As cities become more cycling-friendly it's important not to forget about suburbia, says Aaron Betsky, as he shares what archicts and urban planners could learn from a cycle through the suburbs on World Bicycle Day.

Bicycles are making our cities better, but what about our suburbs" After a brief blip last decades, our cities are sprawling again. At the same time, suburbs and downtown areas are becoming more alike, with the former densifying into exurban villages and the latter filling with vertical versions of gated compounds and big box retail venues.
That also means that it is now easier to bicycle in suburbia: there are higher concentrations of destinations, and more and more suburbs are being designed to accommodate two-wheelers. The rapid rise of ebiking also makes it much easier for suburbanites to travel the larger distances and less uniform terrains they encounter outside of the downtown grid. Riding a bicycle is the best way to experience a city.
For me, what is just as important is that bicycles are great tools for urban exploration. Sprawl is misunderstood and understudied by architects and designers, who generally live in downtown areas. That also means they are undesigned or, what is more often the case, designed badly: in ways that waste natural resources, that isolated us from each other, and that are ugly. I think we need to design better suburbs instead of just wishing them away, and one way to start is by understanding them better.

I have always fel...