There’s a simple reason I like the suburbs.
Living in the city=living with crime, liberals, freaks, gays, dirt, traffic and noise.
Living in the country=driving to the city to work unless you like living on minimum wage...
I know you’re more a fan of city living but that’s a minority of conservatives.
My house is almost 6 years old and was bought before the boom and while its value is far less than it was during the height of the boom, it is still valued far in excess of what I paid and I don’t owe much on it either.
Two of my 4 kids have now been able to buy homes at bargain prices. One will soon and the oldest is stuck in a bad loan on an existing mortgage. 3 out of 4 ain’t bad.
But my point is that, increasingly, you are getting all of that in the suburbs, too - especially in California. You've got to go way out to the backwoods now to avoid it.
I lived in the suburbs most of my life, and now split time between two cities, living right downtown in both. I can't say that the quality of urban life is appreciably worse than suburban life in either city, though twenty years ago the differences were doubtless much greater. If suburbs were what they used to be, I would probably prefer to live in one - but they've become the worst of both worlds in a lot of ways.
A very unpleasant truth is that stereotypical urban/suburban quality of life differences are primarily differences in proximity to majority black neighborhoods. In a lot of West Coast cities, lower-income blacks have been priced out (or driven out by illegal immigrants) and have relocated to suburban areas - resulting in a patchwork quilt of safe/unsafe areas that offers little advantage over urban living. Wealthy whites are returning to cities in droves, and the cycle is starting over again.