> About three-quarters of Americans who describe their own communities as rural (74%) say they would prefer to live in places where houses are larger and farther apart, but also farther from schools, stores and restaurants. A narrower majority of suburban Americans (56%) also say they would prefer places with larger houses.
> In contrast, more Americans who currently live in urban areas (57%) say they would prefer a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores and restaurants.
Breaking news: most people prefer to live where they live.
Based on this data I am seeing tens of millions of people who don't prefer where they live. It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood in most of the country.
It is quite weird how few walkable neighborhoods exist. That and some other properties of modern USA life almost make it seem like someone is trying to prevent community formation. Who would have an incentive to do that?
People already live in their car-centric houses. Creating walkable cores means pitching folks who can park outside their favorite restaurant on walking from a parking lot. It's easier to sell the concept to new folks, who will live within walking or biking distance of the new core, than gaining buy-in from incumbents. That, in turn, creates the opposition we observe.
I might be wrong but the OP might be referring to ordinances forbidding the building of dense housing. Walkable neighborhoods require a certain level of density to be feasible (e.g. grocery store needs X potential customers within a ten minute walk or it's not going to be profitable) and a lot of towns disallow the building of apartment buildings instead of detached homes.
The grocery store doesn't have to have every customer walk to it for the homes around it to have people walk to it. There are plenty of homes near good shopping, schools and other services. If that's important to you then you can buy a home near them. Having dense housing doesn't mean anything about walkability. After all, you aren't walking to all of the other homes.
> The grocery store doesn't have to have every customer walk to it
Depends how much space you’re dedicating to car parking. Once the grocery store has a giant parking lot it’s swallowed up a lot of land that could have been housing.
The more the store depends on car traffic the bigger the parking lot. The bigger the parking lot the less housing it’ll have in proximity, the longer everyone will have to walk. A successful walkable neighborhood has to balance allocated space with thought.
No, it doesn't really matter. You personally don't need everyone in your neighborhood to walk. Buy a home that is close and you have a walkable home. There are plenty to choose from. Someone lives close to the stores.
That isn’t how neighborhoods work? The entire point of a neighborhood is that it’s a community with shared goals. If everyone wants to work out their own goals they live rurally.
Mostly a combination of single-family zoning (illegal to build a duplex, let alone an apartment/condo building, in huge areas of many cities), minimum square footage requirements for new buildings and lots, and parking minimums (new development, often including renovations of existing buildings, required to have X number of parking spaces per Y residents/occupants).
And what is your read about number of people who prefer where they live? If two groups of people have contradictory desires, then elections are the best way to sort out the differences and reach a compromise.
> It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood
Big cities like NYC or Chicago are already walkable.
> in most of the country.
I am sure you can go build a walkable city in the middle of Nevada or Nebraska. Your problem is something else - nobody wants to go there yet so it is a bootstrapping problem. What you are essentially saying is "a lot of neighborhoods where the jobs are are controlled by NIMBYs and they are not letting us convert those to walkable areas"
My takeaway from those stats is that it highlights how the suburbs are the worst of both worlds. I live in an apartment in the city, if I were to leave having a bigger house would be the primary reason. The fact that 44% of people already in the suburbs would prefer to move somewhere with bigger houses suggests that for a lot of people the suburbs aren't fulfilling their promise.
> that 44% of people already in the suburbs would prefer to move somewhere with bigger houses suggests that for a lot of people the suburbs aren't fulfilling their promise.
Once you start playing the space game, particularly if you're in a location where you tend to get guests, it's always appealing to have another room.
Or more likely it just shows that if you ask someone "hey would you like a bigger house?" they're very likely to say yes. I don't think it's some profound statement on the promise of suburban living.
Well there are two halves to the question. "Would you like a bigger house even if it means amenities are further away?". So to me the 44% suggests that for a lot of people suburban amenity proximity is not worth the smaller home size.
And I'm not that surprised. Not to over generalize but very few suburbs are walkable. Once you're in the car what's an extra 10 minutes on your drive? As a person sitting in the city pondering a life outside of it I can't see the point in the suburbs if I'm going to be driving and stuck in traffic anyway. I'd rather go whole hog and live rurally.
> As a person sitting in the city pondering a life outside of it I can't see the point in the suburbs if I'm going to be driving and stuck in traffic anyway. I'd rather go whole hog and live rurally.
I've though this way too for a long time, both now and when I lived in a city. Having thought about it often, I think the two things driving suburbs are those with daily commutes (that 15 extra minutes twice every day adds up), and many people are not well off enough to live in the denser city to begin with (as things stand). Cities are economic attractors, and suburbs are basically less concentrated instances (or addons) of that.
Also note that the question specifically says "amenities". Likely most people aren't thinking about commuting while answering the question.
As a suburbanite, I think my current tradeoff is just right. I have a big enough house for my needs and wants. But if I wish, a major city is just the right distance away and not too far. Also, the place is not overly crowded but it is neither desolate like the rural areas I have visited. I can go to the "main street" and have enough people. Finally, all the amenities I want for a comfortable life (restaurants, bars, hospitals, schools, sports facilities, airports, supermarkets, specialty stores..) are 20-25 min radius.
After a few miserable years in the city, I moved to the suburbs - the place I consider the best of all worlds. I lived in the suburbs when single and bought a bigger house when I started a family.
The reason people in the suburbs are moving to even bigger houses is because they are getting older and richer, or their families are growing.
I must disagree. Having resided in the residential districts of a large city for nearly 15 years, I relocated to the city center, drawn by the promise of better balance and easier accessibility. However, I found myself discontented with the experience and opted to purchase a small detached house in a suburb, a decision I've come to love even if amenities are somewhat further away. If the opportunity arose to move into a larger house that's even more distant from the city, I would certainly seize it. It's not that suburbs are unfulfilling, but rather that once you've tasted the pleasures they have to offer, you may find yourself longing to immerse even more deeply in nature.
You're making it sound like this is the headline, but it is not. The national average is also 57%, and there are a number of other statistics broken down by partisanship, education, age, etc.
From my ~YIMBY bubble it's a bit surprising, though I guess it shouldn't be, that the majority of Americans want to live in exactly the kind of neighborhood I despise.
Will be hilarious when oil is continually $100+ a barrel and their roads become dirt roads, their commutes costing significant portion of their income.
I also hate living outside cities and have a deeply rooted contempt for (non-old) people who choose to live in rural areas, essentially choosing stagnation over risk.
But...
What, exactly, is hilarious about people suffering and having financial difficulties?
I recently moved from the city to the country, and the quality of life increase is amazing. Why the contempt? I'm not hurting you, in fact you probably don't want me in your city.
My commute is only 7 minutes even if I hit every stoplight. I could walk it in about 15 but I'll ride my motorcycle any chance I can. absolutely zero chance of some guy in a faraday cage box truck picking it off the lot while I'm at work, too.
