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Why do the rich keep moving farther away? Is the new Tesla so great they enjoy spending two hours in it every day? EDIT: I see your ninja edit but it's inconsi

by blfr 9y ago

Why do the rich keep moving farther away? Is the new Tesla so great they enjoy spending two hours in it every day? EDIT: I see your ninja edit but it's inconsistent. Either poor people are a drain on resources that the middle class wants to avoid or they're a great profit centre for the municipality.

ComputerGuru 9y ago
It's not either or. Poorer people are essential to the operation of the city economy but simultaneously undesirable on an individual level. It's classic NIMBY. It's not about them being a drain on the _city_ resources, but undesirable beneficiaries of the wealthier denizens' "resource pool". I'm not arguing in favor of the OP's point or against yours: it's much less economics driven and much more socioeconomic status driven. People don't want to share their neighborhoods with those less well off than them because they want to feel metrically superior wherever possible ("I can afford to live here and they can't") and they don't want to "bring down property values" because there's someone that doesn't meet their vision of "minimum acceptable wealth" living withing a stone's throw of themselves.
Swizec 9y ago
> Why do the rich keep moving farther away? Rich enough to feel they’re above a mere apartment[1], not rich enough to afford a condo. [1] american also seem obsessed with the idea that houses are for owning and apartments are for renting. Having grown up in buildings full of people/families owning their apartments and sharing costs of building upkeep, I never understood this. Maybe the co-op approach is a remnant of socialism and I’m the weird one. Personally I’d much prefer to own a nice flat downtown than to waste my life commuting. Sharing space with the hoi polloi is half the fun of living in a city anyway. Gives your neighborhood some character, interesting people to talk to and to see out and about. Nothing worse than a neighborhood full of your average middle class suburbanite to drain all the life out of a place. I’ll never forget how utterly terrible living in Menlo Park was. shudder Edit: sorry that is probably offtopic. My initial point was that real estate is actually more expensive closer to city centers. Maybe “the rich” aren’t so rich after all.
KGIII 9y ago
I'm in a the category that you'd call wealthy or rich. I have grabbed three quick images to show you why I moved further away - after spending my whole life in urban areas. https://imgur.com/a/NXaxm https://imgur.com/a/NXaxm
- phil21 9y ago
  That's not typical suburbia. I completely understand wanting to get out and into nature where you can't see your neighbors. Makes sense, not for me, but it's totally logical and easy to understand different strokes for different folks. The cookie-cutter typical suburbs of most mid-tier US cities though? I cannot imagine a worse combination of all the bad things from rural living, combined with all the bad things from urban living. Utterly soulless, and I feel actively depressed if I must spend more than a day or two stuck in one. My personal theory is that the social strife we are increasingly seeing in the US is due to the breakdown in the sense of community nationwide. I posit that suburbinification was by far the largest driver of this. This is bad enough, but when you realize 90% of the suburbs in the US are unsustainable subsidies for middle class folks it gets even harder to swallow.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Yeah, I did the suburban life for a while. Not quite urban, but a single occupancy with a fence that might have been ten feet from the sides of the building and maybe a thousand square feet of back yard. Getting out was great. It's not realistic for many, but it has been fantastic. The comment mentioned moving further afield, beyond suburbia, so I wasn't entirely sure what was meant. I'm about 25 miles from a village with 1200 residents. I'm in a pn unincorporated township that has six residences and a couple of hunting camps. Once the locals (I call them the village people) get to know and accept you, I've never seen a greater sense of community. I suspect you're onto something with the sense of community. Even the unpopular people here, of which there are a few - some self-selecting for the role, wouldn't be allowed to go hungry or homeless. In my township, there is no crime and everyone knows where my keys are, just in case the door is locked. In the village? Well, there are minor property crimes at the rate of maybe two a month. Most of those can be attributed to tourists. There are only 1200 residents but they may swell to ten times that many people during the height if tourist season. The sense of community is not something I'd experienced elsewhere. Ever. Even as a child, my family moved a lot due to my father being in the military. It was unfamiliar feeling and very disconcerting at times - but it is something I've come to cherish. This is the first time I've really felt at home. You know you're an accepted member of the community when they are telling you the gossip and it is no longer about you. It has its charms. I don't have words for it, but the sense of community really does have an overall effect on the people. There is true compassion, even when it isn't a crisis. It doesn't take a flood to make people help their neighbors. I strongly suspect you're not something with that.
ashark 9y ago
Middle and upper-middle around here move farther out for the schools (it's the only reason I'm not in the city). Our household income's not high enough to afford housing prices (for a family of 5) in the city and sending all our kids to private school. So the in-all-other-ways-terrible suburbs it is. :-/
amyjess 9y ago
At least where I live, more and more businesses are moving into the suburbs as well. This phenomenon is called "edge cities" [0]. Someone who lives in an outer suburb will likely find themselves working in a suburban office park or a massive sprawling campus, not a skyscraper downtown. For this matter, I know people who live in inner-ring suburbs and commute to outer-ring suburbs! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city
- cr0sh 9y ago
  Technically, that kinda describes my current situation, and it's been this way for a while now. I live in what used to be a suburb when my home was built in the early 1970s (now it's more part of an "inner ring"). I "commute" about 15-30 minutes away to my job (software engineer) where my employer is located in an industrial business park area, on the more outer edge of the city (but not the extreme outer edge). My last three or four employers have been like this mostly, but this one has been the closest to home, and it is pretty nice not having to drive so far for a change.

