6 ms·

> why funnel the money into existing cities? Among other reasons, we should because the existing cities are the most resource-efficient and lowest-environmenta

> why funnel the money into existing cities? Among other reasons, we should because the existing cities are the most resource-efficient and lowest-environmental-impact living places we have at scale, and typically subsidize the infrastructure of other places.

CalRobert 5y ago
True, though US "cities" are generally asphalt hellscapes. Design something like Houten, or let Culdesac loose to build a whole city, and now you're talking.
- taza999 5y ago
  1 giant apartment complex? Culdesac is not the answer.
refurb 5y ago
Sure, but based on how it’s current done it’s a huge drag on the economy when people pay $1.5M go houses that are worth $300k in other cities. Seems like taking a short term hit in resource efficient and environmental impact in order to have people live elsewhere would be overall positive.
- maccard 5y ago
  The reason people want the $1.5M houses rather than the $300k houses is likely because they're nicer places to live (ameneties, greenspaces, schools). If you build a new nice city 30 minutes from San Jose (apologies but I don't know how far you need to go out of SJ to have more space to build) you don't inteoduxe 300k housing, you just introduce more $1.5m housing.
  - refurb 5y ago
    It’s $1.5M because of limited supply, not because it has to be that expensive. You’re ignoring two things: 1) many people don’t care about city living just access to jobs, thus a cheaper city with jobs is a good substitute and 2) sure there is a price premium, but $600k seems more reasonable than $1.5M.
    - maccard 5y ago
      And you're ignoring that many people _do_ care about city living. > sure there is a price premium, but $600k seems more reasonable than $1.5M. So now you've built $600k houses, not $300k houses. And if there are desireable jobs in the area, that pushes the demand for thouse $600k houses up to the amount that is paid in the area.
      - danaris 5y ago
        And you also need to bear in mind that a 2x increase in house price means much more than a 2x decrease in the number of people who can afford it.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I think it's more a lack of imagination. I gave up renting in LA and moved to a place where I could afford a great house with great local amenities for under $400k. I tried to convince my brother and his wife to move here but, although they can barely afford their condo fees, they're stuck in the mindset that anywhere outside LA is the "sticks". So it would mean losing their big shot at bigger career opportunities... even though they really only want to raise their kids and have no serious ambitions about that. Meanwhile they're in a tiny place while everything around them falls apart. It's frankly incomprehensible to me that people can't adjust to changing circumstances and re-evaluate their situation, and tack a different course. But my point is, you have to credit a lot of inertia to the reasons why people continue to live in places that are not affordable. Given the choice and if they knew they had job security elsewhere, I think most people would spread out to smaller towns, $300k houses and build the communities they want. They're just paralyzed by having to break with familiarity.
    - sjg007 5y ago
      LA is, however, building more condos than most other areas. They tear down an old 1950s or early single family and put in four ~$1m units... that's better than the Bay area that refuses to do that. This is of course neighborhood by neighborhood so it may not be at the necessary scale to provide relief. I love LA though but the housing situation really does suck.
  - lodovic 5y ago
    No teacher can afford to live in the neighborhood if the house prices are that high. Why would the schools be better?
    - nemo44x 5y ago
      I don’t understand the logic here. Schools are funded primarily through local property taxes. The town with the higher priced houses collects more property tax and can therefore allocate more funding to their school. This means they can pay higher salaries to teachers which means they can select for the best teachers. This attracts teachers that can’t afford to live in the town they teach in.
