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I’d love it if some of the people downvoting your comment would explain why. For me, it really resonates. I think a major driver of anti-single-family-home adv

I’d love it if some of the people downvoting your comment would explain why. For me, it really resonates. I think a major driver of anti-single-family-home advocacy is simply that the kind of people who become urban planners are the kind of people who personally love the crush of the city and the close proximity of their fellow man. It is also fueled by the interests of developers and, to a lesser extent, social justice advocates.

eggsmediumrare 6y ago
Didn't downvote, but I'm guessing the casual dismissal of environmental concerns.
- Nursie 6y ago
  I didn't make a value judgement on those reasons, or at least that wasn't my intention, though I can see why someone might take it that way. I think the environmental concerns that feed into it are often quite valid, spreading endless suburbs across places like the UK is not a great idea. But I don't think criticising those who aspire to have more space is a good outcome.
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
I upvoted you
woah 6y ago
The tone of the comment is very whiny. There’s this sense of the poster feeling threatened by other people’s preferences. An article discussing how a lot of young people prefer cities is somehow “berating” them. It’s a small-minded and insecure attitude. I know we are not supposed to discuss downvotes on this forum, but that is why people are downvoting it.
- Nursie 6y ago
  I'm not threatened by anyone's preferences, if you want to live in a city that's great - I live in the centre of a small city (300k people?) right now. I wasn't specifically talking about the linked article either, I have seen a lot of articles in recent years in the UK taking an anti-suburban line. What I'm drawing attention to is that the bien pensant class in the UK seem to have started to tell us it's wrong to want the life that people have aspired to before. And that this is something we saw some decades before with brutalism, pushing people into spaces that designers and architects wanted them, not places they wanted to be themselves. There seems to be a desire amongst some architects and planners to push people towards their ideals of higher density housing, in particular, trading out much in the way of private space to much more social living. Not everyone wants that. It's not wrong to want to live in smaller urban spaces with that trade-off, but it's not wrong not to buy into it either.
ghaff 6y ago
At least some it has aspects in common with other collective action problems. (See many of the current discussions around remote work.) There's a perception, somewhat warranted, that if they can't persuade other people to adopt their preferences, it's going to be harder for they themselves to live in a world where teams are colocated, cities ban cars, there's more mixed use zoning, or whatever. And the arguments perhaps work better if they're framed in terms of productivity, environmental impact, etc. as opposed to "I like it this way better."
- supertrope 6y ago
  Housing and transportation seems to have two local maxima: car dependent or high density. A walkable high density area with apartments and mass transit. Or free roads, free parking, and sprawl that reinforce each other. If you try to bring a car to a dense area you become frustrated with traffic congestion and expensive parking and insurance. Likewise if you try to maintain an urban lifestyle in most of America you will be braving long waits for a bus and pedestrian hostile layouts.
  - wott 6y ago
    As usual in this type of threads, I don't quite understand what Americans mean by 'walkability'. When I was in high-school, I spent 2 weeks in the USA, on Long Island. I could walk for an hour and not walk across a pedestrian. There were often no sidewalk (when there were, I wasn't sure I could use them, as to my foreign eyes, being detached from the road, they where running though properties :-D ), but what's the problem with that? There was almost zero traffic, since the areas are low-density residential; much less than on my country roads. I could reach the ocean, I could reach playgrounds/playfields, I could reach one street with shops, I could reach... the high-school. No transit was needed. But I was alone in the streets/on the roads. I didn't understand why the older kid (16?) of the house was already driving a big car to go to high-school... When I look at Google Maps, a huge proportion of those suburbs areas seem to be within a mile of a either a shop street or a supermarket, and often some playfield too (we don't have that many over here). The grid pattern makes access easier. So I am puzzled. It seems very 'walkable' to me. Of course accessing those supermarkets by foot or cycle ranges from unpleasant to maddening because access was generally only planned for cars. But that's much more easily fixable than redesigning the whole zones. Now if you work 15 miles away, that's something else, but does this come into 'walkability' concept? No density is going to fix that: even in a big dense city, your job, or your next job (and even more your partner's!) is almost always going to end up on the other end of the city after some time. Walkability cannot help there, so I reckon jobs location shouldn't weight on the concept much. I lived abroad in a pretty US-sprawl-like place. A huge majority of detached houses, a few rowhouses, a handful of short flats buildings, with supermarkets in place of the town centre. Basically no small shops, but a few bars between the supermarkets. I was living on one side of the town, and I was walking (winter) or cycling (summer) everyday to my workplace on the other side of the town, 2 rivers and 1.5 miles away. I would shop on the way back home. Easy, simple, practical. No transit is needed. For me it is walkable. But it seems it isn't, for many people I read here, because they would declare similar areas in the US as non-walkable. I now live in a municipality, where density is 8 inhabitants / km² (20-25 inhabitants / sq mile). But most people live within half-a-mile of the village centre. It has enough small shops for your daily or weekly needs; if you wish, there's a bigger shop/small supermarket in the next village, 2 miles away. There's a guy who is over 80 years old and who lives at the farthest point in the municipality, 1 mile away. He comes shopping almost everyday, by foot, on the road that passes in front of my house. So for him I guess it is walkable. But what if we ask all the 40-something who live 4 times closer, but who prefer to take their car, and drive 2 times 10 miles to go a big supermarket. They'll swear they need their car, for those countrysides are not walkable! Heck, my neighbour works in the centre, that is one quarter miles away (5 mn walk, 1 mn bicycle) and takes her car to go to work.
tomcam 6y ago
Upvoting this comment while it's still visible... which it won't be for long. I too am a little saddened by what feels to me like a classist anti-suburb attitude here on HN. Maybe I'm just oversensitive. But I grew up not rich and not safe. Am very, very happy that I can own a few acres 2 miles away from a Costco and 13 miles from the (currently dormant) opera.

eggsmediumrare 6y ago

Didn't downvote, but I'm guessing the casual dismissal of environmental concerns.

