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People are choosing suburbs based on costs. The aver person has little ability to choose based on any other reason. This is why it's incredibly important that

People are choosing suburbs based on costs. The aver person has little ability to choose based on any other reason. This is why it's incredibly important that we fix this stuff. Rich environmentalists' "sacrifices" achieve nothing. It is also why I am incredibly sad the current infrastructure bill is slated to fund so much stupid suburbanization.

kube-system 5y ago
They’re choosing suburbs for value, not cost. There are plenty of apartments available in cities at rents lower than the average suburban mortgage payment. If we want revitalized cities where people want to live, we don’t just need low cost housing, we need high value housing. The middle class didn’t leave cities on cost alone and they’re not going to move back to cities on cost alone.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  But there are many many things you cannot do living in an apartment that you can do with your own home/property. It's not simply a calculation of value in a $/sq-ft sense that people are making.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Yes, that’s part of what I mean by value as opposed to cost.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Cities have amenities that are supposed to allow for those same things. Fancier apartments sometimes do too.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Sure, value not costs. > There are plenty of apartments available in cities at rents lower than the average suburban mortgage payment. But what is the floor area? Saying people don't need McMansions is not the same as saying additional bedrooms for kids isn't nice. > If we want revitalized cities where people want to live, we don’t just need low cost housing, we need high value housing. It's very easy to tear down walls making bigger units. Focusing on the cost of housing is the key part. Value comes after. Also remember that suburbs and driving is massively subsidize, even separately from the externalizes. It's not fair to expect cities to compete completely on costs without that being fixed. Go read https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/ for urbanism for small-scale romantics if big cities still sound "just bad".
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I agree with everything here except I’m not sure that value will necessarily result from focusing on cost. I think if you focus on cost alone, you’re going to build poor neighborhoods and jump start a cycle of poverty. I think the key is to build diverse neighborhoods. You want poor, rich, and middle income housing all in the same place. The segregation of incomes is how we got into this mess to begin with.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      I'm not sure poor neighborhoods are built. Most construction these days is shit quality, with just a few cheap trappings making something "luxury". Other than physical dividers like highways, I don't really think segregation is built? One big exception is we certainly want the public housing to not be congregated in ghettos. That was another terrible NYCHA (and others) practice.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        The congregation of public housing into one place is an example of what I’m referring to as “building poor neighborhoods”. In contrast, you can build rich neighborhoods depending on the structure and how the land-use is controlled.
        bobthepanda 5y ago
        The trick is to not really do anything at all and let the magic of agglomeration do its thing. Zoning is a very recent phenomenon. Cities were economically vibrant long before that. Even if there is zoning it doesn't need to be as exceedingly specific as American zoning tends to be.
        Ericson2314 5y ago
        I'm worried that cars, given subsidies, are too much of an anti-agglomerator, and thus active measures must be taken. It is as if we used to have clumps of matter bound together by gravity, enforced by magic that new matter must be spread out (zoning) but also charged the matter (cars). Merely stopping the magic doesn't meant gravity will overpower electromagnetism. Zoning and car culture achieved dominance in tandem, and so I am quit skeptical of any certainty that fixing one alone is sufficient to roll back the clock. There could be other sorts of hystersis too that make this challenging. Really we should be very careful and vigilant and not rely on one tactic to eradicate the scourge of suburbanization.
amanaplanacanal 5y ago
The costs are out of whack. Environmental externalities are paid for by everybody instead of the person creating them. We need carbon taxes to fix that problem. This is on top how much zoning craziness distorts the market.
perl4ever 5y ago
I think that discussion about "suburbs" tend not to accomplish much because the word isn't really defined. I mean, in common parlance, but also in the US government I believe that things like the census divide everything into urban and rural. I live within city limits, in a multifamily building. But the edge of the city outside of which is presumably "suburban" is literally a few dozen feet away. Also, my neighborhood has a layout and look that I think a lot of people would consider suburban. No businesses, mostly no sidewalks, mostly a cookie cutter development. On the other hand, it's super quick to go from where I live (by car that is) into the middle of the city where I work, which is kind of against the stereotype of suburbs. It's also much cheaper than the "actual" suburbs, probably because it's part of the city school district.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  A suburb is where people's work aren't tied to the land (agriculture, logging, etc.) And virtually all transport is done by car. There, did it. Sounds like your place has some nice benefits, but since you drive everywhere (you mentioned work, and stores not being in the neighborhood, so that's a safe assumption, right?), It's suburban.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    I'm within easy walking distance of a bus stop. However, the bus goes mostly east and west, rather than north to where I work. I could also technically walk to a convenience store or perhaps a supermarket. It doesn't take that long to walk a mile or two. Point is though, it's clearly not rural, and it's within a recognized city, so any time people are talking about "urban" it includes this sort of setting. It doesn't matter if you think it should be classified as urban, the fact that it is, means that's where the statistics show up indirectly. There is a distinct separation in property value between my neighborhood and surrounding suburbs with single-family housing at double or quadruple the price. Furthermore, as a matter of geometry, any city that is more or less a roundish blob, is going to have more space near the edges than the center. So it seems plausible to me that it's more representative of a city lifestyle. The very center in several cities I've been in is almost completely commercial.
jjav 5y ago
> People are choosing suburbs based on costs. The aver person has little ability to choose based on any other reason. That's quite a wide unsubstantiated generalization. Tons of people have no interest in living in a tiny apartment in a tall building and will happily pay extra to move to the suburbs to avoid that.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  In hot housing markets there is nowhere near enough supply to meet demand. The price per square foot is reflective of what the market will pay, first and foremost. The large cost premium in hot cities suggest that the unmet supply of apartment is much larger in percentage terms than the unmet supply of single family housing. In my area rents are already recovered from their COVID slump and still rising.

