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I spent all of my formative years and my high school years in a subdivision.
However, the subdivision I lived in as a wee one was very different from the one I lived in as a teenager. The first was in the country on an island in the Puget Sound. The lots were enormous and the houses were all custom homes (that's generally how they do things around there as most people on the island can afford that kind of thing). I knew all of my neighbors, there were tons of kids around my age, and we all ran around together.
When I was 13 my dad got a job in Oregon and we moved to the suburbs of Portland. After living in a rental house for a couple months my parents purchased a brand-spankin'-new house in a half-finished subdivision in NW Hillsboro, across the street from the urban growth boundary and backing up onto the sportsfields of the local middle school. It was and is what people in Hillsboro refer to as an "Intel" neighborhood--most everyone who lives in that neighborhood works for Intel or one of the other employers in the Silicon Forest. As for ethnic diversity--well, let me just say you don't get much more colorful in OREGON of all places--our neighbors next door were Chinese, the ones down the street were Indian, the ones over across the way were Pakistanis, and even the Americans were from all over the United States--California, Texas, Michigan, etc. I liked my subdivision because it straddled the area between three schools (now four). I could literally jump the fence and be on the grounds of my middle school. I played lacrosse on that same field for years, and my parents never had to leave the house to watch me play. They would trim our photinia hedge down in early spring so they could see the games from our back patio. Sure, our lot wasn't the largest, we didn't really have a view, and the neighbors were sometimes a little too close, but all in all it was a good place to be a teenager--everything was close including my friends.
While I don't think I would live in such an enormous subdivision again, I would say that there are things subdivisions offer that other places don't. For instance, if you move into a brand-new home on a brand-new street at the same time as a bunch of other people, you're ALL new and therefore it's easier to make REAL friends among them (this is something I learned from my friend's mother). These people all live on the same cul-de-sac in the subdivision next to mine--they take vacations together, babysit each other's children, regular card parties, have a huge barbeque together on Fourth of July , and organize a golf tournament on Labor Day Weekend.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both--it totally depends on your perspective. As someone who has spent most of her life in subdivisions, I hope I've provided everyone with another point of view.
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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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