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Have others noticed this kind of "revolt against cities" attitude lately too? I do wonder if people consider the huge advantages city living can provide? I'm

Have others noticed this kind of "revolt against cities" attitude lately too? I do wonder if people consider the huge advantages city living can provide? I'm reading constantly that current dream is buying a plot of land in the middle no where, signing up for StarLink and growing watermelons while trying to work a full time engineering job. The thing is though, this is all just a temporary thing, even if this pandemic meanders on for another 3-5 years. It's nothing in the course of history.People will still go to cities because the best opportunities, education, entertainment and social scenes will exist there. People who live in cities will have advantages and children will want to move there from the country to be with other young people. I'm not saying that there aren't advantages to the country lifestyle, I've spent time in rural areas too and had plenty of family who lived, I understand the romantic allure of it. But cities were popular before this, and they'll be popular after this too.

BurningFrog 6y ago
This is a revolt against San Francisco in particular though.
ghaff 6y ago
On the other hand, in the US, people had been net migrating out of many cities--including today's "elite" cities--until around the late 90s for about the previous 40-50 years. The current idea that young people all want to live in cities is relatively recent. When I graduated from grad school in the mid-80s, essentially no one from my class who went to work in the Boston area actually lived in the city.
- lucidguppy 6y ago
  I wonder when the country will realize that the rush hour traffic of the nation is a drag on the economy and should be addressed as serious as any emergency. We need livable towns and cities with good schools where anybody can move anywhere.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    For comparison, US commute times are close to the shortest among developed countries. I don’t know much about school quality, but most towns and cities in the country allow people to easily get where they want to be. (source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/521886/travel-time-spent-work-study-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/521886/travel-time-spent...)
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Working remotely where practical seems like one fix. I'm in a very livable town. It's just not walkable given the acres of land with just a few houses around me.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Rush hour traffic is just as bad out in suburbs, and in some ways worse, because the roads are designed for much less congestion.
paul_f 6y ago
What has changed is near universal availability of high speed wireless. Followed by a national experiment in remote working. You don't have to live in the city to have a lucrative tech job.
- luma 6y ago
  How long does the “high paying” part stay true when companies who need technical talent can now pull candidates from the entire world? I wonder if the move towards remote work might wind up pushing down IT wages across the board. edit: instead of downvoting, maybe help me understand why I might be looking at this wrong?
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I did not downvote but timezones, culture, language, skills, etc. are all reasons that companies will not automatically gravitate to the lowest cost areas. Many large companies in tech have global presences that have not resulted in them offshoring all their jobs. That said, I do expect you see a decrease in premiums being paid for high CoL areas to the degree that living there becomes an employee lifestyle choice and a rise for tech workers in low CoL areas who can work remotely. I expect you end up somewhere in the middle.
    - luma 6y ago
      I'd respond that low-cost areas, when compared to San Francisco, includes something like 90%+ of America. Presuming all talent must come from the coasts is missing a pretty wide swath of very qualified candidates who speak your language natively, who went to top-flight schools, and who live/work in or near your time zone.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Yes and that's one reason why I would expect to see companies that go more heavily remote hiring preferentially from low cost areas of the US rather than China. (Along with IP laws, etc.) As I say, I'd expect more remote jobs to flatten out tech salaries a bit--especially within the US. Mostly not 100% but if I don't need you to live in the Bay Area, I'm probably not going to pay you extra to live there any more than I'd pay you extra because you want to live in Aspen.
fulafel 6y ago
Most cities are small, and most city inhabitants dont live on megacities. The whole debate is diviorced from reality as long as this is ignored.
ralphc 6y ago
I guess we'll see how much of that was what you said and how much is "I need to be in the same room as these people to do my work", which won't, or soon won't be true like it was for the past 100+ years.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  I'm now a senior engineer with over 10 years experience and I have to be honest, I wouldn't have been the engineer I am today without sitting next to others and learning things, nor would I have been able to mentor people without personal interaction and having them sit and look over my shoulder. The things is, I work remotely now and have for a while, while I find a lot of pleasure in it, I can see the selfish side of it too. One important change I've noticed in working for remotes is, we tend to hire experienced people, IMO for the following reason.... We, still don't know how to mentor juniors remotely. This is from an emotional and technical perspective. I've also never received promotions as a remote person either. I feel there's a long way to go with fully remote workforce being the ideal situation for most people.
lr4444lr 6y ago
