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The people the suburbs were built for are gone
- tomcam 6y agoHere in suburban Seattle large houses are hot, because people want Zoom rooms and someplace to walk during lockdowns.
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- Spoiled_toast 6y agoThat seems to be more of a common theme in Seattle. From my experience there mostly are apartments with the occasional small home near the sea side. I can’t imagine what a large house goes for over there.
- throwawayboise 6y agoSo people expect these pandemic conditions to just be the norm for so much longer than they are buying/designing houses around it?
- tomcam 6y agoYes, to oversimplify. Many do not expect a return to the daily commute.
- WalterBright 6y agoThere's a neighborhood nearby that I often go for a walk on. It was built probably immediately after WW2. Most of the houses, if you look closely, are of identical design. (Sometimes a mirror image.) But over the years, they've diverged as the owners would add garages, bedrooms, expansions, etc. They're nicely done, and it's a charming neighborhood.
- m463 6y agoIt's unfortunate that the beautiful trees of established neighborhoods take 50 years to achieve.
- Bob_LaBLahh 6y agoIt doesn't have to be that long. My mom asked the city to put in some oak trees when I was a kid. It only took the trees about 15 years to grow to a pretty good size. In my opinion, it's worth the effort of lobbying the city.
- improbable22 6y agoMy parents did it the unofficial way, put in 5-10 trees along the road, over a few weekends, with the same style of concrete surrounding that the city used. They are huge now, and nobody ever questioned how they got there. Not 50-years huge, and a faster-growing species than oak, but still a big improvement.
- theshrike79 6y agoFinland has this exact same thing. We call them "Rintamamiestalo", translates to something like "Soldier house". They're all pretty much the same kind of two-story wooden house, people built them in bulk when they got home from the war. It was an event like an Amish barn raising, the same guys built a ton of the exact same house one after the other. Now they've got maybe the second or third owner and the designs have diverged quite a bit, but you can still find the central house if you know how to look.
- analog31 6y agoI grew up in such a neighborhood, built to absorb the baby boom. It took me a long time to figure out that the houses were identical except for being oriented in different directions, having different facade, and so forth. One day I realized that I knew my way around David's house because I knew my way around Kevin's house.
- danans 6y ago
- WalterBright 6y ago> The dead and dying malls, the vacated office parks, the ghost box stores left behind. Interestingly, around here the Totem Lake mall was written off for dead for the last 30 years. Big boxes, big parking lot bereft of cars. It was a lonely place for a llooong time. But the whole thing was redeveloped into another mall, pretty much all upscale stores, and the parking lot is jammed. I can't explain it, but the developers knew what they were doing.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoI remember totem lake in the early 90s, the compusa there was where I drooled over PowerPC Macs that were just released. It was never a nice place, frankly I’ve overlooked that area for the past 25 years unless I need furniture and don’t want to go to Lynwood. > I can't explain it, but the developers knew what they were doing. Asians, especially Chinese, tend to go for malls with upscale stores (if my experience living in Beijing is any indicator). I bet that’s what the developers were going after.
- jes 6y agoI remember that shop. Was there a “Circuit City” there as well? Good times ... buying white box PCs for my small business on a regular basis in the 90s.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoMaybe? I never went since there was a circuit city at Alderwood. CompUSA was already big box back then.
- forrestthewoods 6y agoTotem Lake is being developed the same way all of Pugetopolis is. A giant box with upscale retail on ground floor and ~$2000 1-BR apartments on top. Or sometimes office space. I think what’s dead is the typical 80s mall with massive parking lots and exclusively retail stores. BellSquare will be fine. But Northgate is a dead mall. Out in Cary, NC a dead mall was just bought by Epic Games for their new office. The old theater in Bellevue got turned into offices for Bungie. Downtown Redmond is full of boxes. So is downtown Kirkland. I think most of the office space is Google? I’m not sure if Totem Lake boxes have much office space. There’s boxes up in Kenmore. Capitol Hill has lots of boxes. Central District has several new boxes around Jackson and 23rd. You can’t throw a stone without hitting a mixed use box!
- sgt 6y agoFor what it's worth, I believe that most families with kids thrive with a decently sized house and a large garden around it. I expect this is how most of HN's crowd grew up, too. With more people and shops etc in your neighborhood comes noise and chaos.
