41–50 of 143 posts
What a load, I've never been to a city that wasn't a disgusting concrete nightmare. God forbid you want to raise kids, say goodbye to playing outside. I'll take my cozy yard and breathable air, thanks
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In Boston, everything is expensive so only the rich can afford them. Boston resident preferences might be explained by culture more than looking up through the glass ceiling of home prices. I think we might also be reaching a tipping point where school districts may not even hold people back. If you can afford a house anywhere, you probably also can afford to send your kids to private school.
You would expect that to be the case in the Bay Area, but even now people will spend several hundred thousand dollars more for a home in a good school district, even though that money could have been used to pay for private school.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the article has failed to realize that "self-reporting" evidence is weaker than actions, not stronger. If you listen to the Freakonomics podcast for any length of time, you would realize that the weakest, most likely to not really be true, form of evidence is self-reporting. When self-reporting/answering surveys, people commonly give the answer they are "expected" to give. The actions then reveal their real…
OK, so tell me why housing prices in high-density cities are significantly higher than in suburbs. Isn't that a revealed preference?
What a load, I've never been to a city that wasn't a disgusting concrete nightmare. God forbid you want to raise kids, say goodbye to playing outside. I'll take my cozy yard and breathable air, thanks
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the article has failed to realize that "self-reporting" evidence is weaker than actions, not stronger. If you listen to the Freakonomics podcast for any length of time, you would realize that the weakest, most likely to not really be true, form of evidence is self-reporting. When self-reporting/answering surveys, people commonly give the answer they are "expected" to give. The actions then reveal their real…
Given that we've made it illegal to build anything other than low-density suburbs in most places, actions aren't good evidence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would hold up Houston as the counterexample. It has zero zoning policies whatsoever and is one of the most sprawled cities in the country, and everyone lives in low-density single family ranch homes with huge floor plans and drives an hour to work each way. Developers still basically just plop large single-family residential developments on random plots of land with few ways to stop them. In the absence of zoning,…
I just did a cursory search, and houston has mandatory parking minimums. Those are one of the most sprawl policies you can find. It also mandates setbacks from the street, wide roads, and long blocks. Overall Houston does a lot of stuff right! But, I think they have still baked sprawl into their system. From what I can see, my dense Montreal neighbourbood would be illegal in Houston. (It's illegal almost everywhere i…
At home, I like parking in a driveway better than parking on the street.
At home, I like parking in a garage better than parking in a driveway or alley.
At home, I like parking in an attached garage better than parking in a detached one.
I like living in my own house better than an apartment.
I like living in a free-standing house better than a duplex or row house.
I like a large yard where my young kids can play with their friends and I can keep an eye on them out the window.
I want to be able to make some noise without disturbing my neighbors, and vice-versa. I don't like living cheek-by-jowl with my neighbors.
I like living in a neighborhood that has virtually no violent crime or burglaries. I don't want to have to run a gauntlet of panhandlers when I go for a walk around the neighborhood.
I prefer to live in a house built since 1978, so I don't have to deal with lead paint, asbestos, knob & tube wiring, wood lath walls, lead (water) service lines, buckling foundations, damp moldy basements, rotting, leaking box gutters, or cheap, chalky aluminum siding that was installed in 1968 over Insulbrick that was installed in 1938. Unfortunately, those houses tend to be relatively rare and exorbitantly expensive in my local city.
I don't know why so many city dwellers seem to obsess over the fact that there are many people who simply prefer living in the suburbs. But there are.
Yet another article claiming that I, every member of my family, and all of my friends don’t actually want to live in our horrible susburbs. It’s not possible that we actually love it here, that we like the clean air, wide open spaces, huge yards, non-crowded downtown, small family friendly parades, and our rodeo. Nope, we’re all just lying to ourselves and really want to love in a cramped arcology.
Nobody wants to outlaw suburbs and single-family homes with huge yards and setbacks via zoning fiat, people want other options to not be outright illegal.
I'm sincerely sure you enjoy living where you do, we're just asking for such preferences to not be encoded and mandated in the zoning/land-use laws and regulations and procedures.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the article has failed to realize that "self-reporting" evidence is weaker than actions, not stronger. If you listen to the Freakonomics podcast for any length of time, you would realize that the weakest, most likely to not really be true, form of evidence is self-reporting. When self-reporting/answering surveys, people commonly give the answer they are "expected" to give. The actions then reveal their real…
OK, so tell me why housing prices in high-density cities are significantly higher than in suburbs. Isn't that a revealed preference?
For example, MTV/Palo Alto have the same per sq ft price as san francisco. There are sources showing each one as higher than the other, but not to any significant degree.
Second there are a tremendous number of factors that affect housing prices other than personal preference.
I'm really unsure if you are trying to be serious here, because it's so rare a preference like we are talking about here really has a majority at one of the extremes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that we've made it illegal to build anything other than low-density suburbs in most places, actions aren't good evidence.
Given that planning and zoning boards making it illegal to build anything other than low density suburbs are elected officials, their actions are pretty good evidence of preferences...
... of the voting population, whose demographics unfortunately don’t match up with the population at large.
There’s also a vested self-interest for property owners to vote in such a way that preserves their property values. And what better way to do so than to restrict supply?
Big caveat: My opinion comes from large amounts of anecdata. But at the same time, it has often been noted (especially on HN, given its demographics) that San Francisco, where there is a huge demand for dense housing, is fraught with many barriers to actually build dense housing.
You can see City Observatory’s (an urbanist publication, so YMMV) take: http://cityobservatory.org/homevoters-v-the-growth-machine/