Until COVID-19, the media trend was a relentless attack on suburbs. However long the pandemic lasts, the mass experiment in remote work is likely going to have indelible impacts. Why would profitable companies want to pay big city prices for employee salaries when the evidence for many can be just as or almost as productive using remote workers with much lower cost of living?
01100011 6y ago
Why would I want to live in a city and compete with the best of the best? I don't want my kids to go to a top school in an urban environment. I want them to do well in an above-average suburban school and have access to recreational activities outside the city. I want to live an affordable life that allows me to save and build wealth. I want a good work/life balance. I don't see the city providing me any of that. The city is for a special type of person. For people like me, it's just constant stress.
- angrais 6y ago
  What's stressful about living in the city for you?
  - jaggederest 6y ago
    What isn't? Noise, traffic, expense, crowding, lack of green space, no sense of community, it's just an extremely hostile environment for human neurology. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3079 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3079
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - newshorts 6y ago
    Personally some folks are energized by the activity. I find it particularly draining. Little things like needing to time my laundry so my neighbor doesn’t pull mine out and move ahead of me in line cause me to spend my weekends stressing instead of relaxing. I also don’t get a ton out of cultural experiences like art exhibits and high end dining. For me, I recharge by sitting in some dirt next to a campfire with friends I’ve had since grade school. Like I said, everyone is different, but for me the city was all cost and no payoff. If I knew I could work remote indefinitely, I’d find a nice house in a bikeable neighborhood with a good school district and have a lot of bbqs with the neighbors.
- welder 6y ago
  Even if you lose competing against the best, you're still better off than the ones not in the competition.
geodel 6y ago
> But cities were popular before this, and they'll be popular after this too. So is country for different people at different times. Besides I think 'revolt against cities' seems like reaction of this constant bombardment of news about how yuppies love cities and how desolate and terrible life must be for people not living in cities. In last decade I only had one job in city rest all were in burbs. I didn't much care about dining and culture options on my work days. I would think of just getting the hell of out workplace as early as possible and reach home on time. Also exploring city on weekend is always an option. All things you listed great about city is true. Something I see missing from discussions is what percentage of population really love or afford to access them and with what frequency. Now as you say cities may be the future for most of the people. Similarly ad economy and constant surveillance also seems to be the future. To me none of these looks to be good.
nostromo 6y ago
> this is all just a temporary thing, even if this pandemic meanders on for another 3-5 years. The last American urban exodus started in the 1950s and wasn't fully reversed until the early 2000s. Many cities never recovered in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. Even the most expensive cities, like San Francisco, LA, and New York, had neighborhoods that were run down and dilapidated, ignored for decades, until very recently. I'm not saying this will necessarily happen again, but it certainly could. Cities are incredibly expensive to maintain, and most American cities have already spent their "rainy day" funds in just a few months of lock-downs. All the while depolicing is gaining steam.
- 205guy 6y ago
  > Cities are incredibly expensive to maintain The whole thesis of the strongtowns.org website, with lots of data and references to back it up, is that medium dense city centers and town centers are the only parts of a city/town that are revenue positive. Commercial strip mall areas and suburbs do not generate enough sales tax and property tax revenue (and often require tax breaks) to pay for the infrastructure: miles of roads and streets, sewers, utilities, etc. Density, when you have lots of people and economic activity in a smaller area, can pay for its infrastructure, even if it might be more expensive than a country road. Otherwise, I do agree, it is cyclical, cities were over-hyped for a while, with the tech boom in many east and west coast cities, but now remote work might reverse that. However, as Europe has shown, with a few precautions and some sacrifice such as concerts and night-clubs, a lot of city activities can go on, and with less rent pressure, we might be headed toward a good balance.
- Eric_WVGG 6y ago
  You’ve got it backwards. It’s the suburbs that are expensive. Think about it: one mile of sewer, one mile of street, supports X people in a suburb, or 50X people in a dense city. Even if the wear costs in the city are double or even four times that, the city comes out way ahead. https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/11/10/meanwhile-u-s-suburbs-are-still-fiscally-unsustainable/ https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/11/10/meanwhile-u-s-sub...
  - 6y ago
bootlooped 6y ago
3-5 years is a long time relative to the span of a human life. I live in NYC; let's say that the reduction of city-life benefits in NYC is temporary, and it will be back to 2019 standards in 5 years (this is not an unbelievable assertion). Should I stick around for 5 years and wait it out? Why? 5 years is enough time for me to pay off an entire house in most parts of the country. I can always move back. I believe in the huge advantages cities provide; it's why I moved here in the first place. I don't feel any loyalty towards a geographic location though.
aglavine 6y ago
I'm interested in the romantic allure you mention. I love cities, but I always wonder if the combination of a high speed internet, plenty of space and fresh air, solar electricity, and a good electric car to go to town in weekends, wouldn't be better.

