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I live in NYC, but I grew up in the Florida panhandle, a mile down a road from the main highway, at the beginning of which had no houses in sight, and passed about 5 visible houses on the way home. There was one house visible from our ranch-style house. To the side and back was swamp. To the front was all woods. I walked in the woods, stepped on ant hills and got bitten, and found rattle snakes, cotton mouths, mocass…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only short-term. Once you factor in gas, ownership of multiple cars, etc it's cheaper to live in the city. Doubly so if your time isn't worthless (time sitting in traffic is working for free)
As an American who prefers rural living, I prefer not living in a city because my time is valuable. I like being able to go from A to B at 60 miles and hour and not worry about parking. I don't like waiting for busses or subways. I think suburban living is generally going to be less time-consuming than urban living unless you're doing something dumb, like communting into Los Angles or Washington, D.C.
I can, on the other hand, speak to suburban living being as alienating as anything I've ever encountered. Sitting in a car, alone, for an hour a day to go to and from work--time I couldn't spend doing anything of use, be it reading or working or talking to a friend--was the most soul-killing time of my life.
I kinda have mixed feelings about it (and I plan to move out even further, since my job allows remoting.) The thing is, money "lost" are spend on wages for people building roads, infrastructure, houses, etc. And this type of work more often done by local workforce, not some international company with bank accounts in caymans. So... how exactly money are "lost"? Lost by whom exactly? People found jobs, which otherwise…
Your view is the broken window fallacy. [1] All the man-hours and natural resources spent building all those roads and paying for all that gas to move around on them could have instead gone to expanding production. For instance, funding new companies, scientific research, and so on. That is the point of the article. Of course, the article is fallacious in that expanding production is not inherently better than consum…
Except for the massive externalities involved, sure, they're willing to pay for it. Urban dwellers largely subsidize your suburbia, and have since its inception.
An individual with the choice of living in the city or in suburbia is faced with a conundrum. Although you would think that by living in the city the individual will save money by expending significantly less natural resources and dramatically lowering his carbon footprint, it ironically costs him less money to do the exact opposite by living in the suburbs. This is because if the individual chooses to live in the ci…
Unlikely we'll run out of oil in the foreseeable future.
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The point you miss is that governments spend far more on roads/services/infrastructure to benefit each mcmansion dweller than they do on roads/services/infrastrucutre to benefit each apartment dweller. So its not a 'free market' of choice - apartment dwellers effectively subsidise house dwellers. A real economic zero-sum choice would be the house dweller paying more tax or with worse services and the apartment dwelle…
I suspect that most families living in a half million dollar McMansions actually do pay far more in tax than the typical apartment dweller. In my area, the flow of capital is definitely the opposite of what you describe: without question, the individuals living in the suburbs heavily subsidize the lives of those living in the more urban areas and apartments, at least those who live in a tax district that has a combin…
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