13 ms·

The line is blurring between city and suburb

94 points by elberto34 10y ago

bognition 10y ago
I don't know anyone who wants to live in the suburbs. They either want to live in the city or far enough out that they can have land and privacy.
- aianus 10y ago
  There are a lot of people who work in the city but feel they need a house to raise a family. Unless you're making $400k+ a year, that leaves suburbia as the only option in my city.
- fullshark 10y ago
  I used to think this way but now that I have kids, I get the appeal of Suburbia.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Same here. Age 20 - hate the suburbs. Age 40 - love them. I'm guessing when I'm ready to retire I'll either go rural or urban. Probably rural where I can afford to have a nice sized workshop.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      I grew up (and now live) in what are called exurbs today. I do appreciate the access to the city. And appreciate the pros (and cons) or urban living, which was never a good match for my employment options. I've never been a big fan of classic suburbia although the one time I lived in such it gave me a 5 minute commute to work. So there was that.
    - jimbokun 10y ago
      In my 40s with two teenagers, love living in a city (Pittsburgh). They can both walk to school (2 blocks to elementary school, high school is farther, though, about half hour). I love that in the summer they can hang out with friends at the local pool, or play ping pong with friends at the local rec center during the winter. Point being they have a lot of activities with in walking distance where they can meet with friends and we don't have to drive them. My son in high school has discovered he can hang out in one of the many many restaurants around his high school with his friends. I don't think they would have the same freedoms or independence living in a cul de sac somewhere, at least not before getting a driver' license.
  - _delirium 10y ago
    In Denmark for many people it goes the other way. Suburbs are nice when you're a couple, because you've got a big yard, lots of space, etc. But once you have kids, they can become more of a hassle. Now you have to drive the kids everywhere. Many people prefer to live in the city (or one of the inner suburbs) once they have kids of a certain age, because then the kids can get around on their own, on bike or transit, rather than the parents having to drive them to/from every single thing. Kids also tend to prefer this, because it gives them more mobility/independence.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      I think it doesn't quite work out that way in US, because biking infrastructure is rather crappy, and so is mass transit.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    I have a kid, and I like the idea of living in a suburb, just not a typical American one where you can't walk anywhere. Being forced to drive everywhere sucks. I'd love to see more 'streetcar suburbs' with local amenities within walking distance, where parents and kids can safely bike around, where transit to the city proper isn't a cruel joke, etc.
- FT_intern 10y ago
  Isn't the entire Bay Area (outside of SF/Oakland) basically one huge suburb?
  - _delirium 10y ago
    Even a good part of SF proper (maybe 1/3 or so) feels pretty suburban to me. Two-story single-family homes, each with a private garage as the most prominent feature of the ground floor frontage. Granted, they're more "old-style" suburban homes. On smaller lots and with smaller yards, on a grid street plan, more like what '40s-'60s style suburbs looked like. Not the style popular since the '80s with big houses on huge lots on a cul-de-sac. But not exactly urban, either.
  - refurb 10y ago
    I think this is accurate. I'd say most of the west half of SF feels like a suburb. Takes forever to get downtown, tons of traffic and no jobs there. I'd also say it's on big suburb from SF to SJ, plus the other side of the bay.
  - johan_larson 10y ago
    Yes. There are a few areas in SF, San Jose, and the east bay that are built up enough to feel truly urban, but the rest is low-rise and therefore quintessentially suburban.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    Yes, but people want to go there for the jobs, not because they think it has a great urban form. A lot of people would love to see more compact, walkable neighborhoods in the bay area, but old-timer residents often fight zoning changes tooth and nail, because they want their neighborhoods to stay frozen in time.
- dudul 10y ago
  How many people do you know?
- mjevans 10y ago
  What they want are: * 1 Good schools for kids * 2 Privacy (isolation of noise/smell/etc from others) * 3 Space (more of it) * 4 Lower costs (rent, parking, prices in stores) * 5 Safety (a perception that being more isolated makes you safer) * 6 Community (this is often a fallacy) 1, 5, and 6 are all factors related to not having good social organizations at a building / block / school district level because incentives aren't aligned correctly. This could be fixed*. 2 is mostly down to building things in stupid, cheep, short-sighted ways, and building codes that allow that. 3 Too many studio units, not enough 3-4-5 bedroom combo units 4, 3, 2, 1, 5, 6 All due to not enough competition to keep prices down.
- johan_larson 10y ago
  I grew up in the suburbs, and wish I still lived there. I live in a city now, having moved for work, and regret it. The city is hard to get around in, and it's crowded and expensive. Happy to answer any questions if you have them.
  - nunez 10y ago
    Same here. Loved in NYC and now live in a suburb of Dallas. I'm never moving back.
  - jimbokun 10y ago
    Depends on the city, and whether or not you are too lazy to walk a few blocks. When I lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn, most things were walking distance, and buses trains and cabs super convenient. I live in Pittsburgh now, and can walk (half hour) or bike (10 minutes) to work. Shopping requires a car, but not much traffic and plenty of parking compared to NYC, so still convenient. I know other US cities, though, have bad public transportation and bad traffic, and those might be worse than living in the suburbs.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      A lot of this is subjective personal preference. What's crowded for one person can be perfectly normal for another.
- calebm 10y ago
  I live in the Milwaukee suburbs, and I think it's a great deal. I can grow my own organic food in my garden, I can have fires at night, I'm 2 miles from the Ultimate Frisbee fields, 2 miles from wooded mountain biking trails, and 4 miles from a good coffee shop. Cost for 4 bed/2 bath house? $112k (~5 years ago).
vidanay 10y ago
Good riddance.
- charles-salvia 10y ago
  I agree - the suburbs are really depressing.
pmoriarty 10y ago
There's a great documentary on this called The End of Suburbia,[1][2] though the causes for such a collapse are very different in the documentary vs this article. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Suburbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Suburbia [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug
- gozur88 10y ago
  Peak oil? Oil is still cheap. If expensive oil is the end of suburbia, we wouldn't be seeing any effect yet.
  - kbob 10y ago
