4 ms·

It's definitely a good thing that one can do that if they so choose in this country, e.g. living far away from "civilization" and totally off-the-grid. But the

It's definitely a good thing that one can do that if they so choose in this country, e.g. living far away from "civilization" and totally off-the-grid. But the real problem, in my opinion, is how the US made it not just possible, but actually easier, to live outside of the city after World War II. The combination of the GI Bill, developments in prefabricated housing construction, and the automobile allowed for the development of the sprawling suburbs that dominate the American residential market. But none of this would have been possible without the intimate cooperation of politicians, who used this as a means of benefiting their own careers. These politicians allowed almost every white person to own a brand new house and brand new car, with tax subsidies and kickbacks all the way down. A lot of people took this opportunity to give themselves and their families a better life, and moved out to the suburbs. It continues today in my hometown of Philadelphia, where I still live. My friends and co-workers who are older all consistently move outside of the city, like my parents and their parents did before them, when they have children. This movement to the suburbs today is no longer caused by political intervention, but rather by the terrible school system that continues to be underfunded, which is primarily the effect of the richest Philadelphians moving outside of the city to raise their families (and pay taxes to the surrounding communities). It's no wonder there's such a major divide between people who "have" and people who "have not", or why the schools are so terrible and the transportation infrastructure is outdated by over 50 years. Perhaps if my generation chooses to stay in the city limits when we settle down and raise families, our kids won't have to deal with such dangerous and depressing environments. On the other hand, I genuinely enjoy getting away from people and being out in the wilderness. Being off-grid sounds really interesting, and something I've always wanted to try in my life, just to see if it was feasible and comfortable. I'm not coming down on you for living your life the way you want to live it in any way. I think you would agree with me that if land around you suddenly became very valuable and apartment towers started going up, you'd feel a little unnerved right? Living off-grid, in my opinion, is not the problem. The problem is people who want to take a beautiful place and build it into a haven for human environmental destruction.

