5 ms·

The cultural dynamic is intertwined with economic factors. If you will have a 2-income family, you'll want to be where multiple jobs are within a commute. The

by tropo 7y ago

The cultural dynamic is intertwined with economic factors. If you will have a 2-income family, you'll want to be where multiple jobs are within a commute. The 1-income family or single person can simply move as needed. If you will have a large family, you'll prefer a location where a large house is affordable. If you won't have a family, that doesn't matter. Cause and effect go both ways. People following a traditional lifestyle are pushed out of cities by economic factors, and people following other lifestyles are pushed into cities. Meanwhile, city dwellers are discouraged from living traditionally due to economic factors, just as non-city dwellers wanting two incomes have trouble finding that second job.

wahern 7y ago
> The 1-income family or single person can simply move as needed. Move where? I've known plenty of both singles (white collar, blue collar) and married couples and on reflection every single one of them is living and working in a place principally because of job opportunities, not according to their preferred locale. Likewise for families. Many have relocated several times in the past 10 or 20 years. I think it goes without saying that the unwashed masses the world over will choose larger accommodations (up to some limit), all things being equal. You can't go wrong assuming the masses will choose more for less. I used to think otherwise until I began reading that even the French had begun leaving their small walkable cities for either the major cities or suburbs. That's when I had to face the reality that the French are no different than the Americans, who are no different than the Nigerians. Given the universal pressure to spread out (at least in the aggregate), if we want to explain trending migration patterns the controlling factors are almost certainly going to relate to the more mundane economics of housing prices and employment opportunities. Those are the relevant variables, everything else is relatively fixed by comparison. All the other narratives, such as the supposedly unique Millennial preference for urban environments, seem hopelessly tainted by the culture wars. I have my own opinions and anecdotes on the matter, but I've come to think they're largely irrelevant. Why resort to them when the more obvious explanations are not only sufficient to help explain the trends, but also have greater predictive power. Also, FWIW, I've noticed that our perceptions of suburbia are changing. What constitutes suburban development these days would have been considered overly dense and undesirable by suburbanites 20-30 years ago. I mention that because I think people will rationalize the choices they face and the choices they make. If they prefer suburbia, they're likely to perceive themselves as in suburbia and describe their surrounding as suburban even when their community is better described as more urban. People have preconceived notions of what urban means that don't suffice to explain contemporary patterns of development. I have a two-car garage in the San Francisco Richmond neighborhood in a house that, when built in 1926, would have been squarely considered suburban--presuming the term had been coined at that time. Today most would consider my neighborhood urban, notwithstanding the absence of skyscrapers, but there are plenty of new developments popping up that people describe as suburban but which are not appreciably less dense than many neighborhoods in San Francisco. But, again, we needn't delve into that minutiae if we instead look to more fundamental and objective qualities, such as cost of housing relative to distance to labor centers. Do I prefer the ideal of the city, where my kids can walk to the neighborhood school, library, movie theater and church, more than the idea of their ability to frolic in open pastures and virgin forest? I realized several years ago that it doesn't matter what I would prefer because the next time we move, if we move, I'll not likely have the privilege of choosing between such stark choices; rather, the reason for moving (i.e new job) will almost certainly narrow my options down not only to a particular city but to a particular neighborhood.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  > San Francisco Richmond neighborhood [...] most would consider my neighborhood urban The whole western half of San Francisco is zoned to mostly only allow 1 unit per lot, much of it requiring detached houses. Here’s a map, see the sea of pale yellow low-density residential. http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf The Richmond is definitely not “urban” by standards of people living in cities. I would rate it much closer to “sleepy beach town” than “dense cosmopolitan city”. The “most people” in your description must be suburbanites through and through. (This zoning should change; SF housing would be a lot more affordable if every part of the city were zoned to allow 3–4 story buildings with multiple units per building. We should get rid of RH-1 zones altogether, and upgrade most of the pale yellow part to e.g. RC-3 or NC-2 zoning. The increased density would then support better infrastructure, such as dedicated bus lanes with frequent and reliable service, significantly improving quality of life for people living in those neighborhoods.)
  - wahern 7y ago
    And yet many days I take one of 4 bus lines (each two blocks apart, traveling in parallel) which collectively move more than 100,000 people per day. I used to live in Lower Pacific Heights, two blocks from Van Ness, and walked ~1 mile to the Financial District every day. We regularly ate out at North Beach and Chinatown (and still do, as my office is still downtown). There may be more bars downtown and around Japantown, but the Geary corridor all the way up to 25 Ave has a far more diverse and trafficked street scene. The Judah and Irving corridors in the Inner and Outer Sunset even more so. The Mission more so still, but it's not skyscraper-urban, either. Relative to almost any neighborhood outside San Francisco, the Outer Richmond is absolutely urban.[1] And I can say this because even though my commute takes 45 minutes (30 minutes if I drive, 15 minutes without traffic), it's about on par with almost everybody else in the city and incomparable to those living outside city limits. More concretely, the Outer Richmond has a population density of over 20,000/sq mile--not bad for a sleepy beach town of single family homes.[2] And ultimately that's what I'm getting at--we should be using objective criteria, both to describe existing situations as well as trends. FWIW, I agree with you that zoning needs to change and that the Outer Richmond could use more density. [1] I first moved to San Francisco in 2000. My first place was in the Outer Richmond, moving from Foggy Bottom in D.C. My roommate, from Philadelphia, used to say it was too far from downtown. Fast forward 20 years and after having lived in multiple cities and towns around the country, he told me that he changed his mind about the Richmond. His conception of what urban meant has changed, especially after he realized how difficult it was to find a job in a locale as dense as that. I also moved around a bit after that (Arlington, VA, Long Beach, New Haven, and several months in Quito and then Santiago), though I never held the opinion that the Richmond wasn't "urban" enough to be urban. [2] Which says something about how dense cities and towns can get while still clinging to the ideal of single-family homes.

