Reflective Essay: My Understanding Of The Suburbs

The suburbs are envisioned to be spacious, uniform, and clean— epitomes of the American dream— while cities are often deemed crowded and dirty concrete jungles. However, the sight of busy streets filled with honking and yelling, a Walmart or McDonalds on every corner, and people rushing from home to work and work to home provides a sense of calmness that cannot be found in the suburbs. The city signifies people toiling to build and advance their careers, while the suburbs signify well-established affluent families. My understanding of the suburbs may be completely wrong for I have lived in a city all my life, and that is all that I have known. Therefore, the little understanding I do have has been developed solely from secondary experience such as movies as stories. However, from my secondary experiences I have developed my own understanding of what the suburbs are and reasoning as to why …show more content…
Typically a great distance away from the city, they must have been widely developed after the creation of better roads and transportation. Although people live in the suburbs, work pulls them back to the city; therefore, it is highly unlikely that people would have favored the suburbs had the constant need to be able to go to and from not been met. I also imagine that houses in the suburbs and transportation costs were not cheap; therefore, they served as an escape for those with more wealth. Wealthier people who could afford to live in such areas were not forced to live in overpopulated, dirty, and polluted cities. However, how true this notion stands today is questionable due to the rising costs of homes in the city. Homes in the suburbs are now seen as cheaper options or better value for one’s money in comparison to the smaller, more overpriced properties within the city boundaries. Regardless, in either case, the suburbs serve as a barrier between the rich and the