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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

#471

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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.

I.e. using money to skip out of the part where you reap what you sow.

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

#472

Post by munificent »

bedhead wrote: post #223
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…

Last year I moved from a top 3 city to a small mountain town in Colorado. In my experience, your hostility is extremely common in small towns that have big seasonal influxes. I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners and relatively newer full-time residents. The one constant is: "Everything was great until shortly after I relocated here and you people moved in." A week…

I recall with some relish a comment I read on the Seattle subreddit a while back. The commenter was furious at how all of the recent transplants were screwing up their previously wonderful city. Eventually, they happened to mention that they themselves had moved to Seattle from California less than a year prior.

There is a real thing going on in the US today, a sort of inchoate rage felt at all of the poorly defined "others". My hunch is that much of it stems from the rising anxieties of climate change, economic inequality, corporate political control, and even more recently the pandemic. Everyone needs to feel they have a certain level of agency and control in the world. It's hard to sleep at night if you don't even feel certain that your bed will still be there when you wake up.

The world today often feels like we are ants surrounded by lumbering billionaire and corporate giants, hoping not to get stepped on while we watch climate change slowly dissolve the ground beneath us. People naturally cling to any remaining pieces of agency they can find, and lash out when even that tiny inch is taken from them. So when I see people screaming at a waitress for insisting they put on a mask, or sneering at someone visiting their beloved hiking trail, I wonder if it's only because there is no convenient face they can yell at for all of the larger forces that have actually marginalized them.

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

#473

Post by AnimalMuppet »

hnal943 wrote: post #271
lotsofpulp wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the school system that is abysmal, it’s people not wanting their kids to mingle with kids from lower income/less wealthy families. Cities might have various socioeconomic classes living near each other, and so the schools have a more mixed population. Suburbs can restrict their schools to those that can afford to live there, so those public schools can have very few kids from lower socioeconomic classes, and…

Wrong. It's the school system that is abysmal. Compare test scores any urban public school district to a middle class suburb.

We lived in a middle- to upper-middle-class suburb, served by a middle- to upper-middle-class school district. Our elementary school tested in the bottom third of the state.

Sometimes it's the school, not the school system.

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

#474

Post by vineyardmike »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #284
a3KEaWOcZr wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For decades people from all over the country, many of these small towns moved to places like NY, Chicago, SF etc. and the respective suburbs in search for better jobs, opportunity etc. It didn't seem like it was a big concern then to anyone that the locals in these cities could be negatively affected by higher rents, home prices etc. Why is it different when the reverse happens? If its ok for a young person to leave…

>If its ok for a young person to leave their hometown, move to a city and call it home to make a better life without thinking about the locals, then it must be ok for a person with a small family living in a city to move to a smaller town and call it home to make a better life for his/her family. The reason that theses two scenarios are not equivalent is so obvious I'm wondering whether or not I'm misinterpreting it.

What is different? Seems pretty comparable to me

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

#475

Post by sagarm »

nitrogen wrote: post #413
bedhead wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year I moved from a top 3 city to a small mountain town in Colorado. In my experience, your hostility is extremely common in small towns that have big seasonal influxes. I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners and relatively newer full-time residents. The one constant is: "Everything was great until shortly after I relocated here and you people moved in." A week…

It's a recurring theme. People spend decades taming and beautifying a place. Then people with no respect or appreciation come and love all the "nature" and turn the place into exactly what they were trying to leave behind. It's incredibly narcissistic and selfish to believe that "the locals" are only there as a hindrance to you . Would you roll up to a random village in Thailand and just start changing things, and ex…

> Taming and beautifying

What you call development in step 1...

> narcissist and selfish

What you call development in step 2. They're both development and urbanization.

> only there as a hindrance to you.

This seems like a projection. You don't seem to consider "them" as having any right to even exist. Indeed, in the next sentence you compare migrating within the US to migrating outside of it, making the xenophobia even more clear.

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

#476

Post by lotsofpulp »

ihyfhgyfhth wrote: post #443
nitrogen wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a recurring theme. People spend decades taming and beautifying a place. Then people with no respect or appreciation come and love all the "nature" and turn the place into exactly what they were trying to leave behind. It's incredibly narcissistic and selfish to believe that "the locals" are only there as a hindrance to you . Would you roll up to a random village in Thailand and just start changing things, and ex…

The western united states maintained its wilderness areas through a culture of conservationism that isn't remotely respected by the new arrivals. I've spent the last two decades watching paradise be paved for a parking lot.

The wilderness areas were maintained by not having a lot of people. US added 100M people in the last 40 years, and a lot of them seem to like the Western states' scenery, terrain, and weather.

1980 census shows just over 40M in the west:

https://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1981-02.pdf

page 6

2019 figures show nearly 80M in the west:

https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr...

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

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

#477

Post by vagrantJin »

arethuza wrote: post #95
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.

I grew up in a very pretty village in Scotland - from 0 to 11 or so it was awesome, from 12 to 14 it was mind numbingly awful, from 15 or so I could travel to the nearest town more easily and meet up with friends there and it went back to being awesome. [Edit: Having parented teenagers I suspect the awfulness of the 12 to 14 age was probably more about me than anything else!]

Most teenager everywhere across the globe think their hometown sucks, even those living in the biggest cities.

Such is the mind of a teenager.

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

#478

Post by [deleted] »

ramphastidae wrote: post #226
Loughla wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV on this one. In my part of the midwest, home and land prices have almost doubled in the last year, and went up about 6x since we built our house (about 8 years ago). Two reasons: (What used to be called) Yuppies moving out here and working remotely to 'get more in touch with nature' (read: start a blog or something about sustainable living that is really only possible if one of you has a 100k+ salary) and invest…

This is the pure definition of NIMBYism. You built a house there eight years ago that has increased 6x in value. Now others are trying to do the same thing and you demonize them for it. You should be complaining about state policy, not the people seeking a better life for themselves.

[deleted]

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

#479

Post by dont__panic »

cwp wrote: post #300
sakopov wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a good deal, but isn't your salary going to be adjusted for the area where you currently reside?

Yes, it was. I took a 15% cut. It's still a financial win, given the lower cost of living, lower taxes, and cheaper real estate. I'm finally able to buy a house.

15% to leave SF and go somewhere rural in the US? That is quite the deal.

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

#480

Post by vineyardmike »

mring33621 wrote: post #282
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You need to understand that it's the 'locals' that are fighting (and losing) against the 'outsiders' that are actually saying "fuck you"

Why is it a fight? Why can't the locals be growing and changing and improving with the outsiders? The outsiders are changing themselves.
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