16 ms·

Revenge of the Suburbs

59 points by prostoalex 6y ago

jseliger 6y ago
Is the pandemic, or is it the fact that exclusionary zoning has dramatically raised the cost of housing in many cities: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/new-hsieh-moretti-paper-land-use-restrictions-economic-growth.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/ne..., and those costs are only worth bearing if the cultural and social amenities are also available? Without liberalizing urban zoning, it's hard to say.
- mmm_grayons 6y ago
  Preferences are almost certainly a factor. I live in Houston, where we don't have zoning, yet it's specifically cited (and I can confirm) that the vast majority of residents live in suburbs. The article itself acknowledges that, "Americans have been running away from dense, vertical design for a century." People don't want to live in small spaces with close neighbors, or at least, I don't. I don't see the appeal of going to a restaurant on foot given that I never (or very seldom) eat out. Same thing for coffee. I don't shop except for occasional online purchases, and never "go shopping" as many are wont to do. Just about the only things I do are go to the office (which was at least partially virtual, even before corona) and occasionally drive to a business function or symphony performance. Living in an urban area simply holds no appeal for me, or at least, I don't see any appeal. While I can't be sure as to everyone's reasons, it appears others may feel similarly. As an aside, the article refers to "the suburban wine room." I have yet to see someone with a "wine room"; is this commonplace? A regional difference, perhaps? It also refers to "his-and-hers walk-in closets"; I don't know any guy with his own walk-in closet excepting those that live in apartments that came with one.
  - mrep 6y ago
    Speaking from a wealthy Chicago suburb here, wine rooms are decently common assuming they are talking about a room dedicated to storing wine (usually underneath your basement staircase). My parents also have separate walk in closets.
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  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    > I live in Houston, where we don't have zoning, yet it's specifically cited (and I can confirm) that the vast majority of residents live in suburbs. Houston doesn't have explicit zoning, which is true, but this doesn't mean that it's necessarily any easier to build dense housing if that's what the market demands. - Deed restrictions effectively work as zoning by limiting what a given parcel can't be developed into, and they are city enforced; this restricts dense development, particularly in wealthy, high-amenity, high-convenience neighborhoods that might otherwise be more densely developed by natural forces. - While Houston does not prohibit land uses anywhere, it does mandate a minimum amount of parking for various types of land uses and lot sizes. Mandated parking will drive up the cost of dense development because the minimums are set very high, and it means you either have to give over valuable floor space for parking, you have to build very expensive underground or structured parking, or a combination of the two. By indirectly driving up the cost of dense development, minimum parking regulations makes less of it pencil out. If dense living was not in demand and undersupplied (which I believe it is), dense apartments would not fetch more per sq ft than a house in a low density suburb, at least not successfully.
    - marcusverus 6y ago
      >While Houston does not prohibit land uses anywhere, it does mandate a minimum amount of parking for various types of land uses and lot sizes. This is an absolute necessity in Houston. It is the 4th largest city in the US and has almost no public transportation. Building an apartment that houses 1000 adults guarantees that 1000 cars that will need to be parked nearby. Building dense housing without parking in Houston would create painful externalities for everyone on the vicinity, in a more pronounced way than any similarly sized US city.
      - hibikir 6y ago
        If your apartment building will not be attractive without two dedicated parking spots per bedroom, the government doesn’t have to say a thing: A builder will not want to make an unprofitable building with insufficient parking. The trick here is that many of the rules are designed for maximum possible need, leading to a sea of lots that are never actually full. It’s silly to build all strip mallS with parking lots that will be comfortable in Black Friday if every store has a major holiday sales bias. Building too much parking also has painful externalities, as walking, even from store to store, becomes problematic, and maintenance for those oversized lots is not free. It’s just that those externalities are legislated in as the status quo, so they are invisible unless you look somewhere else.
  - laingc 6y ago
    I don’t live in the US, but I’m in the same boat. I vastly prefer my suburb to the central city. I have great neighbours, who I only have to see when I want to. I have everything I could need or want. What am I missing out on by not being in the city centre? Shows? I don’t go to them. Restaurants? I have a dog with separation anxiety and a 4mo daughter - I’m not going to any restaurants. Street festivals? Spare me. Art and modern “culture”? Thanks, but no thanks. I’m perfectly happy for other people to pack themselves into noisy, cramped apartments if they like, I just don’t understand why the HN crowd seems to automatically assume that’s what I should want. Suburbs are great. Long may they continue.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      I think a lot of it comes down to how you feel about cars/driving. driving in a dense city is an awful experience, but you can probably walk or take public transit to most of the places you need to be in a given week. driving in a rural area can be lovely, and you're gonna have to do it to get anywhere. driving in a suburb is not as bad as driving in the city, but imo it's still a pretty unenjoyable experience, and you need to do it to get most places. I personally love driving, but I'd rather not drive at all than have a bad driving experience. I live in a city and (in normal times) work in a suburb ~20 miles away. my commute is pretty painless; it's just a straight shot down the interstate in the opposite direction of most other people. but once I get there, it's amazing how unpleasant it is to drive around in a place that was built from the ground up to accommodate cars. even the shortest trips involve driving to a highway, traveling on it for one or two exits, then getting off and driving to your destination. I have no idea how people get around on bikes there. there are several shopping centers that are only connected by a limited access highway. I often joke that in that suburb, no trip takes more than fifteen minutes by car, but none are shorter either.
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    Typically wine rooms and walk-in closets (of any type) are found in the much newer and very expensive (or moderately expensive, but very far away) suburban neighborhoods. I live on the outskirts of a midwestern city and only know a couple people who live in such homes. Though I'm not from a wealthy background, so most of my family and friends (even in the suburbs) are in 1000-2000 sq ft houses where sometimes a 2nd bathroom is a nice amenity. But we do have (usually unfinished) basements here which add at least a few hundred square feet of utility space to a house. I couldn't imagine life without one!
    - closeparen 6y ago
      You tend to see these in apartment complexes when the floorplan doesn't tile well and there are awkward shapes left over. Boom! Walk in closet.
  - greggman3 6y ago
    I don't know which I prefer. I think I'd prefer to be filthy rich and have a house or penthouse in the city haha. But, I grew up in the suburbs and now live in the city. I love both. I love that there are interesting places to walk to, coffee shops, bakeries, bars, restaurants, book stores, etc... but I miss the freedoms of my suburban childhood like a yard to play in, a garage for power tools and bikes, being able to be loud indoors at all hours, being able to have house parties or even just entertain 2-4 friends at any time of the day or night without annoying the neighbors, block parties, and even just knowing my neighbors well. Yes, I suppose I could do that in an apartment building but maybe because we live so close we don't want to know each other :P