BurningFrog 6y ago

This is a revolt against San Francisco in particular though.

ghaff 6y ago

On the other hand, in the US, people had been net migrating out of many cities--including today's "elite" cities--until around the late 90s for about the previous 40-50 years. The current idea that young people all want to live in cities is relatively recent. When I graduated from grad school in the mid-80s, essentially no one from my class who went to work in the Boston area actually lived in the city.

lucidguppy 6y ago
I wonder when the country will realize that the rush hour traffic of the nation is a drag on the economy and should be addressed as serious as any emergency. We need livable towns and cities with good schools where anybody can move anywhere.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  For comparison, US commute times are close to the shortest among developed countries. I don’t know much about school quality, but most towns and cities in the country allow people to easily get where they want to be. (source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/521886/travel-time-spent-work-study-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/521886/travel-time-spent...)
- ghaff 6y ago
  Working remotely where practical seems like one fix. I'm in a very livable town. It's just not walkable given the acres of land with just a few houses around me.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Rush hour traffic is just as bad out in suburbs, and in some ways worse, because the roads are designed for much less congestion.

paul_f 6y ago

What has changed is near universal availability of high speed wireless. Followed by a national experiment in remote working. You don't have to live in the city to have a lucrative tech job.

luma 6y ago
How long does the “high paying” part stay true when companies who need technical talent can now pull candidates from the entire world? I wonder if the move towards remote work might wind up pushing down IT wages across the board. edit: instead of downvoting, maybe help me understand why I might be looking at this wrong?
- ghaff 6y ago
  I did not downvote but timezones, culture, language, skills, etc. are all reasons that companies will not automatically gravitate to the lowest cost areas. Many large companies in tech have global presences that have not resulted in them offshoring all their jobs. That said, I do expect you see a decrease in premiums being paid for high CoL areas to the degree that living there becomes an employee lifestyle choice and a rise for tech workers in low CoL areas who can work remotely. I expect you end up somewhere in the middle.
  - luma 6y ago
    I'd respond that low-cost areas, when compared to San Francisco, includes something like 90%+ of America. Presuming all talent must come from the coasts is missing a pretty wide swath of very qualified candidates who speak your language natively, who went to top-flight schools, and who live/work in or near your time zone.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Yes and that's one reason why I would expect to see companies that go more heavily remote hiring preferentially from low cost areas of the US rather than China. (Along with IP laws, etc.) As I say, I'd expect more remote jobs to flatten out tech salaries a bit--especially within the US. Mostly not 100% but if I don't need you to live in the Bay Area, I'm probably not going to pay you extra to live there any more than I'd pay you extra because you want to live in Aspen.

fulafel 6y ago

Most cities are small, and most city inhabitants dont live on megacities. The whole debate is diviorced from reality as long as this is ignored.

ralphc 6y ago

I guess we'll see how much of that was what you said and how much is "I need to be in the same room as these people to do my work", which won't, or soon won't be true like it was for the past 100+ years.

bamboozled 6y ago
I'm now a senior engineer with over 10 years experience and I have to be honest, I wouldn't have been the engineer I am today without sitting next to others and learning things, nor would I have been able to mentor people without personal interaction and having them sit and look over my shoulder. The things is, I work remotely now and have for a while, while I find a lot of pleasure in it, I can see the selfish side of it too. One important change I've noticed in working for remotes is, we tend to hire experienced people, IMO for the following reason.... We, still don't know how to mentor juniors remotely. This is from an emotional and technical perspective. I've also never received promotions as a remote person either. I feel there's a long way to go with fully remote workforce being the ideal situation for most people.

lr4444lr 6y ago

Until COVID-19, the media trend was a relentless attack on suburbs. However long the pandemic lasts, the mass experiment in remote work is likely going to have indelible impacts. Why would profitable companies want to pay big city prices for employee salaries when the evidence for many can be just as or almost as productive using remote workers with much lower cost of living?