- lynguist 6y agoMost of HN’s crowd? Hmm. Based on earlier polls I see that ca half of the visitors here are from the US and half from outside, and most in the US may have grown up like this, but outside the US, almost no one grew up in a big house. I grew up in an apartment.
- wott 6y ago> outside the US, almost no one grew up in a big house. Neither suburbs nor detached houses nor private houses are specific to the US. In France, primary housing is 57% individual house, 43% collective (apartments). But that's not all: if you consider families (with children), which is what matters when is "where did you grow up?", individual houses rise to 70%! In UK, flats are a tiny minority, the form that rules there is of course the semi-detached house. But even there, there are still more detached houses than flats. In the whole EU, the ratio is similar to France: flats are a minority with 46% of housing, and amongst the remaining 54%, 2 third are fully detached houses. Another angle. If we take ze city, where almost everything is apartments: Paris. There were 25% *less* inhabitants in 1990 (when a present 30-year old was born) than there were in 1920! People have fled to the suburbs there as well (which doesn't mean 100% individual house, admittedly, but anyway a much much greater proportion than inside Paris). > I grew up in an apartment. It doesn't make a statistic :-)
- ghaff 6y agoAnd don't forget the idyllic car-free existence that almost everyone has in Europe. Meanwhile, in the actual world, I think I know one person in the UK who doesn't drive (and his wife does). European car ownership is lower than the US in general but it's a very very far way from zero.
- tolbish 6y agoThe conclusion is clear—American cities are built for cars, not people. I find it interesting how many posts here bemoan the lack of community in their lives when so many people live in isolated areas. For some reason the solution that comes to mind is more church instead of rethinking our housing priorities.
- joe-collins 6y agoThat's a foregone conclusion. The problem has been discussed ad nauseam. This article/book is more valuable than yet another rehash: it covers extant solutions to the problem.
- tolbish 6y agoYet many people here don't believe the problem actually exists, so it's far from forgone. The idea that a third place should be a central part of one's life is not a very common perspective, and such a place is rarely planned for. Take any thread on HN about housing and you only see housing being considered for (1) square footage or (2) how it advances one's career.
- joe-collins 6y agoFair, then. I hadn't considered the blinding effect of HN's extremely atypical demographic.
- austincheney 6y agoWorse, most of the people who bemoan lack of community can’t remove themselves from a ridiculously tiny screen 4 inches from their face.
- dnndevem 6y agoI disagree people want less privacy. I certainly want more places to walk and exercise but not more people. Its a-shame some parks look like outdoor gyms. Keep it clean, safe and natural.
- sgt 6y agoI don't think I have seen a park that looks like a gym. Do you mean people bring their gym equipment there?
- zhte415 6y agoA lot, majority, of local parks in China cities, which are largely apartment living, have outdoor areas with various iron equipment like dips and pullup bars, rowing, basically calisthenics, and spaces for older people to do synchronised dancing or taichi. Benches (for sitting, not presses). Quite communial. A big positive if stuck in an apartment. But the park doesn't look like a gym and not a lot of the frames will be occupied, but if you want it, it's invariably there and pretty social; all free.
- dnndevem 6y agoA park nearby has installed workout equipment along the trails. Basic outdoor swing-set type stuff but a real bummer when you want to enjoy natural scenery. Most parts of the trail are concrete slabs now instead of dirt...
- jsinai 6y agoIt’s just gym equipment that’s designed to be durable outdoors. Kind of like jungle gyms but for adults. I’ve seen it in Cape Town, Milan, London, Auckland and always they are busy.
- sgt 6y agoI have seen that, yes. Those jungle gyms are generally on a flat piece of grass that normally would be open and also relatively small. I thought it was more of a proper park - think full of bushes, trees, ponds, trails, birds etc. I haven't seen jungle gyms in places like that, which of course would be detrimental to the nature.
- jl2718 6y agoBureaucrat plus agenda equals disaster. Maybe just let residents of each place figure out what’s best for their neighborhood. I’m reading a strong academic detachment from reality in this one.
- proggy 6y agoWell, part of the author’s point is that there are a dearth of well-publicized examples of suburban redevelopment. The article is an attempt to raise awareness to those who may be sitting on a really big opportunity without even knowing it.
