7 ms·

Affordable housing and good salaries are usually on the conflicting ends of the same scale. A place that has high-paying jobs will have residents out-bidding e

Affordable housing and good salaries are usually on the conflicting ends of the same scale. A place that has high-paying jobs will have residents out-bidding each other, driving up the prices of the housing market. Conversely, super cheap housing is usually an indicator that there really is no demand from affluent residents. As a counter-point to what I just said, more and more information-based jobs can be done remotely in a very effective manner. This lets people enjoy these small towns and their high salary. Two things could happen, though: - this could form communities with enough remote workers to start altering the housing prices, and produce a similar effect to gentrification in that the locals end up outpriced of their own town; - or this could encourage a better spread of higher-paid employees throughout a lot of small towns, and end up not affecting those towns markets. And as a bonus, this might even help relieve the housing pressure on the larger cities.

wbl 9y ago
Or we could remove housing supply restrictions
jimmaswell 9y ago
I feel like if all work was suddenly remote, city residency would drop at least 50% in a week. I hope remote eventually becomes the norm. There are probably a lot more like me out there who even in their 20s only work in a metro area solely out of necessity. I have a hard time imagining that all these people I see on HN pining for city living and making suburbs out to be worse than prison are more than a vocal minority.
- seppin 9y ago
  > I feel like if all work was suddenly remote, city residency would drop at least 50% in a week. I hope remote eventually becomes the norm. Could not disagree more. (Young) people move to cities for vibrancy, culture, and to be around each other.
  - Density 9y ago
    Most people aren't young. Raising children in a city is a nightmare.
    - saosebastiao 9y ago
      Speak for yourself. Raising children in the burbs is a nightmare.
      - grogenaut 9y ago
        Speak for yourself. Raising children is a nightmare. (Tho worth it)
      - thousandautumns 9y ago
        I'm not sure I can envision a scenario where raising children in a suburb is worse than trying to do so in a city. Mind explaining?
        xkcd-sucks 9y ago
        They feel entitled to roam around in the woods without adult supervision, they come home muddy, they don't learn that you have to pay for everything, and their self-learned knowledge of manipulating the physical/natural world is scary and disempowering to tech weenie parents.
        saosebastiao 9y ago
        Children are humans and are social creatures just as much as adult humans are... if not even more so. It is helpful to be around things that humans enjoy culturally, whether that is museums, sports stadiums, restaurants, parks and playgrounds, or just people in general. Population centers allow for critical mass of a lot of things that children enjoy that don’t exist elsewhere (one example in my case is a boys gymnastics competitive team, which is nearly impossible to find outside of cities). Perhaps most importantly my children spend almost zero time in cars, and will be afforded a freedom that I never had as a suburbanite child...the freedom to go where they want without the explicit accommodation of an adult with a drivers license. It’s also helpful for kids to be afraid of things that can likely hurt them, like cars, and not afraid of things that aren’t likely to hurt them, like black people, gay people, foreign languages, or atheists.
- namlem 9y ago
  I don't agree. Super dense cities like New York might fall out of favor, but smaller cities will still be attractive. Being able to walk to wherever you want to go is very nice. In the suburbs you have to drive 10 minutes to get anywhere, which is quite annoying. Maybe that will change once self driving cars become the norm though.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    Whenever I've been to baltimore, it took around 10 minutes just walking this distance, adding in waiting at road crossings: https://i.imgur.com/Vxnt9cq.png https://i.imgur.com/Vxnt9cq.png
  - alexandercrohde 9y ago
    If you want to go to an actual grocery store and you live in a city you're going to spend more than 10 minutes walking. Plus you won't even have access to Walmart, Costco, etc.
    - saosebastiao 9y ago
      In the 6 apartments I’ve lived in in the 5 years I’ve lived in Seattle, I’ve never had fewer than 3 grocery stores within a 10 minute walk.
      - alexandercrohde 9y ago
        Well I lived in SF and in NYC presently. Unless you count corner stores (and I don't, because they are exorbinantly expensive) 10 minutes is better than average for those two cities.
    - RulingWalnut 9y ago
      I live in a city and have 2 full-fledged grocery stores + approx 70 bodegas and restaurants within a 10 minute walk. Also have a Target + Best Buy.
- lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
  Im pretty sure it's the opposite direction. The economies of scale make it so cities have above and beyond more amenities than the suburbs ever could. Be it food, culture, access to jobs/networks, or even just the dating pool working remotely in a huge house in the middle of nowhere really can't provide a substitution. Living isolated far away from civilization might be appealing to some, but I'd put money on the idea you're the minority. Growing up in the suburbs was a black mark on a generation and I think most of us aren't looking to subject our children to that. Aside from the space (which I'll never understand; who wants to have more shit to clean and maintain) I can't see any benefit to leaving the city.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    >I can't see any benefit to leaving the city. There's less crime, driving is viable (what do you do if you want to bring home a large item from a store in a city?), your surroundings are actually nice to look at, it's quieter, establishments aren't crowded, some people don't like walking all day, you can play loud music or whatever in your home without a noise complaint if you don't live right next to anyone, and privacy in your yard, for a few examples. What's special about city food? That it's more expensive? Calling small towns "away from civilization" is so disingenuous that it seems intentional. I've gone over this in another response, but do you really believe there isn't nice food and events out there?
    - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
      As a base line, this is my mental model for suburban living: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence,_South_Carolina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence,_South_Carolina Less crime in absolute maybe, but it's a toss up as to crime per-captia. Driving being viable is just a twisted way of saying driving is required; a strong con for many people including myself (and eats away at all of those real estate savings when you've got car payments and insurance). You just buy online and ship for most large items; rent a van for everything else. Lack of walking is another con; there's a reason the south sports 40% obesity rates. The special thing about "city food" is the diversity. Small populations can't support a plurality of niche restaurants and vendors. Being "away from civilization" I'll admit is subjective, but I don't think at all disingenuous. In the city we have touring bands, brand new stage productions, top of the line art museums, screenings of foreign films, a thriving music scene, and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to meet and learn from people from all over the world. Giving that up for an HOA and yard work seems like a raw deal.
- Chiba-City 9y ago
  I disagree entirely. Every minute wasted in transit is wasted. I was lucky to make the most of a private school scholarship (Baltimore) and received overlapping theater, voice, writing, instrumental and athletic training alongside academic training and "gifted" early science training provided by state government. From city centers like Boston and DC I was exposed to the world many Americans only know through pictures or books. Nothing is more damaging to adults or children than lives in remote isolation with delusions of Swiss Family Robinson self-sufficiency on government road, school and mortgage subsidies. We must stop claiming any normalcy to that post-Eisenhower makeshift accounting fiction. Lives in remote isolation are one of the reasons business formation is so low in the United States. Shyness is never any value. Shy people are takers.
  - thousandautumns 9y ago
    Wow, quite the extreme take there, and a strawman argument at that. I don't know why you think that the alternative to not living in a city is a life "in remote isolation with delusions of Swiss Family Robinson self-sufficiency". The original comment even specifically referred to suburbs. Transit may be wasted time, but for the vast majority of people, that transit consists almost entirely of going to and from work. Living in smaller cities or suburbs means that your transit time for everything outside of work will be roughly the same as someone living in a big city. So, if remote work were to be the norm, the wasted transit time is eliminated. I for one agree. The idea that you and others seem to believe in where anything outside a major city is an apocalyptic hellscape that is "more damaging to adults or children" than anything else is not just melodramatic, its pure fiction, and like the OP, is a viewpoint I imagine is only held by a (very) vocal minority.
    - Chiba-City 9y ago
      That was poetically agressive. I recommend checking out Strong Towns. Across our shifting political and geographic spectrum folks are looking at 2 phenomena that landed Americans in peculiar distributions. First, Eisenhower era highway building. Even early suburbanization was under panic defense logistics influence. Second was supersizing suburbia with white flight overlapping deindustrialization. We need not moralize to calculate the engineering of that with calculable overlapping downstream costs and grim actuarial funding pictures. Those narratives overlap generations kicked off farms into those cities not long ago. North Americans who buy homes move every 7 years on average. We have troubles building value in places where people stay over generations to enjoy it. Even educators are learning that "tickets out" is too abstract a target to motivate remote kids to study in schools. We inherited our little patches of planet and histories, but we should not normalize our current widespread displacements. Folks are migrating to specific places for different reasons we can examine on maps. Other folks in tons of places have troubles making a go of where they are for reasons we understand and cannot fix. [Edit: grammar]
jseliger 9y ago
A place that has high-paying jobs will have residents out-bidding each other, driving up the prices of the housing market Not necessarily; some cities simply build enough to keep a lid on housing prices: https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/ https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/. Many Texas cities do this and even Chicago does to some extent. Tokyo also does this: https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-costs-tokyo https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-.... We have the technology to build a lot of housing units on a given parcel of land, if doing so is legal.
- purplezooey 9y ago
  Yes especially in the BA. We could build twice as much housing and it wouldn't be enough.
- afpx 9y ago
  I don’t want to come across as too skeptical since increased supply will certainly apply downward price pressure. But, I’ve been seeing this argument so often recently that I need to question it. Can you provide contrasting examples of places of similar high population growth where the deregulated ones’ home prices stayed substantially lower than the regulated ones? I ask this because I believe that demand is the primary influencer of home prices, not supply. I’m open-minded though. So, to challenge my assumptions, I even briefly looked at several of the fastest growing cities of the past couple years (with several in Texas). However, even areas that I assumed had lower regulation and less zoning still had substantial annual price increases. To me, the only way that you can reduce housing costs is to decrease demand.
Kipters 9y ago
That's why I'm trying to get to work remotely. Right now I live in Milan, but I'm planning to move to Palermo where housing costs a fifth, more or less

