Suburban Yokel

Was reading English Heritage's The Heritage Of Historic Suburbs. In it they take a brave stab at defining the suburb as "outgrowths or dependencies of larger settlements - somewhere with a clear relationship with a city or town but with its own distinct character."
Later, they say "understanding how...suburbs work and the role they play in relation to their adjacent urban areas is an important aspect in determining how they should be managed."

While it is interesting to see the dead hand of historical beauracracy descending on the suburb, and especially the inter-war suburb, and English Heritage's acknowledgement of these places as having their "own distinct character", the inter-war suburb I grew up in was much more related, almost exclusively so, to the countryside on its doorsteps; and not the city at all, which was only rarely visited. Also, lots of the older folk and families became suburban because the suburb came out to them, in their villages and farms, and not them moving outwards from a city centre. There were old barns tucked behind houses, old farm gateposts left as playthings in the park, scraps of commons and cottages in our suburb, and fields seen beyond. The city was but a dim, almost alien sensation, well into teenage years.
Even as the barns were demolished and the gateposts removed, their memory remained, as does the tight curve of a street away from the shops, which was once a lane.
It is surprising, then, that English Heritage do not mention once what the suburbs are generally built on and against (the 'country'), as these must be important factors in the sense of there being a "historic environment" of suburbs, as much as, and often more than, the city.