- mcguire 6y agoThe results of that are called "NIMBY" and generally disparaged here.
- jl2718 6y agoIf the people that are most affected by it don’t want it, maybe it’s not a very good idea.
- nostromo 6y agoI’m surprised this article was written during Covid. 2020 was the revenge of the suburb. Downtowns are depressing wastelands with increasing violence and homelessness. And the suburbs are... not too far from normal.
- Barrin92 6y agoDo you realise how much this sounds like the stereotypical boomer argument for the suburbs if you replace 'scary strangers' or whatever with covid? This is what created the malaise to begin with. People flee the city because of some temporary problem and create structural problems for generations. It's also a weirdly American experience in that you find practically nobody in Berlin or Tokyo or whatever whose going to move into a suburb and abandon urban life because of something that is an issue for a year or two.
- seangrogg 6y agoAnecdotally, I wanted to leave the city for a long time but not lose the pay. While I have no statistics at my disposal, I've also seen a non-trivial number of HNers who shared a similar view (though I likely have cognitive biases towards this similar line of thinking). Having lived in SF and San Jose, as well as having spent time in Chicago and New York... Give me a decent sized house in suburbia, a car, and a decent spot in town that doesn't look like it is just trying to die but people are keeping the husk of it alive for it's "charm". Surround me with food and entertainment that doesn't cost city prices to enjoy, passersby who greet you warmly instead of burying themselves in their phones or music, and feel free to let most of that experience be pretty generic - I don't need some to be sold on some place's history or background or mission statement when all I want is a burger. Cities are many things to many people. I respect that people enjoy them and wouldn't want to take them away from anyone. But it's not for me, never has been, and likely never will be. I'm glad to have found a company that respects that.
- MattGaiser 6y ago> Tokyo or whatever whose going to move into a suburb and abandon urban life because of something that is an issue for a year or two. It is happening in Japan too. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/japan-tokyo-cities-city-countryside-pandemic-coronavirus-covid-19/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/japan-tokyo-cities-ci...
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- vxNsr 6y agoThis article makes some pretty bold claims in the beginning and then totally fails to back them anywhere in the interview. It repeatedly decried the fall of the suburbs, and yet throughout the interview talked about how they're being revitalized. By the end it admits that the suburbs are seeing a huge resurgence due to covid and people fleeing the packed cities, but it even claims this was happening before, so what's with those false claims at the start?
- ozim 6y agoI don't see it that way because title is "The People the Suburbs Were Built for Are Gone" and then the whole article is saying how suburbs are revitalized to fit needs of those new inhabitants. So from the start article never was about suburbs. It was about people and social dynamics.
- vxNsr 6y agoThe first 5 paragraphs go to extreme pains to describe suburbs as failed racist projects that only uncle toms and other racists support. The actual interview spends most of its time focusing on how malls aren’t that useful anymore, and now that they’re changing to be useful people are moving back out to the suburbs. But the core idea of the suburbs: large SFU homes on large plots of land is never questioned.
- georgeplusplus 6y agoThat’s kind of the vibe I got from the article as well. The guy being interviewed had a lot to speak about with little actually being said.
- vxNsr 6y agoHonestly that sounds like the author doing a really bad job at transcribing the interview, when you talk you repeat yourself if this was just a video maybe it would be ok, but the author says the same thing “8” times in the intro paragraphs and then appears to just transcribe exactly what was said.
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- KingOfCoders 6y agoAs written elsewhere and talked about on HN in the past, obe problem ist the upkeep of maintenance. Suburbs were build which cheap money and financed e.g. by tax on sold land whereas there was no plan how to pay for maintanace of roads, power, water and drainage for the next fifty years. See for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22908734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22908734
- babesh 6y agoYou mean the same exact problems urban areas have? Read about San Francisco’s sewer issues, state of roads, and how 1 mile of tunnel costs over 1 billion dollars. Read about NYC’s water issues and how one tunnel supplying water to the city is in disrepair. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sea-Cliff-Mansion-Tumbles-Into-Hole-Aged-sewer-3017549.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sea-Cliff-Mansion-Tumble... https://www.sfexaminer.com/the-city/new-central-subway-director-shares-his-strategy-to-speed-up-project/ https://www.sfexaminer.com/the-city/new-central-subway-direc... That Central subway is probably going to be roughly 10 years late. I read the roads are better now after 650M dollars.