Nursie 6y ago
I didn't make a value judgement on those reasons, or at least that wasn't my intention, though I can see why someone might take it that way. I think the environmental concerns that feed into it are often quite valid, spreading endless suburbs across places like the UK is not a great idea. But I don't think criticising those who aspire to have more space is a good outcome.

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago

I upvoted you

woah 6y ago

The tone of the comment is very whiny. There’s this sense of the poster feeling threatened by other people’s preferences. An article discussing how a lot of young people prefer cities is somehow “berating” them. It’s a small-minded and insecure attitude. I know we are not supposed to discuss downvotes on this forum, but that is why people are downvoting it.

Nursie 6y ago
I'm not threatened by anyone's preferences, if you want to live in a city that's great - I live in the centre of a small city (300k people?) right now. I wasn't specifically talking about the linked article either, I have seen a lot of articles in recent years in the UK taking an anti-suburban line. What I'm drawing attention to is that the bien pensant class in the UK seem to have started to tell us it's wrong to want the life that people have aspired to before. And that this is something we saw some decades before with brutalism, pushing people into spaces that designers and architects wanted them, not places they wanted to be themselves. There seems to be a desire amongst some architects and planners to push people towards their ideals of higher density housing, in particular, trading out much in the way of private space to much more social living. Not everyone wants that. It's not wrong to want to live in smaller urban spaces with that trade-off, but it's not wrong not to buy into it either.

ghaff 6y ago

At least some it has aspects in common with other collective action problems. (See many of the current discussions around remote work.) There's a perception, somewhat warranted, that if they can't persuade other people to adopt their preferences, it's going to be harder for they themselves to live in a world where teams are colocated, cities ban cars, there's more mixed use zoning, or whatever. And the arguments perhaps work better if they're framed in terms of productivity, environmental impact, etc. as opposed to "I like it this way better."

supertrope 6y ago
Housing and transportation seems to have two local maxima: car dependent or high density. A walkable high density area with apartments and mass transit. Or free roads, free parking, and sprawl that reinforce each other. If you try to bring a car to a dense area you become frustrated with traffic congestion and expensive parking and insurance. Likewise if you try to maintain an urban lifestyle in most of America you will be braving long waits for a bus and pedestrian hostile layouts.
- wott 6y ago
  As usual in this type of threads, I don't quite understand what Americans mean by 'walkability'. When I was in high-school, I spent 2 weeks in the USA, on Long Island. I could walk for an hour and not walk across a pedestrian. There were often no sidewalk (when there were, I wasn't sure I could use them, as to my foreign eyes, being detached from the road, they where running though properties :-D ), but what's the problem with that? There was almost zero traffic, since the areas are low-density residential; much less than on my country roads. I could reach the ocean, I could reach playgrounds/playfields, I could reach one street with shops, I could reach... the high-school. No transit was needed. But I was alone in the streets/on the roads. I didn't understand why the older kid (16?) of the house was already driving a big car to go to high-school... When I look at Google Maps, a huge proportion of those suburbs areas seem to be within a mile of a either a shop street or a supermarket, and often some playfield too (we don't have that many over here). The grid pattern makes access easier. So I am puzzled. It seems very 'walkable' to me. Of course accessing those supermarkets by foot or cycle ranges from unpleasant to maddening because access was generally only planned for cars. But that's much more easily fixable than redesigning the whole zones. Now if you work 15 miles away, that's something else, but does this come into 'walkability' concept? No density is going to fix that: even in a big dense city, your job, or your next job (and even more your partner's!) is almost always going to end up on the other end of the city after some time. Walkability cannot help there, so I reckon jobs location shouldn't weight on the concept much. I lived abroad in a pretty US-sprawl-like place. A huge majority of detached houses, a few rowhouses, a handful of short flats buildings, with supermarkets in place of the town centre. Basically no small shops, but a few bars between the supermarkets. I was living on one side of the town, and I was walking (winter) or cycling (summer) everyday to my workplace on the other side of the town, 2 rivers and 1.5 miles away. I would shop on the way back home. Easy, simple, practical. No transit is needed. For me it is walkable. But it seems it isn't, for many people I read here, because they would declare similar areas in the US as non-walkable. I now live in a municipality, where density is 8 inhabitants / km² (20-25 inhabitants / sq mile). But most people live within half-a-mile of the village centre. It has enough small shops for your daily or weekly needs; if you wish, there's a bigger shop/small supermarket in the next village, 2 miles away. There's a guy who is over 80 years old and who lives at the farthest point in the municipality, 1 mile away. He comes shopping almost everyday, by foot, on the road that passes in front of my house. So for him I guess it is walkable. But what if we ask all the 40-something who live 4 times closer, but who prefer to take their car, and drive 2 times 10 miles to go a big supermarket. They'll swear they need their car, for those countrysides are not walkable! Heck, my neighbour works in the centre, that is one quarter miles away (5 mn walk, 1 mn bicycle) and takes her car to go to work.

tomcam 6y ago

Upvoting this comment while it's still visible... which it won't be for long. I too am a little saddened by what feels to me like a classist anti-suburb attitude here on HN. Maybe I'm just oversensitive. But I grew up not rich and not safe. Am very, very happy that I can own a few acres 2 miles away from a Costco and 13 miles from the (currently dormant) opera.