    Yabbut if you're taking out a 30 year mortgage, you're not just going to look at current oil prices. The media are full of stories about the end of oil and looming price increases.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      The media is also full of stories about new billion-barrel fields being discovered. Based on what Americans are buying to drive, they don't seem too concerned about the price of oil. I don't know what it is now, but back when I bought my first house the average length of time people stayed in a house was 4 1/2 years.
      - kbob 10y ago
        We consider it acceptable for a car to be mostly depreciated after five years of ownership. We do not want our houses to have lost value in five years, especially as many of us will still owe 75% of its value. A house is still a longer term investment than a car, even if you sell it.
- rustynails 10y ago
  I just watched the documentary you linked. It's an excellent reminder of a major crisis that's looming. The Business Insider article doesn't talk about the collapse of suburbs. It's about the transformation linked to things like Internet shopping. I believe both are true. When peak oil hits, the system as we know it will collapse. It's not doom and gloom but it will be a drastic change. However, a desire for energy efficient houses and Internet Shopping change where we live, where we shop and where we eat. Thanks for posting the link to that video. We don't talk about peak oil anywhere near as much as we should be.
pm90 10y ago
I would be very interested to know how much of this is caused by a change in housing preference v/s a change in the nature of employment/wages for millennials. When you had reasonable expectation that your job would last for several years, you are more willing to invest in building up equity in a suburban home/community. Also, the no.1 reason why people seem to want to move to suburbs is children (IMO, anecdotal etc.)... perhaps the falling fertility is making married/live-in couples more willing to live in a dense, urban communities?
- gozur88 10y ago
  I think that's the case. Americans tend to move out of the city and buy a house in the suburbs when they have children. The perception (true or not) is suburbs are safer and offer better schools. Also, I suspect you can almost buy a house in the 'burbs for the difference in rent between a one and two bedroom apartment in SF.
  - alistairSH 10y ago
    You're suspicion on the cost of living downtown vs the suburbs is correct for DC. My son lives in a new 500sqft flat in a nice downtown neighborhood. His rent in $2200/month and that seems fairly typical for that area. You can spend less for an older unit or one in a less desirable area. That $2200 is definitely enough to pay a mortgage in many parts of Fairfax County (assuming a moderate downpayment).
- ghaff 10y ago
  I know many people who have been in that position when they had children. They like the city but they have a kid and the combination of $/sq ft, schools, and general environment made them, however reluctantly, move out. (The few I know who remained in Manhattan or wherever were very well off and used private schools.)
  - otoburb 10y ago
    >>(The few I know who remained in Manhattan or wherever were very well off and used private schools.) ... or managed to survive the seemingly insane NYC Department of Education admissions process to enter your child[ren] into public Pre-K, Kindergarten or Middle School. There are good schools in the city, but most are difficult to get into for a variety of reasons.
rhapsodic 10y ago
I prefer a 0.5-1.0 acre lot to a lot slightly bigger than the footprint of the house it contains. I prefer to have the privacy that's afforded by having my house set 40' back from the street, with plenty of space between my and my neighbors' homes, rather than living in a house that abuts, or is 6 feet away, from my neighbors'. I prefer a spacious driveway and an attached, heated, two car garage, to parking on the street a block from my house, and having to dig my car out after a snowstorm. I prefer to own a home that was built during or since the 1950s, when Romex wiring was original equipment, rather than own something that still has knob and tube wiring with decaying fabric insulation. I prefer a home built with drywall or rock lathe and plaster, over one built with wood lath and plaster. I've found that most pre-1910 homes I've examined do not have foundations or basements to my liking. I prefer to live in an area where I can leave my doors unlocked and my windows open at night without giving it a second thought. Or where, if I leave the house and realize I left the front door unlocked, I don't feel compelled to go back and lock it. I prefer to live in an environment where junkies and bums are virtually nowhere to be seen, rather than an environment where I have to be careful not to step in human feces when I walk between two parked cars. When I can get all that affordably in the city, I'll consider moving back.
- apsec112 10y ago
  If someone wants a house that doesn't have one of those things - one with a smaller lot, or less setback, or a smaller driveway, or no garage, etc. - and starts to build one, do you think they should be arrested and hauled off to jail? If so, why? If not, then please join us in voting for land use reform in local elections, since that's how things currently are in 99.9% of the US.
  - rhapsodic 10y ago
    I don't know what you mean by "land use reform", but I'm a reluctant supporter of zoning laws. One of their redeeming features is that they tend to be enacted at the most local level. So the people affected by them are in a better position to change them if they don't like them, or they don't have to move far if they can't tolerate them and absolutely have to get out from under them.
leggomylibro 10y ago
Little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky... You know, it's funny. Some cities are trying to quickly build out higher-density apartment buildings in/near the downtown areas, and from what I've seen the same concept applies. I'd love to see some of those fancy mini-arcologies spring up, but really the boxes are just a bit bigger (or smaller, depending on how you look at it.) I do hope that malls become very cheap real estate before long; I think it's already happening in some places. I would just love to buy what is essentially a cheap, empty, commercially-zoned warehouse and stuff it full of things like laser tag, arcades and e-sports, a couple of lounge areas and coffee shops/bars depending on the time of day...but I doubt you could make something like that work without very cheap square footage and a lot of people within a 30-45 minute drive.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  And that (Daly City, CA) is relatively high-density by current US standards.
jtedward 10y ago
This somewhat anecdotal, but the biggest issue I had when living in the suburbs was traffic. I'm someone who has driven hundreds of thousands miles and never been in an accident, but the extreme levels of fear and stress I got from going even short distances in the suburbs was just aweful. I didn't always feel this way, but I think the use of cellphones has created and environment where even slow moving drivers are unpredictable. I now walk to work and frequently see people on their phones while driving, if a line of ten cars are stopped at a light at least three people are on their phones. The result isn't an extreme increase in accidents but a constricting deficit of attention which incrementally lengthens every encounter on the road. More short stopping, more people missing green lights or just driving super conservatively and not merging holding up traffic. Also I never use my phone while driving, but the fact that I can't even look at it when I know someone is trying to contact me is incredibly frustrating and impacts my enjoyment of driving.