blahbhthrow3748 6y ago
I live in a small semi-detached house that's walkable to the downtown of our city. I can bike to dozens different places to get take-out, we have a small private back garden where we can host guests, and we have enough space for two of us to work from home in privacy. We also actually see our neighbors outside every evening when we walk around. There's definitely an in-between, medium density option that this article seems to ignore in favor of focusing on car-focused, isolated suburbs where everyone had 5 bedrooms and a pool.
- mason55 6y ago
  That’s exactly what I want except where I am the schools are all awful for any area with houses like that. So either move to car-centric suburbs or add another $20k+ per year to send two kids to decent private schools.
  - kgermino 6y ago
    I obviously can’t speak for the country as a whole, but at least in Milwaukee the schools in those areas are often fine to great, it’s the “school report cards” that are terrible. The number one predictor of a school’s rating is the average income of its parents. Broadly speaking a rich kid at a mid-tier school will do just as well as a rich kid in a “good” school. City schools have poor kids and lower average test scores, but I don’t know anyone who chose the city schools by me and has regretted it.
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    - bradlys 6y ago
      > Broadly speaking a rich kid at a mid-tier school will do just as well as a rich kid in a “good” school. This is somewhat true but it's missing a component I didn't realize was as important - you're getting relationships/networking even at these "good" schools. I know that sounds stupid but being around people of high socioeconomic status helps you learn unspoken signals and norms. On top of that - your peers will likely be going into high paying professions and will be able to help you make your way into that profession as well. Some people I know who went to these rich kid schools are happy that they did because it helped them. I rarely meet people who were like, "Yeah, going to that rich kid school was pointless. It had literally no effect on my life." I used to think I could just parent/teach my way out of any shit school and then I've watched my friends have kids. There's too much social stuff that can't be made up for by parents. I'd be especially wary of putting a kid in a poor school. If you go to a poor school (rated or, especially, funded) then you will have to put in a lot more effort as a parent to get satisfactory results - and likely your kid will lose all childhood friendships as they age. People in poor schools frequently don't break out. If you're putting in the effort or your child is just generally exceptional then they'll break out... Which means they're leaving everyone behind and forging a path that none of their peers have done. It makes for an isolated experience and a really difficult one. If you've done it - great, you can help your kid but is that enjoyable? The programs for children who would be average or above average at a good school frequently don't exist at poor schools. Think AP courses, college credit, computer classes, advanced math and english, foreign language options, etc. I know because I had to go to a school that could only afford 4 days a week and that had to cut almost every elective. I've stayed in contact with no one from that region because... well, there's not much of a point. I haven't spoken to anyone from that school in close to 10 or so years and I'm not even 30. That said - if you or your kid has no large ambitions or only ones that /somehow/ don't rely on any social components at all then it doesn't matter.
curuinor 6y ago
Every East Asian polity with 50-story soulless concrete apartment buildings is in the middle of successfully beating it back, so really American cities are _not dense enough_
- greggman3 6y ago
  Yes, it sure is confusing why say NYC had a times 5000-6000 new cases a day and yet Tokyo, a city with 2-3x more people and way more crowded trains and offices and stores never had more than 200 a day. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en People come up with all kinds of theories but none of them seem to fit. One theory, Japanese wear masks. They didn't until the lockdown which was late. They've mostly unlocked now and restaurants seem relatively busy. Of course (almost) everyone is still wearing a mask and lots of precautions are in place but at a glance seeing the still crowded trains and now crowded restaurants it's hard to figure out why the numbers stay so low. Some people claim not enough testing but if that's all it was there would still be a death rate climb and arguably an ICU overflow and that hasn't happened either.
  - unishark 6y ago
    The fraction of positives has also been very low in Japan. Considering they have largely stuck with their restrictions on test access, this means people with fever and such symptoms are still mostly due to other reasons, despite being deep in summer now when such things are uncommon. I have been puzzling over the Japan situation from the beginning. They go against a lot of narrative about why the US got so bad. People would wave them off with conspiracy theories about the Olympics. We definitely need some much better survey data.
    - novok 6y ago
      They are a healthier (%3 obese vs %30 obese), quieter, less touchy (ex: bow vs handshake, no hugs, etc) & cleaner (ex: no shoes in the house) base population with mask wearing that probably don't meet up in large groups nowadays other than school. While the poorer population of America is probably not that fit compared to the richer, which is why your seeing more of them dying probably.
jmspring 6y ago
Bay Area born and raised, left 3.5 years ago. Grew up in the East Bay in the mid/late 80s and was fortunate to get to run around from Pleasanton to Oakland/Berkeley and the city (SF). Traffic wasn't that bad. Went to UC Santa Cruz for college (BA/BS -> ABD w/ MS in Comp Eng) and still was lucky to get up and enjoy things through the 90s. 2000s rolled around, traffic increased, going to the city (SF) wasn't as fun. The influx of people changed the nature of long time favorites (many no longer around. That influx and the increase in population has seen long time restaurants close (rezoning - especially in places like Mountain View. The HN take is "more density", "do away with rules", but there is a lack of respect for the history, the restaurants and markets pushed out because FB needed yet another low density campus off of El Camino and Rengstorff. From the late 90s through the 2000s, the Bay Area changed. The influx of people from other areas, the demands of tech, etc have ruined it - at least for me. A side interest is preserving history, and Santa Clara County is pretty gungho about making sure most of that is buried due to the mighty dollar. Where I am now, it's a place. It's not home for the future, but in the mountains, mostly quiet, and I have fiber. I'm privileged in that regard. And my job allows for such.
- laurencerowe 6y ago
  That influx of people into the Bay Area has been fairly steady at ~1 million per decade since 1940.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  When it comes to the economy and housing, I've heard it phrased as "Growth, affordability, preservation: pick two". So, in contrast to your post, I believe what has really destroyed the character of many cities is not that they've grown or had lots of outsiders move in (that's been going on forever when it comes to cities), but that restrictive zoning has made housing so expensive that a diverse range of incomes can no longer afford to live there. If anything, making it extremely difficult to tear down a dilapidated laundromat to build more housing because that laundromat has been deemed "historic" is what is changing the character of cities for the worst.
- advertiser 6y ago
