Americans are rethinking where they want to live • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#241

Post by mypalmike » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #160

jacobolus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: subur…

Evidently it's somewhat odd, but the suburb we bought in has an elementary school and middle school built right in the middle of it. It's very walkable for a large portion of the neighborhood (though, it's the outer Seattle area - so the rain does keep many from walking for a large portion of the year, anyway). I certainly don't think we put our child's mental health second. I'm not sure how to quantify that for a st…

Have you ever actually lived in the city of Seattle? Your description is a caricature that doesn't really exist. Particularly amusing is the idea of food deserts here. What parts of the city suffer from this? Where I live, I can walk to 3 major supermarkets, a produce market, a weekend farmers market, countless cafes, bakeries, delis, restaurants... And somehow I manage to breathe over the constant smell of piss. Lol.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#242

Post by beembeem » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #65

Tiktaalik wrote: post #22

> 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.

Yep and zoning is front and center the problem here. There's a reason developers are building skinny, tall units instead of 3 bedroom flats or heck just duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#243

Post by imbnwa » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #209

If people on HN really want the urban life style to make any sense in America they need to start tackling the mental health / homeless problem. They talk about "the environment" but no one wants to talk about how my wife has to dodge human feces getting on and off public transportation. "It's just part of living in a vibrant city".... Give me a break.

That's not Chicago, maybe West Coast or Austin, but Chicago got super aggressive about homeless in the 90s when gentrification started. Then, the homeless use to die under the freeways every winter and Wacker Drive (the "lower drive" as seen in The Dark Knight) was a giant homeless camp.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

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Post by jedberg » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #147

Tycho wrote: post #87

I've been thinking about what gives big cities their edge. Why some even become global hubs for particular industries. Two reasons are clearer to me now than they were in the past: - Lifestyle advantages of living amongst specialists: people can outsource various chores/tasks/jobs/errands to local specialists who can complete them much more efficiently. For instance imagine if your village doesn't have a plumber and…

Depending on specialists for everything is fragile. What happens when there are no plumbers available at any price? I see it as just sad and pathetic when city dwellers can't even do basic home maintenance like replacing a faucet cartridge or toilet seal.

How far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go? Will you teach yourself how to butcher your own meat so you don't have to rely on a butcher? Teach yourself surgery so you don't have to go to a doctor?

Our society thrives because of specialization. It's what allows a person to focus on what they're best at to have the greatest chance at innovation.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

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Post by munificent » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

ben-schaaf wrote: post #66

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.

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…

The structure of the US economy changed faster in the past 50 years than infrastructure could adapt to.

With globalization and automation, the US pretty quickly turned into a mostly-service economy and shed tons of manufacturing and agriculture jobs. Service and other white-collar jobs mean working either for or with others, so they concentrate in cities. Manufacturing and ag jobs are where the raw materials, shipping, or farmland is, so tend to be more spread out.

The result is that jobs in small towns and cities evaporated and most opportunity became concentrated in large metro areas. People go where the jobs are, but the cities couldn't grow fast enough to keep up.

So, yes, even though cities are more economically efficient, they are still more expensive simply because the demand grew much faster than the supply.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#246

Post by criddell » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #217

unexpected wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you automatically assume that kids are miserable in the suburbs? My kids rather like running around in our backyard, use our pool everyday in the summer, and having tons of friends on the block. At the same time, I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment, having no yard to play in, etc. This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch. It's okay to think differently. I'm glad…

> disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch Have you yourself been a child growing up in places of different density? I personally did (my time spent mostly in one of the nicest suburbs in southern California, but alternating for a couple months every year with a walkable small Mexican city), and then since then have been in cities (where my small kids are now growing up). Are you sure I am the “out of touc…

I think you underestimate to what degree people design their life to provide what they think is the best thing for their kids.

A lot of people ended up in the suburbs because of their kids, not in spite of them. Proximity to other kids, organized sports, good schools, after-school activities, etc... It can be very car-centric as you pointed out, but when there are other families on your block going to the same things, you quickly figure out how to car pool to share the burden.

There's more than one way to live a great life with kids.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

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Post by hunterb123 » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #156

Visit Texas or Florida first. I've lived in Texas and visited Florida many times. I've also visited San Jose. TX and FL are hell compared to CA. I don't care for CA either, but that's because of cultural (coastal) differences. The NorthEast is heaven on Earth.

Both Florida and especially Texas are too large for such a blanket statement.

Weather-wise, Central East Texas is perfect if you survive August and September.

Austin (suburban outskirts) and Dallas (Plano & Frisco) are nice. Houston is way too humid.

North East US is way too cold, I like a 70F winter.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#248

Post by phkahler » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

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…

What would you think of a combination of high density and large green space? Lay out a city like a fractal with the interior being dense, but you're always close to woodlands, open fields (farms?), or parks. I know zoning boards are incapable of maintaining such a structure without constantly making exceptions for developers, but what would you think of such an arrangement?

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

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Post by vineyardmike » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #75

goostavos wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. Walkability is the main thing that keeps me in the city. A very large part of me wants to go back to the suburbs, rent a house, have a yard, garage -- space in general. However, every time I actually visit someone in the suburbs, the long drive there, watching things get more and more spread apart until it's just strip malls, grocery stores, and subdivisions, really saps the excitement out of having more space fo…

There's no reason (besides inertia) that we can't have both. This is how thriving smaller downtowns are, single family homes within walking distance to amenities. It's just that all those areas get really expensive because there are so few of them. But there don't have to be so few places like that.

> There's no reason (besides inertia)

And the fact that re-building cities is really expensive and hard and we're (somewhat) stuck with what we have.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#250

Post by namlem » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #112

In my city (Seattle), you never know if a mob is going to set up a month-long occupation outside your building, whether unregistered sex offenders have set up camp in your doorway (can't roust them), every road puts cars first, and the school is removing gifted programs for being racist. I'd love to live in a safe, well-managed, urban city. I don't believe any exist in North America.

New York? Denver? Jersey City?