I came from the heart of the ghetto - there ain't no suburbia in me.
I'm from New York City. I grew up in the city. Suburban life was very odd to me.
Whether it was H. P. Lovecraft's doomed towns or Shirley Jackson's lonely, looming 'The Haunting of Hill House,' the boondocks had all the fun. As a black kid in Queens, New York, I couldn't have felt more removed.
I had not seen lawns till fifth grade - big green lawns.
We've always been suburb people, and we lived in the East Bay when I was in Oakland. This time around, we're staying in the city, and my kids are getting that city life experience, which is something you don't get too much of in Alabama.
I used to live next door to a farm, so every day for awhile, I used to walk over and fed the cows, when I was in school. This was weird because I lived in sort of a subdivision, but this one holdout in our neighborhood in Kansas still had a farm.
It was very confronting after growing up in the suburbs of Melbourne, then going to India. There's such a different emphasis on everything: food, family, hygiene, love, marriage. It's why it's so exciting, why it's so beautiful.
I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person.
We lived in the bowels of New York City. It was a struggle just to survive. This nice suburban kid hadn't had to do much of that before.
I grew up in the suburbs, so I remember arriving at Waterloo and seeing Big Ben and the coloured lights on top of the Southbank Centre and thinking, 'Wow!'
I grew up in the suburbs, so I figured 'Why not try downtown living?' And, honestly, I love it. I've been very pleasantly surprised at how much downtown Indianapolis has to offer.
Loft living is the antithesis of suburban domesticity, if only because the open spaces don't easily accommodate family life. Lofts also offer residents the opportunity - and responsibility - to structure their own space to reflect what's important to them.
One of the things I noticed while I lived in New York City was how different the kids and teens were that grew up there versus, you know, my suburban upbringing. They have this innate resilience and toughness to them, and they're incredibly self-sufficient, usually from a pretty young age.
