8 ms·
It's because your cities are bad. Wait, let me explain. Around 30 is the age people start having a bit of financial independence and put down a mortgage on a p
by elktea 10y ago
It's because your cities are bad.
Wait, let me explain. Around 30 is the age people start having a bit of financial independence and put down a mortgage on a place in the suburbs, move, and start a family. Noble and normal goals, except that in North America (and other anglosphere countries) the suburbs are hugely spread out and isolated from the city and other people not in your immediate street. What are the chances your friend group all decide to live in the same suburb, let alone the same street? You're already spending most of your free time driving to and from work, how much do you time do you have left after meals, kids and shopping to spend more time driving to your friend's suburb to hang out?
- rubicon33 10y agoHave to agree here. My anecdotal experience? Had a bunch of friends after college, all move to SF for work. Three years later, they've ALL moved across the country to find work in less expensive areas, living in Suburbs.
- Xcelerate 10y agoHaha, this is kind of my plan. Just finished grad school and will probably end up in SF or somewhere similar for a while. But my girlfriend doesn't like big cities and wants kids in a few years, so I imagine we'll move back at that point. Unfortunately, at a personal level, I find cities much more entertaining and enjoyable to live in than suburbs (having grown up in the suburbs). But maybe that's just me.
- rubicon33 10y agoYour situation is, more or less, exactly like mine lol. Right down to the fiance not liking cities, but me liking them very much. Quite a pickle to be in, since I know it means we'll end up in the burb's eventually and I'll likely have a midlife crisis.
- Xcelerate 10y agoHaha. It is indeed a pickle. Both mine and my girlfriend's families live in the South, which means eventually the only (world) city I'll be near is Atlanta, which isn't exactly a tech-haven at the moment.
- Shivetya 10y agohow often do people in Europe change jobs? Curious as another reason for rotten commutes has been changing jobs or worse your job moving within the same city to a new location. got friends who commute by train and I was shocked how much time they spend on that run. still would be worse if they had to drive it
- claudiug 10y agoEurope is not the same in all countries. Depends of the country. Where I live, Germany, people do take train, for 40 minutes per day. But is normal, as with car you will do the same. And with train is more safe and relax. Changing jobs, is not the norm. Being an engineer you probably will work some years(3-7) before exchange
- handedness 10y ago> It's because your cities are bad. If by "bad" you mean "big," sure. The problem you're describing is almost entirely driven by the scale of American cities. (The problem the article is describing is driven in part by that, in part by the very nature of what people tend to do in their 30s.) American cities may be bad, and big may equal bad, but those are separate issues.
- azernik 10y agoThere's a difference between "big" and "sprawled".
- ptaipale 10y agoIt doesn't really make that much difference whether the city is sprawled or not. People move to other cities. Of the friends who I used to hang around as a student in Helsinki region (Finland), one lives in Singapore, one lives in Jakarta, one in Turku, and two in Tampere, one still in the Helsinki region where I am too. I spent a stint in Beijing in between. We do stay in touch over Facebook etc, and see perhaps once per year on holidays or in family parties, but is it really a problem of urban sprawl that I don't see them so often?
- nine_k 10y agoNot always; NYC is large population-wise, but reasonably compact (on average). Suburbia makes me sad. The density is so low that you need a car to get anywhere, and everywhere is outside walking distance.
- grahamburger 10y agoI never lived in a city but I still had friends until I was roughly 30.
- kleigenfreude 10y agoI lost my high school friends after high school, lost my college friends after college, I got new friends from 30-40, but 40+ have been losing some of them.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoI have had some of the same. I think that some of my new friends currently (i'm in my late 30's) is because I moved out of the US to northern Europe. I found things in common with other immigrants in language classes.
- hueving 10y agoNope, it's the culture. Lived in NYC for a year and it's still super hard to make friends outside of work. In the US it's just considered weird to have anything more than superficial interactions with strangers once you're 30+. It's annoying.
- akvadrako 10y agoMaybe those people are just not worth making friends with. I find that people who accept that deep interactions are important to never stop making are those with the most insightful views on life.
- skrebbel 10y agoI live in the Netherlands. Our cities, by your definition, are definitely not bad. A single one of my college friends still lives in the same city as me. On the far other side, about 8km away. Everybody else moved all over the country. This matches America, in some way - after all from my city (Eindhoven) to Amsterdam is about as far as from San Jose to San Francisco (just with better trains). But still, we don't have urban sprawl and our friends still disappear at 30.
- StavrosK 10y agoI've decided that that's because people have friends because they have no girl/boyfriends, and when they get a stable one, they settle down and replace friends with the spouse.
- mjhagen 10y ago>we don't have urban sprawl What would you call people moving from central Amsterdam out to Haarlem, Amstelveen, Almere, Zaandam, Purmerend as soon as they have kids?
- santaclaus 10y ago> Around 30 is the age people start having a bit of financial independence and put down a mortgage on a place in the suburbs Why is the assumption here that if you are over 30 you want to live in the burbs?
- fegu 10y agoI guess the assumption is just as much one of: needs space for kids; can't afford more space in the city. Hence suburbs.