- mhneu 10y ago
  if a line of ten cars are stopped at a light at least three people are on their phones. As a cyclist, I often check who is on their phone when I pull up to a light. My guess would be even higher - 50-75% of drivers are on their phones when stopped at a light.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    This is terrifying to cyclists, motorcyclists, and walkers alike, and probably leads to thousands of deaths a year.
  - sonthonax 10y ago
    Those people need to be lashed.
kr7 10y ago
The title is somewhat misleading. The suburbs are not dying; in fact they are growing [1][2][3][4] and this article makes no claim to the contrary. The article is saying that suburbs are becoming more like urban areas. I like the author's evidence that housing prices are falling: > In that same city in 2012, a typical McMansion would be valued at $477,000, about 274% more than the area's other homes. Today, a McMansion would be valued at $611,000, or 190% above the rest of the market. Up 28% in price - must be dying! [1] http://time.com/107808/census-suburbs-grow-city-growth-slows/ http://time.com/107808/census-suburbs-grow-city-growth-slows... [2] http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/03/2015-us-population-winners-the-suburbs-and-the-sunbelt/475251/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/03/2015-us-population-wi... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/americans-moving-to-suburbs-rather-than-cities-2016-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/americans-moving-to-suburbs-r... [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/26/americas-fastest-growing-counties-the-burbs-are-back/#3ab5c42d338a https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/26/americas-...
- Mz 10y ago
  The title is not misleading: The suburbs as we know them are dying. I think you are misreading it to mean something it does not say.
  - Coincoin 10y ago
    Sure. Not clickbaity at all. Let's make a new article: Computers as we know them are dying. Edit: You might want to revise your definition of misleading. Misleading doesn't mean something is factually false. It means it's true but is presented in a way to lead you into believing something else. So you can feed a narrative without lying.
    - Mz 10y ago
      Computers as we know them are, in fact, dying. This is a genuine pain point for some people, while being an opportunity for others. Click-baity and misleading are not the same thing. Having a title that gets people to look at all is necessary to get traffic. This is true even on HN, in spite of how much people decry the evils of click-bait titles. It is incredibly hard to title things excellently well, such that it gets traffic but won't get labeled as "evil, nefarious click-bait with some dirty agenda" by the HN crowd. I do freelance writing and I blog and I submit stuff to HN regularly. My view of this is not rooted in stupidity. It is rooted in knowing that click-bait titles work to get views and can get your article flagged to death even if the article per se is an excellent piece of writing, yet trying too hard to not be click-bait can mean you get very few views and no upvotes. Titling things well is hard. I see nothing nefarious in how this is titled and I have too much firsthand experience with how incredibly critical HN is. The criticisms here are to the point of being neurotic and cranky. It is not merely a case of placing a high value on excellence.
dthal 10y ago
Jed Kolko, former chief economist at Trulia, thinks stories like this are either exaggerated or wrong. His basic claim is that urban revival is limited to childless professionals in their peak earning years. See [1], or any of his posts at [2] for the data and analysis. [1] http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/25/neighborhood-data-show-that-u-s-suburbanization-continues/ http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/25/neighborhood-data-show-that-u... [2] http://jedkolko.com/favorite-housing-posts/ http://jedkolko.com/favorite-housing-posts/
- ghaff 10y ago
  I was going to say that FiveThirtyEight has written similar pieces but I see it's the same person: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials-are-less-urban-than-you-think/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials-are-les... But right. A particular demographic of young professionals (which happens to align with both a lot of writers in these sorts of publications and tech workers) are moving to a handful of mostly coastal dense urban centers. I'm not sure how much of an outlier his interpretation of the data is or if you just don't hear a lot from his perspective because it doesn't support the urbanization narrative.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mhneu 10y ago
  Anecdotally, when I lived in an urban condo, half the building was empty-nesters -- couples who raised their kids in the suburbs then moved back to walkable smaller city apartments after the kids left the nest. The problem demographic is couples with kids. Our urban schools are bad, so they leave the city to find good schools. But people with no kids -- either before children or after they leave for college -- are living in cities.
  - otoburb 10y ago
    >>The problem demographic is couples with kids. Our urban schools are bad, so they leave the city to find good schools. Good urban schools exist, but there aren't enough of them, hence there is intense competition to get into good urban schools. To your point, this then ends up driving more families away from dense urban centers.
hackuser 10y ago
> "Ideally, there won't be any new highway capacity built because we can't afford to maintain what we have" It's not a detail that changes the conclusion, but I want to focus on it: The U.S. definitely can afford to maintain its roads. The country is the richest in the history of the world, richer than it's ever been. U.S. GDP in 1960, when the Interstate Highway system and many suburbs and malls were being built, was ~$3 trillion in real dollars;[0] now it's ~$18 trillion. The U.S. chooses not to maintain its infrastructure. [0] According to one unofficial source on the web, which I'm going to trust for this purpose.
- mhneu 10y ago
  Strong Towns has written extensively on this. Their conclusion is that our infrastructure is not affordable because too many roads are built to non-dense areas that do not have the tax base to support them. Federal highway dollars get dropped in to build, but then no dollars are available to maintain. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/2/five-ways-federal-infrastructure-spending-makes-cities-poorer https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/2/five-ways-feder...
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    That argument is bunk, because the high density areas are the ones struggling. That is literally an argument for suburbia. State and federal funds do a great job outside of cities. In my state (New York), US and state designated highways are maintained by the state if it isn't located in an incorporated city. So my city (Albany) can barely afford trucks to plow the snow, but you literally cross the city line and an army of DOT trucks are plowing. Long Island is a great example of this, as "towns" with 300k people aren't incorporated, so they get "free" services. Even sewers are the same story. It's way more expensive to maintain buried infrastructure in the city and very cheap in the burbs. Fewer connections == fewer excavations == less labor.
