121–130 of 250 posts
Cities are very upset tax receipts are lower and are increasing taxes to shore up budgets. Not a good sign.
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Prior to getting married and having kids, absolutely. After, not at all unfortunately
Thank you for that feedback, helpful to understand that segmentation :) I'm guessing that traveling with family / setting kids up in local schools or remote learning is a non-starter?
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Then you run into local zoning. I for one would love more mixed zoning in neighborhoods on city boundaries, but too many entrenched interests at the moment
I live in the UK and local shops, restaurants are ubuiquitous. Is that really something that is actively legislated against in the US?
We also have college towns and small cities! I tend to pick places where there’s something walkable, and have never lived in a place where I couldn’t walk to a shop or restaurant (although ”walkable” is subjective I guess, I’ve been in places where I had to walk 45 minutes through parking lots to get groceries).
I dunno, suburbs are a funny thing… it is easily knowable what they are and what you are signing up for when you move to them, but lots of people end up there as a sort of default choice (or maybe not really a choice, they can be the most affordable place to get a house that fits multiple kids comfortably and isn’t in the absolute middle of nowhere).
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Not GP, but I'm 51, been working in tech since I was 21 and, though all my jobs have been within about 50 miles of each other, none has been in the same city as the previous either. The closest sequential pairing of jobs was 3.5 miles apart.
Do you move when you take different jobs, as the ggreer had asked above in the thread?
* One of those jobs was close enough to walk (1.1 miles). I would regularly walk that commute, in most anything less than hellish rain or heavy snow. But that means that my previous job from that residence was 2.7 miles away, which isn't nearly as practical to walk year-round in New England.
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> convert office buildings into housing Can't be done. Office buildings of significant size are not engineered for 24/7 human occupation. The sewer will be inadequate. The water will be inadequate. Retrofitting this would be spectacularly expensive, if it's even possible, as mechanical and plumbing chases are sized for the original design requirements and are difficult (if not impossible) to alter. It may be possible…
> Can't be done. It can be done and has been done, but what the article fails to recognize is that it is spectacularly expensive—the original build-out, of course, but also the maintenance (I’ve seen this firsthand in the stratospheric HOA fees in the one class-A office-to-residence conversion I toured in my condo search). Office to residential will happen, but it will be at the top end of the market. It is fundament…
> cities must let developers convert office buildings into housing This is an Activist piece - not an Analysis piece. You cannot trust facts reported in an article that's advocating change. It cherry picks a number of facts in order to further the arguments.
> convert office buildings into housing Can't be done. Office buildings of significant size are not engineered for 24/7 human occupation. The sewer will be inadequate. The water will be inadequate. Retrofitting this would be spectacularly expensive, if it's even possible, as mechanical and plumbing chases are sized for the original design requirements and are difficult (if not impossible) to alter. It may be possible…
These conversations are kind of like the airplane on the treadmill problem, where there are (approximately) two orthogonal sets of assumptions/preferences that lead to obvious but incompatible conclusions, and people end up yelling at each other over the conclusions without realizing the difference is just the underlying assumptions. Personally - I don't want to live in a city, or a town, or even a neighborhood. I do…
I don't find suburbs boring. I find them soul-less. I grew up in rural France. Small village have shops, bars, services like post-office, hair-dresser and whatnot. It's not a dichotomy between things and absence of things. Suburbs would be fine in my own personal book if they were offering basic services and a sense of comunauty.( not in warehouse operated by large chain, but by people living there and earning a live…
Perhaps they are soul-less, but I think it’s quite beautiful with trees and trails and safety.
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Me personally, no. Nomadic lifestyles prevent one from pursuing the kind of hobbies I would like to pursue (exotic pets and plants).
That makes sense - cool hobbies! =)
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Extensively, yes. Having housing & non-housing in the same area is rare in much of the US.
But... What happens if you've had a beer and suddenly remember you need a pint of milk for the morning? To pick an entirely not uncommon example from my own life...
I'm just moving to the suburbs but I had to specifically go looking for one with shops in walking distance. It's far from the norm; I've lived in places before where the only way to a shop was along a major highway and it was too far to reasonably walk unless you had no choice.
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Extensively, yes. Having housing & non-housing in the same area is rare in much of the US.
But... What happens if you've had a beer and suddenly remember you need a pint of milk for the morning? To pick an entirely not uncommon example from my own life...