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Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

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Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is indeed that much cheaper to start from scratch, we have the open land to do so. Housing prices might fall in the areas that are chosen for divestment, but if we can't afford it, it's unclear what other paths remain. I largely believe in Strong Town's thesis, but we can't make everything a 5+1 because there is too much underdeveloped land use to justify that level of density everywhere given the total populat…

You just have to densify existing towns and smaller cities, and go back to something more like the traditional model of small-scale urbanization. Density is more efficient than suburban sprawl.

No thank you. I would rather burn this country to the ground than deal with the noise of density.

Music. Street racing. 24/7 dog barking. Density is hell.

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#212
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee wiz, I’ve lived in a tiny rural town in AZ, moderate sized city in Northern AZ, Palo Alto, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Seattle, Raleigh, and a small town outside of Albany. Yes , the fact that your nearby city is the worst of both worlds is my point. This is a condemnation of the way we build cities. Note that you are still near a city due to the amenities and opportunities that only cities can provide. This effect appe…

I think you are mistaking the European way of policing with how cities are constructed. Most of the problems big cities have in the US come from high tolerance of overt crime, drug abuse, homelessness and more. - things that are mostly not tolerated elsewhere, and used to not be tolerated here either. Half of the names of cities you have lived in are definitely mega-cities, or very close to being a mega-city. Manhatt…

Right, and the other half is not.

I’m clearly having difficulty speaking a language you understand, so have a good rest of your evening!

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#213
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading. Genuinely curious: what is the basis for that claim? Even if you don't cite a source. Edit: these responses are very insightful. Thank you all for the responses.

At least American suburbs are ultra car-dependent meaning you're not walking anywhere (literally physically degrading to both you and the environment) and you do not have chance social encounters at nearly the frequency of any walking city (socially degrading). This is not to say there aren't real benefits to life in the burbs and serious disadvantages to city life, but it's fairly evident by now that American suburb…

At least with WFH, the trend is reversing. People are leaving urban cores and moving to the suburbs where they can get more space for less money and avoid a lot of the QOL issues.

San Francisco is a great example. The once bustling downtown is losing business at a rapid click not only because residents have left, but also office workers aren't coming in anywhere near as often.

I predict it'll be a positive feedback loop. As more businesses close, QOL issues become worse, it'll accelerate the exodus. It's like a repeat of the 60's.

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#214
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee wiz, I’ve lived in a tiny rural town in AZ, moderate sized city in Northern AZ, Palo Alto, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Seattle, Raleigh, and a small town outside of Albany. Yes , the fact that your nearby city is the worst of both worlds is my point. This is a condemnation of the way we build cities. Note that you are still near a city due to the amenities and opportunities that only cities can provide. This effect appe…

I think you are mistaking the European way of policing with how cities are constructed. Most of the problems big cities have in the US come from high tolerance of overt crime, drug abuse, homelessness and more. - things that are mostly not tolerated elsewhere, and used to not be tolerated here either. Half of the names of cities you have lived in are definitely mega-cities, or very close to being a mega-city. Manhatt…

> high tolerance of overt crime

I'm curious what you mean by this, given the unusually high incarceration rate in the US.

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#215
post #110
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading. Genuinely curious: what is the basis for that claim? Even if you don't cite a source. Edit: these responses are very insightful. Thank you all for the responses.

Not GP but locally there are a few exurbs that have serious budget problems because they overbuilt infrastructure and don't have the tax base to fully maintain it which creates a feedback loop of poorly maintained roads, water systems, parks, etc. Some of it had to do with the murder of brick and mortar retail in tightly packed downtowns in favor of the big box stores on the edge of town. That creates an enormous was…

> doubly so if the store got property/sales tax subsidies.

Walmart is particularly good at this. Search for Walmart property tax lawsuit and you'll find hundreds of examples of Walmart filing lawsuits to get their property taxes lowered. The latest ploy for these big retailers is to push to have their property taxes valued as if the store was empty and shut down and had no inventory.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/to-cut-ta...

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just have to densify existing towns and smaller cities, and go back to something more like the traditional model of small-scale urbanization. Density is more efficient than suburban sprawl.

No thank you. I would rather burn this country to the ground than deal with the noise of density. Music. Street racing. 24/7 dog barking. Density is hell.

I live in one of top 20 densest municipalities in the US (Somerville MA) with 18k people per square mile, and none of those things are an issue here. You can have density without noise.