    - foota 10y ago
      I have a couple issues with your post. First up, you seem to be conflating the source of infrastructures funding (state vs city) in an area with whether the population of that area could without external funding pay for their infrastructure. And secondly, while maintaining buried infrastructure in the city is likely more expensive, your argument presents no claim that it is more expensive _per capita_. edit: see http://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/03/Halifax-data.pdf http://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/0... for some numbers on the last point
charles-salvia 10y ago
So, I have to wonder: if this trend actually continues (and I hope it does), could this be a factor that helps curtail climate change to some degree? I realize that we will most likely inevitably suffer major damages at this point no matter what, but I'm wondering if trends like this (along with the rise of better battery technology and electric cars) will at least mitigate the damage to some extent. I mean, currently NYC has a ridiculously low carbon foot-print for its population size. So if more places become dense population centers with public transportation like NYC, it can only be a positive thing in terms of mitigating climate change.
- rsynnott 10y ago
  Not to a huge degree, probably, because this is really just America moving towards something a bit more like what's already the dominant urban form in other developed countries. It's not a global trend; while other countries have suburbs, the extent of America's obsession with them and the extreme car-dependence of the American ones is almost unique.
johan_larson 10y ago
Some of the living arrangements people are resorting to just reek of desperation: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-live-in-san-francisco-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-live-in-san-f... Living in vans. Living in boxes in larger apartments. Thirty people living in a 10-bedroom building. There is vast demand to live in these cities, and their governments are utterly failing to accommodate it in an orderly and dignified fashion.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Or maybe it's just the market's way of telling employees and employers that it's a big beautiful country that doesn't begin and end with a small peninsula on the West Coast.
  - johan_larson 10y ago
    Yes, there is that. I keep being surprised that major employers keep paying the SV surtax to employ engineers in the Bay area rather than in cheaper places. I understand these organizations need to keep people in the Bay area, sure. It's the center of the industry; it's where a lot of new things happen. But do they need so many people within a half-hour of HQ? Seems like an obvious place to cut costs.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      I get that companies want to have an SV presence but you can do that and limit your headcount there. I also get that some people really value the ability to hop jobs to other geographically close employers but options (which is effectively what we're talking about here) have some upper value. I expect it will all self-correct. There is new housing coming on line. There is some upper limit to the premium companies will pay and some lower limit to the squalor software engineers will tolerate to live in SF. Market corrections can certainly happen.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    It's amazing that most companies, including tech companies, operate technology with a diaspora of people across the globe. Yet the bigshots need to be in SFO for reasons.
agentgt 10y ago
I'm curious if others are seeing tear down fest in semi-urban neighborhoods? So I live in Metrowest Boston Area. I own a multi family. My wife, infant son and I live in modest square footage despite having fairly generous annual incomes (e.g. well above AMT tax rate). My parents used to live nearby in affluent town (Wellesley) before just recently selling their house to a developer... who of course knocked it down to build a gigantic pimped out house. The same developers was buying 4 other houses at the time. In short Metrowest Massachusetts has become tear down central. The problem is other than foreign investors (a lot of Newston, Weston, Wellesley, and Needham is getting bought out by foreign investors) nobody from my age group.. the age group that is looking to buy houses wants a super mansion... even if its decked out (That is these houses aren't McMansions. They are real mansions). From my general experience of talking to other educated thirty somethings is people want authentic and charming not McMansion and yet there all these new houses replacing old New England house. Yet these new houses are priced ridiculously high. And again talking to other peers it seems gone are the days where people buy 4-6 times their salary. People are buying sometimes as low as just twice their salary and completely fine. And if people want convenient they are going for condo and not McMansion style. Historically New England has been fairly bubble proof. I fear that time is coming to an end. When it does happen I might buy some of these big boys and convert them to multi-families ... BTW this is exactly what happened to parts of New England in the late 19th and early 20th century [1] where giant houses were converted to multi families aka Somerville and Waltham (where I live). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-decker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-decker
nikanj 10y ago
"Millennials want to cook at home and don't like to play golf" They don't have money for restaurants, let alone the resources to pick up a hobby as expensive and time-consuming as golf.
- smileysteve 10y ago
  In Atlanta, I find this wholly untrue, and the "doesn't cook at home" is something I find most easily defines between gen-x/early millennials / millenials with older siblings and late millennials. Of my friends and people I've in mid twenties to late thirties, most define eating at home as microwaving or heating a frozen meal; otherwise fast food and eating out are what they spend their budgets on.
trackofalljades 10y ago
I'm really happy that everything they mention in this article is "dying," good riddance.
erikb 10y ago
The idea of suburban areas being less about owning is horrible. Of course if I don't buy my living space and instead rent it, someone ELSE has to buy it first. They become not less about owning, but more about being owned by big companies instead of individual owners. And the reason people don't own as much as years before is because we realize that we can't afford to. If you give me a mansion for $10 (without any zeros behind it) I'll gladly prefer it over my apartment. What will be the next article in the series? Children in Jemen prefer to eat less food than their bodies require?
transfire 10y ago
> In one example, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the extra money that buyers were expected to be willing to pay to own a McMansion fell by 84% from 2012 to 2016. In that same city in 2012, a typical McMansion would be valued at $477,000, about 274% more than the area's other homes. Today, a McMansion would be valued at $611,000, or 190% above the rest of the market. I love how they think it is only a matter of willingness. Do they realize the cost cited prices out around two-thirds of the population?