My take is, IF I'm going to live in a city anyway (as I currently do) then I'd like to have as many things as possible within walking distance. And in point of fact, I can walk to the grocery store, many restaurants, another grocery store, a hardware store, my insurance agent, my dentist, etc. And I can easily bicycle to my doctor's office. So yeah, that's nice. And living in an apartment is part of that current setup, which is acceptable, but a bit stifling. In particular, I'm running out of room for all of my books.
BUT... all things being equal, I'd rather NOT live in a city environment to begin with. I would actually prefer to live on a large enough plot of land, with enough trees surrounding me, to where I can't see another house without making some effort (eg, walking out to the edge of the road). Ideally I should be able to walk around naked outside my house with zero risk of anybody calling the cops. Because I like to walk around naked? NO. It's just the principle of the thing. And more to the point, I should be able to start a big bonfire in my yard, play loud heavy metal, and have a dozen or more people over, drinking and partying, and not have to worry about bothering my neighbors and having the cops called.
The size of the house doesn't actually matter a whole lot, but I would like a fair amount more space than I currently have in my apartment.
Anyway... I moved from the latter environment to the former for career reasons, but I strongly desire to eventually move back to latter - at least part time.
I've made this move back, and it was great for my mental health.
I work from home and like having the ability to live out of my house, instead of a city (i.e. leaving the house for various daily activities because the house isn't big enough to support them). And when I want that city environment experience, I can go there.
You’ve pointed out something key: some people have the mindset of “I live in my home” and others say “I live in my city.” I can see if you are young and have a city job and love restaurants and night clubs and museums and all these other city amenities, then you consider your life to be in various spots in a city. I don’t give a shit about any of that. My life is my family and my dog and my in-home hobbies and working on my vehicle: all of which goes on in my house. I could (and have many times) gone weeks without even leaving my property. No one way is correct.
I'm pretty similar, my wife and I have been looking for 5-10acres for the same reason. I will say tho, while i prefer smaller homes (less room for stuff), these days i massively value two offices and tons of storage.
I don't want stuff, but buying a home (i'm in my first) led me to realize all the practical stuff you accumulate. Organization of it is challenging. Doubly so if you're super space constrained.
> Organization of it is challenging. Doubly so if you're super space constrained.
And when you're space constrained, just allocating a room to one purpose - such as recreation or hobbies - is super hard. Every space is shared with the whole family.
Yep. One reason I want to get back to more of a "country" setting is because some of my hobbies involve needing a lot of space, that I don't currently have. Specifically I want a shop for working on cars, working on bicycles, doing metal working and wood working, using a welding machine, cutting torch, band saw, yadda yadda, etc. Things you can't really do in an apartment in the city. And while the local hackerspace is handy, it's still not like having your own shop where you can park a "project car" in there and leave it for long periods of time, swap engines, pull transmissions, etc.
I've been pondering how much of that is circular though. My interest in metalworking is precisely because I've got some land to maintain. Take away the tractor, and I don't need metalworking. Give me some shared walls, and I don't need to burn wood for heat. Reduce the amounts of biomass and snow that need to be kept at bay, and I don't need a shed full of landscaping equipment. Bury the power lines, and I don't need a generator in case the power goes out.
I know some dyed in the wool country lifers are recoiling in horror at my comment, but my point is to be aware of the path dependence, including the path dependence of culture (eg why you want to work on old cars).
There's also the circular path dependence of (not) relying on socially shared venues, eg hacker spaces, local markets, etc. The US doesn't have great availability of these things, meaning that people use more space at their personal house to replicate their functionality. Rather than going to a corner market and buying food for a few days, we go to the grocery store every week or two and buy huge quantities. Rather than looking around at hacker spaces to scratch my machining itch, I think how it would be great to find some room for a CNC mill. Most of my garage is currently being taken up because I can't even rely on Home Depot to function as a warehouse that sells non-broken goods on demand.
In my estimation the largest unescapable dynamic in the US is that when you're in a city or even a suburb, you're running on the financial treadmill much harder. Which is fine when you're young, rent is comparable to the money you spend on experiences, and you're happy fitting into the corporate societal structure where you can. But when you get tired of running so fast for someone else, want to have a bit more autonomy, perhaps run your own business or other productive endeavor, the main way to do that comfortably is to move to a lower cost of living area where things like office/hobby space comes bundled with your dwelling.
We don't build urban housing for medium/large families. When people have more than 1 child, they're usually off to the 'burbs. Then there's no multi-generational experience in a small neighborhood that you might see in old movies.
The way I think about it is I'd like enough land to fire a .22 pistol without bothering anyone. Would be fun to be able to target shoot in my back yard with a firearm, though I can do that now with airguns.
I hear ya. I used to have a .45 carbine (basically a cheap, off-brand "Tommy Gun" knock-off, semi-auto only) and "back home" we had space out back where there was a big pit where they had sold fill dirt years before. So we could just go down in the pit and shoot with the sides of the pit as a backstop. And if, FSM forbid, a round made it out of the dirt pit, there was nothing around but miles of woods.
Now, if I want to shoot I have to pack my stuff in the car, drive to a range, pay a fee, etc. etc. Doable, but definitely adds some friction to the process.
A big part of wanting to live in a big house far away from the place you go is that it insulates you from the pollution you bring with your car to the place you go.
This is basically a prisoner dilemma, you enjoy the common goods of the city but don't get the downsides by defecting to the countryside, making the city worse in the process. In the end everybody loses.
> is that it insulates you from the pollution you bring with your car to the place you go
This is a citation needed comment to me. It's one heck of an assertion that I have never heard. Most folks I've chatted with who have made this transition do it because of the density of people, not the pollution (which is miles better in cities than it was even 20 years ago).
Does this need a citation? The car is the thing that brings the pollution. You live in the burbs, you drive the car, you pollute. You live in the city, you walk/bike/transit, you pollute less.
I have lived in quite a few cities in the US, and people who live in the city are still driving a majority of the time. There are not that many US cities that have the appropriate biking and transit capabilities to match their size.
I used to think like that, but the city I live in has regular no car days that made me change my mind.
The first and biggest pollution is the noise. The ambient car noise has a huge effect on stress level and sleep quality. When you remove the car from the city, it's almost at silent as the countryside.
The second is the danger in the street. Your brain registers those big fast moving cars as potential danger to avoid and raises your stress level and makes you want to move away from it.
The third one is the space the car take. When you remove the cars you have the opportunity to either make things easier to walk to, or to add parks and greenery. When you remove cars, modern cities are surprisingly empty, much less dense than a village.
> When you remove the car from the city, it's almost at silent as the countryside.
What do you plan on doing about emergency vehicles and their sirens and construction? Those are by far the biggest sources of noise for me in a city. Normal car traffic is omnipresent but usually has a fairly low ceiling that doesn't go through walls all that much.
