Your suburb sounds way nicer than the one I grew up in. It was like a 45 minute walk to the “main Street”, with no sidewalks for most of it. A guy got hit by a car and killed at the intersection closest to the house when I was living there, too. Visiting any friends without a car impractical and/or “walk along the highway” dangerous.
A friend of mine lived in Beacon, NY for a year. It was kind of nice to visit. Walkable main street, restaurants and shops. Lots of space and nature. I don’t think I’d want to live there full time though. Like it’s cool that they have a Thai restaurant, but they have A Thai restaurant. There’s like 20 that deliver to me here, and a handful I can walk to.
If anything honestly living in a city is actually factually unhealthy, people weren’t meant to be around that many people, not to mention the pollution. Being a good amount of space away from any other people is the best feeling tbh.
This is interesting and I wonder how much is just individual. I get sad in the suburbs when there’s not a lot of people around. It feels lonely. The crowds here feel like a comfortable blanket. I like knowing that if I wreck my bike people will be there to help (that happened to me once, memorably)
I don’t know about pollution. That probably varies a lot by specifics. My parents lived in a suburb really close to a highway, so that probably wasn’t good for our air. New York I think is pretty good air quality because of its location and mass transit, where like Houston or LA I think have much worse smog problems.