94 points by elberto34 10y ago

I don't know anyone who wants to live in the suburbs. They either want to live in the city or far enough out that they can have land and privacy.

aianus 10y ago
There are a lot of people who work in the city but feel they need a house to raise a family. Unless you're making $400k+ a year, that leaves suburbia as the only option in my city.
fullshark 10y ago
I used to think this way but now that I have kids, I get the appeal of Suburbia.
- criddell 10y ago
  Same here. Age 20 - hate the suburbs. Age 40 - love them. I'm guessing when I'm ready to retire I'll either go rural or urban. Probably rural where I can afford to have a nice sized workshop.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I grew up (and now live) in what are called exurbs today. I do appreciate the access to the city. And appreciate the pros (and cons) or urban living, which was never a good match for my employment options. I've never been a big fan of classic suburbia although the one time I lived in such it gave me a 5 minute commute to work. So there was that.
  - jimbokun 10y ago
    In my 40s with two teenagers, love living in a city (Pittsburgh). They can both walk to school (2 blocks to elementary school, high school is farther, though, about half hour). I love that in the summer they can hang out with friends at the local pool, or play ping pong with friends at the local rec center during the winter. Point being they have a lot of activities with in walking distance where they can meet with friends and we don't have to drive them. My son in high school has discovered he can hang out in one of the many many restaurants around his high school with his friends. I don't think they would have the same freedoms or independence living in a cul de sac somewhere, at least not before getting a driver' license.
- _delirium 10y ago
  In Denmark for many people it goes the other way. Suburbs are nice when you're a couple, because you've got a big yard, lots of space, etc. But once you have kids, they can become more of a hassle. Now you have to drive the kids everywhere. Many people prefer to live in the city (or one of the inner suburbs) once they have kids of a certain age, because then the kids can get around on their own, on bike or transit, rather than the parents having to drive them to/from every single thing. Kids also tend to prefer this, because it gives them more mobility/independence.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    I think it doesn't quite work out that way in US, because biking infrastructure is rather crappy, and so is mass transit.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  I have a kid, and I like the idea of living in a suburb, just not a typical American one where you can't walk anywhere. Being forced to drive everywhere sucks. I'd love to see more 'streetcar suburbs' with local amenities within walking distance, where parents and kids can safely bike around, where transit to the city proper isn't a cruel joke, etc.
FT_intern 10y ago
Isn't the entire Bay Area (outside of SF/Oakland) basically one huge suburb?
- _delirium 10y ago
  Even a good part of SF proper (maybe 1/3 or so) feels pretty suburban to me. Two-story single-family homes, each with a private garage as the most prominent feature of the ground floor frontage. Granted, they're more "old-style" suburban homes. On smaller lots and with smaller yards, on a grid street plan, more like what '40s-'60s style suburbs looked like. Not the style popular since the '80s with big houses on huge lots on a cul-de-sac. But not exactly urban, either.
- refurb 10y ago
  I think this is accurate. I'd say most of the west half of SF feels like a suburb. Takes forever to get downtown, tons of traffic and no jobs there. I'd also say it's on big suburb from SF to SJ, plus the other side of the bay.
- johan_larson 10y ago
  Yes. There are a few areas in SF, San Jose, and the east bay that are built up enough to feel truly urban, but the rest is low-rise and therefore quintessentially suburban.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Yes, but people want to go there for the jobs, not because they think it has a great urban form. A lot of people would love to see more compact, walkable neighborhoods in the bay area, but old-timer residents often fight zoning changes tooth and nail, because they want their neighborhoods to stay frozen in time.
dudul 10y ago
How many people do you know?
mjevans 10y ago
What they want are: * 1 Good schools for kids * 2 Privacy (isolation of noise/smell/etc from others) * 3 Space (more of it) * 4 Lower costs (rent, parking, prices in stores) * 5 Safety (a perception that being more isolated makes you safer) * 6 Community (this is often a fallacy) 1, 5, and 6 are all factors related to not having good social organizations at a building / block / school district level because incentives aren't aligned correctly. This could be fixed*. 2 is mostly down to building things in stupid, cheep, short-sighted ways, and building codes that allow that. 3 Too many studio units, not enough 3-4-5 bedroom combo units 4, 3, 2, 1, 5, 6 All due to not enough competition to keep prices down.
johan_larson 10y ago
I grew up in the suburbs, and wish I still lived there. I live in a city now, having moved for work, and regret it. The city is hard to get around in, and it's crowded and expensive. Happy to answer any questions if you have them.
- nunez 10y ago
  Same here. Loved in NYC and now live in a suburb of Dallas. I'm never moving back.
- jimbokun 10y ago
  Depends on the city, and whether or not you are too lazy to walk a few blocks. When I lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn, most things were walking distance, and buses trains and cabs super convenient. I live in Pittsburgh now, and can walk (half hour) or bike (10 minutes) to work. Shopping requires a car, but not much traffic and plenty of parking compared to NYC, so still convenient. I know other US cities, though, have bad public transportation and bad traffic, and those might be worse than living in the suburbs.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    A lot of this is subjective personal preference. What's crowded for one person can be perfectly normal for another.
calebm 10y ago
I live in the Milwaukee suburbs, and I think it's a great deal. I can grow my own organic food in my garden, I can have fires at night, I'm 2 miles from the Ultimate Frisbee fields, 2 miles from wooded mountain biking trails, and 4 miles from a good coffee shop. Cost for 4 bed/2 bath house? $112k (~5 years ago).

vidanay 10y ago

Good riddance.

charles-salvia 10y ago
I agree - the suburbs are really depressing.

