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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

#181

Post by AutumnCurtain »

dmode wrote: post #32

This article and similar ones have been written at least a 1000 times for the last decade with a clear political tinge. The poster child is always around how people want to move to Florida and Texas. But somehow it forgets to include Washington and Seattle which has probably seen the biggest tech migration and grown into the second biggest tech hub in the country, far greater than Austin or Miami (hyped up constantly…

It literally cites Ross Perot jr., it's like asking Gavin Newsome for his opinion on the competitive advantages of California.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#182

Post by temp8964 »

larrymyers wrote: post #10

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…

> Moving to the suburbs would find us losing much of that freedom that comes with living in a dense neighborhood.

This does not make sense. Yes, moving to the suburbs and not using a car would lose much of freedom, but it is not how you live in the suburbs...

When you live the suburbs (with a car or multiple cars), you have way more choices to grocery stores, doctor's offices, friends' houses, public parks, lakes, etc.

I will say, if anybody cares a lot about freedom, would want to live in the suburbs. The whole idea of prioritizing walkability is against freedom.

Walkability means limiting choices, not expanding choices. You are basically shrinking the area of 15 min driving distance (radius of eight miles) to the area of 15 min walking distance (radius of three-quarters of a mile). No matter how dense you set in the area of 15 min walking distance, it will never be comparable to the area of 15 min driving distance (around x100 area space).

In addition, you gain more freedom when you live in the suburbs with a backyard and a garage (or a shed in the backyard). You have lots of things you can do (like home lab, wood workshop, etc.) which aren't available to you if you live in a small house or apartment in the city.

If you chose not to own a car, that's a totally separate topic.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#183

Post by strikelaserclaw »

larrymyers wrote: post #10

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…

most people move to hcol areas due to jobs, they don't really have much of a community or family in those areas, so it is an easy decision for many to move away if they could. I myself have lived in dense cities, although i enjoyed the walkability of everything, i also felt myself missing time with nature, to enjoy the peace that life offers etc... and weirdly enough felt more disconnected to humanity living in the midst of a lot of humans.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#184

Post by jermaustin1 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #170
jermaustin1 wrote: post #28

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…

> and live off a VERY modest retirement (WELL under a million saved/invested) for the next 40 years Do you mind sharing how much? I'm curious why most people seem to think $1M is somehow not enough money to retire modestly on. If previous trends continue, you could easily live on >$4K after taxes per month indefinitely. That's almost 50% higher than median wage (after taxes). Median wage = ~$41,000. Even with $0 stat…

> Do you mind sharing how much?

The current (November 31) valuation of my assets is almost $200k. That isn't counting debts (which are small, but still exist), and that isn't counting the assets or value of my consulting company (which unaudited is around $50k).

I'm hoping to stash away another $150-200k over the next couple of years to really make my retirement last.

But either way, it isn't THAT hard to have a working retirement on < $500k. You aren't rich, but you are financially secure enough to chose what you want to do.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#185

Post by donatj »

jeffbee wrote: post #171
donatj wrote: post #77

I live just west of Minneapolis with my wife in a house that's been in my family for generations. I don't want to leave but the continuous stream of car jackings, home invasions, petty theft and seemingly random acts of violence have me rethinking this. Calls to defund the police sound pretty tone deaf when your elderly neighbor is assaulted in their own home and robbed.

FBI crime stats for Minneapolis proper don't look that much higher than the last 20 years, and considering that the metro population has almost doubled since 1990 you have to discount them per-capita. Are you sure it's not just that you are reading too much Nextdoor?

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/07/27/violent-crime-surge...

https://www.axios.com/local/twin-cities/2021/12/09/st-paul-h...

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#186

Post by malermeister »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #173
malermeister wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Montreal!

coryrc should have stipulated one more condition - the weather is temperate enough to survive living outside.

There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#187

Post by nradov »

onychomys wrote: post #53
asimpletune wrote: post #39

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.

I expect we'll start to see more employees who work in the "USA" for employment tax purposes, but are physically in Thailand or somewhere connected via VPN. Short of a detailed audit it's difficult for authorities to tell where someone is actually living. (I'm not encouraging tax fraud, just stating that this is likely to happen.)

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#188

Post by mypalmike »

politelemon wrote: post #85
lbriner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't just people optimizing for the size of a house and low cost of living An important point! I moved recently to a small village from a large town in the UK mainly so that I could afford a good size of house compared to what I could afford in the town. Despite never considering my self a "city boy", I have found the move very challenging. I initially thought it was isolating because of lockdown but then realised…

The driving aspect is the main thing that kills any daydreaming I do about moving to the Scottish Highlands. It doesn't stop the daydreaming, however.

Inverness might be a reasonable middle ground between the remoteness of the Highlands and the walkability of a city.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#189

Post by 0x0nyandesu »

dublinben wrote: post #11

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.

Who cares. Fuck the city. Never again.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#190

Post by gnicholas »

For me, schools are a huge part of this. Zoom schooling has demonstrated how little learning actually happens during a day. Simultaneously, online alternatives have popped up/become popularized, and people are realizing how much more a student can learn through good/personalized remote learning.

Parents who pay tens of thousands of dollars in property tax — largely for access to 'great schools' — are now able to move anywhere they want and access online options that are in many ways better than their tony suburban schools. Many of these parents are allowed to WFH now, which makes moving to rural areas possible, for the first time ever.

I imagine there will be some people who move away, realize the grass isn't always greener, and then move back. But overall I think WFH and remote schooling will unlock regions to a huge pool of families who never previously thought of living away from urban/suburban centers.

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