Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 592 posts

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

#131

Post by refurb »

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…

You’re ignoring the fact that many people that move to SF do so despite the high cost, poor government, traffic, etc.

No doubt plenty decide to stay but for many it was always a temporary move.

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

#132

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

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…

> I understand this is not for everyone and I understand the negative perception of 'outsiders' pushing the price up for locals, but at the end of the day I'm optimizing for my own quality of life.

I'm sorry, is that supposed to be an excuse? I mean, on the whole, some displacement of locals isn't that big a tragedy, but "it was good for me, so fuck you" isn't exactly the best moral reasoning I've ever heard.

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

#133

Post by refurb »

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…

I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place.

This is why housing prices in the Bay are so stupid. People don’t want it to lose it’s magic and their solution is to freeze practically all building. As a result, even the people there are forced out due to growing rents, increasing housing prices force kids to leave, commercial rents replace tattoo shops with skin spas.

And you lose the magic anyways.

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

#134

Post by dcolkitt »

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…

The flipside is that while you’re “taking” a house in Colorado, you’re also “freeing up” a house in California.

You’re only looking at the displaced resident being priced out. But there are many people who desperately want to move to coastal California and currently can’t because of housing costs. The migration is balanced by someone new being “priced in” to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Maybe even someone who wants to get out of their small Rocky Mountain town.

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

#135

Post by refurb »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #91
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.

Farmland owned by city banks. Can we just stop with this BS? Human civilization is the tale of cities- has been for 5000 years.

Cities are owned by city banks. What’s your point?

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

#136

Post by dcolkitt »

digikazi wrote: post #129
dcolkitt wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even 5 years ago I would. But the level of mayhem, filth, and danger on San Francisco public transit is out of control. The BART makes the Tube look like Tokyo Metro.

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

#138

Post by prepend »

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…

> wealthy Californians fleeing

There are more than Californians and I think this story applies to all “rich states moving to lower tax states.”

There were many states [0] with net migration loss and while California alone isn’t enough, you have to lump in NY, IL, NJ, CT, MA, MD you get significant numbers and that’s year after year.

[0] https://taxfoundation.org/state-migration-trends/

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

#139

Post by tarsinge »

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…

> I understand this is not for everyone and I understand the negative perception of 'outsiders' pushing the price up for locals, but at the end of the day I'm optimizing for my own quality of life.

It's unfortunate that you phrase that as egoistic because I think that apart from real estate price (which is highly location dependent because it depends on zoning laws) locals are better with the influx of money. In my experience in France, some rural places with low real estate tension are very happy to see urban people coming, but in other (like small coastal cities) there is a huge resentment because real estate skyrocket in a relatively short time.

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

#140

Post by yifanl »

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…

I guess the question is, is quality of life zero-sum?

I want to say no because I feel like I can improve my QoL in ways that don't harm others, but all these examples are telling me that its really that I don't (or maybe even choose not to) see the negative consequences until its compounded by a large enough group and it ends up being another one of your examples.

Post reply on HN