pmoriarty 10y ago

There's a great documentary on this called The End of Suburbia,[1][2] though the causes for such a collapse are very different in the documentary vs this article. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Suburbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Suburbia [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug

gozur88 10y ago
Peak oil? Oil is still cheap. If expensive oil is the end of suburbia, we wouldn't be seeing any effect yet.
- kbob 10y ago
  Yabbut if you're taking out a 30 year mortgage, you're not just going to look at current oil prices. The media are full of stories about the end of oil and looming price increases.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    The media is also full of stories about new billion-barrel fields being discovered. Based on what Americans are buying to drive, they don't seem too concerned about the price of oil. I don't know what it is now, but back when I bought my first house the average length of time people stayed in a house was 4 1/2 years.
    - kbob 10y ago
      We consider it acceptable for a car to be mostly depreciated after five years of ownership. We do not want our houses to have lost value in five years, especially as many of us will still owe 75% of its value. A house is still a longer term investment than a car, even if you sell it.
rustynails 10y ago
I just watched the documentary you linked. It's an excellent reminder of a major crisis that's looming. The Business Insider article doesn't talk about the collapse of suburbs. It's about the transformation linked to things like Internet shopping. I believe both are true. When peak oil hits, the system as we know it will collapse. It's not doom and gloom but it will be a drastic change. However, a desire for energy efficient houses and Internet Shopping change where we live, where we shop and where we eat. Thanks for posting the link to that video. We don't talk about peak oil anywhere near as much as we should be.

pm90 10y ago

I would be very interested to know how much of this is caused by a change in housing preference v/s a change in the nature of employment/wages for millennials. When you had reasonable expectation that your job would last for several years, you are more willing to invest in building up equity in a suburban home/community. Also, the no.1 reason why people seem to want to move to suburbs is children (IMO, anecdotal etc.)... perhaps the falling fertility is making married/live-in couples more willing to live in a dense, urban communities?

gozur88 10y ago
I think that's the case. Americans tend to move out of the city and buy a house in the suburbs when they have children. The perception (true or not) is suburbs are safer and offer better schools. Also, I suspect you can almost buy a house in the 'burbs for the difference in rent between a one and two bedroom apartment in SF.
- alistairSH 10y ago
  You're suspicion on the cost of living downtown vs the suburbs is correct for DC. My son lives in a new 500sqft flat in a nice downtown neighborhood. His rent in $2200/month and that seems fairly typical for that area. You can spend less for an older unit or one in a less desirable area. That $2200 is definitely enough to pay a mortgage in many parts of Fairfax County (assuming a moderate downpayment).
ghaff 10y ago
I know many people who have been in that position when they had children. They like the city but they have a kid and the combination of $/sq ft, schools, and general environment made them, however reluctantly, move out. (The few I know who remained in Manhattan or wherever were very well off and used private schools.)
- otoburb 10y ago
  >>(The few I know who remained in Manhattan or wherever were very well off and used private schools.) ... or managed to survive the seemingly insane NYC Department of Education admissions process to enter your child[ren] into public Pre-K, Kindergarten or Middle School. There are good schools in the city, but most are difficult to get into for a variety of reasons.

rhapsodic 10y ago

I prefer a 0.5-1.0 acre lot to a lot slightly bigger than the footprint of the house it contains. I prefer to have the privacy that's afforded by having my house set 40' back from the street, with plenty of space between my and my neighbors' homes, rather than living in a house that abuts, or is 6 feet away, from my neighbors'. I prefer a spacious driveway and an attached, heated, two car garage, to parking on the street a block from my house, and having to dig my car out after a snowstorm. I prefer to own a home that was built during or since the 1950s, when Romex wiring was original equipment, rather than own something that still has knob and tube wiring with decaying fabric insulation. I prefer a home built with drywall or rock lathe and plaster, over one built with wood lath and plaster. I've found that most pre-1910 homes I've examined do not have foundations or basements to my liking. I prefer to live in an area where I can leave my doors unlocked and my windows open at night without giving it a second thought. Or where, if I leave the house and realize I left the front door unlocked, I don't feel compelled to go back and lock it. I prefer to live in an environment where junkies and bums are virtually nowhere to be seen, rather than an environment where I have to be careful not to step in human feces when I walk between two parked cars. When I can get all that affordably in the city, I'll consider moving back.

apsec112 10y ago
If someone wants a house that doesn't have one of those things - one with a smaller lot, or less setback, or a smaller driveway, or no garage, etc. - and starts to build one, do you think they should be arrested and hauled off to jail? If so, why? If not, then please join us in voting for land use reform in local elections, since that's how things currently are in 99.9% of the US.
- rhapsodic 10y ago
  I don't know what you mean by "land use reform", but I'm a reluctant supporter of zoning laws. One of their redeeming features is that they tend to be enacted at the most local level. So the people affected by them are in a better position to change them if they don't like them, or they don't have to move far if they can't tolerate them and absolutely have to get out from under them.

leggomylibro 10y ago

Little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky... You know, it's funny. Some cities are trying to quickly build out higher-density apartment buildings in/near the downtown areas, and from what I've seen the same concept applies. I'd love to see some of those fancy mini-arcologies spring up, but really the boxes are just a bit bigger (or smaller, depending on how you look at it.) I do hope that malls become very cheap real estate before long; I think it's already happening in some places. I would just love to buy what is essentially a cheap, empty, commercially-zoned warehouse and stuff it full of things like laser tag, arcades and e-sports, a couple of lounge areas and coffee shops/bars depending on the time of day...but I doubt you could make something like that work without very cheap square footage and a lot of people within a 30-45 minute drive.

dredmorbius 10y ago
And that (Daly City, CA) is relatively high-density by current US standards.

