alt Hacker News> they don't close the time gap
During peak hours maybe, or in very poorly designed or overcrowded cities, but ultimately if everyone is using the same roads then you will eventually sit in the same traffic if you're trying to get to the same places? Travel time might not be that much longer but it will be longer
> It would be fascinating to hear from those who gave all three types of places a fair shake and still settled on the suburbs in the end
I am one of those people. I grew up in suburbs, my family moved to the countryside in my teens, and I spent my 20s in dense urban areas, settled in the suburbs now
When I lived in the country I did often joke with my friends that I could be anywhere in the city in 20 minutes faster than they could, because I could get far north or far south faster than going through the city
But the tradeoff was that 20 minutes was a hard minimum. I could not get anywhere faster than that really
> but ultimately if everyone is using the same roads then you will eventually sit in the same traffic if you're trying to get to the same places?
Once you get to the arterial roads that take the traffic to the amenities that's true, but it is often slow going just to get that far.
Fair to say that is less true if you are on the edge of the suburbs, but, for the sake of this discussion, are you really living in the suburbs if you are right beside the action? I think that goes against the premise presented in the beginning.
> my family moved to the countryside in my teens
Not to diminish or dismiss your experience, but can a teenager really give something like that a fair shake? Like you indicate, you ended up there because your family brought you there, not because you chose to go there to make your own life. Typically, teenagers have limited autonomy and really can't experience it for what it is. You had an experience, but don't you think it would be an entirely different experience if you moved to the countryside now when you can fully shape the experience into being what you want it to be, not what your parents (or equivalent) wanted it to be?