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

Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 592 posts

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#441

Post by _2d30 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #256
_2d30 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yeah clearly? Your own source for what is nearly the worst case in the world is ongoing investment of “US$200 per capita and year”. Look at how much the home values have increased! Do you really think that’s not trivially extractable from property taxes?? That’s IF it’s as bad as building megacities in the middle of literal deserts which obviously a place like Bozeman is NOT. You’re throwing your hands up exa…

Over the course of 10 or 20 years, you can build out the infrastructure to support the previous boom (well, it’s harder in Montana since they are more anti-tax). But in the course of 1 or 2 years? And if that boom turns into a bust before you can get the infrastructure projects going? Urban planning is useful for a reason. Building housing is far from effective on its own, and not all areas can support the same densi…

> And even if you “win”, the result is a more livable city that attracts even more people, leading to price increases nonetheless.

Your statement boils down to "supply can never outstrip demand" which is trivially falsifiable in its own right. No matter how livable a city becomes, at some point, you can have built more than the housing demanded by people. There are a finite number of humans and the proportion of them who both CAN and WANT to live in these cities is almost certainly manageable.

But don't take my word for it, look at the actuality of Tokyo (which for multiple reasons has a far more difficult challenge than Bozeman or any of these other mountain towns): https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/tokyos-affordable-hous...

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#442

Post by joejerryronnie »

DavidAdams wrote: post #363
mark_l_watson wrote: post #281

My wife and I traded living near a beach and lagoon in San Diego country for a small but nice house in a mountain tourist town (Sedona Arizona). That was back in 1998. Except for some time working as a contractor at Google in Mountain View and managing a deep learning team for Capital One in Urbana/Champaign IL, we have lived a quiet life in the mountains since 1998. One reason for my success in being happy here is t…

I lived in Park City for a decade, and it's the same. If you live your life being mad at the traffic during the Sundance Festival and Christmas vacation skiiers, you're just an old man yelling at clouds. That tourist money pays for so many of the amenities that make our town a nice place to live during the rest of the year. Lighten up!

I typically agree but there are some places where this topic is a bit more nuanced and controversial - Hawaii for instance. We love visiting the islands but learned a while back that large parts of the indigenous population see the US as an occupying entity and not their country. While heavily relying on the tourist income, this creates a challenging relationship between the locals and visitors (not to mention the disrespect some tourists show to the local land and culture). This issue was made very apparent during a Pearl Harbor tour when the bus driver described how many Hawaiians actually identified more closely with Japan than America during WW2 (and still do to this day).

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#443

Post by ihyfhgyfhth »

nitrogen wrote: post #413
bedhead wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year I moved from a top 3 city to a small mountain town in Colorado. In my experience, your hostility is extremely common in small towns that have big seasonal influxes. I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners and relatively newer full-time residents. The one constant is: "Everything was great until shortly after I relocated here and you people moved in." A week…

It's a recurring theme. People spend decades taming and beautifying a place. Then people with no respect or appreciation come and love all the "nature" and turn the place into exactly what they were trying to leave behind. It's incredibly narcissistic and selfish to believe that "the locals" are only there as a hindrance to you . Would you roll up to a random village in Thailand and just start changing things, and ex…

The western united states maintained its wilderness areas through a culture of conservationism that isn't remotely respected by the new arrivals. I've spent the last two decades watching paradise be paved for a parking lot.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#444

Post by wyoawayd »

ghaff wrote: post #160
eysquared wrote: post #24

There seems to be a lot of negativity in the comments so far. Is this not the dream that is often touted on hacker news? Work at a FAANG and "retire" somewhere more affordable? I'm personally doing just this. I was lucky enough to land a good job out of college, buy a house in a desired area, and see it appreciate in the last 10 years. This increase plus the birth of my kids left me wondering if there wasn't a better…

I honestly don't get a lot of the comments on this thread. So, say I can work remote or retire and live basically anywhere I want. Is the suggestion that I have some moral obligation to live somewhere that's already expensive?

You have a moral obligation to do what you can to minimize negative impact to others. You don't have to live somewhere that's "already expensive", but you should at least consider trying to live somewhere that won't suffer negative consequences by you living there.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#445

Post by anotherman554 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #126
hoka-one-one wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your kids all else equal will be outsprinted by kids who live in more competitive cities. You can decide you don't care about any of that, but understand that type of that decision will ripple through to future generations, e.g. your grandkids will be less educated. The irony is that most educated people living in small towns want to get out, and a generation or two after they do they want to go back. Will the cycle…

Shared family environment (which by definition includes where your parents choose to live) has near zero impact on long term adult outcomes. This has been confirmed again and again by countless twin studies.

