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Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

economist.com

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Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#121

Post by throwaway6734 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #120
eysquared wrote: post #24

There seems to be a lot of negativity in the comments so far. Is this not the dream that is often touted on hacker news? Work at a FAANG and "retire" somewhere more affordable? I'm personally doing just this. I was lucky enough to land a good job out of college, buy a house in a desired area, and see it appreciate in the last 10 years. This increase plus the birth of my kids left me wondering if there wasn't a better…

You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns their local economy upside down. Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses. You know what the end game of this looks like? It looks like Vail CO, Cape Cod MA, coastal Long Island and CT, the Hamptons, wealthy retirement ar…

Locals wouldn't get screwed if they advocated for better zoning policy and allowed more housing to be built.

This doesn't happen because those same locals that are homeowners love the value of their house exploding upwards

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#122

Post by giantg2 »

isaacimagine wrote: post #15

As someone who lived in a small city in the American Mountain West, the boom does have consequences. Sleepy farming towns are becoming endless suburbia, hiking up prices as developers spill over from the Lehi 'Silicon Slopes' area. Midway, for instance, a town on the Wasatch back situated in a location that feels similar to Switzerland, has gone from about 150 diaries to 2, as expanding housing developments buy out t…

You can always move to mountain towns in Appalachia. The population has been stagnate or shrinking over the past decades with the mills and mines shutting down.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#123

Post by dcolkitt »

watwut wrote: post #76
eysquared wrote: post #24

There seems to be a lot of negativity in the comments so far. Is this not the dream that is often touted on hacker news? Work at a FAANG and "retire" somewhere more affordable? I'm personally doing just this. I was lucky enough to land a good job out of college, buy a house in a desired area, and see it appreciate in the last 10 years. This increase plus the birth of my kids left me wondering if there wasn't a better…

> Is this not the dream that is often touted on hacker news? Work at a FAANG and "retire" somewhere more affordable? Practically, probably not. Few people talk about that, most dont. Most will move for affordable, but wont necessary like abrupt change from FAANG and big city to small city and not much to do. They will need to adjust to different culture, new hobbies, find new friends, everything. And that is not even…

Hasn’t exactly been “much to do” in San Francisco over the past year...

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#124

Post by dcolkitt »

extraAccount wrote: post #93
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grew up in a village. It's nice if you are a 10 year old boy. When you're a grown man you want to be surrounded by degenerates and atheists.

A lot of people grow up in an Urban environment, I don't really see any disadvantage to it. We get to meet a lot of people and there is always stuff to do. During COVID I am seeing a lot of talk about moving into the countryside with their children, as if their children are sheep which need a lot of open spaces in which to graze. But the will probably get bored and miss their friends, and probably force them to pack…

I agree that kids in an urban environment can be very rewarding. I disagree that the urban environment found in the Bay Area is conducive to kids. Visiting the local park is great. Visiting the local park when the walk is littered with human excrement and discarded needles, not so much. No parent in their right mind would ever go on the BART with a child.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#125

Post by sseagull »

adrianN wrote: post #101
codingdave wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supporting a large, rural population is less efficient than urbs or even suburbs. Whenever I see statement like this, it makes me wonder if you know where your food comes from. Because for the most part, the rural populations are supporting the cities. If the supply chains in this country were to fail, it is not the rural communities who would be scrounging for food and water. We'd be just fine.

I don't know how it is in the US, but in Germany at least a quarter of the population lives in "rural" parts of the country, but only a single digit percentage actually works in agriculture.

Imagine the support infrastructure farmers and family need (schools, medical, stores, some entertainment maybe). And then all the infrastructure those workers need.

It’s not like every farmer is happy living in a tent alone, traveling offroad only to deliver their crops and buy seeds in the city. They like some form of community.

