CULTURE | The city versus suburbs debate is all about spin, but which environment is truly “better” and can better even be quantified?

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When you pit cramped quarters, noise, and crime against open space, quiet, and safer neighbourhoods, the suburbs come out on top. Then again, if you stage a throw down between homogenized homes and hot nightlife, the city wins, easy.

So which environment is actually better? Is it better to live in the city, or the ‘burbs? The answer isn’t exactly clear.

“It’s too simplistic to say urban life is good and suburban life is bad,” says Dr. Lawrence Frank, a UBC Professor who specializes in the interactions between land use, travel behaviour, air quality, and health.*

“It’s not about whether an area is considered urban or suburban,” he says. “Being able to have choices about how you get around and having the ability to move around is the key.”

So city versus suburbs, which would he choose?

Frank says that personally, he would choose to live in an area where he would not be solely reliant on an automobile and that such communities don’t exist exclusively in either the city or the suburbs.

“I think there are walkable places everywhere,” he says. “Some of the newest suburban communities are very well designed, while obviously, there are badly designed communities present in any city.”

Frank says Canadians can look to Vancouver as a perfect example of a well-designed urban environment.

“It’s a real example of a walkable wonderland,” he said. “We have a lot of open space ribboned along the water’s edge that provides mobility for pedestrians, cyclists, etc. These open space corridors – that are beautiful and practical – are a great example of how to successfully create ways for people to get places. People need corridors like this … they also need quality public transit, social interaction, and sustainability. It’s takes investment, but it’s not like we don’t know how to do it.”

But even if walkable communities are better for you, health-wise (supposedly, ignoring accessibility concerns, of course), when considering where you’re going to live, personality plays a major role as well.

Andrew Hart, a graduate student in architecture at the University of Toronto has quality workmanship on his mind when considering the city versus suburbs debate.

“The suburban style is very cookie cutter,” he said. “Personally, I think the houses out there are not only inaccessible, but generic … which isn’t to say the city doesn’t have its problems too. The new townhouses they’re always building now, for example – the condos in the city centre – they’re so small, and the space in them is so awkward. In some cases, you can’t even fit a double bed into the so-called master bedroom. And there is absolutely no reason that they should be that way. It’s just an example of bad design.”

Hart thinks there are a lot of benefits to looking into dwelling in older urban areas.

Photo by Ryan Waring on Unsplash

“In an old house, for example,” he said, “you might find hardwood floors and lathe and plaster, which is really good for sound insulation. In a lot of cases, the quality of the older buildings you find in the city is just better.”

As for culture, most of the twenty-somethings Dose spoke to for this piece came out in favour of city life. “Suburbs create the sort of culture where people will walk out of an outlet store, get into their cars and drive a couple of blocks to go to another outlet store,” said Hart. “It’s sad.”

Frank agrees that life in such an environment is isolating.

He also admits that such a life is often typified by the suburbs, even if it’s not exclusively a suburban problem. And since banging this particular drum is his thing, was quick to say that this can create all sorts of health problems for residents. “There is a health risk, but how that risk manifests itself depends on who you are … It’s very specific to person to person.”

Frank says that the bottom line is that we need to stop making it more cost effective for people to move to outlying, isolated areas.

“We need to stop creating highways by which people can commute to and from the large, inexpensive houses out there.” He says that if we don’t stop sprawling, “the result will be more air pollution, energy consumption, increased time in cars … and single use, disconnected environments. All that adds up to a less healthy, less environmentally sustainable urban fabric.”

Sidebar: Dose readers weigh in on the city versus suburbs question.

Patty Ambrogi, 24, Fashion Merchandising Student: 

“I used to love the idea of the suburbs – my grandparents lived out there and I thought the houses were really pretty. But at the time, I was twelve years old. All I knew was that I could ride my bike out on the street and not worry about being hit by a car. Now I think the houses in the city have more character, but you know, I also couldn’t live in the suburbs just because there’s now all the traffic. There’s no way I have the patience to spend two hours in traffic every day. People do it, but not me. I don’t know when I stopped liking the suburbs and started liking the city, but my boyfriend is an architect [Andrew Hart, as mentioned] and I can’t help listening to him and taking some of his ideas in – so he might have influenced me. I don’t know. I just know I like the city better.”

