Suburbs are depressing

I have a confession to make. I dislike suburbs. I really enjoy living in a city and similarly enjoy being in the countryside. But what is the point of suburbs? They are car-dependent hellholes where there is nothing to do, and you need to drive to do the most mundane tasks like going to the supermarket. And things get even worse in the US. American cities are the worst in the world and American suburbs are soul-destroying, in my view. The worst part of it is that when accounting for the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure, cities never make up for it through tax revenue from suburbs. What happens is that inner-city businesses and households subsidise suburbs. Don’t get me wrong. If you like living in a suburb then do it, but to me, suburbs are terrible places.

But what do I know? After all, in my view, the worst place in the world I have ever been to is Las Vegas, and apparently, millions of people enjoy it so much they go there every year to have ‘fun’.

Then again, my assessment of suburbia might be on to something. It could be that suburbs are quite literally depressing. A team from Aarhus University in Denmark analysed the prevalence of depression in people living in and around major Danish cities. They found what has long been known, namely that people who live in the countryside have a substantially lower risk of depression than people who live in a city. However, what was not known before and uncovered by their research is that within cities, depression is not distributed equally.

Take a look at the maps shown below. The colour coded areas indicate inner city, densely populated areas, suburbs, and countryside areas around the inner city. The black lines circle areas where the depression risk for people living there was at least 20% higher than for people living in the countryside. Note, how the really depressing areas are not inner cities and densely populated spaces. Instead, people are depressed if they live in medium density suburbs.

Urban density and depression prevalence

Source: Tzu-Hsin et al. (2023)

There are many reasons why suburbs have a higher prevalence of depression than inner cities or the countryside. One of the drivers the study found was that people who live near water or open green spaces feel less depressed.

And while it is immediately obvious that there are more green spaces in the countryside, there are also quite a few green spaces in well-designed inner cities. Obviously not in concrete jungles like Houston, but most cities in Europe have lots of parks that help people de-stress and provide room to relax and enjoy the sunshine. If you think about it, suburbs typically don’t have public parks. Instead, every house has its own garden but there are few community spaces.

And that is the second driver of depression. We know that people who have more contact with friends and family are happier in life and much less likely to become depressed. And in inner cities, contact with family and friends is easy to maintain. Everything is close together and there are plenty of opportunities to go out and meet people.

In the suburbs, people tend to lose contact with their friends and relatives because it becomes harder to meet them. Everything has to be planned and meeting friends typically involves taking the car to get there. But if you have children, any car ride can become a major undertaking to the point where many people just say: “Sod it, I can’t be asked…” And so, their social life deteriorates gradually over time, and their depression increases. Live a few years in suburbia and reflect on your social life and your circle of friends and most people will find that the number of friends in their lives has declined, and their social life has deteriorated. And that really is depressing.