here's a post i made awhile ago showing all of the pre-war railroad town centers in chicagoland:

maplewood, mo would be another favorite of mine, and another pre-war suburb (rail serviced) ive lived in:

https://explorestlouis.com/wp-conten...nchesterRd.jpg
explorestlouis.com

https://images1.apartments.com/i2/Rm...chester-rd.jpg
apartments.com

In Canada, Westmount is the best "suburb" hands down - it's about as suburban as Brookline.

Newport and Huntington have their strengths as well. I don't go there often, but they're fun.


As no one said Long Beach? Does it count?

I liked Tempe, at least near the train station. Cool place.

I grew up in St. Charles so I'm very familiar with them all. Elgin is by far the most interesting as far as "urban bones" go, IMO; between the downtown area and the Victorian style mansions. Geneva is what St. Charles aspires to be--a good amount of walkability for a town its size and very well maintained. It's definitely worth a day trip if you're after some old fashioned quaintness. It reminds me a bit of Chicago's Lincoln Square spread out over an entire town. St. Charles is actually doing some work to build more downtown density beyond the strip on Main Street. Batavia is another--some cool limestone buildings downtown (although pretty small sample size) and 19th century SFHs.

Wow this is really cool! I've actually tried to find a comprehensive list like this before when I've been bored and looking to see a new suburb (worth seeing) that I'd never been to before. I'll be checking back this fall when I'm in the mood to kill an afternoon exploring!

I love Long Beach, lived there for many years, and would live again. I just don’t consider it a suburb.

Hmm. In KC nothing really stands out.

Given that Oak Park and Evanston both directly border Chicago and are accessible via CTA, I'll go a bit further out and say Elmhurst. Great walkable downtown core, a good number of historic buildings, and new construction galore due to the Metra station smack dab in the center of town.

Aaron (Glowrock)

yeah, evanston and oak park's status as "suburbs" is really only a quirk of history.

both municipalities rejected efforts by chicago to annex them in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. in fact, in one of the evanston referendums, the city's annexation bid lost by only 7 votes. had just 4 of those people voted the other way, we wouldn't be talking about "evanston the suburb", we'd be talking about "evanston the city neighborhood".

evanston and oak park are definitely a sort of middle ground in so many ways.

I agree totally about Naperville. It's actually got a VERY nice downtown core, full of residential, retail and office, generally very pedestrian friendly, nice inclusion of some historic buildings into what essentially has become a big new urbanist development integrated into the existing city street grid.

Schaumburg is a lost cause for sprawlsville. :) Haven't had a chance to check out Aurora yet, but Elgin definitely has great historic bones in its downtown core.

Still think Elmhurst is the best outside of Oak Park and Evanston, though. Haha

Aaron (Glowrock)

^ I don't know, there are so many contenders for #3, to be honest.

I think in the next 20 years we will see a true #3 emerge from the pack. It would have to be in the right location, obviously, as well as having the right kind of political climate where maybe people are willing to give more density a chance. I don't think it will be Naperville or any of the North Shore burbs, but some town somewhere that's not Evanston or Oak Park will cave in to the inevitable push towards more density.

My guess is that it will be Arlington Heights

It's a suburb by municipal standards, but is it really an actual suburb? It's eastern border is 2km from the middle of downtown...

If we count it, then yes it's probably one of the nicest, if not the nicest suburb in Canada.

https://i.postimg.cc/1tB48mZX/282e61...48fd753a79.jpg
https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/518195500852039864/

I hate to say it, but if I lived in metro KC but didn't live in KCMO, NE JoCo is about the only area that i'd be interested in, the part that is closer/better connected to the urban core of kc than most missouri suburbs, since the street grid plugs right in. For the audience at home that is KANSAS. I've never been interested in long/bridge commutes.

I actually find Rosedale in Toronto, equal if not nicer than Westmount.

For Columbus, Grandview Heights.

But its not a real suburb.

If we included the inner suburbs. Toronto has a lot really nice street car suburbs.