jtedward 10y ago

This somewhat anecdotal, but the biggest issue I had when living in the suburbs was traffic. I'm someone who has driven hundreds of thousands miles and never been in an accident, but the extreme levels of fear and stress I got from going even short distances in the suburbs was just aweful. I didn't always feel this way, but I think the use of cellphones has created and environment where even slow moving drivers are unpredictable. I now walk to work and frequently see people on their phones while driving, if a line of ten cars are stopped at a light at least three people are on their phones. The result isn't an extreme increase in accidents but a constricting deficit of attention which incrementally lengthens every encounter on the road. More short stopping, more people missing green lights or just driving super conservatively and not merging holding up traffic. Also I never use my phone while driving, but the fact that I can't even look at it when I know someone is trying to contact me is incredibly frustrating and impacts my enjoyment of driving.

mhneu 10y ago
if a line of ten cars are stopped at a light at least three people are on their phones. As a cyclist, I often check who is on their phone when I pull up to a light. My guess would be even higher - 50-75% of drivers are on their phones when stopped at a light.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  This is terrifying to cyclists, motorcyclists, and walkers alike, and probably leads to thousands of deaths a year.
- sonthonax 10y ago
  Those people need to be lashed.

kr7 10y ago

The title is somewhat misleading. The suburbs are not dying; in fact they are growing [1][2][3][4] and this article makes no claim to the contrary. The article is saying that suburbs are becoming more like urban areas. I like the author's evidence that housing prices are falling: > In that same city in 2012, a typical McMansion would be valued at $477,000, about 274% more than the area's other homes. Today, a McMansion would be valued at $611,000, or 190% above the rest of the market. Up 28% in price - must be dying! [1] http://time.com/107808/census-suburbs-grow-city-growth-slows/ http://time.com/107808/census-suburbs-grow-city-growth-slows... [2] http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/03/2015-us-population-winners-the-suburbs-and-the-sunbelt/475251/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/03/2015-us-population-wi... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/americans-moving-to-suburbs-rather-than-cities-2016-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/americans-moving-to-suburbs-r... [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/26/americas-fastest-growing-counties-the-burbs-are-back/#3ab5c42d338a https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/26/americas-...

Mz 10y ago
The title is not misleading: The suburbs as we know them are dying. I think you are misreading it to mean something it does not say.
- Coincoin 10y ago
  Sure. Not clickbaity at all. Let's make a new article: Computers as we know them are dying. Edit: You might want to revise your definition of misleading. Misleading doesn't mean something is factually false. It means it's true but is presented in a way to lead you into believing something else. So you can feed a narrative without lying.
  - Mz 10y ago
    Computers as we know them are, in fact, dying. This is a genuine pain point for some people, while being an opportunity for others. Click-baity and misleading are not the same thing. Having a title that gets people to look at all is necessary to get traffic. This is true even on HN, in spite of how much people decry the evils of click-bait titles. It is incredibly hard to title things excellently well, such that it gets traffic but won't get labeled as "evil, nefarious click-bait with some dirty agenda" by the HN crowd. I do freelance writing and I blog and I submit stuff to HN regularly. My view of this is not rooted in stupidity. It is rooted in knowing that click-bait titles work to get views and can get your article flagged to death even if the article per se is an excellent piece of writing, yet trying too hard to not be click-bait can mean you get very few views and no upvotes. Titling things well is hard. I see nothing nefarious in how this is titled and I have too much firsthand experience with how incredibly critical HN is. The criticisms here are to the point of being neurotic and cranky. It is not merely a case of placing a high value on excellence.

dthal 10y ago

Jed Kolko, former chief economist at Trulia, thinks stories like this are either exaggerated or wrong. His basic claim is that urban revival is limited to childless professionals in their peak earning years. See [1], or any of his posts at [2] for the data and analysis. [1] http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/25/neighborhood-data-show-that-u-s-suburbanization-continues/ http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/25/neighborhood-data-show-that-u... [2] http://jedkolko.com/favorite-housing-posts/ http://jedkolko.com/favorite-housing-posts/

ghaff 10y ago
I was going to say that FiveThirtyEight has written similar pieces but I see it's the same person: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials-are-less-urban-than-you-think/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials-are-les... But right. A particular demographic of young professionals (which happens to align with both a lot of writers in these sorts of publications and tech workers) are moving to a handful of mostly coastal dense urban centers. I'm not sure how much of an outlier his interpretation of the data is or if you just don't hear a lot from his perspective because it doesn't support the urbanization narrative.
deleted 10y ago
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mhneu 10y ago
Anecdotally, when I lived in an urban condo, half the building was empty-nesters -- couples who raised their kids in the suburbs then moved back to walkable smaller city apartments after the kids left the nest. The problem demographic is couples with kids. Our urban schools are bad, so they leave the city to find good schools. But people with no kids -- either before children or after they leave for college -- are living in cities.
- otoburb 10y ago
  >>The problem demographic is couples with kids. Our urban schools are bad, so they leave the city to find good schools. Good urban schools exist, but there aren't enough of them, hence there is intense competition to get into good urban schools. To your point, this then ends up driving more families away from dense urban centers.

hackuser 10y ago

> "Ideally, there won't be any new highway capacity built because we can't afford to maintain what we have" It's not a detail that changes the conclusion, but I want to focus on it: The U.S. definitely can afford to maintain its roads. The country is the richest in the history of the world, richer than it's ever been. U.S. GDP in 1960, when the Interstate Highway system and many suburbs and malls were being built, was ~$3 trillion in real dollars;[0] now it's ~$18 trillion. The U.S. chooses not to maintain its infrastructure. [0] According to one unofficial source on the web, which I'm going to trust for this purpose.

