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Why don’t more people live close to friends?

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Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#481

Post by cpursley »

hackernewds wrote: post #205
throwaway22032 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. I live in a city and more and more I feel this. The whole idea behind urbanism seems to be - give up the outdoors, give up hobbies that require tools and space. Go to the bar. Or a "makerspace" where you can have controlled use of someone else's tools. Rent this, rent that, take an uber here and there. It's just so commercialised.

Why not both? Except in the city, you can meet your friend and go together in the outdoors instead of 3 hour solo commute time, where there's no real interaction with them.

The great irony, with well designed dense cities, there’s actually more nature available to go explore. And closer.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#482

Post by trgn »

selimthegrim wrote: post #479
trgn wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The aspirational American city is Charleston, its gentle density, lush, verdant. Not he apartment blocks of NYC. That's the picture that needs painting. One of town life. Not necessarily apartment life.

Not NOLA?

For sure, NOLA too, beautiful!

Savannah, Asheville, old streetcar suburbs in general, small college towns ...

Those are the kind of urban environment that are an easy sell. Calm traffic, safe mobility options, diverse mixed housing options, ... Lot's of existing cities can move in that direction. Nothing too crazy or extreme.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#483

Post by MrOwnPut »

vineyardmike wrote: post #475
MrOwnPut wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> means some amount of trouble if you're non religious, non white, or non heterosexual. No it doesn't. Stop generalizing and stereotyping. From my experience people in small towns are nicer than people in cities, regardless of race or whatever. The small town I grew up in was 1/3rd hispanic, 1/3rd black, 1/3rd white and everyone got along. Don't believe what the media tries to racebait you with. > Problem with cities…

Just because you have a good experience, doesn’t mean everyone will. There’s plenty of history in America to defend the assumption that minorities will have a worse experience in rural towns. You seem to live in a very diverse town which is great. That’s not most towns in America. As a counter example, someone has called me a slur in almost every area I’ve spent time in besides big cities. Like driving by me on a sid…

> Just because you have a good experience, doesn’t mean everyone will.

So you stereotype, generalize, and assume the worse just in case your pre-judgement is right?

> There’s plenty of history in America to defend the assumption that minorities will have a worse experience in rural towns.

And what is that? What in "history" specifically makes you think people in rural towns are worse than people in cities?

Either way, that's not a good excuse to stereotype people. I don't think every person in the city is a gangster or a mobster because of cities bad history of them.

> You seem to live in a very diverse town which is great. That’s not most towns in America.

You have no idea what you are talking about, many towns are very diverse.

https://theweek.com/articles/692098/rural-america-more-diver...

https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44331/10597_pa...

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#484

Post by thatfrenchguy »

dugmartin wrote: post #319
jesperlang wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More Europe anecdata: I live in a small town of around 2000. Within 5-10 minutes walking I got: a restaurant, a cafe, a grocery store, pizzeria and kindergarten. Within 5-10 minutes of biking I have: public library, another grocery store, two bars and a restaurant. Public transport is readily available to take me to the neighbouring hustle-bustle (pop. 600'000) within 35 minutes. So my town is 50 times smaller than y…

US anecdata: I also live in a small town of around 2000 in rural Massachusetts. Within the same walking distance I have: full elementary school (kindergarten through 6th grade), public tennis and basketball courts, a public indoor gym, a grocery store, several restaurants, several bookstores, several banks, a pharmacy, a bowling alley and a few more misc stores. We also have public transport to the nearest big town b…

> The only reason my town is dense and walkable is due to geography. It was settled 250 years ago and it is nestled on a river between two "mountains" (really just big hills) so once all the available space filled up 100 years ago it just stopped growing (my house is on the outskirts of town and was built 115 years ago).

It's not geography, it's history. The only nice places in the US are places that were built before cars.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#485

Post by Symbiote »

ptero wrote: post #474
mcv wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With freedom of movement, it's just as easy to move around the EU now. But I don't have to make a trade-off between safety and nightlife. But I've got to admit that Maine looks pretty safe according to https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/charts-and-maps

First of all, I am not bashing EU or Europe -- great countries, great history, etc. But I would pretty strongly disagree on "just as easy to move around the EU" part. From what I understand it is super smooth for vacations, but not nearly as frictionless to move around semi-permanently. For example, someone graduating in Norway, moving to Spain for 3 years, then on to Germany would see friction in renting a flat, sen…

For school you may have language barriers, depending what language(s) your children speak. They're entitled to a place at school though.