brbsix 11y ago
I'm a bit confused when you say "these politicians allowed almost every white person to own a brand new house and brand new car". What business is it of politicians to prohibit people from owning a new home or car? What right does anyone have to tell me what neighborhood I can live in? If you want to blame someone for sprawl, blame the politicians that subsidize the infrastructure that make it possible.
- alphonsegaston 11y ago
  I believe the parent is referring to the fact that the GI Bill and home loans for returning WW II veterans were written in such a way to systematically discriminate against blacks in this country. The explicit prohibitions you mention obviously existed at that time in the form of segregation, but whites were also given extra advantages by the racist way these programs were implemented. The extension of these benefits overlaps precisely with growth of sprawl, as whites used the increased purchasing power afforded to them by these programs to buy homes in the emerging suburbs (essentially following the incentive). Ira Katznelson of Columbia University wrote a good history of this in his book,"When Affirmative Action was White"
- CalRobert 11y ago
  It might be more accurate to say "these politicians subsidized home ownership and cars at the expense of those who don't choose or can't afford to partake". It's hard to express in the space of a HN comment, but American society is built to encourage suburban sprawl and car dependence in almost every way imaginable. * The mortgage interest tax deduction taxes renters to give that money to buyers * Roads, once supposedly funded by fuel taxes, are now mostly funded by general revenue, meaning that they're an all you can buffet (so why not use all you can? Somebody else is going to, after all) * Drivers who kill cyclists and pedestrians virtually never face any serious consequences for their actions * Cities force amenities, jobs, and homes to be ridiculously - comically - far apart from each other through zoning. How the hell does central Dublin have tens of thousands of people, hundreds of pubs, and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of jobs all within a couple miles of each other, while people in Mountain View are pissed off their neighbors might want to put a duplex on land that they own because hey, that's too many people! * We make it ILLEGAL to build homes and businesses without ridiculous excesses of parking, meaning you have to pay for parking whether you like it or not * The cost of parking is rolled in to the cost of goods and services. A grocery store's land is easily 70% parking. That land costs a lot of money. Why do I have to pay for everyone else's parking when I walk to the store? * Auto companies normalized the idea that streets are only for cars with campaigns to popularize terms like Jaywalking. I mean, think about it - for all of human civilization streets were where kids played, vendors sold, people chatted, and horses, carts, and people moved. Then the car showed up, quite literally started killing everyone in its way, and we decided everyone else can just deal with it * Safety standards in the US tend to worry about the safety of the vehicle's occupants without regard to those struck by the vehicles. That's almost as dumb as imposing safety standards on guns based on the threat to the firearm operator. Edit:I should have said "based solely on the threat". Obviously it's important that guns don't blow up in their user's face. And I conflate safety standards with licensing, though the comparison to cars there is fairly apt. * Carbon emissions are likely to cause trillions of dollars in economic damage and kill millions of people through increased disease, decreased food security, and increased drought, among numerous other things. The people who will bear most of this cost are not the ones who are causing it. Gasoline should be taxed at the rate necessary to remove its carbon from the air via proven means. This would probably make it around $15 a gallon, which much to the surprise of most in the US, isn't THAT much. Very healthy societies function fine with $10/gallon fuel. In those places it is not wasted so profligately. * There's more, but I need to get back to other stuff. tl;dr - if you live in the US, you're going to pay the huge, tragic cost of auto dependency whether you like it or not, so you better get with it and just buy one already.
x0054 11y ago
I have never been to Philadelphia, so I have to wonder, is it the case that people are moving out of city into the suburbs to raise kids strictly because of the school system, or is it simply that Philadelphia isn't really all that safe and nice for the kids. I grew up in Kiev, and with all of it's flaws, I never felt unsafe playing in the streets, and my parents (extremely over protective) never felt uncomfortable sending me out to play on the streets for hours at a time completely unsupervised, even as early as age 7. We lived in what would be considered the second ring of Kiev. Not the very center, but just outside the center. I would compare it to midtown areas like Lake View in Chicago. Having lived in a few places around US, I would only be comfortable sending out my kids (future) out to play like that in areas outside the city. Well, for one, having lived in places like Chicago, there really isn't that many places in the city to really send your kids to play in the first place. There are parks, but they are spread out enough where you have to walk for blocks to get to them, unless you are lucky enough to live next to one. Again, never been to Philadelphia, so I am picturing it to be similar to Chicago. And if that's the case, perhaps it makes a bit of sense to move out when you are ready to raise your kids. Is it so wrong to start out in the city, have your fun, and move out to the suburbs in your middle years. Of course, I do agree that the problem is the School systems being paid for by the property taxes instead of by the state. The state should collect property taxes uniformly and then combine it with other taxes and distribute it to schools based on child population in each school district. I am also not a really huge fan of the Suburbs in general to be honest. I like the idea of small towns rather then suburbs. The difference is, a small town would, and should, have it's own economic engine, local services, and everything else to cater to your life. That way you can actually live and work in the same place, and raise your kids. The problem is consolidation of industry. So many companies, especially tech companies, concentrate around one location, forcing high density living to be the ONLY answer. What about medium density living? What about spreading the employment centers a little more evenly, allowing for lower density, but without the need necessarily to always drive to work, and if you have to drive for some (medical perhaps) reasons, it could be 5 min commute at most. That would be the type of society I would strive to build, but I am not in in the business of building societies, and I am guessing plenty of people would disagree with me.

brbsix 11y ago

I'm a bit confused when you say "these politicians allowed almost every white person to own a brand new house and brand new car". What business is it of politicians to prohibit people from owning a new home or car? What right does anyone have to tell me what neighborhood I can live in? If you want to blame someone for sprawl, blame the politicians that subsidize the infrastructure that make it possible.