mhneu 10y ago
Strong Towns has written extensively on this. Their conclusion is that our infrastructure is not affordable because too many roads are built to non-dense areas that do not have the tax base to support them. Federal highway dollars get dropped in to build, but then no dollars are available to maintain. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/2/five-ways-federal-infrastructure-spending-makes-cities-poorer https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/2/five-ways-feder...
- Spooky23 10y ago
  That argument is bunk, because the high density areas are the ones struggling. That is literally an argument for suburbia. State and federal funds do a great job outside of cities. In my state (New York), US and state designated highways are maintained by the state if it isn't located in an incorporated city. So my city (Albany) can barely afford trucks to plow the snow, but you literally cross the city line and an army of DOT trucks are plowing. Long Island is a great example of this, as "towns" with 300k people aren't incorporated, so they get "free" services. Even sewers are the same story. It's way more expensive to maintain buried infrastructure in the city and very cheap in the burbs. Fewer connections == fewer excavations == less labor.
  - foota 10y ago
    I have a couple issues with your post. First up, you seem to be conflating the source of infrastructures funding (state vs city) in an area with whether the population of that area could without external funding pay for their infrastructure. And secondly, while maintaining buried infrastructure in the city is likely more expensive, your argument presents no claim that it is more expensive _per capita_. edit: see http://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/03/Halifax-data.pdf http://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/0... for some numbers on the last point

charles-salvia 10y ago

So, I have to wonder: if this trend actually continues (and I hope it does), could this be a factor that helps curtail climate change to some degree? I realize that we will most likely inevitably suffer major damages at this point no matter what, but I'm wondering if trends like this (along with the rise of better battery technology and electric cars) will at least mitigate the damage to some extent. I mean, currently NYC has a ridiculously low carbon foot-print for its population size. So if more places become dense population centers with public transportation like NYC, it can only be a positive thing in terms of mitigating climate change.

rsynnott 10y ago
Not to a huge degree, probably, because this is really just America moving towards something a bit more like what's already the dominant urban form in other developed countries. It's not a global trend; while other countries have suburbs, the extent of America's obsession with them and the extreme car-dependence of the American ones is almost unique.

johan_larson 10y ago

Some of the living arrangements people are resorting to just reek of desperation: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-live-in-san-francisco-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-live-in-san-f... Living in vans. Living in boxes in larger apartments. Thirty people living in a 10-bedroom building. There is vast demand to live in these cities, and their governments are utterly failing to accommodate it in an orderly and dignified fashion.

ghaff 10y ago
Or maybe it's just the market's way of telling employees and employers that it's a big beautiful country that doesn't begin and end with a small peninsula on the West Coast.
- johan_larson 10y ago
  Yes, there is that. I keep being surprised that major employers keep paying the SV surtax to employ engineers in the Bay area rather than in cheaper places. I understand these organizations need to keep people in the Bay area, sure. It's the center of the industry; it's where a lot of new things happen. But do they need so many people within a half-hour of HQ? Seems like an obvious place to cut costs.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I get that companies want to have an SV presence but you can do that and limit your headcount there. I also get that some people really value the ability to hop jobs to other geographically close employers but options (which is effectively what we're talking about here) have some upper value. I expect it will all self-correct. There is new housing coming on line. There is some upper limit to the premium companies will pay and some lower limit to the squalor software engineers will tolerate to live in SF. Market corrections can certainly happen.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  It's amazing that most companies, including tech companies, operate technology with a diaspora of people across the globe. Yet the bigshots need to be in SFO for reasons.

agentgt 10y ago

I'm curious if others are seeing tear down fest in semi-urban neighborhoods? So I live in Metrowest Boston Area. I own a multi family. My wife, infant son and I live in modest square footage despite having fairly generous annual incomes (e.g. well above AMT tax rate). My parents used to live nearby in affluent town (Wellesley) before just recently selling their house to a developer... who of course knocked it down to build a gigantic pimped out house. The same developers was buying 4 other houses at the time. In short Metrowest Massachusetts has become tear down central. The problem is other than foreign investors (a lot of Newston, Weston, Wellesley, and Needham is getting bought out by foreign investors) nobody from my age group.. the age group that is looking to buy houses wants a super mansion... even if its decked out (That is these houses aren't McMansions. They are real mansions). From my general experience of talking to other educated thirty somethings is people want authentic and charming not McMansion and yet there all these new houses replacing old New England house. Yet these new houses are priced ridiculously high. And again talking to other peers it seems gone are the days where people buy 4-6 times their salary. People are buying sometimes as low as just twice their salary and completely fine. And if people want convenient they are going for condo and not McMansion style. Historically New England has been fairly bubble proof. I fear that time is coming to an end. When it does happen I might buy some of these big boys and convert them to multi-families ... BTW this is exactly what happened to parts of New England in the late 19th and early 20th century [1] where giant houses were converted to multi families aka Somerville and Waltham (where I live). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-decker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-decker

nikanj 10y ago

"Millennials want to cook at home and don't like to play golf" They don't have money for restaurants, let alone the resources to pick up a hobby as expensive and time-consuming as golf.

smileysteve 10y ago
In Atlanta, I find this wholly untrue, and the "doesn't cook at home" is something I find most easily defines between gen-x/early millennials / millenials with older siblings and late millennials. Of my friends and people I've in mid twenties to late thirties, most define eating at home as microwaving or heating a frozen meal; otherwise fast food and eating out are what they spend their budgets on.

trackofalljades 10y ago

I'm really happy that everything they mention in this article is "dying," good riddance.

erikb 10y ago

The idea of suburban areas being less about owning is horrible. Of course if I don't buy my living space and instead rent it, someone ELSE has to buy it first. They become not less about owning, but more about being owned by big companies instead of individual owners. And the reason people don't own as much as years before is because we realize that we can't afford to. If you give me a mansion for $10 (without any zeros behind it) I'll gladly prefer it over my apartment. What will be the next article in the series? Children in Jemen prefer to eat less food than their bodies require?

transfire 10y ago

> In one example, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the extra money that buyers were expected to be willing to pay to own a McMansion fell by 84% from 2012 to 2016. In that same city in 2012, a typical McMansion would be valued at $477,000, about 274% more than the area's other homes. Today, a McMansion would be valued at $611,000, or 190% above the rest of the market. I love how they think it is only a matter of willingness. Do they realize the cost cited prices out around two-thirds of the population?