Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans are rethinking where they want to live

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 645 posts

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#561

Post by watwut »

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/…

> bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries

They are not expensive. The price is comparable or the same as any other bread.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#562

Post by jmeister »

brewdad wrote: post #508
mfer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NYT exec editor Dean Bacquet famously said(ruefully) “we don’t understand the role of religion in people’s lives”, after the ‘16 election.

There is not a single soul in Omaha who would make that statement.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#563

Post by jmeister »

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.

This is an interesting thread. The meta-issue here is that communities differ in their risk tolerance too. You just discovered that you are an outlier in your community.

People can agree 100% on the “science” and still disagree on the risk-reward tradeoff:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier

PS: the risk tolerance varies by issue. E.g. blue cities seem to have a lot of risk appetite when it comes to lenient treatment of crime. Or gun-use in other parts of the country.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#564

Post by shrubble »

jcadam wrote: post #100
shrubble wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get good healthcare but only if you work for the right companies, meaning companies with good plans. My recent experience had me paying zero USD and dealing with almost zero paperwork. For a physical and the resulting outpatient surgery.

I'm paying over $1000/month through my employer for a high deductible health plan. So I'm contributing to an HSA on top of that.

That does not sound like a good price at all. Can I ask if you have shopped around? I think that you can decline all coverage from your employer and buy directly.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#565

Post by refurb »

telotortium wrote: post #558
brewdad wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, I am white but my wife is foreign born naturalized citizen with brown skin. There is no way I am going to ask her to move some place where she has to constantly be looking over her shoulder because the locals can't handle the fact that she looks different. Sure TN is cheap but not at the cost of our mental health.

Okay, then, don't move to the rural areas. As a child of Republicans and a recent visitor to Nashville suburbs, where my parents have moved, I assure you that no one in the bedroom suburbs of major southern cities cares about someone with "dark skin" (they don't hate black people either, but I'm guessing she's South Asian, or you would have said black).

A friend of my brother is South Asian and grew up in Mobile, AL in the 1990's. Said he had zero issues with race and more racial diversity in his neighborhood than where he lives now in Silicon Valley.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#566

Post by laurencerowe »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #314
Jensson wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They very well might work in a downtown, but I have yet to see it in the US. But you see it in Europe. I walk to lidl and buy my groceries, basically every person I know walk to get groceries. Some do big weekend shopping trips now and then to bigger stores, but that isn't the norm.

Presumably, this is in an area where you have a big population without cars. In the US, these are few and far between. And Aldi/Lidl are going to optimize for their costs, which means not paying rent in a downtown if they have the option to build on cheaper land 5 minutes away from downtown. Which makes no difference to them, because 99% of their customers have a car.

In most of the cities I've lived in Europe supermarkets are usually outside of downtown (though there may be a few there) but still in walkable residential neighbourhoods. You don't want to have to go all the way downtown to buy food.

It's pretty similar to the way medium sized Safeways are spread throughout San Francisco, except the rent isn't $3000/month for a 1 bed and the soap and shampoo doesn't have to be kept locked away.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#567

Post by zerocount »

_v7gu wrote: post #540
dragonwriter wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Except everyone with a reliable car still drives to the large grocery store and with a wide selection which has lower prices and better selection on basics but makes it up with lower volume, high margin luxuries that the small market c doesn't have floor space for, and the small market,…

There are more than ten supermarkets within ten minutes of my walking distance, from the cheapest option to fanciest. In addition, even the fanciest bakeries sell the standardized type of bread for the standardized price. So I know this problem is solvable because it is solved in places that are not the US

Most models outside the US would not work for the entire US, perhaps a few cities. Also, it doesn't seem possible to have more than 10 supermarkets within 10 minutes of your walking distance. They would have to be next door to each other. Of course, I'm thinking about this in the context of where I've lived in the US.

It would take me 3 minutes just to walk out of my apartment complex, and another 5 to get to the supermarket right next door to the apartments.

What you have as a supermarket in your country must be different than what we have here in the US: Kroger, Albertson's, SafeWay, Von's, etc... These are very large buildings that take up a lot of property.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#568

Post by sershe »

x3iv130f wrote: post #531
sershe wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 discovere…

Automobile travel is nice in rural areas but it introduces too many problems for cities with any sort of density. Traffic, noise pollution, air quality, and auto accidents are all things the unfortunate city dweller is forced to live with because cars are given free reign on streets. Cities need to convert their freeways to toll roads and limit the registration of vehicles to what the infrastructure can actually hand…

If people prefer driving, that may just cause more people to move away.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#569

Post by Symbiote »

zerocount wrote: post #567
_v7gu wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more than ten supermarkets within ten minutes of my walking distance, from the cheapest option to fanciest. In addition, even the fanciest bakeries sell the standardized type of bread for the standardized price. So I know this problem is solvable because it is solved in places that are not the US

Most models outside the US would not work for the entire US, perhaps a few cities. Also, it doesn't seem possible to have more than 10 supermarkets within 10 minutes of your walking distance. They would have to be next door to each other. Of course, I'm thinking about this in the context of where I've lived in the US. It would take me 3 minutes just to walk out of my apartment complex, and another 5 to get to the sup…

Taking a friend's address in inner Copenhagen (a cheap place as she's a student), she has 4 supermarkets within 5 minutes walk (400m).

Taking a different friend's address in the suburbs, he has 3 supermarkets within a 10 minute walk (800m).

In the city centre, there are 10 supermarkets within a 5 minute walk.

The supermarkets in the city centre are smaller, and have a relatively limited range, although in practise I do 95% of my shopping at one. You choose a different supermarket if you need an upmarket/wider selection, but it doesn't matter as it's so close by (exception: if I really need something like a particular lactose free cheese for a recipe, I'll just go to an inner city supermarket rather than checking 3-4 shops in the centre). There is no parking.

In the inner city, perhaps 20% of them are large enough to be selling clothes, a few toys etc. There might be parking for 0-6 cars. Not having to walk across a ginormous car park saves a lot of distance.

You'll need to travel further (on average) to buy a barbecue, tent, etc. I think I remember the large American supermarkets selling this sort of thing — in Denmark, you'll need to go to the DIY / sports / etc shop. This will have a car park.

Example, though you could zoom into any European city and search "supermarket" on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/search/supermarket+in+Herlev/@55... -- Coop 365, Netto, Fakta, Føtex, Lidl and Rema 1000 are normal supermarkets.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#570

Post by hunterb123 »

stan_rogers wrote: post #518
hunterb123 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small towns in the US already work similarly to European towns, though a bit more straightforward (pun intended). The town itself is pretty self-sufficient, usually has a co-op, general store, single main road going through downtown, sidewalks, etc. Larger cities do have suburbs like you're describing, but generally they do have their own amenities like fast food courts / grocery stores / school systems near the entr…

...and that's kinda what's missing in the US (and large parts of Southern Ontario) right now: small towns. Instead, you have bedroom communities that depend on an urban centre to make them work at all. No, not everywhere, but in too much of the populous parts of the country. It's gotten to the point that people just expect that that's just how things work. It made a certain basic sense, I suppose, with the GI Bill an…

There's plenty of small towns, just takes moving there. I prefer them.

Remote work should make them more viable, before you could either just farm or mine.

Industrial period nearly killed small towns as people flocked to the city for factory work.

Post reply on HN