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Quite apart from your well made point, just about everyone that "makes it" wants a home in the country with some land, probably some old forest. It's the locati

Quite apart from your well made point, just about everyone that "makes it" wants a home in the country with some land, probably some old forest. It's the location for so many leisure activities and holidays. Few want to retire in a city. We conveniently don't notice the decline of soils, of insects or other species. The arrogance that we can just keep on until humanity is in battery hutches everywhere and everything else divided up between agriculture and industry astounds me. Who knows how many miracle drugs and biotech has been lost in those unknown bacteria and species. Even if it turns out to be a process that can continue our collective psyche will lose something it apparently desires or needs. So at what cost?

lotsofpulp 8y ago
Everyone wants the facilities resulting from economies of scales and efficiencies that cities provide, such as entertainment options, access to various labor and product markets, selections of schools, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. At the same time, everyone wants to their own space to do their own thing and raise their family and a peaceful neighborhood where you don't have to worry about dealing with too many others, especially not too far below your socioeconomic class. This would seem to naturally result in the pattern of rich and poor suburbs clustered around cities with the constant struggle of individual housing vs shared housing, car vs public transport, public parks vs private yards, etc. Only recent factor I see changing is the delay in having children into the 30s means a lot of 20 somethings that aren't looking for suburbs, and if they don't ever have kids then maybe they never will want for suburbs.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Everyone? Plenty only move to a city because they have to, to get work. Then Nothing to do with want in many cases. Perhaps even the majority. There's not the same need for everyone to congregate in one place there was when your factory or shipyard needed 40,000 workers every shift. The internet should have enabled more local and rural enterprises to thrive, except that's not turned out to be the case at all.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Those who want to go to the city only because they have to work fall under the "want access to labor markets" part of my statement. "Everyone" is an exaggeration of course on my part, but it still seems like a significant portion of the population, especially high earners, want incompatible parts of urban and suburban life. I was commenting on the claim that "few want to retire in the city", which I agree with, but in old age you need access to medical professionals and other facilities that aren't economically feasible in rural populations, so even though people want the rural life, they don't want or can't afford to give up those other conveniences of more urban areas.
CalRobert 8y ago
And yet city center locations are incredibly expensive. Though I don't disagree with your general point, just that there are a fair number of people who make it and still want to be in the city. I'd still rather be in the city. It's just too expensive, though, since there's a shortage of housing here (honestly "here" could be most cities with good tech industries) and I value being in the city less than a young person who still goes out a lot - and crucially, doesn't have a kid. If it helps, I'm buying a few acres of grazing land an hour from the city by train - grazing land is basically sterile wasteland for ecological purposes - and planning to reforest it, while working remote. But we need a lot more than a few acres. And we need those places to be livable without a car. I rode a bike from the train station to view the property, but places you can do that without a death wish are far too rare.

lotsofpulp 8y ago

Everyone wants the facilities resulting from economies of scales and efficiencies that cities provide, such as entertainment options, access to various labor and product markets, selections of schools, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. At the same time, everyone wants to their own space to do their own thing and raise their family and a peaceful neighborhood where you don't have to worry about dealing with too many others, especially not too far below your socioeconomic class. This would seem to naturally result in the pattern of rich and poor suburbs clustered around cities with the constant struggle of individual housing vs shared housing, car vs public transport, public parks vs private yards, etc. Only recent factor I see changing is the delay in having children into the 30s means a lot of 20 somethings that aren't looking for suburbs, and if they don't ever have kids then maybe they never will want for suburbs.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Everyone? Plenty only move to a city because they have to, to get work. Then Nothing to do with want in many cases. Perhaps even the majority. There's not the same need for everyone to congregate in one place there was when your factory or shipyard needed 40,000 workers every shift. The internet should have enabled more local and rural enterprises to thrive, except that's not turned out to be the case at all.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Those who want to go to the city only because they have to work fall under the "want access to labor markets" part of my statement. "Everyone" is an exaggeration of course on my part, but it still seems like a significant portion of the population, especially high earners, want incompatible parts of urban and suburban life. I was commenting on the claim that "few want to retire in the city", which I agree with, but in old age you need access to medical professionals and other facilities that aren't economically feasible in rural populations, so even though people want the rural life, they don't want or can't afford to give up those other conveniences of more urban areas.

CalRobert 8y ago

And yet city center locations are incredibly expensive. Though I don't disagree with your general point, just that there are a fair number of people who make it and still want to be in the city. I'd still rather be in the city. It's just too expensive, though, since there's a shortage of housing here (honestly "here" could be most cities with good tech industries) and I value being in the city less than a young person who still goes out a lot - and crucially, doesn't have a kid. If it helps, I'm buying a few acres of grazing land an hour from the city by train - grazing land is basically sterile wasteland for ecological purposes - and planning to reforest it, while working remote. But we need a lot more than a few acres. And we need those places to be livable without a car. I rode a bike from the train station to view the property, but places you can do that without a death wish are far too rare.