Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#51

Post by aclimatt » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:08 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #43

aclimatt wrote: post #32

Not the crux of the article, but: > This doesn't mean that they, or the even higher-cost, more congested coastal metros, will adopt Manhattan or Tokyo-style density and transit patterns. Instead, Austin and San Antonio might be the new Houston and Dallas. My goodness, can we /please/ stop this false dichotomy that a city either has to be a Tokyo megalopolis or a suburban sprawlfest? I don't think any reasonable perso…

Tokyo is also not particularly congested.

It's really not. It's actually a surprisingly livable and automobile traffic-free city for being literally the largest in the world. (Obviously the train system plays a huge role in that.)

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#52

Post by hueving » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #31

I wonder if this trend will result in further stratification of American society. I mean, we've always had enclaves where rich people lived and poorer people lived, but they generally used to be at least nearby each other in large metros. Now, though, this city stratification feels like a multi-layer sieve. E.g. San Francisco is still a super-desirable city to live, if you can afford it, so the people who can't get p…

It's always been this way. People didn't go west because they had a good life on the east coast.

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#53

Post by StudentStuff » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

Naritai wrote: post #41

StudentStuff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What companies are creating these positions? What is considered a "high" wage? In my eyes, that could be $58k a year or maybe a touch less depending on the authors perspective, which is a far cry from what similar talent would make in Portland or Seattle, let alone SoCal.

In my experience 60-70k is considered to be a 'high' salary in Boise. Like, someone outside of tech who is making is 60k considers themselves to be upper middle class. I know people who relocated from Boise to Bay area, and were given 30-40% salary boosts for cost of living. Of course, at the time real estate was so cheap in Boise, it was commonly noted that it actually costs much more than 30-40% more to live in the…

Huh? A plumber or electrician can earn more than that even in rural areas, I wouldn't consider $60k to be upper middle class.

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#54

Post by indemnity » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #43

aclimatt wrote: post #32

Not the crux of the article, but: > This doesn't mean that they, or the even higher-cost, more congested coastal metros, will adopt Manhattan or Tokyo-style density and transit patterns. Instead, Austin and San Antonio might be the new Houston and Dallas. My goodness, can we /please/ stop this false dichotomy that a city either has to be a Tokyo megalopolis or a suburban sprawlfest? I don't think any reasonable perso…

Tokyo is also not particularly congested.

Nor is it particularly high rise outside of the center, it’s surprisingly sprawl-like as well.

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#55

Post by lmm » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #35

Why is this a bad thing? I live in a midsize city. High quality housing is $110/sqft. I can walk to my kids school, shopping, library and dining. My kid can take a bus to malls and parks, and my commute is approximately 7-10m, and few commutes around here would exceed 20-30. I can be in NYC or Boston in Why would you want to move from such a place to NYC or SFO?

World-class theatre/opera, bands make a stop here on their tours, wide variety of restaurants, communities for some of my more specialised hobbies and interests. There are certainly costs, but big cities can offer a depth and variety of experiences that smaller ones can't.

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#56

Post by lotharbot » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

mysterypie wrote: post #28

_virtu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in tech, yes. There are a lot of tech related jobs that Boise has a huge deficit for. You won't be compensated at the same rates that you would be in California, but the cost of living would make up for it.

> You won't be compensated at the same rates that you would be in California, but the cost of living would make up for it. No, it generally doesn't. It depends on the specific numbers of course (how much of a salary cut, how much cheaper is the housing costs), but a lot of people make that blanket statement because of a mathematical fallacy: The fallacy is if I make half as much, but my expenses are half as much, the…

software engineer salary somewhere else is usually more like 20-25% less rather than 50% less -- someone making 140k in SF might make 110k-120k in places like Boise or Denver. They'll pay 5k less in taxes (both due to lower total income and lower state tax rates). So saving 18k in housing costs puts them at least in a comparable disposable-income range.

For people in lower-paying careers, the lower housing costs elsewhere almost always dwarf the pay differences. For higher-paying careers, the pay differences are the dominant factor. Mid-range software engineer salary is actually pretty close to the dividing line, which makes it particularly important to evaluate the specific numbers yourself.

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#57

Post by cko » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

akhilcacharya wrote: post #47

Spooky23 wrote: post #35

Why is this a bad thing? I live in a midsize city. High quality housing is $110/sqft. I can walk to my kids school, shopping, library and dining. My kid can take a bus to malls and parks, and my commute is approximately 7-10m, and few commutes around here would exceed 20-30. I can be in NYC or Boston in Why would you want to move from such a place to NYC or SFO?

NJ?

Can’t be NJ, it’s 1 hr from NY and 6 hours from Boston. Maybe near Hartford?

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#58

Post by hueving » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:14 PM UTC

ebikelaw wrote: post #17

taurath wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard a lot of things about California transplants (being one myself), but being far right is one I haven’t yet heard.

California is diverse and populous. There are enough far right voters in California that if they were to migrate en masse they would totally overwhelm their destination. They're also more likely to migrate, being the most irked by California's current one-party government. As a personal anecdote I happen to know a small businessman who moved from Fremont, California, to Oregon because those gosh darn overbearing regu…

>because those gosh darn overbearing regulators in Fremont wanted his employees to stop being severely injured. That's your basic right-wing migrant in a nutshell.

Lazy strawman

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#59

Post by hueving » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #29

cylinder wrote: post #27

My general view after travelling to Denver is that one of America's biggest issues is underpopulation. There is so much land in these areas and actually lots of infrastructure relative to population. It all stood out to me how white these areas remain. I saw a handful of non whites and no Asians the entire time. Shocking how the whitest areas are the most anti immigrant. What are they so angry about?! Bringing in mig…

Denver is 30% Latino, 11% Black, 5% Asian. Not sure how you only saw a handful of non-whites.

Confirmation bias or lives somewhere with a much smaller white population.

Re: Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

#60

Post by bilbo0s » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #31

I wonder if this trend will result in further stratification of American society. I mean, we've always had enclaves where rich people lived and poorer people lived, but they generally used to be at least nearby each other in large metros. Now, though, this city stratification feels like a multi-layer sieve. E.g. San Francisco is still a super-desirable city to live, if you can afford it, so the people who can't get p…

By the time the "GENT-rification" reaches Chattanooga and Pittsburgh though, it's become something more akin to "SQUIRE-ification". The people moving in are not nearly as wealthy, so people are not really being pushed out in the numbers that they are pushed out in places like Manhattan or San Fran.

It's the difference between a few thousand hundred-thousandaires moving in, as opposed to a few thousand millionaires and billionaires moving in. There really is a material and nontrivial difference in the housing market ripples resultant from these two hypothetical immigrant waves. Far fewer people, if any, wind up displaced in the third and fourth tier cities that the hundred-thousandaires move into. Developers operating in these cities simply can't afford to remake the markets the way you can in the larger cities. The numbers typically don't allow for it. Whereas in the first tier cities, the market in entire swaths of these cities can be remade and become astronomically unaffordable in a matter or 5 or 10 years. And the numbers in that large market make it very profitable for a developer to do so.