wbl 9y ago

Or we could remove housing supply restrictions

jimmaswell 9y ago

I feel like if all work was suddenly remote, city residency would drop at least 50% in a week. I hope remote eventually becomes the norm. There are probably a lot more like me out there who even in their 20s only work in a metro area solely out of necessity. I have a hard time imagining that all these people I see on HN pining for city living and making suburbs out to be worse than prison are more than a vocal minority.

seppin 9y ago
> I feel like if all work was suddenly remote, city residency would drop at least 50% in a week. I hope remote eventually becomes the norm. Could not disagree more. (Young) people move to cities for vibrancy, culture, and to be around each other.
- Density 9y ago
  Most people aren't young. Raising children in a city is a nightmare.
  - saosebastiao 9y ago
    Speak for yourself. Raising children in the burbs is a nightmare.
    - grogenaut 9y ago
      Speak for yourself. Raising children is a nightmare. (Tho worth it)
    - thousandautumns 9y ago
      I'm not sure I can envision a scenario where raising children in a suburb is worse than trying to do so in a city. Mind explaining?
      - xkcd-sucks 9y ago
        They feel entitled to roam around in the woods without adult supervision, they come home muddy, they don't learn that you have to pay for everything, and their self-learned knowledge of manipulating the physical/natural world is scary and disempowering to tech weenie parents.
      - saosebastiao 9y ago
        Children are humans and are social creatures just as much as adult humans are... if not even more so. It is helpful to be around things that humans enjoy culturally, whether that is museums, sports stadiums, restaurants, parks and playgrounds, or just people in general. Population centers allow for critical mass of a lot of things that children enjoy that don’t exist elsewhere (one example in my case is a boys gymnastics competitive team, which is nearly impossible to find outside of cities). Perhaps most importantly my children spend almost zero time in cars, and will be afforded a freedom that I never had as a suburbanite child...the freedom to go where they want without the explicit accommodation of an adult with a drivers license. It’s also helpful for kids to be afraid of things that can likely hurt them, like cars, and not afraid of things that aren’t likely to hurt them, like black people, gay people, foreign languages, or atheists.
namlem 9y ago
I don't agree. Super dense cities like New York might fall out of favor, but smaller cities will still be attractive. Being able to walk to wherever you want to go is very nice. In the suburbs you have to drive 10 minutes to get anywhere, which is quite annoying. Maybe that will change once self driving cars become the norm though.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  Whenever I've been to baltimore, it took around 10 minutes just walking this distance, adding in waiting at road crossings: https://i.imgur.com/Vxnt9cq.png https://i.imgur.com/Vxnt9cq.png
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  If you want to go to an actual grocery store and you live in a city you're going to spend more than 10 minutes walking. Plus you won't even have access to Walmart, Costco, etc.
  - saosebastiao 9y ago
    In the 6 apartments I’ve lived in in the 5 years I’ve lived in Seattle, I’ve never had fewer than 3 grocery stores within a 10 minute walk.
    - alexandercrohde 9y ago
      Well I lived in SF and in NYC presently. Unless you count corner stores (and I don't, because they are exorbinantly expensive) 10 minutes is better than average for those two cities.
  - RulingWalnut 9y ago
    I live in a city and have 2 full-fledged grocery stores + approx 70 bodegas and restaurants within a 10 minute walk. Also have a Target + Best Buy.
lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
Im pretty sure it's the opposite direction. The economies of scale make it so cities have above and beyond more amenities than the suburbs ever could. Be it food, culture, access to jobs/networks, or even just the dating pool working remotely in a huge house in the middle of nowhere really can't provide a substitution. Living isolated far away from civilization might be appealing to some, but I'd put money on the idea you're the minority. Growing up in the suburbs was a black mark on a generation and I think most of us aren't looking to subject our children to that. Aside from the space (which I'll never understand; who wants to have more shit to clean and maintain) I can't see any benefit to leaving the city.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  >I can't see any benefit to leaving the city. There's less crime, driving is viable (what do you do if you want to bring home a large item from a store in a city?), your surroundings are actually nice to look at, it's quieter, establishments aren't crowded, some people don't like walking all day, you can play loud music or whatever in your home without a noise complaint if you don't live right next to anyone, and privacy in your yard, for a few examples. What's special about city food? That it's more expensive? Calling small towns "away from civilization" is so disingenuous that it seems intentional. I've gone over this in another response, but do you really believe there isn't nice food and events out there?
  - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
