SUBS v TOWNIES

 The town I grew up in back in South Jersey was filled with old log cabins packed on streets with no curbs and filled with kids riding their bikes to school. The most interesting part about this town, Medford Lakes, is that it was surrounded by large Suburbs with cookie cutter houses, tree lined streets and freshly paved roads. Being from the ‘log cabin lakes’ part of town I was always jealous of my friends who all lived in these large houses and got to play on their neighborhood playgrounds but as I look back at it now I am happy I did not grow up there. Since studying urban sprawl my sophomore year of college I have always had this stigma with that lifestyle. It seems to be car dependent and almost stuck in the consumerism of the 1970s. But is this still the case? Now that the trees have grown, pavement cracked, houses weathered, do these old suburban developments still hold their housewife charm? I personally don't think so and I believe that these suburbs are going to become obsolete as the generation living in those houses retire from them and the youth of today begins to circle back to city living - even in a post pandemic world. What interests me most is that there has always been a tug and pull from suburbia to city and I would love to know what the next ‘tug out’ away from the city is going to look like? Will the suburbs become junkspace that we will have to retrofit? Or will they become historical models we all gawk to live in one day to remember the past?