by blfr 9y ago

ComputerGuru 9y ago

It's not either or. Poorer people are essential to the operation of the city economy but simultaneously undesirable on an individual level. It's classic NIMBY. It's not about them being a drain on the _city_ resources, but undesirable beneficiaries of the wealthier denizens' "resource pool". I'm not arguing in favor of the OP's point or against yours: it's much less economics driven and much more socioeconomic status driven. People don't want to share their neighborhoods with those less well off than them because they want to feel metrically superior wherever possible ("I can afford to live here and they can't") and they don't want to "bring down property values" because there's someone that doesn't meet their vision of "minimum acceptable wealth" living withing a stone's throw of themselves.

Swizec 9y ago

> Why do the rich keep moving farther away? Rich enough to feel they’re above a mere apartment[1], not rich enough to afford a condo. [1] american also seem obsessed with the idea that houses are for owning and apartments are for renting. Having grown up in buildings full of people/families owning their apartments and sharing costs of building upkeep, I never understood this. Maybe the co-op approach is a remnant of socialism and I’m the weird one. Personally I’d much prefer to own a nice flat downtown than to waste my life commuting. Sharing space with the hoi polloi is half the fun of living in a city anyway. Gives your neighborhood some character, interesting people to talk to and to see out and about. Nothing worse than a neighborhood full of your average middle class suburbanite to drain all the life out of a place. I’ll never forget how utterly terrible living in Menlo Park was. shudder Edit: sorry that is probably offtopic. My initial point was that real estate is actually more expensive closer to city centers. Maybe “the rich” aren’t so rich after all.

KGIII 9y ago

I'm in a the category that you'd call wealthy or rich. I have grabbed three quick images to show you why I moved further away - after spending my whole life in urban areas. https://imgur.com/a/NXaxm https://imgur.com/a/NXaxm

phil21 9y ago
That's not typical suburbia. I completely understand wanting to get out and into nature where you can't see your neighbors. Makes sense, not for me, but it's totally logical and easy to understand different strokes for different folks. The cookie-cutter typical suburbs of most mid-tier US cities though? I cannot imagine a worse combination of all the bad things from rural living, combined with all the bad things from urban living. Utterly soulless, and I feel actively depressed if I must spend more than a day or two stuck in one. My personal theory is that the social strife we are increasingly seeing in the US is due to the breakdown in the sense of community nationwide. I posit that suburbinification was by far the largest driver of this. This is bad enough, but when you realize 90% of the suburbs in the US are unsustainable subsidies for middle class folks it gets even harder to swallow.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Yeah, I did the suburban life for a while. Not quite urban, but a single occupancy with a fence that might have been ten feet from the sides of the building and maybe a thousand square feet of back yard. Getting out was great. It's not realistic for many, but it has been fantastic. The comment mentioned moving further afield, beyond suburbia, so I wasn't entirely sure what was meant. I'm about 25 miles from a village with 1200 residents. I'm in a pn unincorporated township that has six residences and a couple of hunting camps. Once the locals (I call them the village people) get to know and accept you, I've never seen a greater sense of community. I suspect you're onto something with the sense of community. Even the unpopular people here, of which there are a few - some self-selecting for the role, wouldn't be allowed to go hungry or homeless. In my township, there is no crime and everyone knows where my keys are, just in case the door is locked. In the village? Well, there are minor property crimes at the rate of maybe two a month. Most of those can be attributed to tourists. There are only 1200 residents but they may swell to ten times that many people during the height if tourist season. The sense of community is not something I'd experienced elsewhere. Ever. Even as a child, my family moved a lot due to my father being in the military. It was unfamiliar feeling and very disconcerting at times - but it is something I've come to cherish. This is the first time I've really felt at home. You know you're an accepted member of the community when they are telling you the gossip and it is no longer about you. It has its charms. I don't have words for it, but the sense of community really does have an overall effect on the people. There is true compassion, even when it isn't a crisis. It doesn't take a flood to make people help their neighbors. I strongly suspect you're not something with that.

ashark 9y ago

Middle and upper-middle around here move farther out for the schools (it's the only reason I'm not in the city). Our household income's not high enough to afford housing prices (for a family of 5) in the city and sending all our kids to private school. So the in-all-other-ways-terrible suburbs it is. :-/

amyjess 9y ago

At least where I live, more and more businesses are moving into the suburbs as well. This phenomenon is called "edge cities" [0]. Someone who lives in an outer suburb will likely find themselves working in a suburban office park or a massive sprawling campus, not a skyscraper downtown. For this matter, I know people who live in inner-ring suburbs and commute to outer-ring suburbs! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city

cr0sh 9y ago
Technically, that kinda describes my current situation, and it's been this way for a while now. I live in what used to be a suburb when my home was built in the early 1970s (now it's more part of an "inner ring"). I "commute" about 15-30 minutes away to my job (software engineer) where my employer is located in an industrial business park area, on the more outer edge of the city (but not the extreme outer edge). My last three or four employers have been like this mostly, but this one has been the closest to home, and it is pretty nice not having to drive so far for a change.