    - klipt 5y ago
      All else being equal, if you have two neighboring school districts, one with good schools and one with bad schools, people will be willing to pay more for houses in the good school district. So higher house prices will tend to correlate with better schools.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        The causation will be more like if you have two neighboring school districts, the one with higher house prices will tend to be the good school district because the kids’ will be coming from houses with educated and financially successful parents like doctors, engineers, lawyers, business owners, etc.
    - maccard 5y ago
      People often don't live in the neighborhoods they work in, and people often can't afford to own in the neighborhoods they live in. A teacher who bought a house 20 years ago might still be able to live there, for example.
    - novok 5y ago
      The secret about good school districts is it's mostly about good student & parent populations. It makes people angry when you say that out loud.
  - city41 5y ago
    I lived in San Jose from 2015 to 2020 and I can't possibly fathom how anyone would consider it "nice". It's extremely crowded, traffic is a nightmare. You can't actually enjoy any of the amenities because they are always jam packed. I think the real reason someone buys a $1.5m house in the San Jose area is because it enables them to take a very high paying job.
- noduerme 5y ago
  This. It seems like cities in America now are a great dumping ground and tax shelter for offshore wealth, but virtually useless for actual Americans to work, live or play. Eventually, even American multi-millionaires will get bored of buying $7M houses in LA and go fuck off to Phoenix, so who needs to live there and service them?
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    Cities or suburbs? I believe a majority in the US lives in a metro area of at least 100,000 people, but only about 30% appear to live in a city of at least 100,000 people. I think the difference is the suburbs, and I don't think that is a recent thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic...
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      In the US almost all residential areas count as cities. For example there are tens of cities in just the Bay Area alone.
      - noduerme 5y ago
        Right... we call these little suburbs "cities". City of Palo Alto. City of Berkeley. But we also pretty much consider the Bay Area as one big city, or maybe 3 if we're old school. If you say "Bay Area" anywhere, everyone knows you mean that giant beard that runs all over the bay.
        jeffbee 5y ago
        Lol Berkeley is a suburb? It contains 120k people in only 10 square miles. It is twice as densely settled as San Jose.
      - refurb 5y ago
        Agreed, but that’s more a legal definition of a city. What most people think of as “living in a city” they don’t think of places like Belmont.
dwiel 5y ago
Cities are resource efficient and low environmental impact only if you count the tight core/downtown and exclude all of the suburbs and sprawl surrounding nearly every big city in the US. Everyone driving an hour to get to everywhere is not resource efficient or low environmental impact. Small cities/large towns are actually more efficient on average in the US since everyone is a 10-15 minute drive of everything. Rural areas can be very inefficient.
- novok 5y ago
  When people say cities, they talk about them in the global context with functioning metro systems, not the sprawling monster american 'suburities' that require you to drive everywhere. If you want less suburities with their shit traffic, you'd support getting rid of zoning laws that force this form of city. I don't like US 'cities'. I do like cities elsewhere in the world. More about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54
  - dwiel 5y ago
    I agree, and I've loved the European cities I've visited, but this is an article about US housing prices and the parent was talking about "existing cities" and how they "are the most resource efficient we have", which is plain wrong. I am all for making them more resource efficient by making them more like cities in other parts of the world.