Emergency vehicles sirens only need to be loud because they have to be heard by other drivers in their cars, which are sound proofed to not hear their own noise.
Normal car traffic absolutely goes through walls, you think you are used to it, but it actually stresses you quite a lot.
As it is in suburbs too. My parents' house is fairly quiet, until a neighbor is hammering or sawing. And that doesn't even include the loud insanity of lawn mowing in the desert.
Judging by you mentioning "no car days" you don't live in the US. American cars are very quiet at the city speed. Americans, on the other hand, are not quiet at all. Especially when they are moving by foot in a walkable neighborhood with drinking establishments.
That’s right. I moved to a single family home in the boonies because I want to be insulated from people, not pollution. I don’t want to constantly hear my neighbor’s music or their fucking at 4 in the morning. I don’t want to smell their awful food. I don’t want to be part of their domestic drama when their ex-boyfriend stomps up out shared stairs, angry. I don’t want them up in my business whenever I do something right outside my home. I want to see them occasionally, waving from a great distance.
Everybody doesn’t lose. Conservatives in Texas win big time with this strategy. They suck all the money out of the cities where all the liberals live and rely on the rural voter base to wage the culture war.
For example, the legislature just passed a law that stripped Austin of the ability to make various ordinances. It also funds its rural schools with payments from the cities — a consequence of having no state income tax and instead a high property tax.
Do most states with income taxes fund schools from them? I've lived in several states but all have had both income and property taxes, and to my knowledge all of them funded schools exclusively from property taxes. In many of them there is literally a line item with the name of the school district.
How is Texas funding rural schools with urban property taxes if they're in different districts?
This is a political advocacy organization, which may have positive goals, but is absolutely only going to be presenting one side of the argument and in a very "we're 100% good and the other side is 100% evil" kind of way.
Not saying it's not worth looking into but it's like trying to get unbiased information on all political candidates in a race by going to one candidate's campaign website.
It seems like the answer to "How is Texas funding rural schools with urban property taxes" is most likely "they're not, they're taking money from both schools for general budget appropriations."
Property taxes go into a general bucket and each school gets a set amount of money per student. It solves the problem of rural school districts not having enough funding but it goes too far there are no adjustments for how expensive an area is. A city like Austin send 51% of their school taxes to the state while also no having enough money to run their schools because things are more expensive in Austin and they deal with a lot more kids with learning difficulties. Texas has collected more in school tax than the schools were funded for in the past several years, so they just steal that money and put it in the general fund instead of giving the schools the money collected through school taxes.
>A city like Austin send 51% of their school taxes to the state
Citation is badly needed. I live in Austin and I don't pay any taxes to the state. My property taxes are going to the city, Travis county and multiple school districts.
> More than half of the district’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year — $940 billion — will go to the state's recapture program, which takes money from property-wealthy school districts and distributes it to districts that don’t collect enough property tax revenue to cover costs.
Thanks, there does seem to be a recapture program even though the article doesn't make much sense (940 million is not more than half of 2.1 billion budget for once).
Austin's local gov't (in the state capital) brought this upon itself.
Over 60% of Austin voted to end unregulated camping: the former progressive mayor of Austin said he would not enforce it, and that he would designate all parks as legal unhoused camping zones. This pissed off a lot of the local population, the governor and the senate.
By trying to get around the local vote against allowing unregulated vagrancy from the houseless population he pushed the state senate to strip the city of those rights. The other pork just came along with it as a nice bonus "screw you"
That’s some twisted logic. The Senate could have passed a statewide ban on unregulated camping, but instead decided to strip the city of its right to make most ordinances, including mandated water breaks for construction workers during a heat wave. The rollback of home rule —more than a century old — is a disproportionate, unreasonable response to a specific problem, the political equivalent of nuking an ant colony.
To be honest this is the first time I hear such argument from someone.
For me and people I know living far from city is about price or community or living in quiet place.
The lack of quiet in the city is almost entirely due to the cars. Less obvious is the lack of community, but car-streets acts as barriers that prevent people from meeting each other. This is really noticeable if your city has a car free day; It will be the day you meet your neighbours for the first time.
The most frustrating noise in communal living is rarely the cars outside - it's the neighbors. It's the upstairs neighbors and the downstairs neighbors. It's the cigarette smoke from someone who shares a vent. It's the thin walls and someone wanting to listen to music loudly. (Or I want to listen to music or watch a movie loudly without neighbors complaining!)
Can I hear the neighbor's kids when they're screeching because they're fighting or playing? Can I hear the neighbors having sex? Can they hear me?
> A big part of wanting to live in a big house far away from the place you go is that it insulates you from the pollution you bring with your car to the place you go.
I can tell you're almost certainly totally wrong, and "fleeing from car pollution" not a big part at all. IMHO, the biggest driver by far is wanting more space. If there's any pollution people want to escape from, it's probably noise pollution (e.g. seeking peace and quiet).
> I'm not saying that either of you are right or wrong, but cars are one of the main (if not the main) contributors to noise pollution in cities.
If that's true, I think the right way to think about it is transportation is the contributor to noise pollution, not cars specifically. We're not getting rid of transportation. If you somehow got rid of cars, bus, train, and truck traffic would have to increase to compensate.
I'm not sure where truck traffic fits in this equation.
As for the others, you're probably right.
That said, we don't necessarily need to get rid of cars. EVs are much less pollutant than ICEs, both in terms of air and noise. They don't solve tyre pollution.
Getting rid of (or massively reducing the reliance on) cars might have other advantages though. Less honking, for one. Probably less police, ambulance and firefighter sirens since it's likely to be less traffic. Fewer people shouting with other drivers. Busses can be made fairly silent. Trains, especially underground metro ones, are not all that disruptive to the general city life.
Again, I'm not saying any particular solution is necessarily correct or desired. I just went off and tried to picture what it could look like.
The whole strong cities movement, which has many laudable goals, I think fails in the same way that many public health initiatives do. The proponents always assume they know more than everyone else, and therefore are better than everyone else.
Strong town supporters just have this smugness that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and its a big turn off from the movement. The problem is they don't have to convince me, they have to convince the 57% of Americans (from the title), many of whom are not in the online echo chamber about strong towns,
It's not that strong towns is wrong, its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it", when it should be "we should develop better places for all of us to live".
Note that this is more a problem with internet commentators vs the actual source material. It's obviously (to me at least) right.
But on the other hand, I'm Canadian, I grew up in a car-dependent suburb. I lived downtown in my city in a walkable neighbourhood, and now I live in the car-dependent suburbs again with my family. I've been to Europe too, the walkable neighbourhoods there are great! But I also like my suburban house. Changing hearts and minds on this will take more than smugness though.
