[plinko]

To me it's all about scale.

I live in a very auto-oriented small/medium city: Ventura. It has a very quaint, walkable downtown area, a very good portion of the city is pre-war or pre-1970s suburbia (where I live), and then there's an eastern portion of the city that is the large mile grids of 70s-current developments with 6 lane arterials, sound walls, and shopping centers at every major intersection. I'd rather be shot in the face than live out there. Oxnard and Camarillo (nearby suburbs, though Oxnard is twice as large) You couldn't pay me enough...

Ventura works though, fairly well.

Is it urban? Not really.
Is it soul-crushing? Not really because there are parts of even the east side that are occasionally necessary.

That being said, it's a city of 105,000 people.

When you multiply that 20-100 times that blah suburbia part becomes something else entirely for me. It angers me. Not in a 'Jane Jacobs would be ashamed' way, but in a truly, 'I fucking hate everything about this place' way, especially when driving.

I recently spent a week in Folsom, California and also visited family in the Rocklin, California area around Sacramento. Driving around each, and between them, I found myself constantly agitated by nearly everything I saw, every experience I had, and found nearly the entire trip miserable (with some notable exceptions when I escaped to DT and Midtown Sacramento).

It's not just the driving thing either. I drive everywhere. My company is located in Santa Barbara (30 miles from my house) and so I drive all the time.

But those exurbs which are slowly eating at the edges of every US City? God damn do they suck.

It is exactly why I don't live in Phoenix or Sacramento anymore. I just can't.