It may be “inefficient” but if you want to be efficient, everyone will starve.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#126

Post by dcolkitt »

hoka-one-one wrote: post #42
eysquared wrote: post #24

There seems to be a lot of negativity in the comments so far. Is this not the dream that is often touted on hacker news? Work at a FAANG and "retire" somewhere more affordable? I'm personally doing just this. I was lucky enough to land a good job out of college, buy a house in a desired area, and see it appreciate in the last 10 years. This increase plus the birth of my kids left me wondering if there wasn't a better…

Your kids all else equal will be outsprinted by kids who live in more competitive cities. You can decide you don't care about any of that, but understand that type of that decision will ripple through to future generations, e.g. your grandkids will be less educated. The irony is that most educated people living in small towns want to get out, and a generation or two after they do they want to go back. Will the cycle…

Shared family environment (which by definition includes where your parents choose to live) has near zero impact on long term adult outcomes. This has been confirmed again and again by countless twin studies.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#127

Post by twobitshifter »

stouset wrote: post #29
iJohnDoe wrote: post #4

Great, you can work from. So you take your California money to middle of nowhere and buy a home for cheap. Renovate it and now it’s awesome. However, that local, who isn’t making California money, that is working a local job and making local money and is hoping to move up in housing for their family is priced out because housing pricing has doubled or even tripled. People that wanted to retire to rural or remote area…

I used to believe this “wealthy Californians fleeing” narrative and… I’m just not sure I buy it any more. 135,000 more people left California than moved in last year. Even if they overwhelmingly moved to only ten other states, that’s just 13,500 extra ex-Californians in each one of those unlucky states. And not all of them are going to be wealthy, surely some non-negligible portion will be less well off. Maybe they’l…

I think you are overestimating sales in rural areas and the number of houses. Here’s an article from Vermont where housing prices have soared during the pandemic and there’s a market shortage.

https://vtdigger.org/2021/04/19/home-sales-to-out-of-state-b...

>The tax department logged 3,795 sales to out-of-state buyers in 2020, compared to 2,750 in 2019. That represents about 27 percent of all residential sales in 2020, according to Deputy Tax Commissioner Rebecca Sameroff.

>The value of that real estate increased even more: $1.43 billion in residential real estate was sold to out-of-staters in 2020, a 79% increase over the $799 million sold the year before.

135,000 Californians could consume the real estate market of Vermont many times over.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#128

Post by danjac »

eysquared wrote: post #24

There seems to be a lot of negativity in the comments so far. Is this not the dream that is often touted on hacker news? Work at a FAANG and "retire" somewhere more affordable? I'm personally doing just this. I was lucky enough to land a good job out of college, buy a house in a desired area, and see it appreciate in the last 10 years. This increase plus the birth of my kids left me wondering if there wasn't a better…

> but at the end of the day I'm optimizing for my own quality of life.

All well and good, but the economic and environmental effects of everyone "optimizing for their own quality of life" without regard for others means everyone loses out, don't they?

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#129

Post by digikazi »

dcolkitt wrote: post #124
extraAccount wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people grow up in an Urban environment, I don't really see any disadvantage to it. We get to meet a lot of people and there is always stuff to do. During COVID I am seeing a lot of talk about moving into the countryside with their children, as if their children are sheep which need a lot of open spaces in which to graze. But the will probably get bored and miss their friends, and probably force them to pack…

I agree that kids in an urban environment can be very rewarding. I disagree that the urban environment found in the Bay Area is conducive to kids. Visiting the local park is great. Visiting the local park when the walk is littered with human excrement and discarded needles, not so much. No parent in their right mind would ever go on the BART with a child.

Why wouldn't you take your child on BART?

I'm not looking for an argument, I'm genuinely curious. I live in the UK but I've never visited the SF area.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#130

Post by throwaway0a5e »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #121
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns their local economy upside down. Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses. You know what the end game of this looks like? It looks like Vail CO, Cape Cod MA, coastal Long Island and CT, the Hamptons, wealthy retirement ar…

Locals wouldn't get screwed if they advocated for better zoning policy and allowed more housing to be built. This doesn't happen because those same locals that are homeowners love the value of their house exploding upwards

It has little to do with zoning and everything to do with economic incentives that drive out anyone high achieving or with a conscience and retain/reward swindlers and those who can't escape.
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