What suburb is the best destination?
 

What suburb would you consider the best or greatest destination?

Most suburbs are not destinations for tourists or travelers. Ever hear of someone who was going to New York City and was excited to see Jersey City? How many people make sure to spend some time in Rockville when visiting Washington DC? Know of any tourist who decided to just go to Mississauga and not set foot in Toronto?

Santa Monica.
South Orange county.

Two stand out to me. Scottsdale, AZ, and Miami Beach, FL, are both destinations in their own rights. Many people fly to Phoenix and spend all their time in Scottsdale golfing. Most people that go to Miami actually go to Miami Beach to the point that many people may think of Miami Beach as part of the City of Miami.

Cambridge, MA, is probably right below Miami Beach or Scottsdale. The Harvard and MIT campuses are destinations in their own right to a degree.

Santa Monica is probably a good choice, too, with tourists who visit the pier.

Clearwater and St. Petersburg are also good candidates, although the Tampa Bay Area seems truly multi-nodal like the Twin Cities or Bay Area.

Jersey City is not a suburb. Highly dwarfed satellite/anchor maybe but definitely not a suburb.

Usually college towns and places with amusement parks are destinations. I'd add sports but many bland suburbs have or do host major sports.

Yeah, St. Pete is its own city. Great glass art museum there.

Miami Beach is just about the furthest thing from a suburb as a place can possibly be.

We can debate the semantics of every municipality near a big city and whether it's a suburb or satellite city, but for the purpose of this argument, I think it's understood that Jersey City is more a place to leave for the day (as in commute to work) than go for the day for people who live in the area.

Oak park Il

I think the worst suburb destination might just be Lake Buena Vista, FL

Jersey City isn't a bedroom community, either.

NY has the Hamptons if you count that.
For LA, only Santa Monica
Chicago none
San Francisco has Sausalito and the Napa valley.
Philadelphia has AC and Cape May if you count those.

Paradise, NV

How about Arlington, TX?

Location of Cowboys and Rangers stadia and Six Flags amusement park. It actually fits the definition of a suburb and is a destination.

Anaheim, CA, if that's your thing...

I personally hate Disney Land.

Is Palm Springs considered a suburb or its own town? And Santa Monica should just be a neighborhood in LA, same with Beverly Hills and Hollywood.

Yokohama.

palm springs is like 4-12 separate traffic jams and 3.5 hours from LAX so i'd hope not. doesn't feel like it. and yeah, santa monica, beverly hills feel like neighborhoods of LA to me.

Palm Springs isn't a suburb.

Anaheim is a good choice for this, actually. There's a million hotels over there.

Yes; and aside from the Disney obvious, Anaheim also has Little Arabia, the best place to get authentic Arabic/Middle Eastern cuisine. They have really good and authentic Syrian, Palestinian and Iraqi places to eat. It's where I first tried khubz, and bouza. Mmm, bouza. Yeah, those tourists? SCREW taking your kids to Cold Stone or 31 flavors. Treat them and yourselves to bouza:

https://scontent-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...b8&oe=5E37D989
Photo by me

JC is essentially a default sixth borough. Functions in a very similar manner as say the Bronx.

For the LA area (If we consider these separate cities to be suburbs)

Pasadena - Rose Bowl, Museums, Food, etc
Santa Monica - Beach, Pier, 3rd Street, Food
Beverly Hills
Anaheim

Daly City, California

One of the most densely populated suburban environments in the country.

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/07/61/16/.../5/920x920.jpg
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=...71163193054576

http://kaprizhardwoodfloors.com/wp-c.../Daly-City.jpg
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=...71163193054576

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BP114R/aer...nia-BP114R.jpg
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=...71163193054576

Hey, Rockville is a hidden treasure. :P Seriously though, Alexandria VA would be the tourist "suburb" here, and technically Arlington Cemetery is in the suburbs too, though pragmatically it's part of the Mall environment. Other point destinations (for exhibits) would be places like Udvar-Hazy Center in Dulles VA, NASA Goddard in Greenbelt MD or the Gateway To NOAA in Silver Spring MD.

It really should be considered the fourth borough, as it's highly superior to the Bronx and Staten Island.