- watwut 6y agoInfrastructure needs maintenance everywhere. The problem with suburbs is that the maintenance is more expensive per capita. They work great while they get subsidies as used to be policy. Then it becomes more expensive. Whether the local government is acually fixing stuff is somewhat different issue. This one is about it being overall more expensive when they finally have no choice but to fix it.
- babesh 6y agoMy assertion is that some progressives just want people to live in cities even if those people are willing and able to bear the supposed additional costs of living in suburbs. They see any extra consumption by another as an attack against the environment or as inequity. Much of the additional costs are actually borne locally: water, sewage, roads, garbage. With increased installation of solar panels, even electricity is increasingly borne locally. Also, given the inefficiency of large bureaucracies and the costs of scale in the US, it is somewhat unclear to me if urban areas are really lower cost per capital compared to suburban areas. Look at the Central tunnel project in SF.
- throwitaway1235 6y agoDo a majority of Americans want to live within dense cities, if given the choice?
- endori97 6y agoAmerican cities are not that great, crime is way up in my area (Minneapolis). I want to live in Tokyo. Can afford a house, don't need to own a car, can walk everywhere, kids can take public transit and no one bats an eye, low crime. I guess I should move and stop dreaming.
- vnxli 6y agoI’m the outlier among my friends- I grew up in the suburbs and I absolutely love them and want to go back. Nobody else I know does. Granted, my city is huge and so living in the city feels more suburban than living downtown would.
- lizknope 6y agoI grew up in the suburbs of 2 cities. I went to college and lived in dorms and apartments in the city. Literally 3 weeks after graduation I moved 3 miles away to a suburban apartment complex. 5 years later I bought a house in the suburbs and absolutely love it. The grocery store and shopping centers are 1 and 4 miles away. I can load up my car with tons of stuff. My wife, kids, and I all have our own rooms and home offices. We have a nice backyard with screened in porch, deck, and patio. 2 car garage and can charge the electric car at home and never have to deal with bringing the groceries in during the rain. I would never go back to living in a downtown area. I have a couple of friends that moved downtown. One bought a house for 2X the cost of the suburbs. The other got divorced and moved to an apartment downtown. After a year of trendy restaurants and lack of space he got tired of it and is looking to move back to the suburbs.
- ghaff 6y agoI like visiting cities and every now and then I've idly thought it would be nice to have a small city place. But 1.) Housing prices in said city are pretty eye-watering, not SF or NYC levels, but enough and 2.) You know what? If I actually wanted to periodically get my taste of city life, nothing is keeping me from getting a hotel room or AirBnB for a week. But I don't actually care enough to do that.
- babesh 6y agoThe institutions are seeding a narrative. This is one such seedling. It doesn’t matter if it is true or not. In the near future, this narrative will be advanced, and governments will begin forcing people to move to cities.
- pharmakom 6y agoYou believe the US government will begin forcibly relocating people?
- babesh 6y agoThere are a lot of laws and taxes designed to promote progressive behaviors already. They aren’t meant to raise money or because of scarcity. They are designed to coerce behavior. The assumption is that you are stupid and need to be coerced. But first comes the narrative fed through the media. Examples: soda tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, gasoline tax, candy tax, decreased state funding for school districts in higher income areas, state requirements for higher density housing lest the city lose state funding, ban on gas cars, ban on gas stoves, tiered electricity and water costs, elimination of magnet schools. I would expect far more social manipulation through laws in the next few years. Here are a few that I can dream up: - decreased state funding for schools if your housing is below a certain density, or below a job/housing ratio - make water and electricity far more progressively expensive - additional property tax based on land area - additional road tax based on number of miles in an area - higher sales tax on cars
- pharmakom 6y agoSome of the examples you gave are simply capturing negative externalities (e.g. carbon emissions). Often a precise externality tax is too difficult for a government to implement so a ban is done instead. The UK banned free plastic bags at large supermarkets and it was incredibly effective. It makes sense for rural and suburban services to cost more in taxes because they cost more for the government to deliver (simple example being a more extensive road network). The status quo is actually that rural and suburban living is being subsidised by government. I agree with you about the soda tax though! Edit: I see you updated your comment but I will leave mine as is.