> we should develop better places for all of us to live
That still sounds like an assumption that "all" of us will prefer strong towns, which is doubtful. How about: "We should develop some new types of places to live for those who would prefer this new type of place"
> its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it"
I'm not sure what you've been reading but I can't say I've ever seen that approach. However, I do agree that the wrong tack is often taken. It's usually "environmental concerns mean we're all going to have to live in dense cities whether we like it or not", which is hardly an appealing take (irrespective of how true or false it is!).
Personally I love living in the city with my family. I bike the kids to school in the morning, the city has more museums than I can count, we have a giant park nearby with a zoo, a half dozen playgrounds... it's great. But you're right that you rarely see this kind of appeal actually made.
> "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it"
I generally hear the more convincing "we've been lied to our entire lives and you have been forbidden from experiencing other ways that you could be living, some of which you may prefer."
I think there’s just less and less to outside the home so we tend to desire larger spaces. That plus more remote working.
Restaurants are getting super expensive. And I’m not sure why fast casual didn’t off. Why do I need to add 20% tip to every meal if I could just order at a counter?
Coffee shops mostly don’t seem super comfortable to just hang out.
Libraries don’t have great hours or reading nooks.
Terrible! That 57% needs to be enrolled in a mandatory indoctrination program to teach them to hate cars and love urban microapartments; like all good, right-thinking people do.
There’s always a “you don’t know what you haven’t experienced” element to this kind of thing. A lot of my YouTube recommendations at the moment have been ‘culture shock’ things from Americans (weird because I’m not American or European myself, but I do find it interesting so the algorithm works I guess!) who have gone to live in the UK or Europe for a bit and talk about how amazed they are at living in European cities and how they just had no concept of the way of life until they came over.
But even in much smaller ways you can get that mind shift. I didn’t really think about active transport until I thought electric scooters looked fun and ordered one, and it just blew my mind and opened up a whole new perspective (now I want an e-bike too, but using the scooter heaps).
I guess another aspect is that if you were looking at a lot of the cities and public transport that the US has, I guess I might even choose the ‘burbs and car culture over that… That’s a tricky thing to overcome, getting public transport especially in the US up to a reasonable international standard.
I will say this: IF you're going to live in a "big city" it's definitely nice to pick one with good public transit. I spent quite a lot of time in Chicago a few years ago, and I was really surprised at how accessible things were without a car, compared to where I live. Like I said in my other comment, I have a lot of stuff within walking distance of me. But what I didn't say, is that for everything else getting there without a car would be a nightmare. We have some buses, and that's about it. Chicago, OTOH, with the L-train system and the comprehensive bus route coverage, is relatively easy to get around, despite its size.
I'm an American. My parents are 1st generation immigrants. I spent a lot of time in Europe visiting grandparents growing up. I don't think one way of living is better than another, just personal preferences. I enjoyed my visits to Europe, but for my own life I prefer living in the US. Public transport in the US just isn't a priority and never will be outside of large cities. Scooters and eBikes are great in cities, but awful for suburbs. I wouldn't risk riding one outside my neighborhood on the larger/faster roads.
> US. Public transport in the US just isn't a priority and never will be outside of large cities
Actually, about a century ago there was better public transportation, both municipal and long-distance, serving even small-ish towns. Yes, most people then lived on farms, but farms were usually close to a small town.
Since then the auto industry has managed to change laws to make it more or less illegal to be killed by a car and get funding for things like paved roads. Same country, but it looks very different today. If it seems like it was always that way, it's because the auto industry's marketers were so good at their jobs.
Auto industry? People on HN really like to blame industry for everything.
While I fully 100% support car-centric development and I think we just need to fix emissions like we fixed pollution, technologically - via massive renewables/nuclear build-out and electric cars - and really dislike governments, I have to give credit where it's due. The car-centric development was all its fault (or was all to its credit). Businesses were building rail lines between cities, and tram lines in the cities around which the new neighborhoods developed (even in smaller cities, like Seattle). Then, the government built the highway system (and instituted zoning laws, for less-palatable reasons). Railroads are now marginal for passenger transport and tram lines have gone out of business. Woops!
If you’ve only lived in small tiny spaces then you don't know what you’re really missing.
Big houses means big hobbies: you’re not gonna fire up a tablesaw on your tiny balcony, probably not gonna install a lift in your one car garage to do your own mechanical automotive work. Probably not going to throw big parties of 20+ people firing up a grill in the yard and sitting around a fire pit drinking beers and having conversation while kids jump in a pool. Probably not going to build a model train town in a spare bedroom.
Yep. My dad has a lift in his shop back home, and I could always take my stuff over there to do auto work. Or if I didn't need a lift, at our place we had a big shed with a concrete floor, well lit, shop air compressor, etc. The downside was that it wasn't fully enclosed so it wasn't great in cold weather.
Anyway, that may be the single biggest thing I miss about "back home". Where I live now, I can't even (officially) change the oil in my car or replace a set of brake pads without violating a rule of the place where I live. I swapped out an alternator a few weeks ago and managed not to get yelled at by the management people, but that's about as extensive as you can go here, either due to lack of amenities/equipment, or "the rules". Aaarggghh.
> There’s always a “you don’t know what you haven’t experienced” element to this kind of thing. A lot of my YouTube recommendations at the moment have been ‘culture shock’ things from Americans (weird because I’m not American or European myself, but I do find it interesting so the algorithm works I guess!) who have gone to live in the UK or Europe for a bit and talk about how amazed they are at living in European cities and how they just had no concept of the way of life until they came over.
Not really. It's personal preference, not ignorance.
As a counter-anecdote: I know many people who moved to US suburbs from dense, walkable places; and they wouldn't want to go back. They like having a big house with a yard, and that's just not a realistic option where they're from.
The primary issue is that big houses and card-dependence aren't mutually exclusive in nature, only in law. We could quite literally have everything we wanted, if "we" refers to people living in communities instead of car manufacturers and dealers.
A lot more Europeans move to the US than the other way around. It's not surprising that the Americans who prefer the European lifestyle move to Europe and are happy with their lifestyle.
One advantage of a large house is that you can have specialized spaces. You can have a "cave" or two. You can have a shop. You can have rooms for guests. You can have greenhouses. You can have a dedicated office to work from home from. You can have pets with far fewer limitations placed upon you.
While technically possible in a city, it's going to generally be cost prohibitive - especially for a couple or a family.
> And most of that will not be used 95% of the time.
Honestly, urban apartments are pretty wasteful. Why does everyone have a kitchen? A bedroom? To me, it's all just wasted space.
It would be far, far less wasteful if everyone lived in barracks and hot-bunked/hot-desked. Meals could be served in a common mess, in shifts. Communal activities could be available for recreation.
If we maximize colocation of work and living spaces, we could also significantly cut down on space wasted on transportation in general, not just cars.
The shift will be hard, but the efficiency gains will be worth it.
> And most of that will not be used 95% of the time.
That's OK. Because the alternative is not having one of those spaces to begin with, or having to change a space to fit the needs (i.e. friction).