  Now this is just an opinion and no doubt others will disagree but I think a very similar thing is happening or has already happened in Seattle. The dynamics have been driven by "tech", namely you-know-who, named after rainforest in South America nd their newly-minted cloud computing competitors. Influx of people from other areas, both within US and international. "More density" and "do away with rules". Another comment in this thread actually proposes the high rents are being driven by zoning. I find that hard to swallow. People in both commercial and residential real estate tell us about demand that is by and large coming from one general source: "tech". This is what has driven the rates higher. I do not want to sound like another person looking to take jabs at the tech industry however I think some of the folks coming into these places for these jobs lack a certain appreciation for what makes these places special. To put it bluntly their standards are lower. The market has reponded and is giving them want they want; the number of city residences being built for rainforest workers is staggering. Yet I think we are losing something in the process and I am not sure the people moving in really have an appreciation for what is being lost. We cannot expect them to as they are new to the area.
ACow_Adonis 6y ago
I live in an 80 sqm apartment within walking distance of our city core. Its a historical mix of new medium-rise apartments, old Victorians, and workers cottages with several public transport lines running through it. Traffic is currently limited to 30kmh on my streets. What the shut-downs has revealed to me is not "the revenge" of the suburbs, but a foisting of suburban lifestyle onto us against our will. Our libraries were shut, our museums, our parks, our shops, our pools. There was no option to accept or manage the risks locally. Its important to remember, the disease didn't do this to us, this was a political response to it, which is a policy choice, not a certainty. Meanwhile, the centres of suburban life were left comparatively untouched: shopping malls, big corporate supermarkets, etc, and people drove there and mixed and shopped almost like there was no pandemic. Again, the disease didn't do this, people did. policy did. In my city, where have the clusters of the disease have been: suburbs. some of that is definitely due to the shutting of the city, but policy has been enacted under the assumption that suburban life is the only life. We just had a slight tightening of conditions because of a (very small) rise in cases: why? two reasons, putting returning travellers in cbd hotels as part of quarantine, and parties and socialising amongst known infected cases in... you guessed it, suburbia. Apparently, because of this, cafes and businesses in the inner city need to be further restrained for another 3 weeks. for me, the pandemic simply accentuated everything wrong with the suburban lifestyle (because I'm now forced to live it while my facilities are shut) and I'll continue to wait and lobby for the return of our actual (and personally, better) life.
- babesh 6y ago
  Is the disease here city politics and government? Suburban governments seem more responsive to citizenry?
  - ACow_Adonis 6y ago
    I think this may be a US political thing. there's no love of local politics here, but I'm not aware of any feeling that suburban/urban councils/local area governments are inherently superior/inferior to the others. though (obviously?) I like the services my local government provides, here transport, health and education are state level decisions...
dangus 6y ago
This is just another article that covers far too many topics all at once. It says a lot while saying nothing. And all the articles about COVID-19 will look silly in 3-5 years when it’s entirely not a concern. Predicting which aspects of life will stick as “the new normal” is a fools errand. All the benefits of suburbia in the article are essentially negated by the drawbacks that the article mentions: suburbia sucks wealth away because the infrastructure costs too much to sustain. There really isn’t any way to get around that huge flaw.
- radomysisky 6y ago
  > suburbia sucks wealth away because the infrastructure costs too much to sustain While cost to sustain is relatively static, the price homeowners are willing to endure for the upsides of suburbia are dynamic. In a world plagued by pandemics and social unrest, that price continues to rise. Remote work will only accelerate this trend.
  - dangus 6y ago
    It sucks wealth away because American towns have an addiction to using bond money to pay for infrastructure maintenance - infrastructure that will need to be replaced again before the bond is paid off. They also have a habit of greenlighting development where the builders pay to build the roads and sewers that the town then takes over long term maintenance for, without accounting for the wealth generation of those properties being unable to pay for them. Part 3 of “the growth Ponzi scheme” illustrates this well: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/15/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-part-3.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/15/the-growth-pon... Now, I also wouldn’t take Stong Towns as gospel but it’s not hard to look around and find crumbling American suburbs. Even the “nice” suburbs are drowning in debt despite good appearances. And now, you’ve got millennials who are figuring out that no, they don’t need to own two cars (debt on wheels) and hoard stuff like their parents did. Millennials are urbanizing at a rapid rate and it is not slowing down since they aren’t universally moving to the suburbs once they have (a smaller quantity of) kids like their parents did. The boomer generation grew up in an era of crime-laden cities that simply doesn’t exist anymore and may never again exist. Without the inner city crime of previous decades one has to ask what suburban life actually gets you in comparison.
vmception 6y ago
tl;dr people have been independently railing on the suburbs for centuries, but because they don't all live in dense urban environments they don't know what they are talking about? or because the good thing about cities was removed and now suburbs compensate by being the exact same drab places as they were, but nothing more alluring exists currently? what people like about cities, and what they hate about suburbs still exists. the former will just have to be read about in a book.
nine_k 6y ago
The problem is that the US have very few real dense cities, like what they call a city in Europe. That is, densely packed population, densely packed businesses, walkability, adequate public transportation that covers the entire area, all the things that allow an urbanite to comfortably live without owning a car, and streets are not very car-friendly anyway. What are these cities? NYC (not only Manhattan but everywhere the subway + buses reach), Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Seattle. Maybe a few others with some reservations, like Washington DC or SF. I have hard time seeing places like Houston or LA as "cities" in the same sense; they have small downtowns and huge suburb-like agglomerations around them, where you are either inside your house, or inside a car. Silicon Valley seems to largely lack cities, except the ailing SF. If you want to see what a functioning large city looks like, visit NYC, or London, or Amsterdam, or Moscow, or Shanghai, or Singapore. [Edited: spelling]
- bane 6y ago
  I think your points are good, but not everyplace needs to be a high functioning mega city. Better design can make better places, even in the surburbs. It doesn't even have to be new design. I'm reminded of places like Reston, Virginia which was designed specifically for most of the things you mention, but is also decidedly suburban. There's an urban core, but most homes are reasonably walkable to some local shopping or some other major amenity. It was also designed as an enclosed area, to contain substantial commercial and office areas, and a mix of densities and housing types so that it might be possible to both live and work within the same environment. I don't think it's "hard" but it has to be purposeful. Too many areas in the U.S. are built by developers who dump the development once the human units are moved in and have no stake in long-term governance of the area.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    Yes, I'm not advocating to turn every place into a city. I just try to note that bona fide "city experience" is not very widely available in the US, and many places that people consider "cities" are dubiously so.
- brnt 6y ago