by tropo 7y ago

wahern 7y ago

> The 1-income family or single person can simply move as needed. Move where? I've known plenty of both singles (white collar, blue collar) and married couples and on reflection every single one of them is living and working in a place principally because of job opportunities, not according to their preferred locale. Likewise for families. Many have relocated several times in the past 10 or 20 years. I think it goes without saying that the unwashed masses the world over will choose larger accommodations (up to some limit), all things being equal. You can't go wrong assuming the masses will choose more for less. I used to think otherwise until I began reading that even the French had begun leaving their small walkable cities for either the major cities or suburbs. That's when I had to face the reality that the French are no different than the Americans, who are no different than the Nigerians. Given the universal pressure to spread out (at least in the aggregate), if we want to explain trending migration patterns the controlling factors are almost certainly going to relate to the more mundane economics of housing prices and employment opportunities. Those are the relevant variables, everything else is relatively fixed by comparison. All the other narratives, such as the supposedly unique Millennial preference for urban environments, seem hopelessly tainted by the culture wars. I have my own opinions and anecdotes on the matter, but I've come to think they're largely irrelevant. Why resort to them when the more obvious explanations are not only sufficient to help explain the trends, but also have greater predictive power. Also, FWIW, I've noticed that our perceptions of suburbia are changing. What constitutes suburban development these days would have been considered overly dense and undesirable by suburbanites 20-30 years ago. I mention that because I think people will rationalize the choices they face and the choices they make. If they prefer suburbia, they're likely to perceive themselves as in suburbia and describe their surrounding as suburban even when their community is better described as more urban. People have preconceived notions of what urban means that don't suffice to explain contemporary patterns of development. I have a two-car garage in the San Francisco Richmond neighborhood in a house that, when built in 1926, would have been squarely considered suburban--presuming the term had been coined at that time. Today most would consider my neighborhood urban, notwithstanding the absence of skyscrapers, but there are plenty of new developments popping up that people describe as suburban but which are not appreciably less dense than many neighborhoods in San Francisco. But, again, we needn't delve into that minutiae if we instead look to more fundamental and objective qualities, such as cost of housing relative to distance to labor centers. Do I prefer the ideal of the city, where my kids can walk to the neighborhood school, library, movie theater and church, more than the idea of their ability to frolic in open pastures and virgin forest? I realized several years ago that it doesn't matter what I would prefer because the next time we move, if we move, I'll not likely have the privilege of choosing between such stark choices; rather, the reason for moving (i.e new job) will almost certainly narrow my options down not only to a particular city but to a particular neighborhood.

jacobolus 7y ago
> San Francisco Richmond neighborhood [...] most would consider my neighborhood urban The whole western half of San Francisco is zoned to mostly only allow 1 unit per lot, much of it requiring detached houses. Here’s a map, see the sea of pale yellow low-density residential. http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf http://default.sfplanning.org/zoning/zoning_map.pdf The Richmond is definitely not “urban” by standards of people living in cities. I would rate it much closer to “sleepy beach town” than “dense cosmopolitan city”. The “most people” in your description must be suburbanites through and through. (This zoning should change; SF housing would be a lot more affordable if every part of the city were zoned to allow 3–4 story buildings with multiple units per building. We should get rid of RH-1 zones altogether, and upgrade most of the pale yellow part to e.g. RC-3 or NC-2 zoning. The increased density would then support better infrastructure, such as dedicated bus lanes with frequent and reliable service, significantly improving quality of life for people living in those neighborhoods.)
- wahern 7y ago
  And yet many days I take one of 4 bus lines (each two blocks apart, traveling in parallel) which collectively move more than 100,000 people per day. I used to live in Lower Pacific Heights, two blocks from Van Ness, and walked ~1 mile to the Financial District every day. We regularly ate out at North Beach and Chinatown (and still do, as my office is still downtown). There may be more bars downtown and around Japantown, but the Geary corridor all the way up to 25 Ave has a far more diverse and trafficked street scene. The Judah and Irving corridors in the Inner and Outer Sunset even more so. The Mission more so still, but it's not skyscraper-urban, either. Relative to almost any neighborhood outside San Francisco, the Outer Richmond is absolutely urban.[1] And I can say this because even though my commute takes 45 minutes (30 minutes if I drive, 15 minutes without traffic), it's about on par with almost everybody else in the city and incomparable to those living outside city limits. More concretely, the Outer Richmond has a population density of over 20,000/sq mile--not bad for a sleepy beach town of single family homes.[2] And ultimately that's what I'm getting at--we should be using objective criteria, both to describe existing situations as well as trends. FWIW, I agree with you that zoning needs to change and that the Outer Richmond could use more density. [1] I first moved to San Francisco in 2000. My first place was in the Outer Richmond, moving from Foggy Bottom in D.C. My roommate, from Philadelphia, used to say it was too far from downtown. Fast forward 20 years and after having lived in multiple cities and towns around the country, he told me that he changed his mind about the Richmond. His conception of what urban meant has changed, especially after he realized how difficult it was to find a job in a locale as dense as that. I also moved around a bit after that (Arlington, VA, Long Beach, New Haven, and several months in Quito and then Santiago), though I never held the opinion that the Richmond wasn't "urban" enough to be urban. [2] Which says something about how dense cities and towns can get while still clinging to the ideal of single-family homes.