01100011 6y ago

Why would I want to live in a city and compete with the best of the best? I don't want my kids to go to a top school in an urban environment. I want them to do well in an above-average suburban school and have access to recreational activities outside the city. I want to live an affordable life that allows me to save and build wealth. I want a good work/life balance. I don't see the city providing me any of that. The city is for a special type of person. For people like me, it's just constant stress.

angrais 6y ago
What's stressful about living in the city for you?
- jaggederest 6y ago
  What isn't? Noise, traffic, expense, crowding, lack of green space, no sense of community, it's just an extremely hostile environment for human neurology. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3079 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3079
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- newshorts 6y ago
  Personally some folks are energized by the activity. I find it particularly draining. Little things like needing to time my laundry so my neighbor doesn’t pull mine out and move ahead of me in line cause me to spend my weekends stressing instead of relaxing. I also don’t get a ton out of cultural experiences like art exhibits and high end dining. For me, I recharge by sitting in some dirt next to a campfire with friends I’ve had since grade school. Like I said, everyone is different, but for me the city was all cost and no payoff. If I knew I could work remote indefinitely, I’d find a nice house in a bikeable neighborhood with a good school district and have a lot of bbqs with the neighbors.
welder 6y ago
Even if you lose competing against the best, you're still better off than the ones not in the competition.

geodel 6y ago

> But cities were popular before this, and they'll be popular after this too. So is country for different people at different times. Besides I think 'revolt against cities' seems like reaction of this constant bombardment of news about how yuppies love cities and how desolate and terrible life must be for people not living in cities. In last decade I only had one job in city rest all were in burbs. I didn't much care about dining and culture options on my work days. I would think of just getting the hell of out workplace as early as possible and reach home on time. Also exploring city on weekend is always an option. All things you listed great about city is true. Something I see missing from discussions is what percentage of population really love or afford to access them and with what frequency. Now as you say cities may be the future for most of the people. Similarly ad economy and constant surveillance also seems to be the future. To me none of these looks to be good.

nostromo 6y ago

> this is all just a temporary thing, even if this pandemic meanders on for another 3-5 years. The last American urban exodus started in the 1950s and wasn't fully reversed until the early 2000s. Many cities never recovered in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. Even the most expensive cities, like San Francisco, LA, and New York, had neighborhoods that were run down and dilapidated, ignored for decades, until very recently. I'm not saying this will necessarily happen again, but it certainly could. Cities are incredibly expensive to maintain, and most American cities have already spent their "rainy day" funds in just a few months of lock-downs. All the while depolicing is gaining steam.

205guy 6y ago
> Cities are incredibly expensive to maintain The whole thesis of the strongtowns.org website, with lots of data and references to back it up, is that medium dense city centers and town centers are the only parts of a city/town that are revenue positive. Commercial strip mall areas and suburbs do not generate enough sales tax and property tax revenue (and often require tax breaks) to pay for the infrastructure: miles of roads and streets, sewers, utilities, etc. Density, when you have lots of people and economic activity in a smaller area, can pay for its infrastructure, even if it might be more expensive than a country road. Otherwise, I do agree, it is cyclical, cities were over-hyped for a while, with the tech boom in many east and west coast cities, but now remote work might reverse that. However, as Europe has shown, with a few precautions and some sacrifice such as concerts and night-clubs, a lot of city activities can go on, and with less rent pressure, we might be headed toward a good balance.
Eric_WVGG 6y ago
You’ve got it backwards. It’s the suburbs that are expensive. Think about it: one mile of sewer, one mile of street, supports X people in a suburb, or 50X people in a dense city. Even if the wear costs in the city are double or even four times that, the city comes out way ahead. https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/11/10/meanwhile-u-s-suburbs-are-still-fiscally-unsustainable/ https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/11/10/meanwhile-u-s-sub...
- 6y ago

bootlooped 6y ago

3-5 years is a long time relative to the span of a human life. I live in NYC; let's say that the reduction of city-life benefits in NYC is temporary, and it will be back to 2019 standards in 5 years (this is not an unbelievable assertion). Should I stick around for 5 years and wait it out? Why? 5 years is enough time for me to pay off an entire house in most parts of the country. I can always move back. I believe in the huge advantages cities provide; it's why I moved here in the first place. I don't feel any loyalty towards a geographic location though.

aglavine 6y ago

I'm interested in the romantic allure you mention. I love cities, but I always wonder if the combination of a high speed internet, plenty of space and fresh air, solar electricity, and a good electric car to go to town in weekends, wouldn't be better.