  I've lived in Amsterdam for a decade, which I affectionately call the largest village I've ever lived. The Netherlands has no cities of 1M+, yet is one of the densest countries in the world. How? Its quite multi centered. There's a lot of 50-500k towns in close vicinity, each with their own facilities and economies. Because of proximity they're of course not independent, but they're definitely not suburbs. There are towns you could say are suburbs, where people usually commute by car, but somehow they're not nearly as car exclusive of American suburbs. Maybe its worth a closer look at this.
bane 6y ago
Like anyplace, suburbs can be great or suck. My last home (detached house) was a in very suburban mega development (about 20k people), but was walking distance to public transit (commuter bus), movies, gym, library, doctors, grocery, dentists, something like 15 different restaurants from fast food to high-end, coffee shop, and so on. It has something like 20 miles of trials, lots of green space, pools and so on. It wasn't a "downtown" but a designed commercial space in the middle of the development that made it pretty nice to live there. Anywhere outside of the development was decidedly not walkable, but not a terrible drive. While sections have very similar looking houses, there's lot of mixed sections with entirely different architecture making it not too boring. I moved a couple years ago to a new place further in towards a major city, but in another, but much older, mega development (about 60k people). It's higher/mixed density. There's a city bus a 2-3 minute walk from my detached house which connects to the subway, I can walk to work (it's about 3 miles away) and a bit of shopping and dining within a couple easy 2 mile walks. There's several shopping areas scattered around, pools, and so on, and a reasonably large and growing urban core maybe 4 miles away, I usually drive to it, but I could probably take the bus. It was also designed with intense tree cover in mind and most of the area is absolutely bursting in mature trees and nature (including wildlife!). There's also an extensive trail system that provides relatively easy transit around all this stuff for walkers, hikers, bikers, and so on. Homes were built in an impossible number of styles in a wide mix of densities. My point is, suburbs can be great places to live. Just like there are terrible suburbs, there's terrible urban areas as well -- not everywhere is Manhattan or San Francisco. But it doesn't mean they all suck. There's definitely a movement to make these areas more livable and to learn lessons from the past.
jackcosgrove 6y ago
The article itself states that a majority of the US population lives in suburbs, and a supermajority lives in suburban built environments, in central city and suburbs alike. How could living in the suburbs be so terrible if a supermajority of people live in detached single family homes in residential neighborhoods with suburban style zoning? Are all of these people imprisoned against their will?
- Drunk_Engineer 6y ago
  In many cases, they are "imprisoned" against their will because zoning does not permit any other kind of development. The other problem is they are not paying the full cost of the suburban lifestyle. It is only sustainable through huge government subsidies.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    I saw the ad from real estate developer who subdivided my neighborhood. They made a big deal that only 50 foot lots were for sale, No 25 Foot Lots! That was 100 years ago. So were living with bad idea's from decades ago. A lot of which was written into codes. Flips side of bad zoning you can look at old pictures of Pittsburgh when the steel mills were going full tilt. I can't figure out how anyone got any sleep. https://www.shorpy.com/node/25168 https://www.shorpy.com/node/25168
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    > The other problem is they are not paying the full cost of the suburban lifestyle. It is only sustainable through huge government subsidies. They're paying for it with taxes right? Or are the minority of people living in dense cities paying these huge subsidies for the supermajority in the suburbs?
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > Are all of these people imprisoned against their will? that's a bit of a dramatic way of putting it, but I think something like that is going on. two big reasons why americans like to live in suburbs are crime and schools. I don't think there's any inherent reason why crime and schools have to be worse in the city, but they usually are.
screye 6y ago
> But America is not South Korea or Singapore. Americans have been running away from dense, vertical design for a century. Those who already prefer sparse, low-slung living will likely use their fear of COVID-19 to entrench their preference. More like Americans were sold a very particular dream of sparse living by car companies that later solidified with the racist/practical implications of how inner cities were perceived. Also, it isn't just SK or Singapore. European cities tend to abhor sprawl as well. In some sense, it unique to the US and countries that culturally draw from the same ford-American dream. > The pandemic will improve suburban life, perhaps in lasting ways The idea that suburbs are resilient to the pandemic because of the unsustainable lack of shared spaces and inherent isolation is hilarious to me. Historically speaking, this is a once in a century thing. It won't and should not affect how generation defining decisions are made. Full disclosure, there are very few things I hate as much as American suburbs and urban sprawl. But, those who dislike dense American cities often seem to dislike things that have nothing to do with the density in the first place. The crime caused by inner cities is a result of white flight and racially driven policing of the last 50 years. The dead looking cityscape of some dense cities are a result of terrible urban planning. (American Urban design is known to be sub-par. Most European cities with similar constraints have implemented better and more practical solutions) Chasing naive single minded goals such as "more density" or "more bike lanes" is not what freedom from suburbia looks like. Well thought-out urban design ends up being dense, with public transportation infrastructure and bike/walking friendly. But adding any of those things hap-hazardly to an old system that clearly was not designed to support it is stupidity. Hopefully people understand that it doesn't have to be a choice between thoughtless dense urban development and Suburbia. There are other proven options out there.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > European cities tend to abhor sprawl as well. In some sense, it unique to the US and countries that culturally draw from the same ford-American dream. That's absolutely not my experience in Germany. If they can afford it, plenty of people move to the edge of the city or a bit outside it. They want access to the city, but they also want a spacious garden and quiet neighbors and don't need to live "in the middle of it" when they have children (or, at least in my peer group, even when they don't have children but are approaching 40).
hbosch 6y ago
I have a daughter and a baby boy on the way. A few years ago we moved to a suburb (a ferry ride away and then some, not Bainbridge) of Seattle, and I'm glad we did. The commute is pretty long when I have to go into the office, but thanks(?) to COVID my employer now has a true WFH-friendly infrastructure and a management team that no longer fears remote productivity. I love gardening and walking down to a relatively quiet waterfront, my little downtown, and seeing my kids run around in the yard safely knowing we are far from the burning cop cars of Seattle just a few weeks ago. Living in Queen Anne isn't much different, it's just 10x more expensive and you have a couple more restaurants. We manage just fine.
- zhdc1 6y ago
  This COVID-19 induced remote work experiment has really been interesting. One of the unexpected outcomes of the IT/software revolution was just how much industry centralization (e.g., Silicon Valley, Seattle, and later San Francisco/Shanghai/Paris/etc...) impacted competitiveness & employee wages. It should have been the opposite - the diffusion of communication infrastructure (and information in general) should have made it easier for companies to outsource work to cheaper locations. This turned out to not be the case, at least in software, for a number of reasons - one of the main ones being that high performing employees on the whole prefer living in and around convenient urban locations. Now that everyone has had a taste of remote work, it will be interesting to see if this trend reverses.

