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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?

#81

Post by titanomachy »

l33tbro wrote: post #36
wenc wrote: post #6

I 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…

> I 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 used to think along similar lines. But I haven't found moving out of the city to be subtractive of my 'intellectual life'. If anything, it has been complementary - due to being grounded in mainstream experience again that I lost touch with in the city. That said, I've very consci…

> being grounded in mainstream experience again that I lost touch with in the city

I just spent a couple weeks visiting a friend in a (fairly affluent) rural mountain town, and felt this overwhelmingly. Most discussion amongst rural people seems to focus on things that directly affect them and that they can in turn affect. Community projects, social events, improving their schools, local gossip, etc.

In contrast, my city friends spend a lot of time on "bigger" subjects: wars, geopolitical and economic trends, our predictions on technological development... also, a lot of conversation about people's travel plans and that sort of thing. Rich city people always seem to be traveling out of the city, or planning their next travel.

It's not that the rural people are ignorant of the world, rather, I think it's a conscious choice to focus on things in their sphere of influence. It was a really nice reminder for me. If I ask a city friend "how have you been doing?" I'm likely to hear something like "oh, I've just been so stressed about this election" or "I've been worrying about AI taking my job". A rural friend might say something about digging their neighbor's house out after the latest snowstorm, or start talking about the new ski trail that their community just built.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#82

Post by em-bee »

linguae wrote: post #75
em-bee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does renting force you to move? how does owning a home allow you to stay if other considerations may force you to sell the house and buy another one? my mother lives in a rental apartment that my family has been in since 150 years ago.

When I was 12 years old, we had to leave a rental house because the landlord sold it. It was very disruptive for us since my parents were low-income and didn’t have much savings. It also took place at a time when market rents increased quite a bit. My parents struggled to find housing; we moved into an apartment temporarily, and two months later we finally found another house to rent that we could afford, but it was…

that's only true in the US though. most other countries have better renter protection. my point was that it's not just renting that forces you to move. you moved yourself because of a job. if you had owned a house you would have had to sell it at that point.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#83

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

wenc wrote: post #6

I 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…

As an American I can see your points, but then as a European you’re making some wild leaps of logic there.

Not all urban environments always provide the learning that’s best for you. Some communities which “don’t favor intellectual pursuits” end up actually being far more intellectual than the most ambitious elite city-dwelling ones.

Most childhoods end up idyllic. All configurations humans put themselves into exist.

Though I will say that I am lucky to say that I did come back to folks who really do value intellectual pursuits, though it did take some time for me to take notice. The urban environment though, not so sure about that anymore, lots of noise and distraction.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#84

Post by epistasis »

lorax wrote: post #78
daedrdev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Japan has detailed zoning restrictions, including the shadow a building can cast on a neighbor's lot. Maybe there are fewer lawsuits because the law is clear so it is easy to know if you are following it. https://ranjatai.wordpress.com/2022/02/11/sunlight-on-japane...

There's two big differences:

1) clarity of law without local community process that overrides what the law says you can build,

2) extra capacity to actual build. Almost 100% of land is "built out" according to zoning, meaning that almost no land allows building anything more than already exists. In fact this downzoning was so intense that many many buildings would never be allowed to rebuilt, including iconic buildings.

We have literally outlawed cities in the US, due to the wishes of people that want suburban automotive lifestyle to replace city life.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#85

Post by cactusplant7374 »

wenc wrote: post #6

I 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…

I can appreciate that being a bit of an obnoxious person myself.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#86

Post by JSR_FDED »

ryandrake wrote: post #73
flawn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, tangentially related, but how would you say SF changed? Where would you get this feeling of SF back then nowadays? Thought about giving SF a visit in summer as an aspiring software engineer & entrepreneur but curious to what you think about it.

Hard to say, and it's highly subjective. It just feels like Silicon Valley is no longer about building cool things and making the world better through technology. It's become about exploitation and extraction, instead of building. It's about capturing and controlling users rather than serving them. It's about "crushing it in the market, bro." It's grindset, hustle culture, performative work. It's about phony tech cho…

As I was reading your comment I was thinking “this feels just like the time of Silicon Graphics and SUN”. Glad I got to experience that time in the valley, even though I started to feel the influx of people who were just there for the money, not the passion, starting around 2002/2003.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#87

Post by mym1990 »

paxys wrote: post #17

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…

Making true, lifelong friends is like planting seeds. People you meet and stay in touch with for the next 20 years will undoubtedly by wonderful friends in time, but people you meet today will not be the same as people you have known for 20 years. Living next to someone I have known for the majority of my life(assuming we are still very close) is very different than living next to someone I have known for 6 months. I understand the idea is that you still live near friends but it is just not the same.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#88

Post by mym1990 »

sanderjd wrote: post #33
paxys wrote: post #17

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…

Nailed it. I was going to say that I think more of us should be figuring out how to make connections with the people in the communities we live in. But I do think moving might make sense for lots of people (maybe including me), in order to have a better local community. Instead of moving to be close to past or current friends, I might suggest we should be moving to places where people are like-minded about valuing a…

I don't really understand where Zillow even factors into your assessment here, but maybe that is part of the problem. If people are looking for close knit communities on Zillow, that is a massive mistake.

Tight and close knit communities are not just going to let you join them. You have to basically commit to fostering those relationships for years and years, and generally speaking that kind of commitment is not getting more prevalent, but less.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#89

Post by lolinder »

wenc wrote: post #6

I 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…

Interestingly, the quote you cite here seems to be specifically directed at G.K. Chesterton, who said exactly the opposite—that larger societies tend towards reducing the amount of variety that you experience, precisely because you can choose to associate primarily with people who you relate to [0]. In a small community, you could choose to be entirely isolated, but if you want company you'll need to associate with the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker—there's no way to keep company only with the particular class of intellectuals that you find stimulating.

Speaking as someone who's currently living in a small rural town, I concur with Chesterton here: if you really want to understand people in all their varieties, the city isn't the place to be. In most cities I've spent time in everyone walks or (worse) drive past thousands to reach the few who they already relate to. If you want variety, if you want to stretch your own perspectives, then you want to be in a small town where people actually stop and talk to each other because there's no one else to talk to.

[0] > It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. ... the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul ... A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/470/pg470-images.html

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#90

Post by Barrin92 »

wenc wrote: post #61
Waterluvian wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I’d draw any general conclusions from your experience. It’s a rather broad brush. I grew up in a very intellectual city (Waterloo) with a back yard with big wood fences and we just became experts climbing them, venturing from yard to yard collecting half a dozen kids. We’d bike all over, including to the universities (though Laurier campus didn’t feel interesting). I moved to a very blue collar small cit…

I get it. I lived part of my life in Southern Ontario and knew a bunch of people from Waterloo and surrounding areas — absolutely brilliant mechanical minds. (Farmers truly make great engineers — in fact many famous American engineers trace their roots to farming communities in Wisconsin or some such). But suppose you were interested in Rousseau or Great Books. You wouldn’t find too many people willing to connect on…

>But suppose you were interested in Rousseau

Ironically enough as a sidenote, Rousseau most definitely was not a proponent of urban living, and in fact detested the intellectual cosmopolitan more than just about anyone else, he went so far as to declare big cities the abyss of the human species. I don't personally agree but that is one tough philosopher for the aspiring urbanite

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