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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

#211

Post by volkl48 »

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

This is a more complex problem than it is in many other regions of the country.

For the most obvious - Once you're off a municipal water supply (which of course, has to have an adequate source of water in the region), available water resources/aquifers are often very limited and minimum lot sizes have to be large because the land can't support higher density housing.

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If you build anything even approaching "normal" suburban SFH housing, you're just going to have all the wells you'll have to sink run dry in a few months and the properties will be uninhabitable. Seeing a 2 acre minimum lot size isn't necessarily a "keep the poor people out" thing.

To be clear, I am mostly not referring to the cities mentioned in this article, but housing development in smaller mountain towns and the rural/semi-rural areas up in the mountains.

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

#212

Post by lotsofpulp »

bobthechef wrote: post #158
antisthenes wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of life is not zero-sum, bot on a local level and a short timeframe, many things are indeed zero sum. The best example is land & desirable real estate. It only takes a few people with "outside" money to drive up prices in the market or to purchase land and sit on it in perpetuity, driving up prices by taking it out of the local supply.

From [0]: "Aquinas believed that it was specifically immoral to raise prices because a particular buyer had an urgent need for what was being sold [...] Aquinas would therefore condemn practices such as raising the price of building supplies in the wake of a natural disaster. Increased demand caused by the destruction of existing buildings does not add to a seller's costs, so to take advantage of buyers' increased wi…

The purpose of increased prices is to incentivize more supply to come into the market. If prices do not rise with demand (and static supply), then you’re left with a market where certain buyers are lucky (or connected) and some don’t get anything.

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

#213

Post by DaniloDias »

francisofascii wrote: post #146
PostThisTooFast wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bubble is back. Look at the housing market and the valuations of do-nothing bullshit companies. People don't learn.

Right. This bubble seems to have elements of both the dot-com crash (overvalued tech) and the financial crisis (overvalued housing).

80 year cycle won’t last much longer.

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

#214

Post by lotsofpulp »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #132
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.

It’s a reason, and the same reason that everything happens in nature when there is inadequate supply of something compared to demand. Might makes right.

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

#215

Post by simonsarris »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #79

Are we still ignoring the ecological collapse that is caused by urban sprawl? We *must* increase the density of our cities. If you believe that the climate crisis is a problem and a big one, then you could be for a rude awakening as most experts now consider the collapse in biodiversity to have far bigger impacts on human lives and living conditions than climate change[0]. The only reason why there are fewer headline…

> We must increase the density of our cities.

We could also try to make a few new cities, instead of ten thousand new suburbs

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

#216

Post by ghaff »

selimthegrim wrote: post #171

Having just been to Santa Fe, I am wondering if only poor education and water shortages keep it from being a remote work magnet.

If I were to move somewhere in the Mountain West to work remotely, Santa Fe would be fairly high on my list. One downside is that, while Santa Fe (and Los Alamos) are pretty great, the nearest relatively big city of any size (Albuquerque) is less so.

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

#217

Post by itsoktocry »

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.

Have you considered that this is the mentality that people take issue with? It's the root of many of today's ills.

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

#218

Post by dagw »

leetcrew wrote: post #204
bluGill wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things you can do in a city are different from the things you can do in the suburbs, are different from the things you can do in rural areas. There are pros and cons of each. Sadly in the US many dense cities have abandoned the things that kids like to do, leaving those who like city things to the suburbs as the best compromise. I know someone who started a children's museum, when she started the city tried to ge…

in my social circle, the number one reason why families leave the city is the abysmal public school system. it's not a big deal to the wealthier families, since they can just send their children to private schools. middle income families usually can't afford that, but they can afford to hop over the county line and send their children to the very good public schools out there. at least in my area, I wouldn't say the…

in my social circle, the number one reason why families leave the city is the abysmal public school system.

That is true. If my daughter hadn't gotten into a good charter school in the city, I wonder if we hadn't looked a lot harder at moving. However after we did eventually hop over the county line my daughter still 'commutes' back into the city because she doesn't want to change schools.

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

#219

Post by bart_spoon »

bluGill wrote: post #167
dagw wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I raised a child in the middle of a city from age 0-8 and it was great. So much to do! Parks, botanical gardens, playgrounds, museums, swimming pools, fun fares, concerts and so on, all within walking distance or at worst a short bus ride.

The things you can do in a city are different from the things you can do in the suburbs, are different from the things you can do in rural areas. There are pros and cons of each. Sadly in the US many dense cities have abandoned the things that kids like to do, leaving those who like city things to the suburbs as the best compromise. I know someone who started a children's museum, when she started the city tried to ge…

Yeah, American cities are actively hostile to young families. It doesn’t have to be this way. I lived in Japan for several years and it seems like a much healthier urban environment for children and their parents. But in the US, it’s hard to justify in most cases the cons of living in dense urban area with young kids, even if you as an adult would enjoy it more.

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

#220

Post by lotsofpulp »

nonameiguess wrote: post #187
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…

It's not just the locals being impacted. This was my parents' plan, too. My dad retired a few years back after 40 years of working for LA County and seeing the house I lived in as a child tremendously appreciate in value. Unfortunately, they found out in retirement that any small town worth actually moving to has also seen prices tremendously go up, they're on a permanent fixed income, and now instead of living the d…

> any small town worth actually moving to

This is the crux of the matter. There is a lot of demand for less humid, mountainous regions with lots of outdoor recreation nearby. And it’s easier than ever to scope (due to internet) out the nice locations from wherever you are in the world.

So people are taking advantage (or already have) of an arbitrage opportunity to go where they want to that they previously may not have known about, or been able to go. The population of the world also exploded in the last few decades.

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