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Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to

Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years. They are really eager to see a trend out of small amounts of data. Or proclaim urban life dead, now and forever. I personally feel strongly in the other direction. We had the infamous "white flight" and car-centric communities and life. We had the peak of urban crime in the 80s and 90s. Then we had a reversal of those trends. Yes gentrification is tough on many, yes the costs are out of control for many, but on the balance I think denser living is the right call.

chrisco255 6y ago
Does denser living really matter if most of the business and professional jobs go remote? The traffic in my city (Austin) has plummeted dramatically since before Covid.
- asveikau 6y ago
  I believe there is economic research that says increases in density are correlated with larger increases in productivity. I also think the environmental cost is lower, for example if you're not burning fossel fuels in single occupant SUVs in order to do everything. My personal experience is also that avoiding that last part is good for your health, physical fitness and stress.
- kasey_junk 6y ago
  I’ve been a remote worker far longer than Covid and live in a dense (for the US) area. For me the density value comes from things that specifically can’t go remote. Having parks, beaches, produce shops, restaurants, schools and friends in walking distance is the value. Covid has proven those things can’t be replicated online.
  - jackcosgrove 6y ago
    If you have children it's not as if you can move anywhere even if your job allows it. Moving is traumatic for children and the places you can move to are those with adequate schools. The benefits of remote working are largely lost on those with children.
    - kasey_junk 6y ago
      I have a child. I live where I live specifically for the school and I don’t want to move. Remote work dramatically increases my opportunities in my current location.
      - jackcosgrove 6y ago
        Right remote work can increase opportunities, but I should have said the mobility advantages are mostly lost on families.
treeman79 6y ago
Kids change mindset. Kids love yards. They love the little creek that runs past. I love the safety. Small neighborhood, we all know each other and look out for the kids that run around playing.
- asveikau 6y ago
  Everyone says this, as if none of us who advocate for urban life understand having kids. I have two kids. Also, they raise plenty of kids in other countries where they haven't oriented life around suburbs. Also, this was more true in the United States before white flight, and the US raised plenty of healthy kids then. So I don't think the kid thing makes as much sense as they say. But the state of US school systems does make the urban kid raising thing needlessly expensive for many.
  - sharadov 6y ago
    The big difference is in other countries schools are not as bad as they are in cities in the US. Not a lot of countries have this huge divide of urban vs suburban culture. In America, you move to the suburbs to die.
  - jackcosgrove 6y ago
    Violence and distracting behavior in schools are bad. But school scores, prestige, etc. don't matter as much as most people think. Your home environment matters more than the school. High achieving magnets and wealthy suburban schools are that way because of the selection profile for students, not because the school itself is transformative.
    - asveikau 6y ago
      Having exposure to high status schools in my own childhood, I agree 100% with your last sentence, that was one of the most important lessons I learned growing up, to completely ignore pedigree. I was in a well regarded school where pretty much everyone was an idiot. But they were born to successful people and most of them are now successful adults. Firm a proof as any that merit is either not the norm or completely doesn't exist. Still, I think more of an effort should be made to improve US urban public schools. I don't know what the answer is. It's surely very complex. I am not a specialist.
majormajor 6y ago
> Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years. What would they be bitter about? The suburbs of "thriving" cities are "thriving" in basically exactly the same way as the city centers are. Even in the extreme examples like the Bay Area, the crazy SF prices haven't stopped prices in Mountain View from also going nuts.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The Bay Area is a bit of a special case in that a lot of the big tech employers (especially) are in the 'burbs--which, sorry, is what SV is. Yet you don't really escape urban housing pricing anyway. By contrast, the Boston area for example you can get to significantly cheaper (though not exactly cheap) housing out where a lot of the, especially local, tech employers are. Things have shifted more towards the city in recent years but a lot of tech is still 30-45 minutes outside the city.
jjoonathan 6y ago
> Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years. Yeah, that would be me. Paying a King's ransom to rent a hovel in an urban desert isn't my idea of fun. It would probably be OK if I did 100% of my work on a laptop, but with hobbies / side-hustles that involve physical equipment and space, an apartment isn't just dismal, it's stifling. Renting tools is like renting an apartment: high cost, low quality. I'm counting the days until I can escape.
- cosmie 6y ago
  This hits a nerve for me, too. I didn't particularly mind or even notice the constraints when I was renting closer to the city. But for the equivalent rent and at the cost of a longer commute, I traded up to renting a house in the suburbs a few years ago. It's been so freeing. If I'm working on something late or at odd hours, I don't have even have to think about the the noise impact on my neighbors[1]. Same with music - if I want to enjoy it, I just can. Simple as that; no more mental triage list of precisely where I listen to it so as to have the least impact on the inhabitants of any adjoining units, scrambling if the song changes to one with far more bass and I need to suddenly adjust things, or copping out of those mental gymnastics by settling with headphones after having already had them on for most of the day at work. I've also got similar hobbies/interests/side-hustles as you, that involve accumulation and use of physical equipment and tooling. I've been able to really dive into those areas far more since I don't have to be hyper aware of spacial efficiency. Without even being fully cognizant of it, I had spent years minimizing how much attention I gave to those areas of interests while maximizing towards things that either had minimal physical prerequisites or leveraged things that both wouldn't cause a disturbance to the others living adjacent to me while also being multi-purpose enough to justify making space for it. Before moving, it didn't really both me as I wasn't particularly cognizant of the many mental micro-checks I had accumulated organically over the years to ensure my behavior aligned with the noise, space, and practicality constraints of urban living. But now that I've been able to let those go, there's no way I could go back unless I somehow hit it big and suddenly become able to afford the astronomical price of urban living with the suburban luxuries of space and isolation. Anything short of that would now just leave me feeling constantly stifled and constrained at home. [1] My neighborhood is packed in pretty tightly on small lots, so still have to be somewhat conscientious of noise impact on neighbors. But sound is sufficiently buffered that I can do pretty much whatever I like whenever I like without having to even think about whether doing so would disturb the neighbors. It's worlds apart from urban living, where SFHs are rare and you're more than likely to have at least one adjoining wall with a neighbor, and potentially have five "outer" walls all adjoining different neighbors.
scythe 6y ago
>I personally feel strongly in the other direction. We had the infamous "white flight" and car-centric communities and life. Getting out of car-centrism doesn't require everyone to live in large cities. Small cities with good design can be more than enough. Living in a dense arrangement might be more tolerable for many people in a small city where the countryside is more accessible.
- asveikau 6y ago
  Thank you, that's an excellent point. We (meaning often times me) have a tendency to think about the extremes as on/off. I have personally passed through a lot of pleasant, walkable small towns in the US, mostly they were laid out in the 19th century and often along a train line or river.
gowld 6y ago
What pendulum swing? The suburbs and exurbs aren't emptying out.
closeparen 6y ago
How does the pendulum affect you?
spamizbad 6y ago
Here's the thing about suburbs and exurbs: Even if everyone loved them, the problem is few people can afford to move into them. They discourage construction of rental supply and prefer either single family homes or... higher-end condominiums. So if you want to live in these communities you need to be able and willing to buy property. People aren't typically at this stage until they're secure in their careers and have partnered up. These days that's people well into their 30s (and maybe 40s). The notion that a bunch of 28 year old single people making $30,000-$50,000/yr while paying down student loans are going to be rushing out to the suburbs to buy homes[1] because of COVID or "social unrest" seems unlikely. [1] Which, incidentally, tend to be fairly large since municipalities discourage smaller "starter home" construction.

