We had some speeches in the French Assembly in 1840 that tells of African villages at the doors of Paris (no African people there, mostly from center of France), that it was a shame... That we should build transient cities (Cité de Transit) to teach those people about how to live in the City... On century after we did build them !

Maybe that's why I speak of the "drift" of the City :-)

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman

A further difference with many American suburbs is that the houses in Europe tend to be built to last, in America there is often a lot of cheap, throwaway material being used on otherwise quite sizeable houses, which is a strange attitude (I think) to housing. An extreme focus on the exterior, while neglecting the character. This fits in with the fake plastic capitalism of America -- treating houses as perishable commodities with built-in obsolescence.

(this is probably a rather prejudiced sweeping generalisation based upon watching too many librul hollywood movies, but I think part of it sticks)

Your point about elitism is spot-on. Still, as margouillat says, it's undesirable to have people living in suburbia. So you have to think about the institutions and the cultural image that lead to people to live in them.