> "In many parts of the developed world, suburbs can be economically distressed areas, inhabited by higher proportions of recent immigrants, with higher delinquency rates and social problems. Sometimes the notion of suburb may even refer to people in real misery, who are kept at the limit of the city borders for economic, social, and sometimes ethnic reasons. An example in the developed world would be the banlieues of France, or the concrete suburbs of Sweden [...]. Thus some of the suburbs of most of the developed world are comparable to several inner cities of the U.S. and Canada."
More seriously. Suburbs may be the trendy area in the English speaking world but that's not the case everywhere else. Watch out when you go to holidays/business trips abroad, there are 'suburbs' you don't wanna end up for your own safety ;)
You can pretty much draw a line from English veneration of countryside manors to modern suburbs in the anglophone world and clearly they are quite popular in the US. Calling French banlieues "suburbs" probably obscures more than it clarifies.
> "In many parts of the developed world, suburbs can be economically distressed areas, inhabited by higher proportions of recent immigrants, with higher delinquency rates and social problems. Sometimes the notion of suburb may even refer to people in real misery, who are kept at the limit of the city borders for economic, social, and sometimes ethnic reasons. An example in the developed world would be the banlieues of France, or the concrete suburbs of Sweden [...]. Thus some of the suburbs of most of the developed world are comparable to several inner cities of the U.S. and Canada."
More seriously. Suburbs may be the trendy area in the English speaking world but that's not the case everywhere else. Watch out when you go to holidays/business trips abroad, there are 'suburbs' you don't wanna end up for your own safety ;)