chrisco255 6y ago

Does denser living really matter if most of the business and professional jobs go remote? The traffic in my city (Austin) has plummeted dramatically since before Covid.

asveikau 6y ago
I believe there is economic research that says increases in density are correlated with larger increases in productivity. I also think the environmental cost is lower, for example if you're not burning fossel fuels in single occupant SUVs in order to do everything. My personal experience is also that avoiding that last part is good for your health, physical fitness and stress.
kasey_junk 6y ago
I’ve been a remote worker far longer than Covid and live in a dense (for the US) area. For me the density value comes from things that specifically can’t go remote. Having parks, beaches, produce shops, restaurants, schools and friends in walking distance is the value. Covid has proven those things can’t be replicated online.
- jackcosgrove 6y ago
  If you have children it's not as if you can move anywhere even if your job allows it. Moving is traumatic for children and the places you can move to are those with adequate schools. The benefits of remote working are largely lost on those with children.
  - kasey_junk 6y ago
    I have a child. I live where I live specifically for the school and I don’t want to move. Remote work dramatically increases my opportunities in my current location.
    - jackcosgrove 6y ago
      Right remote work can increase opportunities, but I should have said the mobility advantages are mostly lost on families.

treeman79 6y ago

Kids change mindset. Kids love yards. They love the little creek that runs past. I love the safety. Small neighborhood, we all know each other and look out for the kids that run around playing.

asveikau 6y ago
Everyone says this, as if none of us who advocate for urban life understand having kids. I have two kids. Also, they raise plenty of kids in other countries where they haven't oriented life around suburbs. Also, this was more true in the United States before white flight, and the US raised plenty of healthy kids then. So I don't think the kid thing makes as much sense as they say. But the state of US school systems does make the urban kid raising thing needlessly expensive for many.
- sharadov 6y ago
  The big difference is in other countries schools are not as bad as they are in cities in the US. Not a lot of countries have this huge divide of urban vs suburban culture. In America, you move to the suburbs to die.
- jackcosgrove 6y ago
  Violence and distracting behavior in schools are bad. But school scores, prestige, etc. don't matter as much as most people think. Your home environment matters more than the school. High achieving magnets and wealthy suburban schools are that way because of the selection profile for students, not because the school itself is transformative.
  - asveikau 6y ago
    Having exposure to high status schools in my own childhood, I agree 100% with your last sentence, that was one of the most important lessons I learned growing up, to completely ignore pedigree. I was in a well regarded school where pretty much everyone was an idiot. But they were born to successful people and most of them are now successful adults. Firm a proof as any that merit is either not the norm or completely doesn't exist. Still, I think more of an effort should be made to improve US urban public schools. I don't know what the answer is. It's surely very complex. I am not a specialist.

