7 ms·

There are many factors, but IMO it has a lot to do with urban sprawl. I'd never consider living somewhere where I'd have to own a car to be able to do my grocer

There are many factors, but IMO it has a lot to do with urban sprawl. I'd never consider living somewhere where I'd have to own a car to be able to do my groceries and to go work. In the same idea, I'd never take a job that requires me to do more than a 30 minutes commute by public transportation/biking distance. That makes me a perfect candidate for biking, unfortunately I'm more of an outlier. Most people, including my own family, would think that this way of thinking makes no sense. They all own a car (or two) and have an hour commute each way to be able to afford a bigger house/different lifestyle than they could in the city. Just look at any suburbs: the inhabitants clearly disagree with me.

ashark 9y ago
> Just look at any suburbs: the inhabitants clearly disagree with me. Some of us just have kids and have noticed that all the city housing is either incredibly expensive or in slums, and the schools in the city proper are dangerous and terrible so we'd also have to pay for private school[0]. And we're not made of money. I'd much rather live in the city—I hate the car-centric lifestyle—but living there if I have enough money not to but not enough money to also pay for private k-12 schooling would be irresponsible. Plus there's the issue of having to balance commutes for two people in a dual-income household—one of us would almost certainly need a car anyway. [0] This is true for my city at least. YMMV.
- hamstercat 9y ago
  It's definitely a choice and I wasn't implying it's a bad one. Everyone has different priorities, like you said it could be kids or something else. All I'm saying is that it's those choices that make urban sprawl a thing and reduces the effectiveness of living car-free. I'd buy a car in an instant if I had to, and I consider myself lucky not to have to right now. Not all suburban cities are equal either, some makes it possible not to have to commute by car (at least near where I live).
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  That's a chicken-and-egg problem too... inner-city schools suck because everyone with money took their taxes to the suburbs (for better schools).
  - ashark 9y ago
    Well, more to the point they took their bound-to-be-good-students-on-average children to the suburbs. If you do it right (i.e. you don't make a bad choice and get ripped off) you're buying your kids' peers more than anything else by paying to live in more affluent districts or (more directly) by paying private school tuition. This is why pouring money into poor districts rarely does much to educational quality—the money's coincident with other factors that make rich(er) kids easy to teach and relatively unlikely to seriously disrupt class on a regular basis, miss large numbers of school days, et c, and just giving the schools more money doesn't fix all that other stuff. So it's still a chicken/egg problem but a much tougher one to resolve than if schools having too little money were even a large part of the trouble. It's even a shitty situation for people who can afford to get their kids into better schools because there's pressure under this system to spend absolutely as much as you can on these things, because you will definitely be improving your kids' chances in life by doing so. It's a craptastic coordination problem that's so bad things would kind of be better if we just assigned schools based on some combination of parental income and education level, since that'd put most kids more or less where they are when we use willingness-and-ability-to-spend-money as a proxy for those things (i.e. the current system) while keeping everyone from having to waste tons of money competing over blessed zip codes or paying private school tuition.
    - InitialLastName 9y ago
      That's a well-put perspective. ... however... I can't even picture the political shitstorm that would happen if someone suggested (openly) segregating schools by parental income and education level.
      - ashark 9y ago
        Oh, I know it's not politically feasible and is fairly horrible. It's damning of our current system, though, that it's de facto very nearly the same thing and also incredibly expensive/stressful.
mnm1 9y ago
Or maybe they're just not rich. Because you have to be rich to live--and especially to buy--in most cities' walkable parts in the US. Not even just middle class but upper class. And even if you can afford it, it often doesn't make financial sense. For less than a studio or one bedroom, I can get a 5 bedroom house 20 minutes away by car. And I don't have to pay extreme HOA fees, essentially private taxes. I hate driving / would love to walk places too. I just can't afford it.
cakedoggie 9y ago
I agree with you 100%. Owning a car is a horrible solution for me.

ashark 9y ago

> Just look at any suburbs: the inhabitants clearly disagree with me. Some of us just have kids and have noticed that all the city housing is either incredibly expensive or in slums, and the schools in the city proper are dangerous and terrible so we'd also have to pay for private school[0]. And we're not made of money. I'd much rather live in the city—I hate the car-centric lifestyle—but living there if I have enough money not to but not enough money to also pay for private k-12 schooling would be irresponsible. Plus there's the issue of having to balance commutes for two people in a dual-income household—one of us would almost certainly need a car anyway. [0] This is true for my city at least. YMMV.

hamstercat 9y ago
It's definitely a choice and I wasn't implying it's a bad one. Everyone has different priorities, like you said it could be kids or something else. All I'm saying is that it's those choices that make urban sprawl a thing and reduces the effectiveness of living car-free. I'd buy a car in an instant if I had to, and I consider myself lucky not to have to right now. Not all suburban cities are equal either, some makes it possible not to have to commute by car (at least near where I live).
InitialLastName 9y ago
That's a chicken-and-egg problem too... inner-city schools suck because everyone with money took their taxes to the suburbs (for better schools).
- ashark 9y ago
  Well, more to the point they took their bound-to-be-good-students-on-average children to the suburbs. If you do it right (i.e. you don't make a bad choice and get ripped off) you're buying your kids' peers more than anything else by paying to live in more affluent districts or (more directly) by paying private school tuition. This is why pouring money into poor districts rarely does much to educational quality—the money's coincident with other factors that make rich(er) kids easy to teach and relatively unlikely to seriously disrupt class on a regular basis, miss large numbers of school days, et c, and just giving the schools more money doesn't fix all that other stuff. So it's still a chicken/egg problem but a much tougher one to resolve than if schools having too little money were even a large part of the trouble. It's even a shitty situation for people who can afford to get their kids into better schools because there's pressure under this system to spend absolutely as much as you can on these things, because you will definitely be improving your kids' chances in life by doing so. It's a craptastic coordination problem that's so bad things would kind of be better if we just assigned schools based on some combination of parental income and education level, since that'd put most kids more or less where they are when we use willingness-and-ability-to-spend-money as a proxy for those things (i.e. the current system) while keeping everyone from having to waste tons of money competing over blessed zip codes or paying private school tuition.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    That's a well-put perspective. ... however... I can't even picture the political shitstorm that would happen if someone suggested (openly) segregating schools by parental income and education level.
    - ashark 9y ago
      Oh, I know it's not politically feasible and is fairly horrible. It's damning of our current system, though, that it's de facto very nearly the same thing and also incredibly expensive/stressful.

mnm1 9y ago

Or maybe they're just not rich. Because you have to be rich to live--and especially to buy--in most cities' walkable parts in the US. Not even just middle class but upper class. And even if you can afford it, it often doesn't make financial sense. For less than a studio or one bedroom, I can get a 5 bedroom house 20 minutes away by car. And I don't have to pay extreme HOA fees, essentially private taxes. I hate driving / would love to walk places too. I just can't afford it.

cakedoggie 9y ago

I agree with you 100%. Owning a car is a horrible solution for me.