I grew up in a suburb of NW London, though never felt isolated from the city as there was a tube station nearby and Camden/Kings X were only 20 mins away on the Northern Line. Aunt and uncle lived in Stratford and we saw them often, it was cheap/easy to get around.
Then I ended up in Luton, though is that technically a 'suburb'? I dunno... anywhere north of Camden, east of Liverpool St, south of Waterloo and west of Fulham is 'the suburbs' to me. Liverpool, Newcastle = the suburbs.
If Luton and Houghton Regis qualify...actually, it wasn't that bad. Boredom can lead you to some funny places. You tend to get weird sub-subcultures too; there was this brief trend in Luton for kids in Hawaiian shirts and bermuda shorts, the gaudier the better, to walk around with sticks and target anyone who wore straight-leg black jeans. Loads of dirtbike gangs. Dunstable had a wicked jungle 12" store too around '94-'95 - seriously, it rivalled any of the London ones, and the bloke who ran it, who looked like a skinny Bob Mills, was sound. Also had the biggest concentration of BNP skinheads I've ever seen.
It's easy to soap up your hair and bleach your jeans and walk down Camden High St in your fancy Discharge T-shirt, where nobody bats an eyelid - but it takes dedication to do it at 11pm outside the suburban local, as a bunch of psychotic ex-Falklands vets with 'taches stagger out and start noising you up. There's also LOADS of pervy stuff that goes on behind the net curtains that'd put your average, 'edgy', 'urban' Dalston dullards, sitting on the balcony of their £500k maisonette and talking about open relationships, to shame. The suburbs gave you dogging, for example. 🐶🎆👍