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Americans are rethinking where they want to live

economist.com

501–510 of 645 posts

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#502
This is manufacturing consent right here.

It’s easily Googled; ~30 million people move each year.

The CEO of Upwork is engaging in SEO.

An academic in Canada is calling normal behavior a “great unmooring.” Then bail on any other discussion they had with said academic.

Suburban developers with data from Mar 2020-2021 ignoring easily Googled fall 2021 data showing a reverse in the urban exodus.

This article is SEO spam, ostensibly about a big deal, but their data is normal movement of the population, and outdated sampling, wrapped in grand language.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#503
post #336

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.

Europe doesn’t have suburbs like the USA does. In California if you drive an hour you’re in the suburbs. In Germany if you drive an hour you’re in another country.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do those smaller downtowns thrive? The few I know usually have rich populations that do not mind spending more than what Costco/Target/Walmart/big grocery stores sell at. All it takes is the big box stores to setup camp 10 minutes outside of town and almost everyone with a car will opt to save money and shop there.

In Europe many smaller stores are competitive by aiming for high turnaround. The cut down on the selection to the things that get sold fast. German Lidl and Aldi are based on these principles and known to have very low prices. In fact I think they outcompeted wall-mart when it tried to setup shop in Germany. I remember quite good prices in the Netherlands as well which is quite densely populated and where people shop…

How much is a beer after work hours at a given pub/bar?

One thing I hate about the majority of the US's urban centers is they are extremely touristy and expensive. It is common to be paying $6+ per beer (it's local but still) and that's not even on weekends.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#505

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…

Florida is pretty terrible. Even if you are totally cool with never doing anything outside, never engaging in culture, and never talking to other people, there is literally no positive side to living in Florida other than the combined lack of winter and access to a beach. Sure, people are more right-wing, but I'd much rather live in Texas than Florida. Even a desert is more interesting than endless strip-malls, and b…

What parts of Florida have you lived in?

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#506

I have a home in Nashville, Tennessee but chose to move to Seattle, Washington for work (software engineering), but stay here for the access to everyday life improvements- restaurant variety, activities, etc. Nashville has grown a lot, but you are still car dependent and the Conservative values run deep there, though those folks are being displaced as the housing market continues to boom which makes them more hostile…

Huh, interesting. I’m visiting Nashville from Seattle. There’s definitely not as much Asian/Fusion food or Indian food in Nashville, but overall there are tons more restaurants - just not Pho or chicken tikka masala everywhere. I’ve spent some time in Nashville and visited Brentwood, Franklin, Nolensville, and further east towards Murfreesboro and Smyrna. In a week, I felt like there’s a restaurant metric you’d measu…

What about teriyaki? Can't move somewhere without it!

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#507

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. Maybe people didn't leave because of the policies, but because of their position relative to them. I mean, people who aren't legacy homeowners and find California too expensive but otherwise like it might well prefer to become a homeo…

People leave because of second-order effects to policies that they voted for. California is expensive because of decades of policy that make it hard to build housing, some of the more ridiculous ones I've heard are banning natural gas in new homes and mandating photovoltaic panels on all new constructions. Since basic economics still applies, prices get inflated, some of the people don't like the economics of what th…

Basic economics says prices are set based on supply+demand not cost. Cost of course affects supply, but right now the main housing supply limiter in urban areas is restrictive permitting and to some degree lack of construction labor (a nationwide echo of 2008). As a result increased construction costs mostly come out of landowner's returns.

Most efficiency standards actually lower monthly housing costs, including your two examples of solar panels and natural gas bans. Note that the solar can be built offsite, and solar + electric is a natural (hah) combination.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#508
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a fine line with this though — the advantage of hiring Americans in the Midwest versus hiring in Europe and Asia needs to be solidified somehow.

There are 2 advantages I see... 1. Many great workers either won't or don't want to live in SV. I've known a bunch of them, over the years. Moving more development to where these folks are brings them in to the fold. 2. The people in SV don't represent and aren't regularly interacting with most of America or the world. They are in a different bubble. The majority is part of the out group to them. Hiring people in dis…

If you are hiring from a pool of candidates who, by nature of their skills and relative wealth, lie at the 90th percentile or higher in their communities, does it really make that much of a difference? Yes SV is a bubble, but hiring people living in a similar bubble in Omaha isn't going to move the needle that much IMO.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#509
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being on the north side of Chicago, you're probably already in one of the "move-to" and not the "move-away" from areas. It's expensive, but let's be serious it's nothing compared to the coast – with a good quality of life (as the reasons you stated).

By "move-to", not sure if you mean Chicago overall, or the north side in particular, but if the former Chicago is growing slower than the national average. 2% last decade (vs 8% nationally) https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/8/12/22622062/chicago-cens... I had the impression Chicago was actually losing people, but that info was old, from the previous decade where it lost 7%.

North Chicago, or really any of the nicer parts.

Chicago is a weird place for various political and economic reasons (I’m from Minneapolis, so just a neighbor), and was not growing pre-pandemic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that trend reverse given its relative LCOL - especially with the Denver/Austins of the world no longer being very affordable.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#510
Hello all, it appears that a large portion of this article is based on this study:

https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publication...

There is a lot of data and a lot of charts.

This study has a data table that just makes me confused about the Economist article:

> V. Change in Gross and Net Flows for Metro Areas with Populations Greater Than 500,000

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