59 points by prostoalex 6y ago

Is the pandemic, or is it the fact that exclusionary zoning has dramatically raised the cost of housing in many cities: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/new-hsieh-moretti-paper-land-use-restrictions-economic-growth.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/ne..., and those costs are only worth bearing if the cultural and social amenities are also available? Without liberalizing urban zoning, it's hard to say.

mmm_grayons 6y ago
Preferences are almost certainly a factor. I live in Houston, where we don't have zoning, yet it's specifically cited (and I can confirm) that the vast majority of residents live in suburbs. The article itself acknowledges that, "Americans have been running away from dense, vertical design for a century." People don't want to live in small spaces with close neighbors, or at least, I don't. I don't see the appeal of going to a restaurant on foot given that I never (or very seldom) eat out. Same thing for coffee. I don't shop except for occasional online purchases, and never "go shopping" as many are wont to do. Just about the only things I do are go to the office (which was at least partially virtual, even before corona) and occasionally drive to a business function or symphony performance. Living in an urban area simply holds no appeal for me, or at least, I don't see any appeal. While I can't be sure as to everyone's reasons, it appears others may feel similarly. As an aside, the article refers to "the suburban wine room." I have yet to see someone with a "wine room"; is this commonplace? A regional difference, perhaps? It also refers to "his-and-hers walk-in closets"; I don't know any guy with his own walk-in closet excepting those that live in apartments that came with one.
- mrep 6y ago
  Speaking from a wealthy Chicago suburb here, wine rooms are decently common assuming they are talking about a room dedicated to storing wine (usually underneath your basement staircase). My parents also have separate walk in closets.
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- bobthepanda 6y ago
  > I live in Houston, where we don't have zoning, yet it's specifically cited (and I can confirm) that the vast majority of residents live in suburbs. Houston doesn't have explicit zoning, which is true, but this doesn't mean that it's necessarily any easier to build dense housing if that's what the market demands. - Deed restrictions effectively work as zoning by limiting what a given parcel can't be developed into, and they are city enforced; this restricts dense development, particularly in wealthy, high-amenity, high-convenience neighborhoods that might otherwise be more densely developed by natural forces. - While Houston does not prohibit land uses anywhere, it does mandate a minimum amount of parking for various types of land uses and lot sizes. Mandated parking will drive up the cost of dense development because the minimums are set very high, and it means you either have to give over valuable floor space for parking, you have to build very expensive underground or structured parking, or a combination of the two. By indirectly driving up the cost of dense development, minimum parking regulations makes less of it pencil out. If dense living was not in demand and undersupplied (which I believe it is), dense apartments would not fetch more per sq ft than a house in a low density suburb, at least not successfully.
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    >While Houston does not prohibit land uses anywhere, it does mandate a minimum amount of parking for various types of land uses and lot sizes. This is an absolute necessity in Houston. It is the 4th largest city in the US and has almost no public transportation. Building an apartment that houses 1000 adults guarantees that 1000 cars that will need to be parked nearby. Building dense housing without parking in Houston would create painful externalities for everyone on the vicinity, in a more pronounced way than any similarly sized US city.
    - hibikir 6y ago
      If your apartment building will not be attractive without two dedicated parking spots per bedroom, the government doesn’t have to say a thing: A builder will not want to make an unprofitable building with insufficient parking. The trick here is that many of the rules are designed for maximum possible need, leading to a sea of lots that are never actually full. It’s silly to build all strip mallS with parking lots that will be comfortable in Black Friday if every store has a major holiday sales bias. Building too much parking also has painful externalities, as walking, even from store to store, becomes problematic, and maintenance for those oversized lots is not free. It’s just that those externalities are legislated in as the status quo, so they are invisible unless you look somewhere else.
- laingc 6y ago
  I don’t live in the US, but I’m in the same boat. I vastly prefer my suburb to the central city. I have great neighbours, who I only have to see when I want to. I have everything I could need or want. What am I missing out on by not being in the city centre? Shows? I don’t go to them. Restaurants? I have a dog with separation anxiety and a 4mo daughter - I’m not going to any restaurants. Street festivals? Spare me. Art and modern “culture”? Thanks, but no thanks. I’m perfectly happy for other people to pack themselves into noisy, cramped apartments if they like, I just don’t understand why the HN crowd seems to automatically assume that’s what I should want. Suburbs are great. Long may they continue.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I think a lot of it comes down to how you feel about cars/driving. driving in a dense city is an awful experience, but you can probably walk or take public transit to most of the places you need to be in a given week. driving in a rural area can be lovely, and you're gonna have to do it to get anywhere. driving in a suburb is not as bad as driving in the city, but imo it's still a pretty unenjoyable experience, and you need to do it to get most places. I personally love driving, but I'd rather not drive at all than have a bad driving experience. I live in a city and (in normal times) work in a suburb ~20 miles away. my commute is pretty painless; it's just a straight shot down the interstate in the opposite direction of most other people. but once I get there, it's amazing how unpleasant it is to drive around in a place that was built from the ground up to accommodate cars. even the shortest trips involve driving to a highway, traveling on it for one or two exits, then getting off and driving to your destination. I have no idea how people get around on bikes there. there are several shopping centers that are only connected by a limited access highway. I often joke that in that suburb, no trip takes more than fifteen minutes by car, but none are shorter either.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  Typically wine rooms and walk-in closets (of any type) are found in the much newer and very expensive (or moderately expensive, but very far away) suburban neighborhoods. I live on the outskirts of a midwestern city and only know a couple people who live in such homes. Though I'm not from a wealthy background, so most of my family and friends (even in the suburbs) are in 1000-2000 sq ft houses where sometimes a 2nd bathroom is a nice amenity. But we do have (usually unfinished) basements here which add at least a few hundred square feet of utility space to a house. I couldn't imagine life without one!
  - closeparen 6y ago
    You tend to see these in apartment complexes when the floorplan doesn't tile well and there are awkward shapes left over. Boom! Walk in closet.
- greggman3 6y ago
  I don't know which I prefer. I think I'd prefer to be filthy rich and have a house or penthouse in the city haha. But, I grew up in the suburbs and now live in the city. I love both. I love that there are interesting places to walk to, coffee shops, bakeries, bars, restaurants, book stores, etc... but I miss the freedoms of my suburban childhood like a yard to play in, a garage for power tools and bikes, being able to be loud indoors at all hours, being able to have house parties or even just entertain 2-4 friends at any time of the day or night without annoying the neighbors, block parties, and even just knowing my neighbors well. Yes, I suppose I could do that in an apartment building but maybe because we live so close we don't want to know each other :P

blahbhthrow3748 6y ago

I live in a small semi-detached house that's walkable to the downtown of our city. I can bike to dozens different places to get take-out, we have a small private back garden where we can host guests, and we have enough space for two of us to work from home in privacy. We also actually see our neighbors outside every evening when we walk around. There's definitely an in-between, medium density option that this article seems to ignore in favor of focusing on car-focused, isolated suburbs where everyone had 5 bedrooms and a pool.

