Weird that the article frames friends as being constant in life and your career/house/neighborhood/kids' schools/community as totally flexible when practically speaking it's the other way around. It is normal to move away from people you formed bonds with in high school and college. If you are lonely the solution isn't to uproot your life and go after them, but to form new bonds with people who are around you right n…
Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
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Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#22My friends and I live near each other. It's a quick 10 min walk to their place and we have keys to each others' places. We've slowly lobbied more people to move nearer and life is getting better with each additional participant. I'm a firm believer in optimizing for our relationships.
That said, we did that because it seemed to us to be the obvious right thing, and it seemed that our parents benefited from doing this. If the only input I had was some super rich guy saying "Don't do what I did, man. Wealth isn't worth it. I wish I had friends" I would conclude that it's bogus.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#23This is great advice if you replace "friends" with "family"
Not always
With family, the further I get, the happier I am. They are what they are, and I can’t say I’m that interested in it.
I’ve replaced that with friends I can actually count on.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#24More of us should be prioritizing making friends, probably: if you pull it off, you've achieved a similar effect at much lower cost. If you're the type of person who's organized and capable enough to organize a communal living space with your friends, you're logically also able to find friendships in your area, much more so than the average person is.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#25Great idea - to make this happen we either need to solve the housing affordability crisis in high-density areas, or spread job opportunities around to lower-density areas. My friends are in a diverse set of fields, finding a place with jobs for all of them isn't feasible right now.
Tokyo seems to have done this. It’s not cheap by any means, but rent seems relatively affordable relative to pay (and very cheap compared to expensive cities in North America). I wonder if part of the reason is that housing is not an investment vehicle in Japan (probably due to the Japanese preference for newer, more modern builds and the fact that housing is a depreciating asset in an earthquake prone region). In mo…
I think it's simply illegal to build housing like Tokyo does in every US city, and often every project over 3 stories needs community input and faces environmental lawsuits over things like shadows
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#26Weird that the article frames friends as being constant in life and your career/house/neighborhood/kids' schools/community as totally flexible when practically speaking it's the other way around. It is normal to move away from people you formed bonds with in high school and college. If you are lonely the solution isn't to uproot your life and go after them, but to form new bonds with people who are around you right n…
The article frames this issue with an older person looking back on their life and being glad they maintained lifelong friendships.
From a practicality standpoint making a new friend can be easier but it won't have the same spiritual and emotional connection as a lifelong one. If you are 80 a friendship of 60+ years will be something that invokes real satisfaction and lends depth to your life. Being friends with someone from down the street for 6 months doesn't really mean anything.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tokyo seems to have done this. It’s not cheap by any means, but rent seems relatively affordable relative to pay (and very cheap compared to expensive cities in North America). I wonder if part of the reason is that housing is not an investment vehicle in Japan (probably due to the Japanese preference for newer, more modern builds and the fact that housing is a depreciating asset in an earthquake prone region). In mo…
I think it's simply illegal to build housing like Tokyo does in every US city, and often every project over 3 stories needs community input and faces environmental lawsuits over things like shadows
"Urban" planning in the US is actually the art of urban destruction.
For nearly every maximum or minimum that the zoning and code sets, flipping the direction would be better. Have parking maximums instead of minimums. Have density minimums rather than maximums.
Make those who want to have too much parking get exceptions and be vetoed by a handful of people showing up on a Tuesday afternoon meeting. Let those who want the "luxury" of low density living in urban cores be the ones begging the neighborhood busybodies and control freaks for the chance to under build in prime locations.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#28rich people problems
Rilly? In my experience, many of the rich people are isolated and paralyzed by concerns about status and wealth and family connections and .... It's the poor who are often able to put those issues aside because they have so little status and wealth. They have nothing to lose.
A granular housing choice is a privilege not afforded to poor people. They live where they can, typically in places heavy with compromise.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#29Weird that the article frames friends as being constant in life and your career/house/neighborhood/kids' schools/community as totally flexible when practically speaking it's the other way around. It is normal to move away from people you formed bonds with in high school and college. If you are lonely the solution isn't to uproot your life and go after them, but to form new bonds with people who are around you right n…
It's "failure to launch" as a social activity. It seems directed at unburdened youth who do not need to struggle to survive in any way. If friendships are truly the path to the highest levels of wealth then the takeaway should be that learning how to make new friends is the highest of human endeavors as it not only enriches your lives but the lives of those you connect with.
Instead they come away with "get your high school friends to pick houses on Zillow together and live an 'enclave.'" Weird indeed.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#30I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs to always be learning. So I would always need to be in a big city. Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisel…
> In North America, there is a very strong cultural preference to isolate oneself
There's also a "very strong cultural preference" to be "obnoxious," as you put it. Hence a strong preference to isolate oneself.
I'd be fine living and raising a family in a high-rise downtown in a country where people behave themselves. Not here in the US. The comparison isn't apples-to-apples.