Specifically, how often would your parents have you over if they had a 2br apartment and had to change the function of the second bedroom (or living room) every time?
And honestly, they may be OK with it. But they also may not - they rationalized the additional cost of a 4br house in the first place.
> 4 persons cars
That space might not be used all the time, but again the friction of having to rent a different car when you do need the space would be pretty significant. Not to mention a 4 seat car is effectively required (assuming suburban or rural US) once you have even one child.
What is a "cave" and why would anybody even want one?
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to come by in cities lol.
> What is a "cave" and why would anybody even want one?
Think "man cave." I understand it to be a personal space dedicated to hobbies/interests/decor not shared by one's spouse, so they can be pursued in a way that won't bother the other.
What is a "cave" and why would anybody even want one?
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to findp in cities lol.
What is a "cave" and why would anybody even want one?
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to p in cities lol.
I live in NYC, love it, but roof greenhouse gardens are hard to come by to say the least. Same with garages for that matter. And any shared space has all sorts of considerations with where you store things etc.
An example: I want to sand and revarnish a chest of drawers we have. If I do that inside the apartment I'll have dust everywhere and then the stink of varnish will pervade the space. There are also no suitable shared spaces for me to use.
It is what it is, I accept it as a price of city life. But it's definitely a downside.
> What is a "cave" and why would anybody even want one?
It's basically a space with a door that's dedicated to one of the inhabitants and their interests.
Even the closest of couples needs their own space occasionally, and having a "man cave" or "she shed" (yes, sadly they're needlessly gendered) provides that environment. They can also frequently double as a WFH office.
> apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to p in cities lol
Sure, but at what cost? How much does a 4 bedroom apartment cost in most cities? $4k a month?
I live in a big house in a suburb that used to be farmland. As our town population has exploded, more and more amenities have come to us. Young folks without families love cities, as they should, but if they have a family, most people want a house. There's nothing wrong with changing your preferences. Once our kids are gone, maybe we'll go back to city living. There is no "better", it's all in what works for you at the current stage in your life.
I think a lot of people in America simply don’t have a great concept of what living somewhere within walking distance of amenities can be like. Walking totally sucks in most of the country, so it’s very reasonable to devalue it.
I grew up in a rural place but live in NYC now. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of having things nearby. My family from suburban and rural places always seem surprised when I mention I need to run out to the grocery store at 6pm on a Tuesday. For them that’s a once a week trip at most–I can probably get there and back in the time that it takes them to get to just get to the store.
I am not making a case for the superiority of one lifestyle over the other (though I see suburbia as kind of a worst of both worlds between urban and rural), just offering my interpretation of why people in America might feel this way.
96 degrees and 80% humidity is a dew point of 89. The highest verified dew point ever recorded in the US is 88, and that was in Minnesota which might sound odd to people who have never heard the term "corn sweat".
But yeah, even high 90's with 65% humidity (dew point in low 80's) is not healthy to be walking around in.
Yes, my bad...humidity decreases some in the hottest part of the day. So the 80% humidity is overnight while the high 90's temperature is during the day.
> There are places that just aren't walkable certain times of the year.
Because we built them to be unwalkable. We ripped out the trees so there's no shade. We paved the soil so we could drive portable furnaces over it. You're not wrong that it's unwalkable where you live - it is also unwalkable where I live. But it not just because of natural climate.
Additional anecdote from someone who lived in a few different walkable neighbourhoods in a European city (around 180 000 people).
The main benefit was having easy access to grocery stores and cafes. For everything else that's not basically interchangeable, I still used a car. Going to work, dancing classes, well equipped gym (there are 2-3 in the city that are worth going to), other sport facilities. So I was still driving basically every day.
And even meeting at cafes and pubs meant using a car (or taxi) most of the time, as most of my friends are living in their own (also walkable) neighbourhoods.
Public transit exist, but that means 30-40 minute bus ride (with waiting, if you need to switch buses - which you often will) vs. 10 minute car ride.
Whenever I talk to my friends from rural areas of the provinces, it becomes clear they just prefer the way they used to live as a child. I lived my entire life in different cities and can’t imagine myself driving for a simple grocery run.
Other thing is, a lot of people who move into a city later in life don’t bother taking advantage of city life and say how much they hate it. I’ve heard time and time again from my friends how “they feel trapped in an apartment”, but they don’t go out for walks or city adventures.
Personally, when I go into rural sides of the countries, I feel extremely trapped and crave some sights of people. It doesn’t have to be crowded, but there’s a beauty of an okay-ishly functioning city going through it’s morning routine.
In rural America, we used to have more very small towns that were actual towns, with sidewalks, main streets, grocery stores, cafés, and cinemas. One of the places I lived used to be one, and I never would have known if the old folks wouldn’t randomly bring up the old bowling alley or something, and when I had no idea what they were talking about they would go on to explain that it used to be in some empty field maybe a quarter mile from my house.
Most shocking one was when I was with someone who mentioned a town I’d never heard of. She said oh, it used to be just up the highway and brought me there. We went into a wooded area in the middle of a farm, and there were the remnants of wooden walkways everywhere (low elevation and frequent flooding). She showed me where the train station and the hotel had been, talked about the different shops and the amusement park that was owned by the local dentist.
But that was all a long time ago. Now that whole area which used to contain multiple such communities is just farmland, loose clusters of houses, a plant, a gas station, and five of the ugliest churches you’ve ever laid eyes on. If you drive for half an hour you can go to Walmart or Taco Bell in the “small city” that used to be an actual small city.
> A majority of Americans (57%) say they would prefer to live in a community where “houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away,”
I would rather have enough distance not to have to hear/see my neighbors than have stores and restaurants within walkable distance, at least in this point in time. If you are a quiet-loving person this is really your only way to get what you need.
A few years ago I made this exact tradeoff. Moving from my townhouse in a urban-suburban neighborhood that was closer to my work and the major urban center to a more a big house in an isolated suburb that was ~15 minutes farther away.
Having a bigger house is good when you have kids like I do, but I definitely prefer the former, where it wasn't exactly living in a big city but still had a lot of the benefits. I just hate having to drive more and how much time it takes up.
One of the problems with mainly anglophone countries is that they have made other kinds of housing so difficult or even illegal to build in large swathes of major cities that single family homes - big, with everything far apart, is the only reality. No one is saying everyone has to live in apartments. But people who want to live in apartments should be able to where there is demand. Nearly all new apartment stock in, say SF, is "luxury" instead of just being straightforward apartments or multi family dwellings.
I think at a 'wanting a better world' makes sense. The problem I think is that people don't really want to act like they're in a shared space. Maybe because they have different standards, maybe because they're not tuned to it.
I was raised being conscious of my presence and how it affected others. While I live in a single family home I still walk like in my 2nd floor apartment to avoid annoying the neighbors downstairs (so far the termites haven't lodged a complaint), or automatically turn down the volume later in the evening, even when I'm home alone.
