It goes without saying that suburbs generally are where jobs are in the post industrial age. Jobs have fled the crime and lack of parking in the cities. As cities have sprawled into decentralized exurban area the workforce has moved out and many jobs have followed.
Suburban architecture is still in its infancy if we take the long view. Some of it is obviously atrocious. There are wonderful examples of planned communities like Columbia, Maryland that have intriguing mixtures of affordable housing, green belts for walking, ponds, village centers, and greenery everywhere. In affluent communities there are golf courses and parks in abundance. The wealth of some of these communities is mind boggling and has generated aesthetically pleasing views. Some suburbs regulate the height and placement of signs so that the ubiquitous presence of billboards and neon is absent. On the whole the suburb can seem soulless in this regard, with no discernible downtown. However, the fact that people flock to live in this type of community speaks volumes to how they want to organize their lives in our age. People do not shop from street vendors, they are moved by automobile and so the decentralized suburban layout makes sense.
More and more colleges are either located in the suburbs or have branches there. Suburban libraries are generally plentiful, and in our interconnected age can supply about anything via interlibrary loan.
Suburbs are afflicted with an enormous spiritual poverty on the order of the physical poverty of many inner cities. People bow to the idols of appearance, money, drugs, influence, etc. The church in our day can no more ignore the suburb that it can the city. Both are vast mission fields with very unique challenges. Suburbs are constantly growing (thus exurbs) while the physical space of cities is and has been defined for some time. Churches attempting to reach inner cities tend to focus on physical need, but this approach may not be correct for the burbs. Of course proclamation and the sacraments are indispensable in both locations, but the set of needs in the suburb needs to be quantified. I suspect that the church must focus on broken marriage, sexual hedonism, adultery, abortion, and crass materialism in suburban ministry. And offering answers to those who have it all but feel that life is meaningless is a key challenge. Churches must not focus at one area at the expense of another, and some way to bridge the gap between bodies of believers in both locations needs to be made. We are after all one new man.
