3 ms·
Nobody has left suburban living. Young people have just delayed marriage due to financial instability and career preferences, and thus delayed childbirth. Older
by cylinder 11y ago
Nobody has left suburban living. Young people have just delayed marriage due to financial instability and career preferences, and thus delayed childbirth. Older folks have sensibly sought to downsize when empty nesting.
The hyper dense mega city model is a failure for quality of life. Instead, a dense CBD with trains distributing the population to the suburbs, with medium then low density, with shopping zones on walkable strips built around the train stations, is the way to go. Add in good planning, with buses and cycle infrastructure for last mile. And lots of parks.
Melbourne, where the modern concept of suburban living as we know it originated, executes well on this. Perfect, no. But a good framework.
- greggman 11y agoFailure by who's definition? I live in Tokyo, the largest city on the planet. It's a "Hyper Dense Mega City" and it's an amazing fun city with a high quality of live AFAICT. There are certain things about Japanese work culture that suck for some but that has nothing to do with the city itself and everything to do with traditional culture.
- geomark 11y agoAfter seeing how a number of Japanese acquaintances live, I've concluded the lack of personal space is a kind of paucity that makes them very poor. Barely room for a couple with one child to keep the tiniest amount of personal belongings. A pet, a small garden, bicycles for the family, any number of personal possessions I consider normal are out of the question. People living in other capital cities experience similar, although not as extreme, paucity of personal space. I don't understand how so many people feel this is a high quality of life.