Not doing this causes friction, and I don't think everybody realizes the presence they have while sharing a space.
So it's only natural people want to avoid that friction. Larges spaces accomplish this naturally.
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[ 13.9 ms ] story [ 3225 ms ] thread> In contrast, more Americans who currently live in urban areas (57%) say they would prefer a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores and restaurants.
Breaking news: most people prefer to live where they live.
People already live in their car-centric houses. Creating walkable cores means pitching folks who can park outside their favorite restaurant on walking from a parking lot. It's easier to sell the concept to new folks, who will live within walking or biking distance of the new core, than gaining buy-in from incumbents. That, in turn, creates the opposition we observe.
What laws make it illegal to have walkable neighborhoods in the US?
Depends how much space you’re dedicating to car parking. Once the grocery store has a giant parking lot it’s swallowed up a lot of land that could have been housing.
The more the store depends on car traffic the bigger the parking lot. The bigger the parking lot the less housing it’ll have in proximity, the longer everyone will have to walk. A successful walkable neighborhood has to balance allocated space with thought.
That is not a walkable neighborhood. When people are talking about this stuff they're talking about an actual defined concept:
https://www.walkscore.com/walkable-neighborhoods.shtml
A home next to a strip mall might be close to a grocery store, it is not a walkable neighborhood.
> It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood
Big cities like NYC or Chicago are already walkable.
> in most of the country.
I am sure you can go build a walkable city in the middle of Nevada or Nebraska. Your problem is something else - nobody wants to go there yet so it is a bootstrapping problem. What you are essentially saying is "a lot of neighborhoods where the jobs are are controlled by NIMBYs and they are not letting us convert those to walkable areas"
Once you start playing the space game, particularly if you're in a location where you tend to get guests, it's always appealing to have another room.
And I'm not that surprised. Not to over generalize but very few suburbs are walkable. Once you're in the car what's an extra 10 minutes on your drive? As a person sitting in the city pondering a life outside of it I can't see the point in the suburbs if I'm going to be driving and stuck in traffic anyway. I'd rather go whole hog and live rurally.
I've though this way too for a long time, both now and when I lived in a city. Having thought about it often, I think the two things driving suburbs are those with daily commutes (that 15 extra minutes twice every day adds up), and many people are not well off enough to live in the denser city to begin with (as things stand). Cities are economic attractors, and suburbs are basically less concentrated instances (or addons) of that.
Also note that the question specifically says "amenities". Likely most people aren't thinking about commuting while answering the question.
Rural setting doesn't have anything like that.
I think you are reading it backwards. 44% suburbanites would prefer to live in communities with smaller houses.
The reason people in the suburbs are moving to even bigger houses is because they are getting older and richer, or their families are growing.
Same can be said for large suburban houses.
From my ~YIMBY bubble it's a bit surprising, though I guess it shouldn't be, that the majority of Americans want to live in exactly the kind of neighborhood I despise.
Breaking News: Most people would like someone to do something about the environment. Not me. Someone else.
Also if that someone could subsidize my forest fire insurance, that’d be great. Kthxbai.
But...
What, exactly, is hilarious about people suffering and having financial difficulties?
The rising price of oil was taught in my middle school, its not news at this point.
population 12k
BUT... all things being equal, I'd rather NOT live in a city environment to begin with. I would actually prefer to live on a large enough plot of land, with enough trees surrounding me, to where I can't see another house without making some effort (eg, walking out to the edge of the road). Ideally I should be able to walk around naked outside my house with zero risk of anybody calling the cops. Because I like to walk around naked? NO. It's just the principle of the thing. And more to the point, I should be able to start a big bonfire in my yard, play loud heavy metal, and have a dozen or more people over, drinking and partying, and not have to worry about bothering my neighbors and having the cops called.
The size of the house doesn't actually matter a whole lot, but I would like a fair amount more space than I currently have in my apartment.
Anyway... I moved from the latter environment to the former for career reasons, but I strongly desire to eventually move back to latter - at least part time.
I work from home and like having the ability to live out of my house, instead of a city (i.e. leaving the house for various daily activities because the house isn't big enough to support them). And when I want that city environment experience, I can go there.
I don't want stuff, but buying a home (i'm in my first) led me to realize all the practical stuff you accumulate. Organization of it is challenging. Doubly so if you're super space constrained.
And when you're space constrained, just allocating a room to one purpose - such as recreation or hobbies - is super hard. Every space is shared with the whole family.
I know some dyed in the wool country lifers are recoiling in horror at my comment, but my point is to be aware of the path dependence, including the path dependence of culture (eg why you want to work on old cars).
There's also the circular path dependence of (not) relying on socially shared venues, eg hacker spaces, local markets, etc. The US doesn't have great availability of these things, meaning that people use more space at their personal house to replicate their functionality. Rather than going to a corner market and buying food for a few days, we go to the grocery store every week or two and buy huge quantities. Rather than looking around at hacker spaces to scratch my machining itch, I think how it would be great to find some room for a CNC mill. Most of my garage is currently being taken up because I can't even rely on Home Depot to function as a warehouse that sells non-broken goods on demand.
In my estimation the largest unescapable dynamic in the US is that when you're in a city or even a suburb, you're running on the financial treadmill much harder. Which is fine when you're young, rent is comparable to the money you spend on experiences, and you're happy fitting into the corporate societal structure where you can. But when you get tired of running so fast for someone else, want to have a bit more autonomy, perhaps run your own business or other productive endeavor, the main way to do that comfortably is to move to a lower cost of living area where things like office/hobby space comes bundled with your dwelling.
Now, if I want to shoot I have to pack my stuff in the car, drive to a range, pay a fee, etc. etc. Doable, but definitely adds some friction to the process.
This is basically a prisoner dilemma, you enjoy the common goods of the city but don't get the downsides by defecting to the countryside, making the city worse in the process. In the end everybody loses.
This is a citation needed comment to me. It's one heck of an assertion that I have never heard. Most folks I've chatted with who have made this transition do it because of the density of people, not the pollution (which is miles better in cities than it was even 20 years ago).
The first and biggest pollution is the noise. The ambient car noise has a huge effect on stress level and sleep quality. When you remove the car from the city, it's almost at silent as the countryside.
The second is the danger in the street. Your brain registers those big fast moving cars as potential danger to avoid and raises your stress level and makes you want to move away from it.
The third one is the space the car take. When you remove the cars you have the opportunity to either make things easier to walk to, or to add parks and greenery. When you remove cars, modern cities are surprisingly empty, much less dense than a village.
Then there's the air pollution.
What do you plan on doing about emergency vehicles and their sirens and construction? Those are by far the biggest sources of noise for me in a city. Normal car traffic is omnipresent but usually has a fairly low ceiling that doesn't go through walls all that much.
