Feeling like I am doomed to live in suburbia forever

[Puddy_Tat]

I'm interested by this (and not aiming this at you in particular but from previous conversations I think have a rough idea of the area that you live in). I grew up just outside the M25 in Hertfordshire and now live slightly further outside the M25 in Surrey. I wouldn't consider anywhere in zones 1–6 suburban to me they are urban and I grew up/live in suburbia. I suspect the definitions end up being very subjective.

From the perspective of growing up on the zone 3 / 4 boundary in SE London I'd (politely and respectfully) disagree with you - I'd regard 'suburbia' as (roughly) zones 4 to 6. outside that is 'the country' or 'the home counties' where you can (largely, and to an ever diminishing extent) you can see the gap between one place and another.

although the boundaries don't quite match - cudham (for example) is in the london borough of bromley and doesn't look or feel like 'the suburbs' from where i'm sitting, but it's hard to see where crayford / erith (london borough of bexley) ends and dartford (kent) starts.

…whereas for me, there are areas of Brixton I’d consider suburban to Brixton Town Centre. Same with other parts of London that are kinda like their own little defined town.

yes. many towns and villages in london were there when 'london' was just the 'square mile', and now they have overlapped a bit. some towns (for one reason or another) stayed more of a self contained town than a commuter suburb for longer than others, some of the suburbs are clearly a suburb of one of the towns, some are villages that have got absorbed in to towns (or just in to the suburban sprawl - where i grew up is somewhere between lewisham / catford / eltham / bromley, but not really quite big enough to have much of an identity of its own) some suburbs only exist because a railway line got built through them and a suburb grew up round a station, or because the LCC built a council estate on what was then green fields in the 1920s / 30s.

and just where one london 'town' starts and ends is subjective and changes over time - brixton's one of the prime examples of that, where 40 years ago, people (or at least estate agents) would try and sell much of it as clapham / norwood but maybe not so much now...

 

[MickiQ]

A village pub is essential for me, I was a bit disappointed that one out of the two had closed before I moved here, but delighted to discover three micro-pubs had opened up instead.

Well, one is more of a cafe during the day, but turns into a pub from early evening.

Best of both worlds

 

[krtek a houby]

As aged and woolly, I find that suburbia is suiting quite well. There's a lot of fields and farmers about, so it's not all endless sprawl.

Dublin and London were great when younger, but they'd destroy this self now.

 

[MickiQ]

I’m terrified in the countryside that a farmer is going to shoot me or I’ll get eaten by a cow. Horses for courses, I guess!

You know cows are herbivores right?

I lived in London for many years and was never scared but admittedly I was much younger and the thought of being attacked never crossed my mind. As it didn’t when I lived elsewhere. My daughter and I happily walked through a park in the dark in Malvern this evening and didn’t give it a second thought. We felt completely safe. Whereas if I get the train home at night I will get an Uber from the station rather than walk the ten minutes home in the dark. I don’t need you to tell me how to feel thanks.

As a father of three girls I've always felt far less worried about bringing them up here than I suspect I would have felt bringing them up in an inner city. OK it's impossible to not worry and bad things still happen in small towns but there isn't the worry of random violence that you get in big places.
The youngest one is away at Uni at the moment and no matter how much I tell myself she's careful and sensible the odd worry sometimes surfaces and has to be suppressed.
She loves the Uni life by the way.
If someone wants to live in London then good luck to them but I wouldn't change it for what I have unless I was mega rich in which case I would have a penthouse in Docklands and a mansion in the countryside.