- basicplus2 6y agoThe suburb as a defence against nuclear attack, so the people the suburbs are built for are still here.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22892150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22892150
- anovikov 6y agoSuburbs were invented with one goal: survive and win an all-out nuclear war, getting an edge over Commies which they could neither economically nor ideologically afford to replicate. Commies are long gone, that goal no longer applies, move on.
- strictnein 6y agohttps://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-27cc-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-27cc-a3d9... The Daily Evening Rush Of Suburbanites And Travelers For The Cortlandt Street Ferry, Pennsylvania Railroad. (1899)
- chrisseaton 6y ago> Suburbs were invented with one goal: survive and win an all-out nuclear war This seems historically illiterate, because suburbs came before the Cold War.
- anovikov 6y agoBut suburbanisation properly became a thing with policies of destroying public transport, and redlining that while invented in 1934, started to get massively applied around 1947. Destruction of public transport made living in inner cities more difficult and in suburbs, relatively easier - and redlining made people feel compelled to move out out inner cities.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> started to get massively applied around 1947 Ok but that's not when it was invented, which is what you said.
- throw998 6y ago> Commies are long gone, that goal no longer applies, move on. On the contrary, they are running the asylum
- zone411 6y ago> Previous mainstays of suburban life are now myths: that the majority of people own their homes Cite? "Owner-occupied housing units made up 60.6 percent of total housing units, while renter-occupied units made up 29.3 percent of the inventory in the third quarter 2020" (https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf)
- refurb 6y agoThis is kind of a silly premise considering the massive jump in housing prices in the suburbs with Covid. City core prices are dropping (at least for condos) and the 'burbs are jumping up, even in relatively remote locations.
- LatteLazy 6y agoI live in Dagenham in the UK. The neighbourhood I live in was originally for dock workers around the Thames. Then the docks containerized and electrified. Then the neighborhood was for employees of the local Ford plant. Then they downsized and replaced most people with robots. Now the neighbourhood is for a mix of people being housed by the state (the unemployed, single mums etc) and people working service jobs in Central London who take the train up every morning. That's all in the last 90 years. Less really as my house is one of the older ones. With covid meaning everyone works from home, us service workers might all move out over the next decade. My point is, people (including governments, companies and other groups) find uses for the infrastructure (including houses) that they have. Not the other way around. And this is all cyclical: I remember when the inner cities were "crime ridden hell holes". They depopulated. Then suddenly people (often gay men apparently?) moved in and suddenly you can't turn around with seeing million dollar appartments, 8 dollar coffee places and high fashion outlets...
- freddymilkovich 6y agoIf anyone reading this lives in Atlanta and actually wants to work on solving some of these problems reach out. I could really use the help. Email my HN username at gmail. The long game is a modified form of pod hotels.
- fallingfrog 6y agoReminds me of that modest mouse lyric: “Here's the man with teeth like God's shoeshine He sparkles shimmers shines Let's all have another Orange Julius Thick syrup standing in lines The malls are the soon to be ghost towns So long, farewell, good-bye..”
- sandworm101 6y agoThey arent gone. They just got old. The suburbs were biult for the kids of the boomer generation. They are now old. The kids of the kids of the boomers have different needs, mostly to do with money and work. Thats where i disagree with the article. It isnt about cars and work-life third places. It is about not being able to buy a house, or not wanting to because we shift jobs/cities every few yeara. It is about higher bills. It is about working multiple jobs, or working that one job 24/7. Those are the needs the suburb doesnt address. Wanting to ditch the car is way way down the list. It is sunday morning, 5am, and this kid of a boomer, with a good white-collar job, is about to drive to work.
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- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThis is mostly predictive - that 1-2 person households will become the norm. So the title is wrong to start with. Then, they assert that most people don't live in houses, also wrong. 60% of Americans (and similar elsewhere) live in houses. Not apartments etc. Then, the predictions. Why are 1-2 person households the trend? Is it because people don't want to live in a house and own a car? Are the so-called Millennials at the core of this? No. If they have the income, they buy houses and cars, exactly as people before them did. So what is the supposed trend about? I imagine it's because of a lack of suburb development. Zoning, land use, distance to city centers. People don't live in suburbs, because for whatever reason they're not being built fast enough at a cost that is affordable.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago> People don't live in suburbs, because for whatever reason they're not being built fast enough at a cost that is affordable. Is it possible that it’s due to people feeling like they do not have the economic security to purchase homes and start families? There are cheap suburbs all over the US. The question is can people afford them, including factoring in the volatility of income over the next few decades of your life.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoI'm not so sure there are cheap suburbs all over. Housing occupancy has remained at the same, noise level for decades. You have to find a house for sale, in your price range, to live in a house. That's hard, which means IMO there aren't enough houses.
