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Americans are rethinking where they want to live

economist.com

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Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#62
post #6

COL/SOL in California is appalling. SOL continues to degrade here to the point where certain parts of Bay Are (Oakland, Hayward) look more like Syria than first world nation. Trash is everywhere, even in nicer neighborhoods. Not a single park here in East Bay without encountering a homeless person. And, then I meet people here that continue to defend 1) Food is amazing 2) SF sucks! Oakland is the best place ever 3) W…

Could you dig up sources on that? Not challenging you, but as an Angeleno I've always believed this to be true myself. Curious what may actually be happening.

Here you go:

> 70% from San Francisco

22% from rest of California

8% from out of state

I think the source is from this study: https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/FINAL-PIT-R...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28333755

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28974050

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#63

I've heard this brought up as a kind of second round of white flight. The middle- and upper-class (primarily) white population is once again moving out of urban centers because telecommuting is something that these high-salary jobs afford them. I think it will rebound a bit (but not much), as moving from urban to suburban is a very difficult transition, but its even harder going the other way once you've adjusted. I…

I've entertained the same idea from time to time, but just don't see how it can work out financially. What is your contingency plan for medical expenses? Kids?

Btw, big fan of your blog posts.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#64

I'm also sure a small percentage of people from the USA may even rethink living there.

My company has gone to work-from-anywhere-as-long-as-it's-in-the-USA, there's some sort of complicated tax thing that comes if you live in another country but work in the US, and they don't want to deal with that.

There is a SaaS for that.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#65

> First, people have been leaving large, dense, expensive urban cores for smaller, less-dense cities and suburbs. Second, people and companies have been moving to warm, low-tax states in the South and Southwest. Seems like there could be a convergence of the demographic trend of millennial family formation with pandemic related increase in people's perception of the value of square footage that is pushing people towa…

As a millenial forming a family, it's the former part of your last paragraph that's keeping our family out of the city. We live near Seattle, and we'd much rather be in Seattle, but we can't afford anywhere near the same square footage, owning or renting. We'd absolutely be happy renting in the city if it was remotely affordable.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#66

It bodes poorly for the environment if people are increasingly moving from denser cities to sprawling suburbs. This is in many ways a self-inflicted problem of high-cost cities, but it should be a national priority to reverse this trend.

It's always crazy to hear that suburbs are cheaper. Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation, so it should be considerably cheaper. It's only through the subsidisation of suburbia and the low supply/high demand of high density urban areas that this is the case.

Car centric suburbs aren't just terrible for the environment, terrible for safety and terrible for transportation; they're also incredibly costly.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#67

My family and I decided to stay on the north side of Chicago, a very high cost of living location, despite no longer needing to head downtown every day for work. Why not move outside of Chicago where our cost living would be substantially lower? * We wanted to keep our kids in the same school, which is walking distance. * We like being walking distance to the grocery store, doctor's offices, etc. * Our kids can walk…

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Different people value different things. You prioritize your kids school and proximity to important destinations and so that neighborhood makes a lot of sense. When your kids move away after college, does that change the calculation much for you? Both of my kids are away at college and so I'm looking at where I live and what kind of life I want and am leaning more and more to…

Suburbs are very unfriendly for the elderly compared to cities.

The ideal suburbanite is an upper-middle-class person in their 30s–50s in good health who really likes driving their large car and has hobbies they can do individually from inside their own home (e.g. woodworking, gardening), and doesn’t mind that life is miserable* there for their kids. Everyone else is more or less a second-class citizen.

* Edit: suburbs are unpleasant for kids because anyone who can’t drive is completely dependent on someone else (for kids, usually a parent) for transportation: few destinations are within walking/cycling distance, buses are few and infrequent, in general non-car transportation is discouraged by the urban design. Everything is harder to get to, and there are far fewer resources available for people with particular interests.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#68

I've heard this brought up as a kind of second round of white flight. The middle- and upper-class (primarily) white population is once again moving out of urban centers because telecommuting is something that these high-salary jobs afford them. I think it will rebound a bit (but not much), as moving from urban to suburban is a very difficult transition, but its even harder going the other way once you've adjusted. I…

Many like you are buying up lake-front properties in rural places.

I recommend it, playing farmer-cowboy-houseboateer in Kentucky/Tennessee is a magnitude cheaper than out west, even if you fail, you are out less money than simply living elsewhere.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#69

I'd go South if the politics start to blue-up. I figure if this trend holds as the article says, by the time I'm ready to retire there will have been two censuses. I care about social justice, local produce, and warm weather. The south has 2 out of 3.

If everything goes as planned with global warming, we may have 3/3 here in the north as well (at least some of us). Where I live it’s noticeably warmer, winters milder and summers longer just in the ten years I’ve been here.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#70

COL/SOL in California is appalling. SOL continues to degrade here to the point where certain parts of Bay Are (Oakland, Hayward) look more like Syria than first world nation. Trash is everywhere, even in nicer neighborhoods. Not a single park here in East Bay without encountering a homeless person. And, then I meet people here that continue to defend 1) Food is amazing 2) SF sucks! Oakland is the best place ever 3) W…

These are the reasons I chose to leave the East Bay. It's a dump (almost literally). Californian exceptionalism is rampant too, like many people have never visited a place where you aren't afraid to park your car on the street or don't step over human feces. For the low low price of $2,500/month (and that's not particularly expensive).

What bothers me most is that when I talk about this with people there the reaction is somewhere between "good riddance" or reducing my complaints down to cost of living. But I distinctly remember talking to a mayoral candidate in Berkeley canvassing for the election last year and discussing things like solar mandates. He seemed baffled that I asked why the city couldn't keep my street clean or do something about the number of brush fires and assaults at the nearby homeless encampment.

The Easy Bay could be great, but they're lacking basic municipal function and acting like the weather, mountains, and liberalism make up for it.

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