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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

#351

Post by mumblemumble »

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/…

What I have seen in my travels is that those cafés and bakeries are not all that expensive in places where they are the norm. They occupy an environment where they have serious competition from truly comparable businesses, and a larger potential clientele. That brings market forces into play, which means they are more directly incentivized to compete on price and make it up on volume, while keeping quality high.

Compare with the Great Harvest Bread location a mile or two down the street from my dad's house. (It's a chain, I believe mostly concentrated in the midwestern USA.) The bread is overpriced and hastily made. The only reason they can command such high prices is that there's nowhere else anywhere nearby that makes bread that doesn't come in a plastic bag is because they can position themselves as a sort of luxury good. But they probably also need to have high prices because people only buy bread there for special occasions.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#352

Post by Eric_WVGG »

more_corn wrote: post #345
honkycat wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just not true. Everyone is talking about the homeless problem all the time. NOBODY is happy about the homeless situation in our major cities. I don't know a single city, liberal, moderate, or conservative, that has solved it. I am just a single citizen, I pay out the ass for taxes, and nothing is being done to help these people. At this point is appears there is no political will to do anything. Instead every…

Housing First seemed to be working in Utah. They achieved 90% reduction in chronic homelessness. A remarkably simple and cost-effective answer. Essentially it states “get people housing and then it’s way easier to treat the things making them homeless” plop someone in a home and then it’s easier to get medication to them and they stop showing up in the ER 4x a month. Get people housing and then you know where they ar…

I was about to chime in with the same comment. In actuality, they landed around 71%, but yeah, I'd still call that a huge success. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-onc...

The arguments for housing-first homeless solutions align neatly with Universal Basic Income.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#353

Post by mrkentutbabi »

I’ve been rethinking this as well. I think I came to conclusions that too much diversity isn’t a good thing. I myself isn’t American and rethinking hard if I should obtain my American citizenship (currently PR)

I want to move back to Asia where there are less diversity and society is less complex. I value harmony more than diversity.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#354

Post by dragonwriter »

jacobolus wrote: post #347
eweise wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The environmental impact of suburban lifestyle is not limited to personal transportation carbon emissions. It also involves huge amounts of expensive (in land and resources) infrastructure, and individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint than other people.

> individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint.

Suburbs have higher median personal income than urban cores; so that individual suburbanites consume more resources isn't surprising.

These people would also consume more resources if they lived in urban cores.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#355

Post by rubylark »

55555 wrote: post #79

I’m looking to buy an investment property in the US. Any ideas on how to pick an up-and-coming location where people are going to want to move to?

A lot of US cities publish their urban development plans. Pick a state and look up their major cities' 2040 plans and see if they are planning extensive developments in the area your interested in buying. Sometimes the plans are overoptimistic or pessimistic but usually they generally give you an idea if the city itself thinks it will grow quickly or slowly.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#356

Post by opportune »

treis wrote: post #336
ericmay wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

People in Europe mostly choose the suburbs too. As for the rest of it, I'm not arguing that the suburbs is a good choice. It's just the one people do choose and they choose it because of space and cost of living.

Do they choose suburbs because it’s preferred or because it’s cheaper?

If the urban areas have more expensive housing for a given unit size, that would imply it is actually preferred.

It’s like saying nobody drives because there is too much traffic. Or sporting events always sell out so nobody goes.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#357

Post by hagbard_c »

vineyardmike wrote: post #270
hagbard_c wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also don't vote for the policies which made you pick up your bags and leave the place you came from or your new place of residence will eventually start to look like the one you left.

A lot of the "California problem" policies work at smaller city sizes and just fail when scaled to major city/metro, so would be great at a lot of those smaller towns. Especially because they can be more humane and well thought out than whatever that town had to start.

> they can be more humane and well thought out than whatever that town had to start.

In other words, you'll go to those small towns to teach those hicks some manners. No wonder they're not that keen on seeing refugees from "more humane and well thought out" places settle in their towns and villages.

If that is your message to your new neighbours may I suggest you go somewhere more welcoming of those "humane and well thought out" policies? It is a sad thing that those places tend to be the ones people are moving away from but that means there should be lots of vacancies.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#358

Post by mrkentutbabi »

csomar wrote: post #261
davewritescode wrote: post #107

I think a lot of people are seeing what they want to see in this. Once a company figures out how to leverage a developer in the Midwest as effectively as one in the Bay Area what stops them from hiring in the Dominican, or Mexico or South America? I've worked with fantastic developers from those areas who can effectively work on the same timezones, communicate well and write high quality code. I know personally, I've…

"They" could always make it harder to transfer money from inside the US system to the "outside" world. This is what an exit-tax is, basically making it harder for established people to move away from the system. Or AML for international wires. Or Minimum Corporate Tax. Unluckily for First-World countries, the politicians seems to be focused on the symptoms rather than the disease itself. This will not change course o…

Crypto seems to introduce another headache to this.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#359

Post by kritiko »

thehappypm wrote: post #292
kritiko wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, that makes sense. I grew up around there, and I do think Boston is the best place in the Northeast megalopolis for access to nature stuff and relatively easy to get around...

128's kind of funny, though. Unless you live in one of a handful of nearby streets, you need a car to get there. And you're at the Boston line (the suburban, single family and industrial park part of Boston, but still.)

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#360

Post by 88913527 »

foofoo4u wrote: post #91

I sure am. I live in San Jose (which resides in the Bay Area). Here’s why I am leaving. - $2,700 per month for a 500 sq/ft apartment. - Homeless people everywhere the moment I step foot out of my apartment. - Smells like urine on many sidewalks. - Literally half of the buildings are vacant or abandoned (in downtown). - Human feces on sidewalks and entrance to buildings. - Political and ideological homogeny. Keep your…

What areas don't have political and ideology homogeny anymore? There are two Americas. I would enjoy an area with better tolerance to the other side's ideals, but it seems that's in short supply everywhere. There's a real viciousness for the other side at the national level, but I can't understand it at the individual human being level or the community level. Your neighbor may not share your politics, but it also doesn't imply they embody all of your opposition's ideas. We pick sides because we have to in a first-past-the-post system.
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