The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#241

Post by bitdeveloper » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

developer2 wrote: post #231

laughfactory wrote: post #128

This article reflects my wife and my experience: just a month ago we left San Diego for a small town north of Salt Lake City. We make over six-figures and San Diego held only poor economic prospects for us. We'd have a very difficult time buying a decent home (2000 sq ft, good neighborhood, reasonable commute) for a price which wouldn't jeopardize other essentials like retirement savings, kids college savings, saving…

Just a minor nitpick. If you are buying a home, and are also fortunate enough to be able to manage "retirement savings, kids college savings, savings in general, and debt payoff and avoidance", you are likely not strictly middle class. Most people who are classified as middle class can't afford any one of those, let alone the entire set. You don't come across as negatively "privileged", but perhaps if you can afford…

The essence of middle class is being able to do all those things.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#242

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #218

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can get your human dynamic just fine on sidewalks, cafes, parks, etc. More density means fewer [EDIT: more] people within walking distance of each café, park and restaurant. That, in turn, affects how many of them there are and how eclectic they can be. Density is people over space. If you give each person more space, you reduce density. This can't be avoided. > nothing like the hour-plus train rides middle-cla…

>Some people don't want that--they want the restaurants and nightclubs and parks with rotating art installations that only emerge and make sense when you pack people together. You really think a neighborhood of 70-story buildings can sustain these things as long as people share bedrooms, but can't the instant that children and young adults have their own doors to close? >More density means fewer people within walking…

Manhattan contained 854,000 housing units in 2014 [1] and 1.6 million residents between 2010 [2] and 2013 [3]. The average Manhattan unit has 1.2 to 1.3 bedrooms [4]. (For Core Manhattan, that average falls to 1.0 to 1.2.) So 1 to 1.1 million bedrooms.

If you mandated one bedroom per person you'd have to expel 31 to 38% of the population or increase the number of bedrooms by 45 to 60%.

Manhattan's 33.6 square miles [5] are populated with 70,826 people per square mile. If we go the culling-people route, that drops to 44,000 to 49,000 people per square mile. That's the population density of West New York, in New Jersey [6]. Manhattan and West New York are radically different places.

If we go the building-units route, consider that Manhattan gained 13,189 units between 2011 and 2014, i.e. 4,400 a year [1; Table 2]. To build the 500,000 to 600,000 bedrooms we need you'd need to make 415,000 to 500,000 units, i.e. a century of construction. (If you built only three bedrooms, you'd cut that time down to 167,000 to 200,000 units, i.e. a mere 38 to 45 years.) To build them in 20 years, you'd need to increase construction by 4.7 to 5.7x (90% to 2.3x if only 3BR), and that's ignoring any additional infrastructure that new population may need as well as population growth.

Cities are a product of density. If you try to make a city with suburban-sized personal spaces, you end up with neither city nor suburbia. Building up is better than sideways, always, but we shouldn't delude ourselves regarding realistic sets of trade-offs.

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/hpd/downloads/pdf/2014-HVS-initi... Page 1

[2] http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/data-maps/n... Table 1

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Manhattan

[4] http://furmancenter.org/files/FurmanCenter_FactBrief_RentSta... Table F

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_New_York,_New_Jersey

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#243

Post by ghaff » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #240

ghaff wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It can support a lot more housing So long as you also build all the transportation, schooling, utility, and other infrastructure needed to support it.

All the city needs to do is literally nothing. Just stand back and stay out of the way. Sadly this is one of the hardest things for a bureaucracy to do.

Because schooling and public transit and such will just happen automagically?

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#244

Post by mtbcoder » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #221

mtbcoder wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fix is to make more areas desirable to live in by reducing income inequality and stimulating local economies (which in turn creates more desirable locations). Simply saying build "more houses" in clustered cities along the coasts doesn't solve anything in the long run. Cities are in it for the long run.

San Francisco is not nearly dense enough. It can support a lot more housing. Easily. It's just NIMBYs and cronies in the way. Despite having significant growth opportunity San Fran is already twice as dense as Seattle. Therefore Seattle has room for explosive housing growth. It would need more changes than just housing of course. But that's to be expected and totally doable. Cities are huge economic multipliers. We d…

More desirable areas means more areas for developers to build housing. Cities cannot do more with a citizenry that is unable to keep the local economy and government institutions afloat. These cities are in a horrendous feedback loop that is seeing their economies and tax bases decimated. It all begins and ends with income inequality.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#245

Post by kafkaesq » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #151

I live in SF, and am flabbergasted at the number of 1- or 2- floor single-family homes. A city the size of SF (46 sq mi) and population (850K+ and growing) simply can't afford so many SFHs. I was in Barcelona recently (yay NIPS!) and Barcelona is smaller than SF (36 sq mi) and has nearly twice the population! Everywhere you see are 6-floor buildings, with the bottom reserved for shops and people living above them. It…

We kept thinking: why can't SF be more like BCN?