mason55 6y ago
That’s exactly what I want except where I am the schools are all awful for any area with houses like that. So either move to car-centric suburbs or add another $20k+ per year to send two kids to decent private schools.
- kgermino 6y ago
  I obviously can’t speak for the country as a whole, but at least in Milwaukee the schools in those areas are often fine to great, it’s the “school report cards” that are terrible. The number one predictor of a school’s rating is the average income of its parents. Broadly speaking a rich kid at a mid-tier school will do just as well as a rich kid in a “good” school. City schools have poor kids and lower average test scores, but I don’t know anyone who chose the city schools by me and has regretted it.
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  - bradlys 6y ago
    > Broadly speaking a rich kid at a mid-tier school will do just as well as a rich kid in a “good” school. This is somewhat true but it's missing a component I didn't realize was as important - you're getting relationships/networking even at these "good" schools. I know that sounds stupid but being around people of high socioeconomic status helps you learn unspoken signals and norms. On top of that - your peers will likely be going into high paying professions and will be able to help you make your way into that profession as well. Some people I know who went to these rich kid schools are happy that they did because it helped them. I rarely meet people who were like, "Yeah, going to that rich kid school was pointless. It had literally no effect on my life." I used to think I could just parent/teach my way out of any shit school and then I've watched my friends have kids. There's too much social stuff that can't be made up for by parents. I'd be especially wary of putting a kid in a poor school. If you go to a poor school (rated or, especially, funded) then you will have to put in a lot more effort as a parent to get satisfactory results - and likely your kid will lose all childhood friendships as they age. People in poor schools frequently don't break out. If you're putting in the effort or your child is just generally exceptional then they'll break out... Which means they're leaving everyone behind and forging a path that none of their peers have done. It makes for an isolated experience and a really difficult one. If you've done it - great, you can help your kid but is that enjoyable? The programs for children who would be average or above average at a good school frequently don't exist at poor schools. Think AP courses, college credit, computer classes, advanced math and english, foreign language options, etc. I know because I had to go to a school that could only afford 4 days a week and that had to cut almost every elective. I've stayed in contact with no one from that region because... well, there's not much of a point. I haven't spoken to anyone from that school in close to 10 or so years and I'm not even 30. That said - if you or your kid has no large ambitions or only ones that /somehow/ don't rely on any social components at all then it doesn't matter.

curuinor 6y ago

Every East Asian polity with 50-story soulless concrete apartment buildings is in the middle of successfully beating it back, so really American cities are _not dense enough_

greggman3 6y ago
Yes, it sure is confusing why say NYC had a times 5000-6000 new cases a day and yet Tokyo, a city with 2-3x more people and way more crowded trains and offices and stores never had more than 200 a day. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en People come up with all kinds of theories but none of them seem to fit. One theory, Japanese wear masks. They didn't until the lockdown which was late. They've mostly unlocked now and restaurants seem relatively busy. Of course (almost) everyone is still wearing a mask and lots of precautions are in place but at a glance seeing the still crowded trains and now crowded restaurants it's hard to figure out why the numbers stay so low. Some people claim not enough testing but if that's all it was there would still be a death rate climb and arguably an ICU overflow and that hasn't happened either.
- unishark 6y ago
  The fraction of positives has also been very low in Japan. Considering they have largely stuck with their restrictions on test access, this means people with fever and such symptoms are still mostly due to other reasons, despite being deep in summer now when such things are uncommon. I have been puzzling over the Japan situation from the beginning. They go against a lot of narrative about why the US got so bad. People would wave them off with conspiracy theories about the Olympics. We definitely need some much better survey data.
  - novok 6y ago
    They are a healthier (%3 obese vs %30 obese), quieter, less touchy (ex: bow vs handshake, no hugs, etc) & cleaner (ex: no shoes in the house) base population with mask wearing that probably don't meet up in large groups nowadays other than school. While the poorer population of America is probably not that fit compared to the richer, which is why your seeing more of them dying probably.

jmspring 6y ago

Bay Area born and raised, left 3.5 years ago. Grew up in the East Bay in the mid/late 80s and was fortunate to get to run around from Pleasanton to Oakland/Berkeley and the city (SF). Traffic wasn't that bad. Went to UC Santa Cruz for college (BA/BS -> ABD w/ MS in Comp Eng) and still was lucky to get up and enjoy things through the 90s. 2000s rolled around, traffic increased, going to the city (SF) wasn't as fun. The influx of people changed the nature of long time favorites (many no longer around. That influx and the increase in population has seen long time restaurants close (rezoning - especially in places like Mountain View. The HN take is "more density", "do away with rules", but there is a lack of respect for the history, the restaurants and markets pushed out because FB needed yet another low density campus off of El Camino and Rengstorff. From the late 90s through the 2000s, the Bay Area changed. The influx of people from other areas, the demands of tech, etc have ruined it - at least for me. A side interest is preserving history, and Santa Clara County is pretty gungho about making sure most of that is buried due to the mighty dollar. Where I am now, it's a place. It's not home for the future, but in the mountains, mostly quiet, and I have fiber. I'm privileged in that regard. And my job allows for such.

laurencerowe 6y ago
That influx of people into the Bay Area has been fairly steady at ~1 million per decade since 1940.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
When it comes to the economy and housing, I've heard it phrased as "Growth, affordability, preservation: pick two". So, in contrast to your post, I believe what has really destroyed the character of many cities is not that they've grown or had lots of outsiders move in (that's been going on forever when it comes to cities), but that restrictive zoning has made housing so expensive that a diverse range of incomes can no longer afford to live there. If anything, making it extremely difficult to tear down a dilapidated laundromat to build more housing because that laundromat has been deemed "historic" is what is changing the character of cities for the worst.
advertiser 6y ago
Now this is just an opinion and no doubt others will disagree but I think a very similar thing is happening or has already happened in Seattle. The dynamics have been driven by "tech", namely you-know-who, named after rainforest in South America nd their newly-minted cloud computing competitors. Influx of people from other areas, both within US and international. "More density" and "do away with rules". Another comment in this thread actually proposes the high rents are being driven by zoning. I find that hard to swallow. People in both commercial and residential real estate tell us about demand that is by and large coming from one general source: "tech". This is what has driven the rates higher. I do not want to sound like another person looking to take jabs at the tech industry however I think some of the folks coming into these places for these jobs lack a certain appreciation for what makes these places special. To put it bluntly their standards are lower. The market has reponded and is giving them want they want; the number of city residences being built for rainforest workers is staggering. Yet I think we are losing something in the process and I am not sure the people moving in really have an appreciation for what is being lost. We cannot expect them to as they are new to the area.