kube-system 5y ago

They’re choosing suburbs for value, not cost. There are plenty of apartments available in cities at rents lower than the average suburban mortgage payment. If we want revitalized cities where people want to live, we don’t just need low cost housing, we need high value housing. The middle class didn’t leave cities on cost alone and they’re not going to move back to cities on cost alone.

throwawayboise 5y ago
But there are many many things you cannot do living in an apartment that you can do with your own home/property. It's not simply a calculation of value in a $/sq-ft sense that people are making.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Yes, that’s part of what I mean by value as opposed to cost.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Cities have amenities that are supposed to allow for those same things. Fancier apartments sometimes do too.
Ericson2314 5y ago
Sure, value not costs. > There are plenty of apartments available in cities at rents lower than the average suburban mortgage payment. But what is the floor area? Saying people don't need McMansions is not the same as saying additional bedrooms for kids isn't nice. > If we want revitalized cities where people want to live, we don’t just need low cost housing, we need high value housing. It's very easy to tear down walls making bigger units. Focusing on the cost of housing is the key part. Value comes after. Also remember that suburbs and driving is massively subsidize, even separately from the externalizes. It's not fair to expect cities to compete completely on costs without that being fixed. Go read https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/ for urbanism for small-scale romantics if big cities still sound "just bad".
- kube-system 5y ago
  I agree with everything here except I’m not sure that value will necessarily result from focusing on cost. I think if you focus on cost alone, you’re going to build poor neighborhoods and jump start a cycle of poverty. I think the key is to build diverse neighborhoods. You want poor, rich, and middle income housing all in the same place. The segregation of incomes is how we got into this mess to begin with.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    I'm not sure poor neighborhoods are built. Most construction these days is shit quality, with just a few cheap trappings making something "luxury". Other than physical dividers like highways, I don't really think segregation is built? One big exception is we certainly want the public housing to not be congregated in ghettos. That was another terrible NYCHA (and others) practice.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      The congregation of public housing into one place is an example of what I’m referring to as “building poor neighborhoods”. In contrast, you can build rich neighborhoods depending on the structure and how the land-use is controlled.
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        The trick is to not really do anything at all and let the magic of agglomeration do its thing. Zoning is a very recent phenomenon. Cities were economically vibrant long before that. Even if there is zoning it doesn't need to be as exceedingly specific as American zoning tends to be.
        Ericson2314 5y ago
        I'm worried that cars, given subsidies, are too much of an anti-agglomerator, and thus active measures must be taken. It is as if we used to have clumps of matter bound together by gravity, enforced by magic that new matter must be spread out (zoning) but also charged the matter (cars). Merely stopping the magic doesn't meant gravity will overpower electromagnetism. Zoning and car culture achieved dominance in tandem, and so I am quit skeptical of any certainty that fixing one alone is sufficient to roll back the clock. There could be other sorts of hystersis too that make this challenging. Really we should be very careful and vigilant and not rely on one tactic to eradicate the scourge of suburbanization.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago

The costs are out of whack. Environmental externalities are paid for by everybody instead of the person creating them. We need carbon taxes to fix that problem. This is on top how much zoning craziness distorts the market.

perl4ever 5y ago

I think that discussion about "suburbs" tend not to accomplish much because the word isn't really defined. I mean, in common parlance, but also in the US government I believe that things like the census divide everything into urban and rural. I live within city limits, in a multifamily building. But the edge of the city outside of which is presumably "suburban" is literally a few dozen feet away. Also, my neighborhood has a layout and look that I think a lot of people would consider suburban. No businesses, mostly no sidewalks, mostly a cookie cutter development. On the other hand, it's super quick to go from where I live (by car that is) into the middle of the city where I work, which is kind of against the stereotype of suburbs. It's also much cheaper than the "actual" suburbs, probably because it's part of the city school district.

Ericson2314 5y ago
A suburb is where people's work aren't tied to the land (agriculture, logging, etc.) And virtually all transport is done by car. There, did it. Sounds like your place has some nice benefits, but since you drive everywhere (you mentioned work, and stores not being in the neighborhood, so that's a safe assumption, right?), It's suburban.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  I'm within easy walking distance of a bus stop. However, the bus goes mostly east and west, rather than north to where I work. I could also technically walk to a convenience store or perhaps a supermarket. It doesn't take that long to walk a mile or two. Point is though, it's clearly not rural, and it's within a recognized city, so any time people are talking about "urban" it includes this sort of setting. It doesn't matter if you think it should be classified as urban, the fact that it is, means that's where the statistics show up indirectly. There is a distinct separation in property value between my neighborhood and surrounding suburbs with single-family housing at double or quadruple the price. Furthermore, as a matter of geometry, any city that is more or less a roundish blob, is going to have more space near the edges than the center. So it seems plausible to me that it's more representative of a city lifestyle. The very center in several cities I've been in is almost completely commercial.

jjav 5y ago

> People are choosing suburbs based on costs. The aver person has little ability to choose based on any other reason. That's quite a wide unsubstantiated generalization. Tons of people have no interest in living in a tiny apartment in a tall building and will happily pay extra to move to the suburbs to avoid that.

bobthepanda 5y ago
In hot housing markets there is nowhere near enough supply to meet demand. The price per square foot is reflective of what the market will pay, first and foremost. The large cost premium in hot cities suggest that the unmet supply of apartment is much larger in percentage terms than the unmet supply of single family housing. In my area rents are already recovered from their COVID slump and still rising.