I was walking through an American suburb this morning. Quiet streets, all lined with the same houses, the same lawns, the same driveways. Everything clean, still, and silent. I’m here for a friend’s wedding, just visiting. But as I moved through the neighbourhood, I started remembering why I chose not to stay in the US after living here for five years.
Back then, I seriously considered settling. I had work, good people around me, a rhythm. But something always felt off. I couldn’t fully explain it then, but walking these streets now, I feel it clearly. It’s not just about culture or politics. It’s something deeper. Something built into the place itself.
These neighbourhoods are designed to look safe and peaceful. But they don’t feel alive. The houses are all copies. The roads are too wide. There’s nowhere to walk to except parking lots or shopping centres. No chance encounters. No corner stores. No street life. Just space, fences, and silence.
And that’s not a mistake. Suburbs aren’t failing to create connection, they’re built to prevent it. You don’t meet your neighbours. You see their cars. You don’t hear music, or smell food, or hear people arguing through an open window or pass people talking on the street. You go from your house to your car, from your car to somewhere else where you spend money, then back again. Box to box to box. The only places you can go are designed for consumption.
The result is this low-level loneliness that seeps into everything. A kind of quiet stress, even if you have money and a nice house. I think it’s because you’re cut off. From people. From texture. From life happening around you.
As someone with Italian and Australian roots, I feel the contrast hard. Back home, streets are messy and loud. People spill out onto footpaths. You walk to get groceries, talk to shop owners, sit at cafes, run into friends. Life there isn’t always polished, but it’s shared.
Here, everything is private. Everything is planned. Everything is locked behind doors or spread out so far you need a car to reach it. Even rest feels isolated. And I don’t think it’s just my background that reacts to this. I think something in all of us suffers when we’re boxed up and kept apart.
Coming back here reminded me. I didn’t leave the US because I disliked it. I left because I didn’t want to disappear into this kind of life. Suburbia looks like freedom, but it works like a trap. And once you see that, it’s hard to unsee.