ACow_Adonis 6y ago

I live in an 80 sqm apartment within walking distance of our city core. Its a historical mix of new medium-rise apartments, old Victorians, and workers cottages with several public transport lines running through it. Traffic is currently limited to 30kmh on my streets. What the shut-downs has revealed to me is not "the revenge" of the suburbs, but a foisting of suburban lifestyle onto us against our will. Our libraries were shut, our museums, our parks, our shops, our pools. There was no option to accept or manage the risks locally. Its important to remember, the disease didn't do this to us, this was a political response to it, which is a policy choice, not a certainty. Meanwhile, the centres of suburban life were left comparatively untouched: shopping malls, big corporate supermarkets, etc, and people drove there and mixed and shopped almost like there was no pandemic. Again, the disease didn't do this, people did. policy did. In my city, where have the clusters of the disease have been: suburbs. some of that is definitely due to the shutting of the city, but policy has been enacted under the assumption that suburban life is the only life. We just had a slight tightening of conditions because of a (very small) rise in cases: why? two reasons, putting returning travellers in cbd hotels as part of quarantine, and parties and socialising amongst known infected cases in... you guessed it, suburbia. Apparently, because of this, cafes and businesses in the inner city need to be further restrained for another 3 weeks. for me, the pandemic simply accentuated everything wrong with the suburban lifestyle (because I'm now forced to live it while my facilities are shut) and I'll continue to wait and lobby for the return of our actual (and personally, better) life.

babesh 6y ago
Is the disease here city politics and government? Suburban governments seem more responsive to citizenry?
- ACow_Adonis 6y ago
  I think this may be a US political thing. there's no love of local politics here, but I'm not aware of any feeling that suburban/urban councils/local area governments are inherently superior/inferior to the others. though (obviously?) I like the services my local government provides, here transport, health and education are state level decisions...

dangus 6y ago

This is just another article that covers far too many topics all at once. It says a lot while saying nothing. And all the articles about COVID-19 will look silly in 3-5 years when it’s entirely not a concern. Predicting which aspects of life will stick as “the new normal” is a fools errand. All the benefits of suburbia in the article are essentially negated by the drawbacks that the article mentions: suburbia sucks wealth away because the infrastructure costs too much to sustain. There really isn’t any way to get around that huge flaw.

radomysisky 6y ago
> suburbia sucks wealth away because the infrastructure costs too much to sustain While cost to sustain is relatively static, the price homeowners are willing to endure for the upsides of suburbia are dynamic. In a world plagued by pandemics and social unrest, that price continues to rise. Remote work will only accelerate this trend.
- dangus 6y ago
  It sucks wealth away because American towns have an addiction to using bond money to pay for infrastructure maintenance - infrastructure that will need to be replaced again before the bond is paid off. They also have a habit of greenlighting development where the builders pay to build the roads and sewers that the town then takes over long term maintenance for, without accounting for the wealth generation of those properties being unable to pay for them. Part 3 of “the growth Ponzi scheme” illustrates this well: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/15/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-part-3.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/15/the-growth-pon... Now, I also wouldn’t take Stong Towns as gospel but it’s not hard to look around and find crumbling American suburbs. Even the “nice” suburbs are drowning in debt despite good appearances. And now, you’ve got millennials who are figuring out that no, they don’t need to own two cars (debt on wheels) and hoard stuff like their parents did. Millennials are urbanizing at a rapid rate and it is not slowing down since they aren’t universally moving to the suburbs once they have (a smaller quantity of) kids like their parents did. The boomer generation grew up in an era of crime-laden cities that simply doesn’t exist anymore and may never again exist. Without the inner city crime of previous decades one has to ask what suburban life actually gets you in comparison.

vmception 6y ago

tl;dr people have been independently railing on the suburbs for centuries, but because they don't all live in dense urban environments they don't know what they are talking about? or because the good thing about cities was removed and now suburbs compensate by being the exact same drab places as they were, but nothing more alluring exists currently? what people like about cities, and what they hate about suburbs still exists. the former will just have to be read about in a book.

nine_k 6y ago

The problem is that the US have very few real dense cities, like what they call a city in Europe. That is, densely packed population, densely packed businesses, walkability, adequate public transportation that covers the entire area, all the things that allow an urbanite to comfortably live without owning a car, and streets are not very car-friendly anyway. What are these cities? NYC (not only Manhattan but everywhere the subway + buses reach), Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Seattle. Maybe a few others with some reservations, like Washington DC or SF. I have hard time seeing places like Houston or LA as "cities" in the same sense; they have small downtowns and huge suburb-like agglomerations around them, where you are either inside your house, or inside a car. Silicon Valley seems to largely lack cities, except the ailing SF. If you want to see what a functioning large city looks like, visit NYC, or London, or Amsterdam, or Moscow, or Shanghai, or Singapore. [Edited: spelling]

bane 6y ago
I think your points are good, but not everyplace needs to be a high functioning mega city. Better design can make better places, even in the surburbs. It doesn't even have to be new design. I'm reminded of places like Reston, Virginia which was designed specifically for most of the things you mention, but is also decidedly suburban. There's an urban core, but most homes are reasonably walkable to some local shopping or some other major amenity. It was also designed as an enclosed area, to contain substantial commercial and office areas, and a mix of densities and housing types so that it might be possible to both live and work within the same environment. I don't think it's "hard" but it has to be purposeful. Too many areas in the U.S. are built by developers who dump the development once the human units are moved in and have no stake in long-term governance of the area.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Yes, I'm not advocating to turn every place into a city. I just try to note that bona fide "city experience" is not very widely available in the US, and many places that people consider "cities" are dubiously so.
brnt 6y ago
I've lived in Amsterdam for a decade, which I affectionately call the largest village I've ever lived. The Netherlands has no cities of 1M+, yet is one of the densest countries in the world. How? Its quite multi centered. There's a lot of 50-500k towns in close vicinity, each with their own facilities and economies. Because of proximity they're of course not independent, but they're definitely not suburbs. There are towns you could say are suburbs, where people usually commute by car, but somehow they're not nearly as car exclusive of American suburbs. Maybe its worth a closer look at this.