Do you mean twin studies where the twins are separated at birth and raised by different parents? This is a rare thing for parents to do so I think you are exaggerating when you say there are "countless" twin studies saying family environments don't matter? I would be surprised if there were more than a few such studies?

Or are you claiming something else?

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#446

Post by AnimalMuppet »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #121
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns their local economy upside down. Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses. You know what the end game of this looks like? It looks like Vail CO, Cape Cod MA, coastal Long Island and CT, the Hamptons, wealthy retirement ar…

Locals wouldn't get screwed if they advocated for better zoning policy and allowed more housing to be built. This doesn't happen because those same locals that are homeowners love the value of their house exploding upwards

But what good does it do a local if the price of their house explodes? Less than none (less because their property tax goes up), until they sell. But once they sell, if they keep the gains, then they can't buy another house locally. So the only way the increase in price helps locals is when they quit being a local.

If this is happening to your town, the town has a choice: The newcomers are coming. Are they going to live alongside the long term locals, or are they going to replace them? Are the locals going to get rich and leave, or are they going to remain poor and stay? "Get rich and stay" is not an option.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#447

Post by zip1234 »

grecy wrote: post #364
bedhead wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year I moved from a top 3 city to a small mountain town in Colorado. In my experience, your hostility is extremely common in small towns that have big seasonal influxes. I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners and relatively newer full-time residents. The one constant is: "Everything was great until shortly after I relocated here and you people moved in." A week…

> I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners Housing can not be both affordable and a good investment. Given second homes are an investment, by definition having one means you're helping make homes unaffordable.

The view that a home is an investment is poisonous to the housing supply. It makes people of all political affiliations into raging NIMBYs. Why would they want to change anything or allow any new construction in their area if it might negatively affect their housing price?

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#448

Post by ghaff »

nitrogen wrote: post #426
throwaway6734 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locals wouldn't get screwed if they advocated for better zoning policy and allowed more housing to be built. This doesn't happen because those same locals that are homeowners love the value of their house exploding upwards

Most people who are trying to live somewhere don't want their house price exploding, because then they get forced out by rising taxes and insurance.

The opinions here are probably influenced by Prop 13 in California and by the fact that many younger people in the tech field capable of buying property probably assume that they'll be selling and moving somewhere else sooner rather than later.

But, as you say, someone who plans to remain in their house indefinitely would probably just as soon not have their property taxes double (and may not even be able to afford them in they're retired on a fixed income).

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#449

Post by Ario5 »

vailprogrammer wrote: post #341
anthomtb wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vail, and most Colorado ski resorts, are already full of 10+ story hotels. I’m not sure how building a residential or office tower would be any more impactful.

Sorry but that is false. Please name even 1 hotel in Vail that is 10+ stories. The tallest that I can think of is 5, maybe 6 stories. edit: having been a ski bum in Vail, I can't say that I've visited every resort in CO. But across Vail, Breck, Keystone, A Basin, Loveland, Monarch, Cooper, Copper, Beaver Creek, Steamboat, Wolf Creek, Crested Butte, all 5 mountains of Aspen, there are no 10+ story towers. I'm trying t…

This is not true, Vail has had a 10 story building since the 1970's[1], Beaver run in Breckenridge is 9 stories and has also been around for a while, the westin in avon is 10 stories, if you count blackhawk as a resort it has some 20-30 story towers in a super narrow canyon. thats just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, perhaps tall buildings don't have as large of a impact as you think.

[1]https://www.emporis.com/statistics/tallest-buildings/city/13...

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#450

Post by hamolton »

DavidAdams wrote: post #363
mark_l_watson wrote: post #281

My wife and I traded living near a beach and lagoon in San Diego country for a small but nice house in a mountain tourist town (Sedona Arizona). That was back in 1998. Except for some time working as a contractor at Google in Mountain View and managing a deep learning team for Capital One in Urbana/Champaign IL, we have lived a quiet life in the mountains since 1998. One reason for my success in being happy here is t…

I lived in Park City for a decade, and it's the same. If you live your life being mad at the traffic during the Sundance Festival and Christmas vacation skiiers, you're just an old man yelling at clouds. That tourist money pays for so many of the amenities that make our town a nice place to live during the rest of the year. Lighten up!

Park city is particularly atrocious because most of the place is designed as this super spread out suburb around arterial roads - if they just had massive condos downtown near the ski lifts, people would only have to drive in/out of town once.
Post reply on HN