Normal car traffic absolutely goes through walls, you think you are used to it, but it actually stresses you quite a lot.
Construction work can be an issue indeed
As it is in suburbs too. My parents' house is fairly quiet, until a neighbor is hammering or sawing. And that doesn't even include the loud insanity of lawn mowing in the desert.
For example, the legislature just passed a law that stripped Austin of the ability to make various ordinances. It also funds its rural schools with payments from the cities — a consequence of having no state income tax and instead a high property tax.
How is Texas funding rural schools with urban property taxes if they're in different districts?
https://recapturetexas.org/
The money doesn’t even go to education in rural areas, not completely. It just goes into the general state budget.
The really fucked up thing is that local ISDs are intentionally underfunded because of this policy.
Stick the liberals with the pollution, kill their public schools, take their money and spend it on vouchers for private religious schools.
Oh, and gerrymander the fuck out of their districts so the suburbs and ranch dwellers have all the say, all the time.
Not saying it's not worth looking into but it's like trying to get unbiased information on all political candidates in a race by going to one candidate's campaign website.
It seems like the answer to "How is Texas funding rural schools with urban property taxes" is most likely "they're not, they're taking money from both schools for general budget appropriations."
Citation is badly needed. I live in Austin and I don't pay any taxes to the state. My property taxes are going to the city, Travis county and multiple school districts.
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/education/2023/06/26/au...
It's 2.1 budget for the year:
* 940 million goes to the state as recapture (1.8 billion was collected in property taxes)
* There is a few hundred million in state and federal grants coming in
* They are spending 52 million more than grants + leftover property taxes
Over 60% of Austin voted to end unregulated camping: the former progressive mayor of Austin said he would not enforce it, and that he would designate all parks as legal unhoused camping zones. This pissed off a lot of the local population, the governor and the senate.
By trying to get around the local vote against allowing unregulated vagrancy from the houseless population he pushed the state senate to strip the city of those rights. The other pork just came along with it as a nice bonus "screw you"
Can I hear the neighbor's kids when they're screeching because they're fighting or playing? Can I hear the neighbors having sex? Can they hear me?
I can tell you're almost certainly totally wrong, and "fleeing from car pollution" not a big part at all. IMHO, the biggest driver by far is wanting more space. If there's any pollution people want to escape from, it's probably noise pollution (e.g. seeking peace and quiet).
If that's true, I think the right way to think about it is transportation is the contributor to noise pollution, not cars specifically. We're not getting rid of transportation. If you somehow got rid of cars, bus, train, and truck traffic would have to increase to compensate.
As for the others, you're probably right.
That said, we don't necessarily need to get rid of cars. EVs are much less pollutant than ICEs, both in terms of air and noise. They don't solve tyre pollution.
Getting rid of (or massively reducing the reliance on) cars might have other advantages though. Less honking, for one. Probably less police, ambulance and firefighter sirens since it's likely to be less traffic. Fewer people shouting with other drivers. Busses can be made fairly silent. Trains, especially underground metro ones, are not all that disruptive to the general city life.
Again, I'm not saying any particular solution is necessarily correct or desired. I just went off and tried to picture what it could look like.
Is this the same among the HN gang? Or is staying single long term an option?
If so, what's the best way to live as a single?
In tech, you can work from everywhere. So travel the world and / or have an appartment in a big city?
Strong town supporters just have this smugness that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and its a big turn off from the movement. The problem is they don't have to convince me, they have to convince the 57% of Americans (from the title), many of whom are not in the online echo chamber about strong towns,
It's not that strong towns is wrong, its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it", when it should be "we should develop better places for all of us to live".
Note that this is more a problem with internet commentators vs the actual source material. It's obviously (to me at least) right.
But on the other hand, I'm Canadian, I grew up in a car-dependent suburb. I lived downtown in my city in a walkable neighbourhood, and now I live in the car-dependent suburbs again with my family. I've been to Europe too, the walkable neighbourhoods there are great! But I also like my suburban house. Changing hearts and minds on this will take more than smugness though.
That still sounds like an assumption that "all" of us will prefer strong towns, which is doubtful. How about: "We should develop some new types of places to live for those who would prefer this new type of place"
I'm not sure what you've been reading but I can't say I've ever seen that approach. However, I do agree that the wrong tack is often taken. It's usually "environmental concerns mean we're all going to have to live in dense cities whether we like it or not", which is hardly an appealing take (irrespective of how true or false it is!).
Personally I love living in the city with my family. I bike the kids to school in the morning, the city has more museums than I can count, we have a giant park nearby with a zoo, a half dozen playgrounds... it's great. But you're right that you rarely see this kind of appeal actually made.
I generally hear the more convincing "we've been lied to our entire lives and you have been forbidden from experiencing other ways that you could be living, some of which you may prefer."
>Public preferences were more evenly divided on this question in fall 2019, a few months before the coronavirus outbreak.
COVID-19 caused a measurable shift in living preferences that appears to be durable.
Restaurants are getting super expensive. And I’m not sure why fast casual didn’t off. Why do I need to add 20% tip to every meal if I could just order at a counter?
Coffee shops mostly don’t seem super comfortable to just hang out.
Libraries don’t have great hours or reading nooks.
Bars like cheers aren’t a thing.
You’re mostly stuck in your house.
But even in much smaller ways you can get that mind shift. I didn’t really think about active transport until I thought electric scooters looked fun and ordered one, and it just blew my mind and opened up a whole new perspective (now I want an e-bike too, but using the scooter heaps).
I guess another aspect is that if you were looking at a lot of the cities and public transport that the US has, I guess I might even choose the ‘burbs and car culture over that… That’s a tricky thing to overcome, getting public transport especially in the US up to a reasonable international standard.
Actually, about a century ago there was better public transportation, both municipal and long-distance, serving even small-ish towns. Yes, most people then lived on farms, but farms were usually close to a small town.
Since then the auto industry has managed to change laws to make it more or less illegal to be killed by a car and get funding for things like paved roads. Same country, but it looks very different today. If it seems like it was always that way, it's because the auto industry's marketers were so good at their jobs.
While I fully 100% support car-centric development and I think we just need to fix emissions like we fixed pollution, technologically - via massive renewables/nuclear build-out and electric cars - and really dislike governments, I have to give credit where it's due. The car-centric development was all its fault (or was all to its credit). Businesses were building rail lines between cities, and tram lines in the cities around which the new neighborhoods developed (even in smaller cities, like Seattle). Then, the government built the highway system (and instituted zoning laws, for less-palatable reasons). Railroads are now marginal for passenger transport and tram lines have gone out of business. Woops!
Big houses means big hobbies: you’re not gonna fire up a tablesaw on your tiny balcony, probably not gonna install a lift in your one car garage to do your own mechanical automotive work. Probably not going to throw big parties of 20+ people firing up a grill in the yard and sitting around a fire pit drinking beers and having conversation while kids jump in a pool. Probably not going to build a model train town in a spare bedroom.