Because you'd have to demolish acres and acres of 100+ year-old architecture (generally considered to be among the planet's most distinctive) to make it that way.

And even if we did -- it wouldn't look anything like Barcelona (and its fabulously integrated 100 year-old architecture and street grid), either. Most likely, I betcha, it would end up looking like a pepped up, West Coast version of this place:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_Park_City

Which I'm sure would suit many of the "Who cares about historic architecture, as long as I can get a shot at a $2400 studio!" advocates here just fine.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#246

Post by kafkaesq » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

abalashov wrote: post #164

1024core wrote: post #151

I live in SF, and am flabbergasted at the number of 1- or 2- floor single-family homes. A city the size of SF (46 sq mi) and population (850K+ and growing) simply can't afford so many SFHs. I was in Barcelona recently (yay NIPS!) and Barcelona is smaller than SF (36 sq mi) and has nearly twice the population! Everywhere you see are 6-floor buildings, with the bottom reserved for shops and people living above them. It…

> We kept thinking: why can't SF be more like BCN? Because 'Murrica. As a native Russian, this has always puzzled and bewildered me, too.

It's not that hard to understand, actually.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#247

Post by BWStearns » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:20 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #208

ilamont wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 300 units are built it will help 4500 middle-income households. That's great, but how many middle-income households will still be unable to find affordable housing, therefore keeping market-rate rents sky-high? I think the solution is not trying to cram more units into a small area. Manhattan has done that for decades, and it's still not enough to balance supply and demand. Rather, it's to encourage business devel…

> What will it take Google, GE, or Microsoft to move a big chunk of their respective operations away from San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle? It's a chicken and egg problem: companies don't want to invest in cities where there aren't a lot of qualified workers, and workers don't want to move to cities where there aren't a lot of jobs. Furthermore, the most competitive workers tend to move to the cities you mentioned,…

I don't think it's illegal to collude to improve a second tier city's economic prospects. Large tech cos have proven their inclination and ability to cooperate to influence markets before, why not put that collaborative spirit to work for good and profit?

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#248

Post by saryant » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

intopieces wrote: post #189

cies wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why can't SF be more like BCN? 1. Earthquakes. 2. City planning policies over the years (or lack thereof).

>1. Earthquakes. And yet Tokyo exists.

I was in Tokyo during Fukushima in a recently-built building.

Felt like nothing more than a freight truck passing by.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#249

Post by wcummings » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #138

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> terrible public schools There are affordable parts of Long Island and Connecticut with great public public schools less than an hour from Manhattan by train. We've grown accustomed to overporting our post-war suburban archetype of what a "middle class" family "deserves," i.e. lots of bedrooms, garages and lawn space, while diminishing previously (and still!) common practices like having roommates when young, not ow…

>We've grown accustomed to overporting our post-war suburban archetype of what a "middle class" family "deserves," i.e. lots of bedrooms, garages and lawn space, while diminishing previously (and still!) common practices like having roommates when young, not owning a car, et cetera. "People's lives are too good, we need to make them worse." What's your angle? What do you gain from advocating against mobility and pers…

Not worse, just different. Times change. Maybe the lifestyle people expect and idralize isn't sustainable.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#250

Post by criddell » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #151

I live in SF, and am flabbergasted at the number of 1- or 2- floor single-family homes. A city the size of SF (46 sq mi) and population (850K+ and growing) simply can't afford so many SFHs. I was in Barcelona recently (yay NIPS!) and Barcelona is smaller than SF (36 sq mi) and has nearly twice the population! Everywhere you see are 6-floor buildings, with the bottom reserved for shops and people living above them. It…

I have too many hobbies that take space to live in a place like Barcelona. Where do people work on their hobby car or motorcycle? Where do you do woodworking? Where do you keep your boat or paddle board? Do they have gardens? What about an outdoor kitchen for grilling and smoking? Do their kids have bicycles and scooters and skateboards and baseball gear?