- sjm 10y agoAlso the desire to own your house, rather than rent as is more common in for example, Berlin.
- isostatic 10y agoI see London rents when I go down there for work. People paying £800pcm for a room in a 3 bed house. I pay less than that for a mortgage on a 4 bed in the suburbs, and most of that is equity repayment. Ie the cost is about 1/10th of the price of renting. When you have kids, in the UK you need to own as otherwise you're stuck with a 3 year lease at most, if the landlord decides to whack up the price, or simply sell up, you get maybe 2 months to move. That's a pain when you're a young professional, but when the kids are at school and you can't find anywhere available in that tiny time period, you're screwed.
- isostatic 10y agoI see London rents when I go down there for work. People paying £800pcm for a room in a 3 bed house. I pay less than that for a mortgage on a 4 bed in the suburbs, and most of that is equity repayment. Ie the cost is about 1/10th of the price of renting. When you have kids, in the UK you need to own as otherwise you're stuck with a 3 year lease at most, if the landlord decides to whack up the price, or simply sell up, you get maybe 2 months to move. That's a pain when you're a young professional, but when the kids are at school and you can't find anywhere available in that tiny time period, you're screwed.
- sjm 10y agoI don't have kids but I'm from Australia (Perth to be precise), and our suburbs are like this too - generally far from the center and all the cafes, restaurants and nightlife that go with it, and very spread out. It's common for people here to get married young, have kids and move to the outer suburbs, falling out of contact with friends who aren't nearby. I was always terrified of that so I got out, and discovered it doesn't need to be like that. In Berlin for example, Prenzlauer Berg (a very central suburb) is booming with young couples having kids, and from what I've seen and understood they keep very active social lives.
- mcv 10y agoFriends just moved out of Amsterdam after having kids because they didn't want to raise kids in the neighbourhood where they lived. I couldn't think of a better neighbourhood to raise my kids than the one I live in. Tons of friends live nearby, lots of neighbours with children in the same age group. I wouldn't want to raise my kids in the dreary suburban town I grew up in. But I live in a more expensive neighbourhood of Amsterdam than those friends. I can imagine if you can't afford that, suburbia become a lot more attractive.
- vacri 10y agoIt starts well before 30, both in the article, and in the developmental psychology subject I was taught over 25 years ago. Back then I was taught that people form cliques of roughly 8-15 people in their late teens to early 20s, and then those cliques dissolve. This stuff has been known for a very long time, and it's not "cities are bad", it's "people pairing off and moving out of their parent's place". Then for a bit of variety, throw in the others that disappear because of personal politics, move to another continent, or even simply die. When you're at school, you all live near each other. As you pair off and move out, you don't live near each other anymore, and you're also not spending large amounts of the day together. Similarly, your clique is learning how to be adult together. How sex works, how relationships work, how earning wages and paying your way works. It's an intense time. By the time most people reach their mid- to late-20s, they've got most of that sorted out. When you're 20, relationships breaking up amongst your friends is new and intense and interesting and gossip-worthy; when you're 30 it's boring and people are tired of hearing the story. Not so much opportunity for the heart-to-hearts that help make strong friendships.
- VLM 10y ago"What are the chances your friend group all decide to live in the same suburb" Excellent, because American K-12 schools, unlike higher ed, populate based on geographic boundaries. That means the EE you met volunteering at after school Vex Robotics lives around the block, the assistant scoutmaster of the school pack lives down the road, the two couples who we're inseparable from during soccer season are about a block away in opposite directions, my wife's PTO buddy is three blocks away, times were pretty good! HN skews young, and perhaps from recent election results or whatever other reason, they're very pessimistic, but I'm old enough to have lived thru "the little kid era of activities", and it was actually a blast! I will admit some of this is rose tinted glasses remembering a decade ago we seemed to have a million idyllic picturesque picnic tailgates at little league games in the summer and it was always bug free and 70 degrees and everyone was friends with everyone else after a couple years together, but in reality there were probably only thirty or so that were not clouded by mosquitos or 95F+ or colder than 60F or it starts raining in the second inning or whatever. Still, even taken more realistically, times were pretty good!
- pallan 10y agoAt 41 I have lived through the "little kids" era too. Three of them, first kid at 27, last at 31. There was a stretch before they went to school where our (my wife and I) friend's disappeared as we dedicated our time to the kids. Now that the kids are older, in grade school and involved in team sports we are accumulating a new group of friends from their friend's parents. We had a bunch over last night for games as a matter of fact. If eight years ago, I decided to go on a guys trip with some friends I would have had no one to go with. That was depressing. Today that is no longer the case. I have many friends I would go with. That said its still work, you can't just expect to go out every night, party and meet someone new.
- eranation 10y agoSo true. And even worse. I have good friends in the same neighborhood but not such a short walking distance. I hang out with them much than my next door neighbors (their and our kids play all the time, so we have "over the fence" talks that lead to having a beer / doing s'mores and just standing in one of the back yards, talking to the other parents while the kids play soccer. No time for driving, not even to the other side of the subdivision...