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None of this really deals with what generates such a need for suburbia: being physically separated from the criminal element and the dirty elements that have been allowed to dominate cities.
I am old enough to remember why suburbia was built, as I grew up in a country where it happened later than in the US. People used to live in tenements - entire families in single rooms in large buildings that were either fancy family homes or industrial buildings. These were hideous places to live. The new estates were built, with modest, by American standards, semi-detached (which means two houses share a wall) homes with small gardens. People did hot have cars, of course, but needing to walk a mile to get to things was far better than living in decaying 18th-century buildings (for strange reasons, all buildings stopped in 1800, so almost all the built environment dated from then).
The new estates were great but would tend to go through a rough patch 14 years after they were first built when the children of the first inhabitants became teens (and were bad). Once this patch ended, they turned into lovely places. The houses were built by the corporation, so people got them at a very large discount. The system broke down later, as the number of decent people declined, and the later estates never became acceptable places to live. A bad element arose that made the estates unlivable, drugs were commonplace, and no one in their right mind would want to live there. Strangely, the newer estates have better quality houses than the old ones. As far as I can tell, the corporation gave decent people houses first.
I had held out hope that these estates would turn around, but that is not going to happen unless the new immigrants do it. It may have been the 70s, or it may be that the later residents were worse, or it may be something else, but the glory that was public housing ended and can not return because enough of the people who are being housed are too antisocial to allow the estates to thrive.
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