CalRobert 5y ago

True, though US "cities" are generally asphalt hellscapes. Design something like Houten, or let Culdesac loose to build a whole city, and now you're talking.

taza999 5y ago
1 giant apartment complex? Culdesac is not the answer.

refurb 5y ago

Sure, but based on how it’s current done it’s a huge drag on the economy when people pay $1.5M go houses that are worth $300k in other cities. Seems like taking a short term hit in resource efficient and environmental impact in order to have people live elsewhere would be overall positive.

maccard 5y ago
The reason people want the $1.5M houses rather than the $300k houses is likely because they're nicer places to live (ameneties, greenspaces, schools). If you build a new nice city 30 minutes from San Jose (apologies but I don't know how far you need to go out of SJ to have more space to build) you don't inteoduxe 300k housing, you just introduce more $1.5m housing.
- refurb 5y ago
  It’s $1.5M because of limited supply, not because it has to be that expensive. You’re ignoring two things: 1) many people don’t care about city living just access to jobs, thus a cheaper city with jobs is a good substitute and 2) sure there is a price premium, but $600k seems more reasonable than $1.5M.
  - maccard 5y ago
    And you're ignoring that many people _do_ care about city living. > sure there is a price premium, but $600k seems more reasonable than $1.5M. So now you've built $600k houses, not $300k houses. And if there are desireable jobs in the area, that pushes the demand for thouse $600k houses up to the amount that is paid in the area.
    - danaris 5y ago
      And you also need to bear in mind that a 2x increase in house price means much more than a 2x decrease in the number of people who can afford it.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I think it's more a lack of imagination. I gave up renting in LA and moved to a place where I could afford a great house with great local amenities for under $400k. I tried to convince my brother and his wife to move here but, although they can barely afford their condo fees, they're stuck in the mindset that anywhere outside LA is the "sticks". So it would mean losing their big shot at bigger career opportunities... even though they really only want to raise their kids and have no serious ambitions about that. Meanwhile they're in a tiny place while everything around them falls apart. It's frankly incomprehensible to me that people can't adjust to changing circumstances and re-evaluate their situation, and tack a different course. But my point is, you have to credit a lot of inertia to the reasons why people continue to live in places that are not affordable. Given the choice and if they knew they had job security elsewhere, I think most people would spread out to smaller towns, $300k houses and build the communities they want. They're just paralyzed by having to break with familiarity.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    LA is, however, building more condos than most other areas. They tear down an old 1950s or early single family and put in four ~$1m units... that's better than the Bay area that refuses to do that. This is of course neighborhood by neighborhood so it may not be at the necessary scale to provide relief. I love LA though but the housing situation really does suck.
- lodovic 5y ago
  No teacher can afford to live in the neighborhood if the house prices are that high. Why would the schools be better?
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    I don’t understand the logic here. Schools are funded primarily through local property taxes. The town with the higher priced houses collects more property tax and can therefore allocate more funding to their school. This means they can pay higher salaries to teachers which means they can select for the best teachers. This attracts teachers that can’t afford to live in the town they teach in.
  - klipt 5y ago
    All else being equal, if you have two neighboring school districts, one with good schools and one with bad schools, people will be willing to pay more for houses in the good school district. So higher house prices will tend to correlate with better schools.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The causation will be more like if you have two neighboring school districts, the one with higher house prices will tend to be the good school district because the kids’ will be coming from houses with educated and financially successful parents like doctors, engineers, lawyers, business owners, etc.
  - maccard 5y ago
    People often don't live in the neighborhoods they work in, and people often can't afford to own in the neighborhoods they live in. A teacher who bought a house 20 years ago might still be able to live there, for example.
  - novok 5y ago
    The secret about good school districts is it's mostly about good student & parent populations. It makes people angry when you say that out loud.
- city41 5y ago
  I lived in San Jose from 2015 to 2020 and I can't possibly fathom how anyone would consider it "nice". It's extremely crowded, traffic is a nightmare. You can't actually enjoy any of the amenities because they are always jam packed. I think the real reason someone buys a $1.5m house in the San Jose area is because it enables them to take a very high paying job.
noduerme 5y ago
This. It seems like cities in America now are a great dumping ground and tax shelter for offshore wealth, but virtually useless for actual Americans to work, live or play. Eventually, even American multi-millionaires will get bored of buying $7M houses in LA and go fuck off to Phoenix, so who needs to live there and service them?
- perl4ever 5y ago
  Cities or suburbs? I believe a majority in the US lives in a metro area of at least 100,000 people, but only about 30% appear to live in a city of at least 100,000 people. I think the difference is the suburbs, and I don't think that is a recent thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic...
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    In the US almost all residential areas count as cities. For example there are tens of cities in just the Bay Area alone.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      Right... we call these little suburbs "cities". City of Palo Alto. City of Berkeley. But we also pretty much consider the Bay Area as one big city, or maybe 3 if we're old school. If you say "Bay Area" anywhere, everyone knows you mean that giant beard that runs all over the bay.
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        Lol Berkeley is a suburb? It contains 120k people in only 10 square miles. It is twice as densely settled as San Jose.
    - refurb 5y ago
      Agreed, but that’s more a legal definition of a city. What most people think of as “living in a city” they don’t think of places like Belmont.

dwiel 5y ago

Cities are resource efficient and low environmental impact only if you count the tight core/downtown and exclude all of the suburbs and sprawl surrounding nearly every big city in the US. Everyone driving an hour to get to everywhere is not resource efficient or low environmental impact. Small cities/large towns are actually more efficient on average in the US since everyone is a 10-15 minute drive of everything. Rural areas can be very inefficient.

novok 5y ago
When people say cities, they talk about them in the global context with functioning metro systems, not the sprawling monster american 'suburities' that require you to drive everywhere. If you want less suburities with their shit traffic, you'd support getting rid of zoning laws that force this form of city. I don't like US 'cities'. I do like cities elsewhere in the world. More about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54
- dwiel 5y ago
  I agree, and I've loved the European cities I've visited, but this is an article about US housing prices and the parent was talking about "existing cities" and how they "are the most resource efficient we have", which is plain wrong. I am all for making them more resource efficient by making them more like cities in other parts of the world.