Anyway, that may be the single biggest thing I miss about "back home". Where I live now, I can't even (officially) change the oil in my car or replace a set of brake pads without violating a rule of the place where I live. I swapped out an alternator a few weeks ago and managed not to get yelled at by the management people, but that's about as extensive as you can go here, either due to lack of amenities/equipment, or "the rules". Aaarggghh.
Not really. It's personal preference, not ignorance.
As a counter-anecdote: I know many people who moved to US suburbs from dense, walkable places; and they wouldn't want to go back. They like having a big house with a yard, and that's just not a realistic option where they're from.
While technically possible in a city, it's going to generally be cost prohibitive - especially for a couple or a family.
My parents have a large house with 4 bedrooms. They are only filled when we come seeing them. To me it's just wasted space.
Multiply that by millions of houses and you have a huge volume of space that is built heated/ACed for basically nothing most of the time.
We must rationalized all this, same with office spaces or "4 persons cars" :)
Honestly, urban apartments are pretty wasteful. Why does everyone have a kitchen? A bedroom? To me, it's all just wasted space.
It would be far, far less wasteful if everyone lived in barracks and hot-bunked/hot-desked. Meals could be served in a common mess, in shifts. Communal activities could be available for recreation.
If we maximize colocation of work and living spaces, we could also significantly cut down on space wasted on transportation in general, not just cars.
The shift will be hard, but the efficiency gains will be worth it.
The kitchen and bedroom you use them everyday. Same with the "one-seat" in your car.
No, if wasted space is a problem, let's get rid of it. No half-measures that just happen to stop when it starts interfering with your preferences.
> The kitchen and bedroom you use them everyday. Same with the "one-seat" in your car.
Come on. Just used everyday? That's a total waste. They should be in constant use.
They have those: motorcycles and bicycles. Not family compatible though.
That's OK. Because the alternative is not having one of those spaces to begin with, or having to change a space to fit the needs (i.e. friction).
Specifically, how often would your parents have you over if they had a 2br apartment and had to change the function of the second bedroom (or living room) every time?
And honestly, they may be OK with it. But they also may not - they rationalized the additional cost of a 4br house in the first place.
> 4 persons cars
That space might not be used all the time, but again the friction of having to rent a different car when you do need the space would be pretty significant. Not to mention a 4 seat car is effectively required (assuming suburban or rural US) once you have even one child.
I’m sure that’s worth it for them
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to come by in cities lol.
Think "man cave." I understand it to be a personal space dedicated to hobbies/interests/decor not shared by one's spouse, so they can be pursued in a way that won't bother the other.
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to findp in cities lol.
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to p in cities lol.
An example: I want to sand and revarnish a chest of drawers we have. If I do that inside the apartment I'll have dust everywhere and then the stink of varnish will pervade the space. There are also no suitable shared spaces for me to use.
It is what it is, I accept it as a price of city life. But it's definitely a downside.
It's basically a space with a door that's dedicated to one of the inhabitants and their interests.
Even the closest of couples needs their own space occasionally, and having a "man cave" or "she shed" (yes, sadly they're needlessly gendered) provides that environment. They can also frequently double as a WFH office.
> apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to p in cities lol
Sure, but at what cost? How much does a 4 bedroom apartment cost in most cities? $4k a month?
I grew up in a rural place but live in NYC now. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of having things nearby. My family from suburban and rural places always seem surprised when I mention I need to run out to the grocery store at 6pm on a Tuesday. For them that’s a once a week trip at most–I can probably get there and back in the time that it takes them to get to just get to the store.
I am not making a case for the superiority of one lifestyle over the other (though I see suburbia as kind of a worst of both worlds between urban and rural), just offering my interpretation of why people in America might feel this way.
I live in Florida. It gets into the high 90's with 80% humidity. At the same time NYC is in the 80's with 50% humidity.
There are places that just aren't walkable certain times of the year.
96 degrees and 80% humidity is a dew point of 89. The highest verified dew point ever recorded in the US is 88, and that was in Minnesota which might sound odd to people who have never heard the term "corn sweat".
But yeah, even high 90's with 65% humidity (dew point in low 80's) is not healthy to be walking around in.
As you said, still not walkable :).
Because we built them to be unwalkable. We ripped out the trees so there's no shade. We paved the soil so we could drive portable furnaces over it. You're not wrong that it's unwalkable where you live - it is also unwalkable where I live. But it not just because of natural climate.
The main benefit was having easy access to grocery stores and cafes. For everything else that's not basically interchangeable, I still used a car. Going to work, dancing classes, well equipped gym (there are 2-3 in the city that are worth going to), other sport facilities. So I was still driving basically every day.
And even meeting at cafes and pubs meant using a car (or taxi) most of the time, as most of my friends are living in their own (also walkable) neighbourhoods.
Public transit exist, but that means 30-40 minute bus ride (with waiting, if you need to switch buses - which you often will) vs. 10 minute car ride.
Other thing is, a lot of people who move into a city later in life don’t bother taking advantage of city life and say how much they hate it. I’ve heard time and time again from my friends how “they feel trapped in an apartment”, but they don’t go out for walks or city adventures.
Personally, when I go into rural sides of the countries, I feel extremely trapped and crave some sights of people. It doesn’t have to be crowded, but there’s a beauty of an okay-ishly functioning city going through it’s morning routine.
Most shocking one was when I was with someone who mentioned a town I’d never heard of. She said oh, it used to be just up the highway and brought me there. We went into a wooded area in the middle of a farm, and there were the remnants of wooden walkways everywhere (low elevation and frequent flooding). She showed me where the train station and the hotel had been, talked about the different shops and the amusement park that was owned by the local dentist.
But that was all a long time ago. Now that whole area which used to contain multiple such communities is just farmland, loose clusters of houses, a plant, a gas station, and five of the ugliest churches you’ve ever laid eyes on. If you drive for half an hour you can go to Walmart or Taco Bell in the “small city” that used to be an actual small city.
I would rather have enough distance not to have to hear/see my neighbors than have stores and restaurants within walkable distance, at least in this point in time. If you are a quiet-loving person this is really your only way to get what you need.
Having a bigger house is good when you have kids like I do, but I definitely prefer the former, where it wasn't exactly living in a big city but still had a lot of the benefits. I just hate having to drive more and how much time it takes up.
I was raised being conscious of my presence and how it affected others. While I live in a single family home I still walk like in my 2nd floor apartment to avoid annoying the neighbors downstairs (so far the termites haven't lodged a complaint), or automatically turn down the volume later in the evening, even when I'm home alone.
Not doing this causes friction, and I don't think everybody realizes the presence they have while sharing a space.
So it's only natural people want to avoid that friction. Larges spaces accomplish this naturally.