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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

#291

Post by cheese_van »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #113
itsyaboi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So in rural America you definitely give up access to top-notch medical care, but I'm relatively healthy currently, and if we drop our household income, we start to qualify for subsidies. My wife only just started her career, 17 years into our relationship, so she's going to start ramping up income over the next few years, and that will hopefully cover any unforeseen issues. I actually tried retiring this year. I paid…

It is not necessarily the case that one gives up good med care in rural America.

I live in a suburb of an 8000 person city (town?) and med care is top notch. I do believe that anywhere one chooses to live there are compromises. Those compromises, if you do your homework, are up to you.

We have zero violent crime, and no fear of our neighbors. However, there are raccoons.

Restaurants exist, but they are exceptionally mediocre. We have grocery stores, however, and one learns to cook.

A car is indeed a necessity. The terrain is hilly and a bike riding is exhausting.

Children are free roaming. Bicycle gangs of laughing children invade day napping.

The unstated pressure to maintain one's lawn is intense, ridiculous and mildly fascist. I comply grudgingly.

One has fish and game on speed dial in the event wild animals misbehave.

Strangers may wave at you from their cars if you are walking. It is unsettling.

There is a smaller pool of craftsmen and tradesmen to fix your shit and they will stick it to you.

People would rather talk about weather than politics. It is difficult to identify those who deserve to be politically shunned, so one must instead judge their diligence regarding lawn care.

One can lead a life of quiet desperation, or enjoyment, in either the city or the country.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#292

Post by thehappypm »

kritiko wrote: post #174
thehappypm wrote: post #24

I moved the the suburbs way earlier than I had planned due to the pandemic and my job being much more WFH. I love it. I’m still accessible the city (14-28 minutes by train depending on schedule), I have way more space, and I’m near some really wonderful nature areas. I love having a garage and a yard and a grill. Im still near restaurants and stuff, and I kinda outgrew the bar scene a few years ago — now I’m more lik…

That sounds great, but I am very skeptical. 14 minutes by train - what's the actual door to door commute time? I'm not aware of any city in the US with commute times that short where the place you live wouldn't be more urban than suburban e.g. Hoboken/Harrison, NJ, Quincy, MA, etc...

The 14 minute train is from Route 128 in Westwood, MA to Back Bay, in Boston’s downtown. I give myself ~15 minutes (for traffic buffer) to drive and park, take the 14 minute train, then it’s a 5 minute walk to work. I’ve done it in 30 minutes seat to seat.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#293

Post by sershe »

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…

For me, the COVID has really opened my eyes to how little I need walkability. My preferences completely flipped from "I want walkscore 75+ and ideally 90+" to "I want walkscore to be I used to be very pro-transit and walking (didn't even learn to drive till 30), and even as I was not walking as much just before COVID, I reflexively remained so. When most things closed nearby (so we went out less and finally discovered food delivery), I realized I don't really need to walk places - I don't miss them. With spotty reopenings, when some places were indoors and some outdoor-only in bad weather, we drove to go out and turns out it's much better (unless you plan to drink a lot). With more grocery shopping, walking to groceries was out of the question and turns out, even in a dense city, driving for the same amount of time to get groceries is so much more convenient. Etc.

I can see benefits of a park nearby, but that's about it... and then again, in overall less walkable areas parks are less crowded, larger, and also cleaner/nicer.

EDIT: reading other comments I guess I can see benefits for kids, although only with more old-style parenting. I could take a subway by myself when I was 10 or so, and walk around everywhere obviously, so that gives a lot of independence you cannot have in suburbs.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#294

Post by eweise »

obstacle1 wrote: post #240
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…

Kids like suburbs just fine before they understand there's a big world out there outside the family unit. Often things fall apart after that phase. > I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment OK but that's a problem with a limited imagination, not how your kids would actually feel. Do you know that 90% of families in the world live in close quarters, in places like 2 bedroom apartments (or -…

"The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable." That's a problem with a limited imagination. Cars are becoming electric. There are things called towns that exist in suburbia and can be reached easily by bike or walking.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#295

Post by [deleted] »

bovermyer wrote: post #162
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.

Counterpoint: we live in Edina, a nicer suburb just south of Minneapolis proper. No real crime except for a single hit-and-run by an out-of-towner in the last two years. Walking distance to two grocery stores, several restaurants, and two malls. Affordable utilities and rent.

