the suburbs in the US are sprawling hellscapes full of cars and chain restaurants. they were originally created in the US as a result of increased car ownership which allowed people to live farther away from their jobs in the cities, and the migration of black people into cities which led to "white flight" from the cities into the suburbs. a lot of middle class professionals still live in the suburbs and commute into nearby cities for work. where I live people sit in traffic for hours just to get to and from work, even though without traffic it's like 20 minute drive. the schools in the suburbs are usually better funded too.

I don't think those same original conditions occurred in Europe, but I've been wondering a lot about suburbs compare in different countries.

There's a lot shit tied up in suburbs. For one, there's this post war economic motivation of building shitloads of single family homes for returning soldiers. Expanding out of the cities so white people could get away from minorities. Car culture. An anti-communist/By your bootstraps ideology of creating a world where the nuclear family is the only social unit, and consumption is the only activity that can be undertaken. So much different bullshit.

deleted by creator

I think in america, the suburbs are where most of the comfortably off middle class lives
whereas here in england it's a mix of middle class people and council estates anywhere that isn't a big city

The idea is more or less the same but you have to understand the historical context of US suburbanization and American racism.

Suburbanization happened around the same time as deindustrialization and Black migration to the North. As Blacks migrated north they were met with discrimination in housing and employment so they were forced into ghettos. The most common way to segregate housing were through racial covenants, redlining, and intimidation. Racial covenants were put in the deeds of homes and would prevent Black people from buying homes in certain neighborhoods. They would say things like this home shall not be sold to someone of the negro race. I want to say these were legal until the 50s. Redlining comes from maps the federal government used to back mortgages. During the great depression the federal government started insuring mortgages so banks could offer lower rates than they otherwise would. Well, the federal government made a color coded map to decide where were the best places to make loans with red being the worst. Well, as you can imagine, black neighborhoods were always considered bad so nobody could get a mortgage in those neighborhoods so there was never any investment. Then there was straight intimidation. It wasn't uncommon for mobs to show to show up if a Black family moved into the wrong neighborhood. All this happened in central cities and new suburbs. Levittown is often considered the first suburb and it Black people were not allowed to live there.

While all this was going on the federal government was building freeways right through the middle of cities to newly built suburbs that were all backed by federal loans. Since there were so many barriers for Black to get into the suburbs the suburbs were pretty much all white. US cities got totaly fucked. They were destroyed by freeways, all the jobs and tax base left, and the people left over were legally second class citizens until the 60s.

This is why there is such a divide between US cities and their suburbs. Since about WWII US cities have been disproportionately poor and black while the suburbs have been wealthier and white.

I think the bijlmer near Amsterdam was supposed to be an American style suburb for yuppies. but squaters cancelled the requisite highway, the yuppies were too attached to their inner city shit. so it became populated by ethnic minorities.

Also there was some plane crash and some suspicious people in hasmat suits appeared who were thought to be mossad which led to conspiracy theories.