Is it not contradictory to say that traffic/activity/noise are almost the same, but it'd support lots of corner stores and restaurants and people would want to visit the neighborhood? The entire point of living in a suburb is that people who don't live here have no reason to be here. I actively do not want a restaurant or a bar or a coffee shop a block away from my home.
As counterintuitive as it seems, that was my experience living in one of those neighborhoods and visiting others over several years. A handful of small stores on one block or corner every half-mile really doesn't induce that much traffic. It's an entirely different scale from a commercial district or even a car-oriented strip mall.