The problem is that the nice villages that dot the outer Toronto suburbs were swallowed up to form large municipalities and now form a near contiguous sprawl between them.

Pittsburgh has so many suburbs... in Allegheny County alone, there are 130(!)... pretty ridiculous. Many(most) of them are not suburbs in the traditional sense; rather were steel/industrial towns which grew right along with Pittsburgh and have all grown together, but because of the region's insane topography, they maintain separate identities. Many of the further flung, towns on the rivers are ROUGH, having decayed for the past 40 years. But many of the more centrally-located ones basically function as City of Pittsburgh neighborhoods, with many being situated much closer to the inner core of the city than areas of city proper.

The usual suspects for most desirable suburb include:

- Mount Lebanon in the South Hills (#73 on the below map). Early streetcar suburb, affluent, but still relatively affordable, top schools, beautiful brick and stone tudor homes of all sizes, leafy, hilly, but highly walkable, with nice business districts with good restaurants, shops, etc. An urban-lite Shangri-La, if you will. I get it, it's very nice, but it's just a little too "perfect" (and too white) and too separated from the city for my tastes, even though it borders two southern city neighborhoods, and has direct access to Downtown via light rail.

- Sewickley/Edgeworth/Osborne in the Ohio Valley (#100/#35/#84). Generally, just referred to as Sewickley. Wealthy, exclusive, Main Line Philly-ish, old money, mansions, but also smaller homes, somewhat racially diverse due to nearby blue-collar river towns, and having the same as above Mt. Lebanon amenities, but no light rail. Much too far for me (~12-15 miles from downtown) and no good transit options.

- Aspinwall/Fox Chapel in the Allegheny Valley (#2/#44). Fox Chapel is 2nd wealthiest municipality in Pennsylvania. Very suburban with country clubs and estates, old money. Its "downtown" is Aspinwall... small upper middle class enclave on the river, big, tightly-packed Victorian homes, brick streets, a few good restaurants, shops, very compact and walkable, basically an extension of the city's East End neighborhoods/good access, more racially and economically diverse, decent bus transit service, top schools, etc, etc.

https://apps.alleghenycounty.us/webs...s/mapalleg.gif

My favorite, however, is Sharpsburg (#104), aka The Sharps, aka Ketchup City (where Heinz was founded). Funky, gritty, old blue-collar river town. Racially diverse. Intact Main Street now home to two newer breweries (incl. Dancing Gnome, one of the best in the US), a new distillery, new art gallery, new coffee shop, now part of an EcoDistrict... it's coming. Best location on the river in the core, rivefront park expansion and bike trails connecting to downtown u/c. Just across river from city neighborhoods Highland Park and Upper Lawrenceville... connected via Highland Park and 62nd Street Bridges. Close access to city's East End neighborhoods (Pittsburgh is East End-centric) and easy drive or bus to Downtown. Functions as a city neighborhood, but has its own small town vibe.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Sharpsburg.png

https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/wp...2019/04/S1.jpg

https://archive.triblive.com/wp-cont...eets011917.jpg

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b...ee47a3465.webp

yeah, after evanston and oak park, i don't see a clear #3 in chicagoland either.

i mean, elmhurst is certainly in the next tier down, and a fine enough place for what it is, but does it clearly stand above downers grove, highland park, naperville, park ridge, des plaines, arlington heights, lagrange, hinsdale, glen ellyn, geneva, wheaton, etc?

i don't think so.

Agreed. I do like Elmhurst but the actual walkable downtown is considerably smaller than some of those you listed. It does have some nice, quintessential American suburban leafy residential streets--but so does Geneva, Park Ridge, Naperville, etc.

I think the tiers look like this:

1. Oak Park/Evanston
2. Elmhursts (walkable downtown, a least a moderate selection of local businesses, interesting housing stock)
3. Schaumburgs (extremely auto-centric, cookie cuttetr strip malls, housing stock made entirely of subdivisions built between 1965-2005)