It's actually the place to be now, really blossoming into something special.

Vaughan is Toronto's destination suburb thanks to Canada's Wonderland.

I can't believe I didn't think about this. How many people who have been to "Las Vegas" have never been inside the City of Las Vegas? Maybe 90% of the tourists?

All of Marin County.

Paradise, NV

People think theyre in Vegas proper but they aint

Eyyyyy!

Probably better to stay in West Hartford instead of Hartford.

Cambridge is an anchor at this point.

That's a CDP with a Las Vegas address mostly.

As if LA doesn't have enough intra-city suburban neighborhoods.

The casinos need some way to get around the gaming commissions and taxes.

Cambridge doesn't count, it's as core as they come. For Boston, it would probably be Salem. Definitely during this time of the year.

I don't count Santa Monica or Jersey City for the same reason I don't count Cambridge.

Paradise NV jumped out in my mind, also Lake Buena Vista outside Orlando (Disney World).

high five!

I folly you on Cambridge, because of its proximity to the core and comparative density to Boston's. In Santa Monica's case, its distance from downtown is a giveaway suburban trait. Jersey City is an urban node on its own, IMO.

Buddy, ain't that the truth... I never got around to posting my pics from there, much to my eternal shame.

It may be further from DTLA but Santa Monica is its own thing. Nothing suburban about it.

Santa Monica is both urban and suburban, just like the rest of LA. It's urban suburbia.

Sure, downtown Santa Monica is urban
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0173...7i16384!8i8192

But is this?
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0372...7i16384!8i8192

Eh, you can do those kinds of samples for Chicago or DC too. Doesn't tell much. It's probably one the most urban "newer" suburbs in the whole country.

Most of Santa Monica is pretty dense, with walkable commercial strips througout.
Wilshire, Main, Santa Monica, Ocean Park, Colorado, Broadway, Montana, Pico etc. You're never more than a few blocks from retail/restaurants and there's solid transit. Even the numerous office buildings have street facing retail everywhere in the neighborhoods.

But Santa Monica is not what I would call a suburb though; even if it has suburban areas within it. It's as almost as old as LA itself and is one of the many nodes within the LA area that all grew into one another.

A neighborhood can simultaneously be fairly dense and have businesses to walk to while still being suburban in its basic form. IMO most of LA is just dense suburban style development. Most everywhere has generous side and front setbacks, curb cuts are very prevalent, the streets tend to be wide, and the commercial corridors are dominated by suburban style development. Land of the corner strip mall and what not.

But lots (for SFHs) are pretty small and packed close together, and literally almost every buildable parcel in the entire LA basin is built out. So you end up with a suburban-ish looking environment that is deceptively dense. It's walkable in the sense that you can walk to a variety of things, but it wasn't built with the pedestrian in mind. That's why it can be somewhat tough to determine suburban areas from the City of LA. The suburbs are dense, and the city, while dense, is largely suburban in its built form. It's a totally different paradigm than the rest of the country.

I'm from DC burbs, and I was amazed how much street retail there was in LA suburbs, especially places like Santa Monica. You don't really see that much in Fairfax County and the like.
Santa Monica just looked very different than what I was used too.

Paradise isn't even a suburb -- It's an unincorporated part of Clark County, home to McCarran Airport, UNLV and the Strip of course.

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Anybody mention Anaheim?
Population 359,000.
25 million visitors annually.

Same is true for Boston.

https://goo.gl/maps/AK6Gw44XmQajFwaX6

ha. yeah, if we are going to criticize a random weak point in a residential street in santa monica.

It's true for any city. Even NYC (queens/staten Island)

Santa Monica isn't just urban in downtown. That's a false statement. For a "suburb" it's walkable in several areas.

It's funny that people on this forum call north east/midweest suburbs walkable, even when many of them are small areas around a train station (much smaller than downtown santa monica) and the rest is usually single family homes too. They don't have a Wilshire, Montana, ocean park blvd etc in addition to that. They're pretty standard and generic.

You can't have it both ways.

Santa Monica isn't so much a "suburb" but rather a logical extension of the city, defined merely by municipal boundaries. . .

. . .