- treis 6y ago>Why are 1-2 person households the trend? All of these types of articles are just laughably wrong about the state of the world. They say 80% of new households will be 1-2 people as though this is a lasting trend towards smaller households. That's just people moving out of their parents house. The majority of those will eventually become 3+ households. The people that the suburbs were built for still exist. People that aren't rich and want to have a family. They're just doing that in their early 30s now instead of in their early 20s.
- amberj8 6y agooh cool, another commie socialist article about how we should all just blend into grey and give up our humanity and submit to the powers that be. thanks vice, you fucking fascists. why is this shit on hackernews.
- gdubs 6y agoSince I don’t see any other comments mentioning it: wow, Bell Labs was preserved as a kind of public multi-use space? That’s wild, I had no idea. I’m glad they didn’t tear it down for McMansions as the article explains was the plan before preservationists intervened. It’s a very cool structure with historical significance. Bell Labs is particularly relevant to this crowd here in HN - it’s arguably the birthplace of our whole industry, and people have tried replicating its magic over the years. To me the architect in the article is too quick to dismiss the premise of Bell Labs — giving researchers privacy and pastoral views. Sounds a lot like early Silicon Valley to me. They claim that it’s actually just the chance encounters that were important. There’s some truth to that — Steve Jobs famously designed the Pixar campus to maximize chance encounters. But I wouldn’t be so quick to discount a degree of space and privacy. That’s kind of central to the whole discussion: the human balance between a need for privacy and a need for community. People want space, and they also want to be able to visit areas of density, and walk around. This used to be the mall, the big box bookstores. I actually think this article was very interesting, and the architect was very articulate about a lot of things. But I’m not sure we’ve actually solved the core question: why did the malls decay? What changed? Was it e commerce? The shrinking middle class? Traffic just getting too snarled with no real solution?
- cushychicken 6y agoKnew I wasn't going to have to scroll far in the comments section to find discussion about Bell Labs. :) That's a very cool office structure. I'm glad they repurposed it for a more cooperative use suited to the times. To me the architect in the article is too quick to dismiss the premise of Bell Labs — giving researchers privacy and pastoral views. A great discussion point re: Bell Labs that I read in an HN thread long, long ago was that research labs of this type (Bell Labs, Google X, Xerox PARC, etc.) only arise in monopoly conditions. Basic research only becomes supportable from an organizational overhead and ROI standpoint when there is no meaningful competition to the parent organization. It implies another large and very interesting question: are the net benefits of places like Bell Labs worth the costs that come with tolerating monopolies? More to the point of the topic at hand: is the monolithic structure of Bell Labs, the building, worth the costs it has imposed on the shape of its surrounding community?
- jackcosgrove 6y agoI read through the article and was disappointed that it did not give a good treatment to the suburbs' new role as immigrant destinations. Historically inner city ethnic neighborhoods were where immigrants first landed, but now they move straight to the suburbs. And they do so for the same reason white people in the 60s and 70s did so: immigrants have larger families and want space and good schools at a good price. The narrative that suburbs are obsolete because (mostly white) baby boomers and their children have less of a need for them overlooks the suburbs' desirability to non-whites and immigrants climbing the ladder.
- williesleg 6y agoBring in the illegals
- lr4444lr 6y agoThat's a funny title given that the suburbs of some metro areas, most notably NYC, are hitting record closing prices.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoit is rather unfortunate that we have people calling for the abolition of X in favor of Y, cannot see their own biases in the whole thought process. Point to be made : ".....The expectation going forward is that something like 80 percent of new households that will form over the next 15 years will be these one to two person households. A lot of them would prefer an apartment or a condo—smaller units...." This to me is at the core the problem. This statement is borderline revolting, with a holier-than-thou attitude. Why do we have an academic from an urban core opine on what everyone else wants ? Who said this person is an authority on how people that he does not know, want to live ? The proof is in the details. People left cities to move to the suburbs because they hated what they had in cities. That was their solution. If people no longer want to live in the suburbs, they can do the reverse, or strive to change the suburb themselves. Instead of advocating for "solutions" to impose on others, how about instead let people decide on their own ? Simply put, for people that want to change their lifestyle, they should be able to do so on their own. Yet I never hear 1 expert - "let's open every metro city zone regulation to unlimited mixed use, and let's see what gets built". These experts are probably afraid they may be dead wrong about what people actually want.
