How to Walk in Suburbia
The suburbs are walkable but not easily navigated
Despite the rumors to the contrary, it turns out that the suburbs are quite walkable. “Walkable” seems to mean one of two things. The first is how easy the area is for accomplishing the various tasks that need to be done in everyday life on foot. On this measure, the suburbs are poor. They simply aren’t close enough to the things you need to do, they will score low in measures like the Walk Score.
There is another element of walkability however, that is are places actively unwalkable. Which here means, it is actively dangerous to move around on foot. Will you be killed crossing the street. Will you have to constantly endure the sounds and emissions of nearby vehicles. In this respect most residential suburbs are walkable.
Suburban streets are, by design, quiet. There is little traffic. There are often sidewalks, or if there are not, there is a sufficient paucity of traffic to make them not necessarily. Suburbs contain many of the aesthetic elements that people value in walkable areas. Green spaces are often sought out as places to walk, and while the suburbs aren’t exactly the epitome of nature, the lawns, gardens, and (especially in older suburbs) the large trees are quite pleasant enough. The fact that they are pleasant enough is one reason they are such popular places to live.
Suburbs can be hard to define, but look at the satellite view of your city, and you can see them. Squiggly streets. cul-de-sac, disconnected collections of homes. The term “suburbia” is a tricky one, the term is (much like the slugs on my old college campus) as slippery as it is commonplace. When I say “suburbia” this is what I mean: Areas of the city, that consist of detached single-family homes, on non-gridded streets, in an auto dependent area, outside of the central core of the city.
This definition applies to many places. It should, there is a lot of suburbia in America. But also there are a lot of different suburbias. Cities aren’t a single suburbia but evolving rings of different iterations of suburban development roughly moving out from a historic core. Walk out from any city core in America and you will move from one version of suburbia to another. Cross a street and the ages, materials, sizes, of the houses will all shift at once. This largely has to do with when the houses were created, but each suburbia will have different economic, demographic, and visual characteristics.
The primary criticism of suburbia is its sameness, which is true within each suburbia. Each individual suburbia likely has only a handful of different housing designs. However, take a walk of any significant length in any city and you will likely pass through several suburbia. In my midwestern college town, an afternoon walk to the edge of town will take me through a variety of suburbs.
In general, older suburbs are often a little more aesthetic interest and beauty, especially if they have well established trees. Richer suburbs can have more interesting homes and more interesting or more involved landscaping. Brand new suburbs have the least amount of variety, but offer both a chance to see how the city is evolving in real time, and a strangely pleasant feeling of not being anywhere at all[1].
If you live in suburbia, and there is a very good chance you do, do not let that stop you from walking. In terms of walkability the suburbs are fine. They are perfectly pleasant places to go for an amble, as millions of dog walkers can attest.
There is a problem with walking in the suburbs however. This is a problem with walking in many places in America, but it is especially acute in suburban areas. The suburbs are tricky to walk though not because they are hard to walk in, but because they are hard to navigate.
The suburbs are disorienting. There are lots of things that make the suburbs disorienting. Most of these are by design. The first is that the streets are not straight, instead they curve gradually. On foot, this a gentle enough that you never feel like you are turning, but it becomes difficult
to keep track of the direction you are actually going.
The second reason the suburbs are hard to navigate is because they lack reference points. The houses within each suburbia do all look the same. To make matters worse, suburb designers seem to like to theme the street names.
The third reason why the suburbs are hard to navigate is many of the streets don’t actually go anywhere. Streets that don’t go anywhere are sort of the whole point of suburbia, which is designed to maximize residential quiet. This means no through traffic. It also means lots of dead ends and cul-de-sacs. The pedestrian is constantly checking their map to try to figure out if they are indeed going the right direction.
The last reason wayfinding in the suburbs is hard is because there are often only a few exits. Most suburbs have only a few ways to leave them and one or two winding paths that make it all the way through. Many suburbs have just a single way to exit them in each cardinal direction, and not even that sometimes.
Pedestrian wayfinding in America is next to nonexistent, but gridded streets and context usually provides enough to get by. In the suburbs its harder. Of course, by staring at your phone it is easy enough to maintain your bearings, but the whole point of walking is to not stare at your phone. This problem is easily solved. The answer is going to sound like a joke, but I’m serious. Suburbs need “this way out” signs. Or “this way to YXZ street”. It really wouldn’t take much. You could do it with a few well-placed stickers.
I’ve ordered some, they’ll be here later this week.
Happy Walking!
[1] Not coincidentally the chance to be nowhere at all is also the great merit of Starbucks Coffee.