AS a native of suburbia, I have a soft spot for its ethos: the arena rock and shopping malls, the chain stores and competitive lawn care. But when I moved to New York City, I did so because I wanted to do all the things that New Yorkers do. Lately, though, I noticed something odd happening around Manhattan: The suburbs are seeping in.

It’s not just in Times Square, where catering to — and gouging — homesick tourists is a time-honored tradition. The ’burbs seem to be everywhere, from miniature golf in the Village to batting cages on the Upper West Side. There’s table tennis off Park Avenue South, an Applebee’s in Harlem and highway-style hotels like the Comfort Inn on the Lower East Side. Multiplexes are more common than art houses, and don’t even try to avoid trivia nights. If not for all the big buildings and honking, you could easily mistake Manhattan for Mahwah on some nights.

So what’s going on here? Wasn’t the point of living in the city to do, you know, city stuff? Going to museums and seeing Broadway plays and eating at fancy restaurants?

There could be a demographic explanation: The city is always being restocked by people like me from less urbane environments, and we bring our cultural traditions, just as immigrants to New York have for generations.