- geofft 6y agoI hear the latter from plenty of YIMBY organizations. Even in so-called urban cores, there are often strict restrictions on what you can build, and demand exists for bland modern apartment tower blocks but they just can't be built. There are often rules on maximum height, mandatory parking (pointed out in the article), design / "character" requirements, etc. Getting rid of zoning and review processes and letting the market take care of things is exactly what folks are calling for. But more generally I don't understand your complaint. You're saying that people should not advocate for changing how the suburbs work, because if people wanted to change how the suburbs work, they would advocate for it? Like, I'm sorry you feel that a claim of fact comes with an attitude, but it's a testable, refutable claim. Do you think the claim is wrong? Or do you just not like it?
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoCorrect > I'd like to hear about people with skin in the game, meaning residents or people tied to that land, about what they are looking to do, boots on the ground style, to change the situation they are in. Not some outsider having an opinion on it with no stake in the outcome. For example, if the academic was calling certain things he has an opinion on, about how to make things better, and to be done in the city of New York (presumably where he lives) then he would be a lot more credible.
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- theNJR 6y agoWhat a frustrating article. The first few citations are circular, they link to articles about the book being discussed or the authors of that book. Where are they getting the “80% of new households ... will be these one to two person households” stat from? No citation, of course, because it’s not true. I won’t be surprised to see that used in future articles and linked back to this interview, however. The anti-homeownership propaganda seems to be growing with articles trying to tell us “you don’t want to own a home!”. If an ounce of research was conducted it would be clear how many people want out of cities and into homes. My wife and I are going into the third season of trying to buy a house (SoCal). Every half decent home sells in its first weekend and, in our experience (6 offers), for all cash and over ask. This is the norm in many other areas from what I’ve read. To me, the real story is “Millennials want to buy homes and start families but the older generations aren’t moving out of the suburbs fast enough”.
- newacct583 6y ago> The anti-homeownership propaganda seems to be growing I don't read this like that at all. It seems much more a reflection of exactly the difficulty you're describing: lots and lots of people like you want to find big suburban family homes but are priced out, and the suburbs are (awkwardly and somewhat unfairly) infilling to accomodate more modest and denser neighborhoods to house them. The unfortunate truth is that "The Suburbs", as you and many people imagine, simply don't scale. So the actual neighborhoods we're building in the urban periphery are having to change. Recognizing that fact isn't "propaganda".
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoI respectfully disagree. It is not just a commentary on what's happening, as you describe in your first sentence. There's also a distinct assertion on what must happen going forward, to the opinion of the speakers. Suburbs don't scale. Yet, cities don't scale either. This is why people get priced out or want to move out and most cities have been low growth modes for years. I find it interesting that recognizing that the path of least resistance (suburbs) may be slowly and haphazardly changing (true), is ccheered by all academics. Yet I don't see any expert opinion about about having cities be more receptive to change to accommodate growth.... Sure sounds like a NIMBY from academics about their cities, no?
- fasteddie31003 6y agoI don't understand all this hate against the suburbs. We lived in Jack London Square in Oakland in a 700 sq/ft apt until COVID made WFH easier. We moved to a suburban paradise in Colorado and life in the suburbs is so much better than Oakland. So much space for hobbies. I can drive 5 minutes and get anything I need. There is no noticeable crime. Cars are great. I own a truck and have a 16ft trailer. We can pack everything we own into the trailer and move somewhere else. These Millennials don't want to own anything and are just jaded.
- gautamcgoel 6y agoWhich city in Colorado?
- fasteddie31003 6y agoBroomfield
- Ericson2314 6y agoIs your hobby social or individual? Do you know people besides those you moved with? If everyone tries to enjoy what you are, that drive won't be 5 minutes an average.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoHobbies are wood working and metal working.
