And that's nice and maybe I'd actually like to live there, but here's another question: How are these 'burbs linked to the outside world? As an example, your description sounds a lot like Issaquah Highlands east of Seattle. Shopping, light commercial, and so on surrounded by individual houses. The problem is, how do those people get to and from work? Massive freeways? Issaquah Highlands is asking to be included on the far end of a big light rail project and it will cost a few hundred million bucks to include them. It's still sprawl, just slightly-more-dense sprawl.

Work from Home (very common here since all homes have had fiber since pre-FiOS days) Car, Commuter Bus (the stop is in the neighborhood). We'll have light rail within 2 miles in a few years and have shuttles to the same rail service (but going in closer to the city). But yeah, most people drive.

Nearby towns (major nearby employment centers) are 10-30 minutes away by car and have ample free parking. Two of the bigger towns are also on the same rail line. The big city is about an hour by car outside of rush hour and you have to pay to park, rail and bus are faster and cheaper. However, all of the major tech employment in the area happens in a belt that stretches from my neighborhood into the city, there's negligible tech work actually in the city.

There's 17-23 million square feet of commercial and office space getting zoned right now that will set up a major employment center about 5 minutes away (with a world trade center and all that jazz). And I can almost but not quite see from one of the two coffee shops I'm working at today, the largest collection of new data center construction on the East Coast. Major tech employers range from aerospace to internet companies to government. So it's all fairly future proof.

So yeah, it's sprawl I guess. But it's not the mile after mile of unending prefab houses that defined suburbia from the 40s to the 90s either (though there is some of that out here as well, just not in my immediate area). From my front window I can see homes designed and built by 3 different developers and I think 8 or 9 participated in total. This isn't custom architecture, but if you get bored you can walk a block and see something that looks different at least.

Today for lunch my major conundrum was should I eat Greek, Thai, American style Chinese, Italian, Burgers, Subs or Tex-Mex within walking distance, or head out in my car for a quick 5-minute spin to get Vietnamese, Indian, Taiwanese or Korean. I decided to walk to my local pizza place, get a couple slices of pizza and then walk to one of my two local coffee shops and hang out for the rest of the day.

A slightly longer drive and I can add in Ethiopian, Bolivian, Salvadorian, Mexican, even more Korean, even more Vietnamese...and of course every kind of chain food you can imagine from Taco Bell to TGIF.

> central "town center/shopping mall" surrounded by condos and apartments, surrounded by townhouses,

That's not the kind of suburb at issue. That's a small town.

Welcome to the new suburbia.