bane 6y ago

Like anyplace, suburbs can be great or suck. My last home (detached house) was a in very suburban mega development (about 20k people), but was walking distance to public transit (commuter bus), movies, gym, library, doctors, grocery, dentists, something like 15 different restaurants from fast food to high-end, coffee shop, and so on. It has something like 20 miles of trials, lots of green space, pools and so on. It wasn't a "downtown" but a designed commercial space in the middle of the development that made it pretty nice to live there. Anywhere outside of the development was decidedly not walkable, but not a terrible drive. While sections have very similar looking houses, there's lot of mixed sections with entirely different architecture making it not too boring. I moved a couple years ago to a new place further in towards a major city, but in another, but much older, mega development (about 60k people). It's higher/mixed density. There's a city bus a 2-3 minute walk from my detached house which connects to the subway, I can walk to work (it's about 3 miles away) and a bit of shopping and dining within a couple easy 2 mile walks. There's several shopping areas scattered around, pools, and so on, and a reasonably large and growing urban core maybe 4 miles away, I usually drive to it, but I could probably take the bus. It was also designed with intense tree cover in mind and most of the area is absolutely bursting in mature trees and nature (including wildlife!). There's also an extensive trail system that provides relatively easy transit around all this stuff for walkers, hikers, bikers, and so on. Homes were built in an impossible number of styles in a wide mix of densities. My point is, suburbs can be great places to live. Just like there are terrible suburbs, there's terrible urban areas as well -- not everywhere is Manhattan or San Francisco. But it doesn't mean they all suck. There's definitely a movement to make these areas more livable and to learn lessons from the past.

jackcosgrove 6y ago

The article itself states that a majority of the US population lives in suburbs, and a supermajority lives in suburban built environments, in central city and suburbs alike. How could living in the suburbs be so terrible if a supermajority of people live in detached single family homes in residential neighborhoods with suburban style zoning? Are all of these people imprisoned against their will?

Drunk_Engineer 6y ago
In many cases, they are "imprisoned" against their will because zoning does not permit any other kind of development. The other problem is they are not paying the full cost of the suburban lifestyle. It is only sustainable through huge government subsidies.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I saw the ad from real estate developer who subdivided my neighborhood. They made a big deal that only 50 foot lots were for sale, No 25 Foot Lots! That was 100 years ago. So were living with bad idea's from decades ago. A lot of which was written into codes. Flips side of bad zoning you can look at old pictures of Pittsburgh when the steel mills were going full tilt. I can't figure out how anyone got any sleep. https://www.shorpy.com/node/25168 https://www.shorpy.com/node/25168
- Thorrez 6y ago
  > The other problem is they are not paying the full cost of the suburban lifestyle. It is only sustainable through huge government subsidies. They're paying for it with taxes right? Or are the minority of people living in dense cities paying these huge subsidies for the supermajority in the suburbs?
leetcrew 6y ago
> Are all of these people imprisoned against their will? that's a bit of a dramatic way of putting it, but I think something like that is going on. two big reasons why americans like to live in suburbs are crime and schools. I don't think there's any inherent reason why crime and schools have to be worse in the city, but they usually are.

screye 6y ago

> But America is not South Korea or Singapore. Americans have been running away from dense, vertical design for a century. Those who already prefer sparse, low-slung living will likely use their fear of COVID-19 to entrench their preference. More like Americans were sold a very particular dream of sparse living by car companies that later solidified with the racist/practical implications of how inner cities were perceived. Also, it isn't just SK or Singapore. European cities tend to abhor sprawl as well. In some sense, it unique to the US and countries that culturally draw from the same ford-American dream. > The pandemic will improve suburban life, perhaps in lasting ways The idea that suburbs are resilient to the pandemic because of the unsustainable lack of shared spaces and inherent isolation is hilarious to me. Historically speaking, this is a once in a century thing. It won't and should not affect how generation defining decisions are made. Full disclosure, there are very few things I hate as much as American suburbs and urban sprawl. But, those who dislike dense American cities often seem to dislike things that have nothing to do with the density in the first place. The crime caused by inner cities is a result of white flight and racially driven policing of the last 50 years. The dead looking cityscape of some dense cities are a result of terrible urban planning. (American Urban design is known to be sub-par. Most European cities with similar constraints have implemented better and more practical solutions) Chasing naive single minded goals such as "more density" or "more bike lanes" is not what freedom from suburbia looks like. Well thought-out urban design ends up being dense, with public transportation infrastructure and bike/walking friendly. But adding any of those things hap-hazardly to an old system that clearly was not designed to support it is stupidity. Hopefully people understand that it doesn't have to be a choice between thoughtless dense urban development and Suburbia. There are other proven options out there.

luckylion 6y ago
> European cities tend to abhor sprawl as well. In some sense, it unique to the US and countries that culturally draw from the same ford-American dream. That's absolutely not my experience in Germany. If they can afford it, plenty of people move to the edge of the city or a bit outside it. They want access to the city, but they also want a spacious garden and quiet neighbors and don't need to live "in the middle of it" when they have children (or, at least in my peer group, even when they don't have children but are approaching 40).

hbosch 6y ago

I have a daughter and a baby boy on the way. A few years ago we moved to a suburb (a ferry ride away and then some, not Bainbridge) of Seattle, and I'm glad we did. The commute is pretty long when I have to go into the office, but thanks(?) to COVID my employer now has a true WFH-friendly infrastructure and a management team that no longer fears remote productivity. I love gardening and walking down to a relatively quiet waterfront, my little downtown, and seeing my kids run around in the yard safely knowing we are far from the burning cop cars of Seattle just a few weeks ago. Living in Queen Anne isn't much different, it's just 10x more expensive and you have a couple more restaurants. We manage just fine.

zhdc1 6y ago
This COVID-19 induced remote work experiment has really been interesting. One of the unexpected outcomes of the IT/software revolution was just how much industry centralization (e.g., Silicon Valley, Seattle, and later San Francisco/Shanghai/Paris/etc...) impacted competitiveness & employee wages. It should have been the opposite - the diffusion of communication infrastructure (and information in general) should have made it easier for companies to outsource work to cheaper locations. This turned out to not be the case, at least in software, for a number of reasons - one of the main ones being that high performing employees on the whole prefer living in and around convenient urban locations. Now that everyone has had a taste of remote work, it will be interesting to see if this trend reverses.