The only barrier to buying a flat or house might be slightly reduced access to loans. I found in Denmark it is easier for a Dane to get a loan for 95% of the house value, but foreigners might only get 80%. EU citizens are somewhere in the middle, depending what the banks think.

Language is the main problem. If you aren't fluent in the new country's language, you can have problems with government bureaucracy, school/work, socialising, children's lives, doctors etc. If you speak English these are much reduced in countries with high English proficiency (IS/NO/SE/FI/DK/NL/LU/CY, obviously IE/MT). Or, if you are moving where there's already a significant community of people speaking your language.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#486

Post by renewiltord »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #59
philsnow wrote: post #55

> why don’t we do this? The fetishization of the nuclear family, of course, as well as the building and zoning codes that facilitate that fetishization. Zoning calls them "single family homes" but it doesn't call it "nuclear family homes" or anything like that. Single family homes are more about American individualism [0] and not wanting to share anything if you don't absolutely have to. That's why, outside of at mos…

> about American individualism[0] and not wanting to share anything if you don't absolutely have to. I don’t know if this is an American quality specifically. It could just be that Americans can (or used to be able to) afford it, whereas most other people in most other societies never could. For example, what young married couple would want to live in their parents house if they can afford their own? All of my extend…

This is quite interesting, actually. Perhaps it is cultural. My cousins had kids and the grandparents spent all the time with them. My other friends also did the same, once immigration concerns were handled. The positives I can see from the outside are:

1. Childcare is a lot easier with multiple people

2. Experience makes child care much easier

3. Principal-agent problem for child care is absent with grandparents. Grandparents obey parents' choices in broad strokes while providing a high degree of attention.

4. Fulfilling for grandparents

Overall, I'm in my mid 30s and watching the experience of my cousins, part of my desire to get going on the kids thing is that I want my parents to be able to help before they are too old.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#487

Post by prmoustache »

theshrike79 wrote: post #454
OJFord wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK you would barely even have neighbours if that were the case, it would be properly rural, US 'suburban sprawl' needs a different word IMO, it's a housing estate basically (though that implies social housing) but a spectacularly isolated/car-assuming one.

It's the idiotic American zoning laws. If an are is zoned for single family homes, you can't even put up a 7-11 in there. Even though it'd have booming business 24/7 just from people grabbing stuff ad-hoc that they forgot during their grocery run... Instead people have to get into their 7-11 -sized trucks and drive to a store with a parking lot that's larger than many European neighbourhoods.

How do mexicans survive in the USA without a Costco and a taco vendor every half a mile?

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#488

Post by jeffreyrogers »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #273
rcarr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s another thing no one talks about because it’s taboo: drink driving. Right up until the mid 70s, it was completely socially acceptable to drink and drive. Now I agree that it was probably a good thing that’s it’s been banned, but having to pay for and organise transportation to go to whatever event it is you want to go to adds another substantial layer of friction to socialising. Not to mention the fact that th…

It's still completely socially acceptable to drink and drive, at least in "redneck" parts of the country.

Yeah, you're getting downvoted but this is true in rural/semi-rural areas.

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#489

Post by jeffreyrogers »

naremu wrote: post #25

I've been wondering how related these feelings of distance and isolation in the middle of society are to how the area is designed. I had always known for a long time the "why" I didn't want to go out on weekends and such, but it wasn't until I watched some of those videos from "Not Just Bikes" that it really, really struck me. I literally dread finding parking more than I enjoy finding friends. And suburban (and fran…

Eh, it's part of it, but not the whole story. Utah is a pretty close place and it has a lot of sprawl (traffic isn't too bad though). So many things have changed in the last half-century or so that I don't think you can point to any one thing as the cause. Even in a city with a lot of sprawl you likely have a lot more people you are within a 10 minute walk of than someone in a mid-size town is within a 10 minute drive of, it's just hard to meet those people because most people stay within their existing bubbles unless some event shakes up their life (breakup, job change, moving, etc.)

Re: Why don’t more people live close to friends?

#490

Post by jutrewag »

agentdrtran wrote: post #401
jutrewag wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s missing the best part. The outdoors and having a huge backyard. You can’t have any hobbies like woodworking, metalworking, gardening/farming, animal husbandry etc. in that setup.

Cities subsidizing maker spaces would solve the wood/metal workign part of this well, and I live in a pretty dense part of the city that has a community garden down the street.

Shared spaces are not for me. I’d much rather have my own workshop where I don’t have to share. That’s the beauty of the American lifestyle, you don’t have to share. Your home is your castle.
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