alphonsegaston 11y ago
I believe the parent is referring to the fact that the GI Bill and home loans for returning WW II veterans were written in such a way to systematically discriminate against blacks in this country. The explicit prohibitions you mention obviously existed at that time in the form of segregation, but whites were also given extra advantages by the racist way these programs were implemented. The extension of these benefits overlaps precisely with growth of sprawl, as whites used the increased purchasing power afforded to them by these programs to buy homes in the emerging suburbs (essentially following the incentive). Ira Katznelson of Columbia University wrote a good history of this in his book,"When Affirmative Action was White"
CalRobert 11y ago
It might be more accurate to say "these politicians subsidized home ownership and cars at the expense of those who don't choose or can't afford to partake". It's hard to express in the space of a HN comment, but American society is built to encourage suburban sprawl and car dependence in almost every way imaginable. * The mortgage interest tax deduction taxes renters to give that money to buyers * Roads, once supposedly funded by fuel taxes, are now mostly funded by general revenue, meaning that they're an all you can buffet (so why not use all you can? Somebody else is going to, after all) * Drivers who kill cyclists and pedestrians virtually never face any serious consequences for their actions * Cities force amenities, jobs, and homes to be ridiculously - comically - far apart from each other through zoning. How the hell does central Dublin have tens of thousands of people, hundreds of pubs, and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of jobs all within a couple miles of each other, while people in Mountain View are pissed off their neighbors might want to put a duplex on land that they own because hey, that's too many people! * We make it ILLEGAL to build homes and businesses without ridiculous excesses of parking, meaning you have to pay for parking whether you like it or not * The cost of parking is rolled in to the cost of goods and services. A grocery store's land is easily 70% parking. That land costs a lot of money. Why do I have to pay for everyone else's parking when I walk to the store? * Auto companies normalized the idea that streets are only for cars with campaigns to popularize terms like Jaywalking. I mean, think about it - for all of human civilization streets were where kids played, vendors sold, people chatted, and horses, carts, and people moved. Then the car showed up, quite literally started killing everyone in its way, and we decided everyone else can just deal with it * Safety standards in the US tend to worry about the safety of the vehicle's occupants without regard to those struck by the vehicles. That's almost as dumb as imposing safety standards on guns based on the threat to the firearm operator. Edit:I should have said "based solely on the threat". Obviously it's important that guns don't blow up in their user's face. And I conflate safety standards with licensing, though the comparison to cars there is fairly apt. * Carbon emissions are likely to cause trillions of dollars in economic damage and kill millions of people through increased disease, decreased food security, and increased drought, among numerous other things. The people who will bear most of this cost are not the ones who are causing it. Gasoline should be taxed at the rate necessary to remove its carbon from the air via proven means. This would probably make it around $15 a gallon, which much to the surprise of most in the US, isn't THAT much. Very healthy societies function fine with $10/gallon fuel. In those places it is not wasted so profligately. * There's more, but I need to get back to other stuff. tl;dr - if you live in the US, you're going to pay the huge, tragic cost of auto dependency whether you like it or not, so you better get with it and just buy one already.

x0054 11y ago

I have never been to Philadelphia, so I have to wonder, is it the case that people are moving out of city into the suburbs to raise kids strictly because of the school system, or is it simply that Philadelphia isn't really all that safe and nice for the kids. I grew up in Kiev, and with all of it's flaws, I never felt unsafe playing in the streets, and my parents (extremely over protective) never felt uncomfortable sending me out to play on the streets for hours at a time completely unsupervised, even as early as age 7. We lived in what would be considered the second ring of Kiev. Not the very center, but just outside the center. I would compare it to midtown areas like Lake View in Chicago. Having lived in a few places around US, I would only be comfortable sending out my kids (future) out to play like that in areas outside the city. Well, for one, having lived in places like Chicago, there really isn't that many places in the city to really send your kids to play in the first place. There are parks, but they are spread out enough where you have to walk for blocks to get to them, unless you are lucky enough to live next to one. Again, never been to Philadelphia, so I am picturing it to be similar to Chicago. And if that's the case, perhaps it makes a bit of sense to move out when you are ready to raise your kids. Is it so wrong to start out in the city, have your fun, and move out to the suburbs in your middle years. Of course, I do agree that the problem is the School systems being paid for by the property taxes instead of by the state. The state should collect property taxes uniformly and then combine it with other taxes and distribute it to schools based on child population in each school district. I am also not a really huge fan of the Suburbs in general to be honest. I like the idea of small towns rather then suburbs. The difference is, a small town would, and should, have it's own economic engine, local services, and everything else to cater to your life. That way you can actually live and work in the same place, and raise your kids. The problem is consolidation of industry. So many companies, especially tech companies, concentrate around one location, forcing high density living to be the ONLY answer. What about medium density living? What about spreading the employment centers a little more evenly, allowing for lower density, but without the need necessarily to always drive to work, and if you have to drive for some (medical perhaps) reasons, it could be 5 min commute at most. That would be the type of society I would strive to build, but I am not in in the business of building societies, and I am guessing plenty of people would disagree with me.