Rob Macgowan, 25, Legal Articling Student

“I’ve lived in both, and I don’t know that I could really say one is better than the other. I think it depends on what you’re looking for in a living environment. I know a lot of people with families, or who are older, decide to move to the suburbs for the supposedly better education, crime rates – all those buzzword reasons people tend to go for, but I really think it depends on what kind of person you are. If you’re into having night life – like bars and restaurants – within walking distance, then obviously the city would be better. Then again, the suburbs are definitely quieter, and some people are looking for that. I live in the city now, but I enjoyed growing up in the suburbs and I definitely wouldn’t discount the possibility that I may end up living there again.”

Andrew Hart, 26, Architecture Grad Student

“I would prefer the city for a lot of reasons, particularly because I hate to commute, but also because I’d rather live in a smaller, more restricted space than a big suburban house. I don’t have that many possessions and I don’t think I need a giant space to hold the stuff I have. It’s just a really different sort of life. In the city, you tend to spend more time outside of your house, taking advantage of the city’s amenities. It’s not like that in the suburbs.

A version of this article published in Dose on August 8, 2005. See clipping. And read on for some (possibly) interesting notes from 2018. More culture pieces are here.

Published in Dose, August 8, 2005.

2018: This piece was a nightmare to work on.

It went through so many edits and rewrites and the final version was idiotic (see clip).

When I initially pitched the piece, what I said was, “I was inspired by a study done by RAND Corporation that said that living in the burbs had a negative effect on physical well being, and is linked to chronic physical conditions. If that’s the case, I’m interested to see what living in the city does to health and compare the two from every angle to see if one consistently comes out on top.”

At the same time, what I didn’t say was that, like so many urban-dwelling 20-somethings, I irrationally hated the suburbs and planned to skew my piece that way.

I was also stupid enough to think that “obesity” was a medical condition. I didn’t understand that it was actually just a medicalized description for bodies that may or may not have any number of real medical conditions (conditions that in every single case, also affect thin people).

And unsurprisingly, since I was a 25 year old moron, I wasn’t thinking at all about issues of gentrification, accessibility, or the economic class divide. And Dose didn’t want any of that anyway. What I’ve included here is my first draft of the story, as sent to an editor at Dose, a dude named Duncan.

Duncan’s response to the first draft you see above was this:

“NO. NEEDS WORK. CALL ME.”

He really enjoyed his all caps.

So I did call him. And then I produced a second draft. Here’s his response to the second draft, in screen-grab form (see image).

Yelly caps are fun. Editors like this are fun.

Anyway, the piece went through several more rewrites, then there was the inevitable copyediting massacre that came right before publication.

Oh, and as with the dumb piece I wrote about “wedding season survival” or whateverthefuck, when I needed quotes, I went to friends. Everyone other than the “expert” in this piece was a friend or friend-of-a-friend, which is sketchy as hell, I know, but I just couldn’t stomach more streeters.

If memory serves, the final piece resulted in my first bits of serious hate mail and online trolling!

Yay! Angry men writing in to tell me what a “fucking idiot” I was, and that sort of thing. Thanks, Dose!  Good times, good times.

*In 2005, Dr. Frank was a UBC prof who’d co-authored  a couple of books, published by Island Press. I’d found him because in June of that year, The American Journal of Preventive Medicine published his “study” entitled Obesity Relationships with Community Design, Physical Activity, and Time Spent in Cars, a work ostensibly about “the odds of being obese.” I didn’t know enough at the time to see it for the fatphobic near-junk-science it was. The media LOVES the diet industry and hates fatties, so Frank’s study was unsurprisingly featured in  Time, on CNN, ABC news, and over 300 media outlets worldwide. Sigh. At least he advocated for public transit. It’s possible he wasn’t a monster. I don’t know. I include these facts because I’m so embarrassed that I was ever a part of this utter. fucking. nonsense.