    As a base line, this is my mental model for suburban living: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence,_South_Carolina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence,_South_Carolina Less crime in absolute maybe, but it's a toss up as to crime per-captia. Driving being viable is just a twisted way of saying driving is required; a strong con for many people including myself (and eats away at all of those real estate savings when you've got car payments and insurance). You just buy online and ship for most large items; rent a van for everything else. Lack of walking is another con; there's a reason the south sports 40% obesity rates. The special thing about "city food" is the diversity. Small populations can't support a plurality of niche restaurants and vendors. Being "away from civilization" I'll admit is subjective, but I don't think at all disingenuous. In the city we have touring bands, brand new stage productions, top of the line art museums, screenings of foreign films, a thriving music scene, and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to meet and learn from people from all over the world. Giving that up for an HOA and yard work seems like a raw deal.
Chiba-City 9y ago
I disagree entirely. Every minute wasted in transit is wasted. I was lucky to make the most of a private school scholarship (Baltimore) and received overlapping theater, voice, writing, instrumental and athletic training alongside academic training and "gifted" early science training provided by state government. From city centers like Boston and DC I was exposed to the world many Americans only know through pictures or books. Nothing is more damaging to adults or children than lives in remote isolation with delusions of Swiss Family Robinson self-sufficiency on government road, school and mortgage subsidies. We must stop claiming any normalcy to that post-Eisenhower makeshift accounting fiction. Lives in remote isolation are one of the reasons business formation is so low in the United States. Shyness is never any value. Shy people are takers.
- thousandautumns 9y ago
  Wow, quite the extreme take there, and a strawman argument at that. I don't know why you think that the alternative to not living in a city is a life "in remote isolation with delusions of Swiss Family Robinson self-sufficiency". The original comment even specifically referred to suburbs. Transit may be wasted time, but for the vast majority of people, that transit consists almost entirely of going to and from work. Living in smaller cities or suburbs means that your transit time for everything outside of work will be roughly the same as someone living in a big city. So, if remote work were to be the norm, the wasted transit time is eliminated. I for one agree. The idea that you and others seem to believe in where anything outside a major city is an apocalyptic hellscape that is "more damaging to adults or children" than anything else is not just melodramatic, its pure fiction, and like the OP, is a viewpoint I imagine is only held by a (very) vocal minority.
  - Chiba-City 9y ago
    That was poetically agressive. I recommend checking out Strong Towns. Across our shifting political and geographic spectrum folks are looking at 2 phenomena that landed Americans in peculiar distributions. First, Eisenhower era highway building. Even early suburbanization was under panic defense logistics influence. Second was supersizing suburbia with white flight overlapping deindustrialization. We need not moralize to calculate the engineering of that with calculable overlapping downstream costs and grim actuarial funding pictures. Those narratives overlap generations kicked off farms into those cities not long ago. North Americans who buy homes move every 7 years on average. We have troubles building value in places where people stay over generations to enjoy it. Even educators are learning that "tickets out" is too abstract a target to motivate remote kids to study in schools. We inherited our little patches of planet and histories, but we should not normalize our current widespread displacements. Folks are migrating to specific places for different reasons we can examine on maps. Other folks in tons of places have troubles making a go of where they are for reasons we understand and cannot fix. [Edit: grammar]

jseliger 9y ago

A place that has high-paying jobs will have residents out-bidding each other, driving up the prices of the housing market Not necessarily; some cities simply build enough to keep a lid on housing prices: https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/ https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/. Many Texas cities do this and even Chicago does to some extent. Tokyo also does this: https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-costs-tokyo https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-.... We have the technology to build a lot of housing units on a given parcel of land, if doing so is legal.

purplezooey 9y ago
Yes especially in the BA. We could build twice as much housing and it wouldn't be enough.
afpx 9y ago
I don’t want to come across as too skeptical since increased supply will certainly apply downward price pressure. But, I’ve been seeing this argument so often recently that I need to question it. Can you provide contrasting examples of places of similar high population growth where the deregulated ones’ home prices stayed substantially lower than the regulated ones? I ask this because I believe that demand is the primary influencer of home prices, not supply. I’m open-minded though. So, to challenge my assumptions, I even briefly looked at several of the fastest growing cities of the past couple years (with several in Texas). However, even areas that I assumed had lower regulation and less zoning still had substantial annual price increases. To me, the only way that you can reduce housing costs is to decrease demand.

Kipters 9y ago

That's why I'm trying to get to work remotely. Right now I live in Milan, but I'm planning to move to Palermo where housing costs a fifth, more or less