majormajor 6y ago

> Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years. What would they be bitter about? The suburbs of "thriving" cities are "thriving" in basically exactly the same way as the city centers are. Even in the extreme examples like the Bay Area, the crazy SF prices haven't stopped prices in Mountain View from also going nuts.

ghaff 6y ago
The Bay Area is a bit of a special case in that a lot of the big tech employers (especially) are in the 'burbs--which, sorry, is what SV is. Yet you don't really escape urban housing pricing anyway. By contrast, the Boston area for example you can get to significantly cheaper (though not exactly cheap) housing out where a lot of the, especially local, tech employers are. Things have shifted more towards the city in recent years but a lot of tech is still 30-45 minutes outside the city.

jjoonathan 6y ago

> Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years. Yeah, that would be me. Paying a King's ransom to rent a hovel in an urban desert isn't my idea of fun. It would probably be OK if I did 100% of my work on a laptop, but with hobbies / side-hustles that involve physical equipment and space, an apartment isn't just dismal, it's stifling. Renting tools is like renting an apartment: high cost, low quality. I'm counting the days until I can escape.

cosmie 6y ago
This hits a nerve for me, too. I didn't particularly mind or even notice the constraints when I was renting closer to the city. But for the equivalent rent and at the cost of a longer commute, I traded up to renting a house in the suburbs a few years ago. It's been so freeing. If I'm working on something late or at odd hours, I don't have even have to think about the the noise impact on my neighbors[1]. Same with music - if I want to enjoy it, I just can. Simple as that; no more mental triage list of precisely where I listen to it so as to have the least impact on the inhabitants of any adjoining units, scrambling if the song changes to one with far more bass and I need to suddenly adjust things, or copping out of those mental gymnastics by settling with headphones after having already had them on for most of the day at work. I've also got similar hobbies/interests/side-hustles as you, that involve accumulation and use of physical equipment and tooling. I've been able to really dive into those areas far more since I don't have to be hyper aware of spacial efficiency. Without even being fully cognizant of it, I had spent years minimizing how much attention I gave to those areas of interests while maximizing towards things that either had minimal physical prerequisites or leveraged things that both wouldn't cause a disturbance to the others living adjacent to me while also being multi-purpose enough to justify making space for it. Before moving, it didn't really both me as I wasn't particularly cognizant of the many mental micro-checks I had accumulated organically over the years to ensure my behavior aligned with the noise, space, and practicality constraints of urban living. But now that I've been able to let those go, there's no way I could go back unless I somehow hit it big and suddenly become able to afford the astronomical price of urban living with the suburban luxuries of space and isolation. Anything short of that would now just leave me feeling constantly stifled and constrained at home. [1] My neighborhood is packed in pretty tightly on small lots, so still have to be somewhat conscientious of noise impact on neighbors. But sound is sufficiently buffered that I can do pretty much whatever I like whenever I like without having to even think about whether doing so would disturb the neighbors. It's worlds apart from urban living, where SFHs are rare and you're more than likely to have at least one adjoining wall with a neighbor, and potentially have five "outer" walls all adjoining different neighbors.

scythe 6y ago

>I personally feel strongly in the other direction. We had the infamous "white flight" and car-centric communities and life. Getting out of car-centrism doesn't require everyone to live in large cities. Small cities with good design can be more than enough. Living in a dense arrangement might be more tolerable for many people in a small city where the countryside is more accessible.

asveikau 6y ago
Thank you, that's an excellent point. We (meaning often times me) have a tendency to think about the extremes as on/off. I have personally passed through a lot of pleasant, walkable small towns in the US, mostly they were laid out in the 19th century and often along a train line or river.

gowld 6y ago

What pendulum swing? The suburbs and exurbs aren't emptying out.

closeparen 6y ago

How does the pendulum affect you?

spamizbad 6y ago

Here's the thing about suburbs and exurbs: Even if everyone loved them, the problem is few people can afford to move into them. They discourage construction of rental supply and prefer either single family homes or... higher-end condominiums. So if you want to live in these communities you need to be able and willing to buy property. People aren't typically at this stage until they're secure in their careers and have partnered up. These days that's people well into their 30s (and maybe 40s). The notion that a bunch of 28 year old single people making $30,000-$50,000/yr while paying down student loans are going to be rushing out to the suburbs to buy homes[1] because of COVID or "social unrest" seems unlikely. [1] Which, incidentally, tend to be fairly large since municipalities discourage smaller "starter home" construction.