[deleted]

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#296

Post by throwaway6734 »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #223
throwaway6734 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of a social safety net is catch people falling through the cracks that are unable to support themselves. Using social safety programs when you are able bodied leaves less for those that are unable to do so

And in America we are all one unexpected medical expense away from bankruptcy. I'm not going to toil my life away doing things I hate just because America's safety net has been defunded by a bunch of people who view gainful employment no matter how unnecessary the job is as the only way to get to Heaven.

>And in America we are all one unexpected medical expense away from bankruptcy.

How do subsidies help then?

And people like you are a fantastic political talking point for why the social safety net routinely gets defunded.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#297

Post by CountDrewku »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #157
TurkishPoptart wrote: post #121

And part of it is what public schools are doing to our kids. My 6 year old is required to sit outdoors to eat her lunch in 40ish degree (F) weather, and is not allowed to socialized. My 5 year old has to wear a mask 7 hours a day against an illness that doesn't kill kids. I'm at my wit's end with these school administrators. Hoping to be in Wyoming in 6 months' time.

> that doesn't kill kids While the numbers are low, it is not 0. This is, sadly, categorically untrue.

Can you provide an example of a child in that age range dying when without a secondary illness that made them high risk? All the examples I've seen are children with cancer or something else.

The percentages still don't pan out to having such massive restrictions on children that young.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#298

Post by dragonwriter »

AlbertCory wrote: post #290

The Economist used to be somewhat boring, but at least it had honest reporting about parts of the world you don't read much about. Good for you, in other words. In the new world of the web, they seem to be trying too hard to amplify conventional opinions. Chasing clicks, in other words. Long after a trend has started up and enough people have heard of it (moving out of expensive areas, in this case), they jump on it.

> In the new world of the web, they seem to be trying too hard to amplify conventional opinions.

They've always been, fairly overtly, about amplifying a narrow range or neoliberal viewpoints. At the height of the UK/US neoliberal consensus of the late 1980s and 1990s, that may have been less obvious since that narrow range basically spanned the entire Overton Window.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#299

Post by ericmay »

treis wrote: post #286
ericmay wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cultural but also institutional. Governments think nothing of blowing tens of millions of dollars on highway construction and do not typically think about or care to invest in alternatives. Beyond a certain point (which was a long time ago) we're just building roads and highways to create artificial growth. It blows my mind how people don't realize the cultural piece either. They travel, "omg it's so walkable he…

Because cafes and bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries. Even if it's just $1 more a coffee/loaf that adds up to significant money over a year. That's the thing that I think people miss. Scale makes things cheaper and to have scale at retail you need to pull customers from a large area. You could do the same in a dense area but then you run into housing cost/size problems. I don't see how you get the typical 4/…

> Because cafes and bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries. Even if it's just $1 more a coffee/loaf that adds up to significant money over a year. That's the thing that I think people miss. Scale makes things cheaper and to have scale at retail you need to pull customers from a large area.

I wonder if all those loaves of bread and coffees cost more than tires, having 2 or 3 cars, obesity, and lost productivity from car crashes and deaths (among other things)? Scale can make things cheaper, but is cheapness the goal? And scale in this context also creates centralization which has some fragile properties at times.

> You could do the same in a dense area but then you run into housing cost/size problems. I don't see how you get the typical 4/3 suburban house and a low cost of living without driving.

Tear down a house in the suburbs and put in a little market/grocery store and you don't need to drive anywhere you just walk over. The only reason all of the best neighborhoods you've ever been to are so expensive is because we just don't build mixed-use, medium density development. And also you can look at countries in places like Europe to see how it has been achieved. I'm not sure the premise of 4/3 suburban house is a good one. It's like saying how can you use AWS when you have this server rack in the basement that you have to use.

It's just cultural and institutional inertia driving us down bad paths because we don't have a good market mechanic to realize costs.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#300

Post by willis936 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #237
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.

Can you provide some details on why it is hell?

If you think human feces in public is a problem worth leaving for then try living in a place where you don't know if the water is poisoned, if the power will stay on, or the ground will literally crumble under your home. The local governments are neither equipped nor interested in making those places habitable. It's getting worse and will continue to. Hurricanes and rising sea levels will bankrupt TX and FL each in this century.
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