- nobodyandproud 6y agoI detest these agenda driven articles. I lived most of my life in dense, walkable, rental neighborhoods. It took years to get out and I don’t regret it one bit. It is impossible to have downtime when you’re surrounded above, below, and all around you with neighbors. It’s also impossible to state how different an owner-maintained building is from a landlord-maintained one. A better approach would be how to create walkable suburbs, with all of the benefits but none of the downsides. Instead, the articles are taking the lazy approach; and takes a lazy approach to reasoning on why homeowners are becoming more scarce. Edit: The timing of the article couldn’t also be worse. Covid has suddenly shown that density has significant downsides.
- Ericson2314 6y ago"walkable suburb" is an oxymoron. I believe you are looking for a thing called a "town".
- djrogers 6y agoNahh, plenty of suburbs are set up with a nice quaint downtown area, with walkable housing surrounding that, and bikeable/driveable housing further out.
- jeffbee 6y agoCovid shows us that overcrowding in housing is bad, not that density is bad. There is no relationship between density and covid problems. The most-infected jurisdiction in America is Crowley County, Colorado, where fewer than 6000 people live in an area of 800 square miles, and where there are no cities.
- nobodyandproud 6y agoCrowley, CO is also a popular skiing destination, which your population count doesn’t account for.
- gumby 6y agoClearly different people have different tastes; one benefit of capitalism is that it is supposed to provide more options than strict planning (though it requires planning as well). But this comment of yours struck me in particular: > It is impossible to have downtime when you’re surrounded above, below, and all around you with neighbors. Where were you living? We lived in busy Paris and Berlin and were able to consider our homes quiet refuges. We had a kid and all the other reasons why people transition from city to suburb. It felt more accommodating than the German suburb my brother in law lived in with his kids, full of bike lanes and the like. Now we’re in Palo Alto, a walkable suburb, which doesn’t seem much quieter. I still can’t see the stars, and getting to concerts, art exhibits and the like is inconvenient and doesn’t really happen. At least I can still walk to the grocery store or restaurants through of course the selection is limited.
- nobodyandproud 6y agoLet’s please solve Nimbyism like this, before we declare that home ownership and suburbs are dead? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/economy/single-family-home.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/economy/single-f...
- plandis 6y ago> The expectation going forward is that something like 80 percent of new households that will form over the next 15 years will be these one to two person households. A lot of them would prefer an apartment or a condo—smaller units. I don’t get their conclusion, because I think there are many other benefits to home ownership outside of size typically being bigger than an apartment or condo. Having outdoor space, no HOA that can impose restrictions, added privacy, etc...
- Salgat 6y agoWhat will happen to all that parking real estate once automated cars are a thing and parking/owning a car is no longer the norm? They touch up on retrofitting parking lots but there is so much out there that will need to be changed once huge parking lots are no longer needed. If I had to guess, places like Walmart and whatnot may end up building strip malls on the empty half of their lots to take advantage of that in population dense areas. Perhaps even just extend their storefronts out another 100'.
- boxmonster 6y agoSolar panel farms seem like a good option.
- throwawayboise 6y agoI don't share your thoughts on automated cars, but assuming I'm wrong, lawns/greenspace seems like a good idea. They would absorb a lot of rainwater that would otherwise need to be managed, would reduce the "heat island" effect in the summertime.
- supertrope 6y agoAutomated cars are still decades away. As road space is even more valuable than parking, that's a net loss. There would have to be a multiplier for people sharing use of a vehicle. But people already hate mass transit, people are still expected to get to work at 8 a.m., and ordering a ride will never be a convenient as having their own vehicle available 24/7 so the maximal size of the fleet of all cars might only 25% less.
- Ericson2314 6y agoI understand the desire to do things cheaply and without mass political upheaval, but I don't see how the suburbs, and American's ideas about them can be reformed. BTW, you can well partition American ideology as: - let's go back to post war golden age, fuck disadvantaged people - let's go back to revised post war golden age, but made good for disadvantaged people - the post war boom was only possible because WWII destroyed so much of the rest of world and cars were becoming popular for the first time. We cannot go back. The third camp is right, but very small and very different.
- watersb 6y agoAtlanta, car addiction, dead malls. It was a nice weird space-age childhood, but now that built environment needs to go.