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how globalised the anti-globalisation populist political movements may be. Yesterday's news included "Reichsbürger" getting busted in Deutschland for conspiring to coup, and it was mentioned the suspects were also pretty QAnon-aligned. However, Reichsbürger are not indigenous, but are derived from US "Sovereign Citizens", who result from an amalgam of nuttery derived from XIX and XX conspiracies wishing to…

This heavily underestimates the influence of Ezra Pound through his disciple and biographer Eustace Mullins. Butz certainly upped the economic pressure on rural people, but the theory is regular old European conspiratorial antisemitism as revived through Dreyfus, then post-WWI central European "stabbed in the back" fantasies, and interpreted by the fascist Europhile Pound. If the US government hadn't just completed a…

Interesting that these memetics[0] have been ping-ponging back and forth across the Atlantic. If you wish, search my HN comments for what (little) I know about Pound — I had not realised he'd been influential, as I'd thought he'd been dismissed as a crank upon openly embracing fascism[1].

[0] The Master and Margarita is my favourite take on deicide.

[1] with the benefit of hindsight, this is perhaps the victors' history. After all, NATO (although it no longer does) had openly fascist members within my lifetime. cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grândola,_Vila_Morena

(also: I'm not so sure about the cow's milk going all the way to the Med. Consider: "All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part that cooks with lard and goose fat, the part that cooks with olive oil, and the part that cooks with butter.")

Edit: Wow, Mullins met Pound post-WW2. ... and I guess if the goldbuggery I'd noticed earlier in Pound was coded antisemitism whose whistle I'd missed, it explains much more about how an educated, culturally open, intellectual (cf Pound's juvenilia) could embrace fascism.

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This heavily underestimates the influence of Ezra Pound through his disciple and biographer Eustace Mullins. Butz certainly upped the economic pressure on rural people, but the theory is regular old European conspiratorial antisemitism as revived through Dreyfus, then post-WWI central European "stabbed in the back" fantasies, and interpreted by the fascist Europhile Pound. If the US government hadn't just completed a…

no thanks for this simplified explanation -- "regular old European conspiratorial anti-whatever" is not the same as being suspicious of debt-and-foreign-trade driven core economies. There are winners and losers -- Farmers and their communities are sometimes the losers when you get cheap fruit from 5000km away, and lend money to people for basic needs from centralized and international banking.

One may be suspicious of debt-and-foreign-trade, but: are there (or have there ever been) any successful autarkic economies?

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#219
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick any moderate sized city in Europe! There's no reason Americans have to choose between glass and concrete imposing megastructures a la (parts of) NYC or sprawling car-dependent and socially atomized burbs a la Houston/Phoenix etc. We can have moderately dense, highly walkable, transit-connected, safe, clean, private, quiet, socially vibrant, affordable towns and suburbs all over the country. We just choose not to…

The thing is, America is very big. For perspective, America is just shy of the square mileage of all of Europe - but America is just one country... and it has half the population of Europe. This means things can be, and are, very spread out. It is not unusual for a person in the US to live 20-60+ miles from their work - by choice. It is simply not possible for everyone in the US to live in or near these mega-cities.…

Have you.... even lived in a city? You see miles of idling cars in cities... do you think those are city residents sitting in cars? Those cars are suburban commuters. People in cities don't own cars. You know that right? The whole point of living in a city is to avoid wasting hours of your life every day sitting in a car. What a depressing existence that is. And even so, the miles and miles of highway are an order of magnitude more - you just don't experience it the same way so it's hard to compare. Think about it.

It's not really debated that the carbon emissions of suburban life is an order of magnitude more than urban life. They just aren't comparable.

Re: Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

#220
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps for you city dweller's, but for the rest of us, we really like our suburbs. Not being able to walk everywhere is literally not even a factor I look for when moving to a new area. I want quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and affordability. I have yet to see the metropolis that checks all of those boxes, or any of them for the matter.

I see why you like the suburbs. But it's essentially a hoax, it's like living above your means on a bunch of credit cards - at least for most people (not all). Affordability for a lot of suburbs is when you allow for degrading infrastructure and moving more and more towards bankruptcy of cities. Budget analysis for a lot of suburbs show very troubling trends. In essence, living in a properly maintained suburbia is no…

This is a bizarre take. The suburbs of the Bay Area are often wealthier and better run than the cities. In fact, it's true of most major cities. The urban core is likely lower income and the surrounding suburbs are where the wealthy live.

Kind of weird to talk about "living on a bunch of credit cards" when it's the cities who seem to burn cash with little to show for it.

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