‘I’M A FULLY PAID-UP MEMBER OF CLUB SUBURBIA’

I wasn’t always a paid-up member of Club Suburbia. After growing up in a suburb of Leeds, I had set my heart on hotfooting it to central London the moment I was out of university. Leeds was no backwater, of course: as a teenage clubber, I was spoilt for choice. But London had always formed the appealing shape in my mind of something bigger, more unknowable, more infinite, brimming with life-affirming possibility.

I was so impatient to reach the promised land, it almost didn’t matter that my first rental place in Kennington overlooked the noisome A3; that double decker buses hissed past our living room window all day and all night; that the flatshare, which was all I could afford, had a damp problem, a plumbing problem and a kitchen floor problem (there wasn’t one).

A few moves later, up and down the Northern line from rental flat to rental flat, my then boyfriend (now husband) and I settled in Brixton for five years. Then we had a baby, which was fine, because still the three of us could just about squeeze into our flat. It was our second child that tipped the balance, sending us off on our flight to the suburbs.

Ah, Zone 4… an hour’s journey from the office, comprising a 20-minute bus ride and two different Tubes. It’s far away from almost everything. And I love it.

Out here, in the oncesneered-at suburbs, I can’t shake the feeling us suburbanites have arrived at the perfect balance. I still have a London postcode, but one that has cleaner air and plenty of green space; a school we reach by walking through a field (which, OK, used to be a rubbish dump, but still…).

About 80 per cent of us live in suburban areas, yet still, to the young, they are places where dreams go to die amid rows of identical houses.

But it rather depends what you’re dreaming of. The origins of suburbia, after all, lie in the desire for a healthier, happier, more restful way of life. The kind of thing we’re now, once again, thinking seriously about. As a thirtysomething who has spent most of her life in cities, I may not be your average suburban dweller – but urban living isn’t a patch on this.