs left over. If you own one of those SFHs and live in it, you're a lucky person but that's a very small % of the population in that area.
There are some advantages - it's a very easy and quick commute to D.C. and there's restaurants and bars in the vicinity. However this can be said about much of Arlington. It zones to Yorktown High which is an advantage in some ways, but quite frankly probably doesn't matter to most of the younger adults living there.
Really, it's at best a mediocre area of Arlington, so that shows you how misleading these types of lists can be. The #2 best place to live in America? It's not even in the top 10 of neighborhoods in its own county/city.
This is interesting in light of the distinction we make between "city" and "suburb" hereabouts.
While all 10 could technically be called "suburbs" of a nearby core city, none of them really fit the image of a "suburb" as we have come to know it, though many of them are more suburban than urban in form.
Most Bostonians would say that #1 Cambridge is more properly considered an extension of it. I would say the same thing for Arlington, Va., relative to DC. (Besides, Arlington County was originally part of the District itself before the Feds gave it back to Virginia in 1846.)
Cambridge, Berkeley and Ann Arbor are all college towns close to metropolitan centers, although Ann Arbor is the core city of its own metro and thus technically not a suburb at all. Whether Irvine can be considered a "college town" because it has a University of California campus is debatable; I'd put it in the class of "planned cities" that includes Columbia, Md., and The Woodlands, Texas.
The remaining three not mentioned yet — Naperville, Ill., Overland Park, Kan. and Bellevue, Wash. — contain edge cities.
I think that for purposes of this particular discussion, the Niche list that fits better is its "Best Places to Live in America" list. Here are the top 10 of those communities:
1. Chesterbrook, PA (Philadelphia suburb)
2. Colonial Village, Arlington, VA
3. Ardmore, PA (Philadelphia suburb)
4. Hyde Park-Spanishtown Creek, Tampa, FL
5. Penn Wynne, PA (Philadelphia suburb)
6. City Center, Santa Monica, CA
7. Cambridgeport, Cambridge, MA
8. North Quarter, Orlando, FL
9. Devon, PA (Philadelphia suburb)
10. Great Neck Gardens, NY (New York City suburb on Long Island)
I will, however, note that this list is evenly split between suburbs and core-city neighborhoods (counting Arlington and Cambridge as core-city extensions as mentioned above and also throwing Santa Monica into that camp).
Note also that Philadelphia's suburbs are very well represented in that top 10 list. All but Chesterbrook lie on the storied Main Line (Penn Wynne is a neighborhood in Wynnewood). Edited to add: Chesterbrook, which is also a master-planned community (exclusively residential save for a shopping center on its edge) — built in the 1970s and looks it — has topped this list every year since at least 2018, when I started paying attention to it. I've gotten tired of writing the annual "Chesterbrook Named Best Place to Live in America" story, and at least this year, I will have some other suburbs to mention in it.
1. Chesterbrook, PA (Philly suburb)
2. Ardmore, PA (Philly suburb)
3. Penn Wynne, PA (Philly suburb)
4. Devon, PA (Philly suburb)
5. Great Neck Gardens, NY (NYC LI suburb)
6. Brookline, MA (Boston suburb)
7. Great Neck Plaza, NY (NYC LI suburb, this is literally next to #5)
8. North Bethesda, MD (DC suburb)
9. Herricks, NY (NYC LI suburb / hamlet)
10. Syosset, NY (NYC LI suburb)
11. North Potomac, MD (DC suburb)
12. Kensington, NY (NYC LI suburb, next to #5 and #7)
13. Okemos, MI (Lansing MI suburb)
14. Swarthmore, PA (Philly suburb)
15. Holly Hills, CO (Denver "suburb"...more like an unincorporated enclave small neighborhood in Denver)
16. Cinco Ranch, TX (Houston suburb...technically more a giant master planned neighborhood within Katy)
17. Innsbrook, VA (Richmond suburb)
18. Carmel, IN (Indianapolis suburb)
19. Los Alamos, NM (Not really even a suburb...but basically a town and probably most of families has somebody that work in Los Alamos National Lab)
20. Aspinwall, PA (Pittsburgh suburb)
A few other Philly suburb are in Top 50, as is the "inner" MoCo suburb (i.e. Kensington, Chevy Chase) and a few St. Louis suburbs (Clayton, Chesterfield, etc.)
tl;dr: Philly suburbs does rate high...not really a big surprises though.
Couple more top 10 suburb lists for me (again just the ones I like the most, not necessarily the best ones to live in)
Bay Area (excl. Oakland and San Jose)
Berkeley
Daly City (basically a continuation of SF's Sunset District but more interesting ethnically --- huge Filipino population)
Palo Alto
San Mateo
Alameda
Albany
San Rafael (kinda the "downtown" of the North Bay)
Dublin (even if it's all just sprawl with no downtown, idk, I like the "unfinished" look of it, and some of the developments are surprisingly dense and well-planned, with parks and rec centers)
Burlingame
Morgan Hill (kinda interesting geographically, being where two mountain ranges gradually flatten into hills and meet)
Seattle/Tacoma
Olympia
White Center
Shoreline
Edmonds
Everett
North Bend/Tanner
Bremerton
Redmond
Buckley (those Rainier views)
DuPont (history is interesting, and the gas station there is always a useful stop on road trips)
Of the cities listed, for me, NYC and Boston have the nicest collection of suburbs.
Both areas have a large collection of historic town centers, surrounded by charming homes with mature tree covers and sidewalks with good rail connection to the core. In addition both have scenic natural settings with parks, trails, natural areas, hills, and water everywhere: rivers, lakes, seashores.
I'd have a really hard time choosing and accumulating the right suburbs across the different areas in the NYC metro.
For Boston, which is something I've done before, here are a few of my favorites:
I wanted to do a few more around the metro, like Beverly and Cohasset, but I ran out of steam. A few of the most affluent suburbs, like Dover, Weston, Carlisle, Lincoln, have few streetviews and do them no justice. But, they are absolutely stunning, especially on a drive in the spring and fall.
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