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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

#341

Post by vailprogrammer »

anthomtb wrote: post #269
vailprogrammer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this sentiment in cities, however, I believe that this approach in the mountains would result in skyscrapers being built in areas of natural beauty, and be harmful to all of the wildlife that live there. The Eagle (Vail) Valley is relatively small to begin with.

Vail, and most Colorado ski resorts, are already full of 10+ story hotels. I’m not sure how building a residential or office tower would be any more impactful.

Sorry but that is false. Please name even 1 hotel in Vail that is 10+ stories. The tallest that I can think of is 5, maybe 6 stories.

edit: having been a ski bum in Vail, I can't say that I've visited every resort in CO. But across Vail, Breck, Keystone, A Basin, Loveland, Monarch, Cooper, Copper, Beaver Creek, Steamboat, Wolf Creek, Crested Butte, all 5 mountains of Aspen, there are no 10+ story towers. I'm trying to take back some of the pedantic tone of my original comment.

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

#342

Post by fullshark »

San Francisco house prices rose 25% as well

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA#0

I'm unconvinced this spells the beginning of a long term trend re: remote work. It's more a sign house prices are going up everywhere. Remote workforce will grow from this no doubt but the smart money remains on work looking very similar to how it looked pre pandemic IMO.

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

#343

Post by AlwaysRock »

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…

Gross. If I have to worry about my kids and their kids kids being overtaken by other more elite kids I'm doing something wrong.

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

#344

Post by seattle_spring »

supernovae wrote: post #318
throwaway6734 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So the answer to beautiful mountain towns, is to destroy the beauty so we can build on it and remove the reason people come to visit/escape? mmmkay

This argument has always bothered me too. I'd rather a place be relatively inaccessible but great, rather than accessible but shitty.

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

#345

Post by driverdan »

big_youth wrote: post #27
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…

Great post but one point, Whole foods sells 1/2 gallons for $6! I don't drink much milk but would gladly pay a premium for high quality, local, organic milk.

Organic is a scam and Whole Foods is a rip off.

Please explain what "premium" milk is. Milk is a commodity. All milk has a code on the bottle that indicates which farm produced it. If you compare codes you'll often find the cheaper store brands are the same thing as the more expensive brands.

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

#346

Post by supernovae »

khuey wrote: post #311
ghaff wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is--and I'm not saying you specifically--but worrying about a place losing "its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place" inevitably has to go hand in hand with strong NIMBY policies. Which isn't even "wrong" in any absolute sense whatever the growth at all costs crowd here may want. Though, really, not even that helps because towns can't actually (or really w…

A lot of these people are really only moving into the interior mountain towns because places like coastal California where the economic activity is that allows them to pile up this kind of wealth has become prohibitively expensive due to their own NIMBY regimes.

NIMBY is just a symptom of the problem... The problem is development, wealth and consumption at all cost.

If people lived in normal houses, had normal job and lived normal lives where they didn't have to escape to feel normal, then we wouldn't seek out mountain towns as places to live, but rather places to explore.

Instead, we amass sheer amounts of wealth, property, exclusivity, we build so much of our society around celebrity and uniqueness and feeling special. We value huge houses with lots of rooms we'll probably never use and as long as "we win" - we don't care the cost.

Here in Austin - we're seeing the result of people leaving other cities. They look here and go "wow its cheap" but the people who have lived here - and lived here for EONS are going "wow, its getting expensive".

If you bought a house on fixed income and paid it off and worked a full life - we're getting to the point where your dream is no longer a dream. Sure, the house may have equity but its a tax liability - so you have to move..

Where do you move too that isn't being impacted? Where do you go to survive on fixed income and just live?

Is it NIMBY when you just want what you worked an entire life for or is it really something else?

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

#347

Post by reducesuffering »

aidenn0 wrote: post #302
nerdkid93 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deep learning team for Capital One What!? Capital One has a deep learning team? As a long-time customer of theirs, I can't even begin to guess what that team might do for their set of products, except maybe to optimize their credit card offerings.

Fraud detection?

My thoughts too. Fraud detection seems like the first step ML for a financial institution. Consumer banking basically labels itself. The customers will come telling you X transaction = fraud, with all the features available like time, location, amount, etc.

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

#348

Post by vailprogrammer »

driverdan wrote: post #334
vailprogrammer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this sentiment in cities, however, I believe that this approach in the mountains would result in skyscrapers being built in areas of natural beauty, and be harmful to all of the wildlife that live there. The Eagle (Vail) Valley is relatively small to begin with.

How are skyscrapers harmful to wildlife? Density is much better for wildlife than sprawl.

Good point. I guess you could say that its the contents of skyscrapers that are harmful to wildlife: humans. Lots of traffic (whether car, bicycle, foot, alpine touring skiing, etc) causes the wildlife herds to be pushed further away from where they originally may have inhabited.

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

#349

Post by lotsofpulp »

alistairSH wrote: post #298
giantg2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ssssshhhh, don't spill the beans. I need those towns to remain affordable for ~15-20 years, until I'm ready to cash-out my suburban home.

They aren't unknown now, they're less expensive because they are less desirable than less humid places with bigger mountains in the west.

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

#350

Post by supernovae »

seattle_spring wrote: post #344
supernovae wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the answer to beautiful mountain towns, is to destroy the beauty so we can build on it and remove the reason people come to visit/escape? mmmkay

This argument has always bothered me too. I'd rather a place be relatively inaccessible but great, rather than accessible but shitty.

after i wrote it, it occurred to me that the problem is we should build more cities/towns that allow people to live HAPPY lives - so that traveling isn't an escape from reality - but a recognition of the charm/character as something to experience for what it is. I hope we don't lose those mountain town charms to sky scrapers and apartment complexes...

I think if we can address what makes cities livable for EVERYONE who lives in them, then travel is for experiencing foreign ideas, concepts and cultures and not "escaping the reality of cities and using my wealth to get what i want" kinda thing

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