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It's always crazy to hear that suburbs are cheaper. Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation, so it should be considerably c

• Clubber 5y ago
  With remote work becoming the norm, it is significantly less terrible. I remote 100% and the only time I drive is to visit family and friends. I put around 1500 miles a year on the car.
  • selectodude 5y ago
    I don't care how big my house is. The idea of being locked inside like that sounds absolutely awful to me.
    • lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I am confused how one could interpret Clubber’s comment as “locked inside”. Having 24/7 access to their own vehicle sounds like the opposite of being locked inside.
    • criddell 5y ago
      It's different for everybody. In my 20's my apartment was where I slept and bathed and that's about it. The city was great because there was always something going on and the energy level is high. All that energy fed me in some way. In my 50's it's the reverse. I know who I am and what I like and the things that make me get up and be excited about the new day are now mostly internal. Being around a lot of people drains me. I've spent decades figuring out what I love and my home contains the stuff that makes me happier than anything outside (with the exception of really great restaurants). I hate saying it because I know it was really hard on a lot of people, but during the COVID lockdown days, I was happier than I've been for a long time.
    • Karsteski 5y ago
      Locked inside? You can step out any time you want. Such a silly exaggeration. Personally, I very much prefer country living where I can go to many hiking trails and campsites, have clean air, a quiet environment, and not be beholden to my neighbours for enjoyment of my own property.
• snek_case 5y ago
  It's clear that, because people view housing as an investment, supply and demand increases the value of city housing (often to levels that seem ridiculous). Can you elaborate on the subsidisation of suburbia? Are there tax provisions that advantage them?
  • lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    I think this is the "StrongTowns" argument - roughly speaking some local / federal government borrows billions and builds a suburban area, roads, sewers, schools, hospitals. Rich white people move in, taxes are collected etc. The marginal cost of the services is covered, but the bonds that raised the money may or may not be. And 2 years later the sidewalk is cracked, the sewers need replacing, the roads need widening, and there is no money - the long term sustainability of a town needs tax revenue from dense living and from local businesses that thrive in density, not businesses that sit thirty miles away at the end of a commute. So the town slowly dies, and another municipality starts to raise a bond issue ... The town was subsidised by a bond issue against National creditworthiness, against a building project with no long term revenue plan and the people living there did not pay for full long term cost of utilities (although to be fair that's the case for most utilities as they all chronically under invest)
    • nradov 5y ago
      StrongTowns isn't entirely wrong, but they exaggerate problems in suburbs to advance a political narrative. In reality large, dense cities are more likely to have problems funding infrastructure maintenance and government services due to persistent corruption, mismanagement, and the pernicious influence of public employee unions. Just look at the ongoing fiscal crisis in Chicago.
      • milkytron 5y ago
        > persistent corruption, mismanagement, and the pernicious influence of public employee unions Is this less likely to happen in smaller towns?
• tester756 5y ago
  How about comfort of living? Maintaining your own home ain't trivial, cheap, quick thing
• lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  maybe. There are very few city centres compared to city-not-centres by definition, but even so there is not much stopping us making a suburb the density of Chinatown. I wonder why we don't?
  • ben-schaaf 5y ago
    > but even so there is not much stopping us making a suburb the density of Chinatown. I wonder why we don't? It's often illegal, through zoning or otherwise, to build those kinds of places.
• opportune 5y ago
  This is a bit simplistic. There are a lot of other reasons housing is more expensive in dense urban areas: Low supply due to underbuilding. High costs due to difficulty in getting housing approved and forced BMR units. More expensive land price. Not needing to own a car saves you money. And, most importantly, proximity to jobs and services. Living in a dense urban area saves you the time of driving and commuting, and has more amenities, restaurants, and things to do within a given X minutes. Buying time is expensive and a luxury good. This is where a lot of the demand comes from. The problem is not just subsidization. Urban (especially “ultra-urban” in dense areas like Manhattan, non-suburban SF, central Boston or DC, Brickell, etc) residences have low supply and high demand.
  • nradov 5y ago
    Living in a dense urban area doesn't actually save you any commuting time on average. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-travel-time-to-work-rises.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...
    • opportune 5y ago
      The lowest travel time to work by mode of transportation was still walking or bicycling. I think the discrepancy between this and what I said is that I was mentioning extremely dense areas and this probably has a much broader criteria for what constitutes as urban. For example the city of Houston may be urban but there is nothing walkable about it. There are markedly few areas in the US that are mega-dense. Check out the individual places I mentioned
• tornato7 5y ago
  Building a high-rise condominium downtown will always be more costly and expensive than a plot of single-family homes in the 'burbs. Car travel is only getting cheaper in the suburbs with solar and EVs, while subways and trolleys are getting more and more expensive to build in big cities.
  • milkytron 5y ago
    > Car travel is only getting cheaper in the suburbs with solar and EVs, while subways and trolleys are getting more and more expensive to build in big cities. Man I really hope EVs keep dropping in price because they still seem like a virtue signal for the wealthy at their current prices.
• dfxm12 5y ago
  Suburbs aren't always or necessarily cheaper. Compared to where I live, some suburbs outside the city are cheaper, some are more expensive. A lot of the prices in the suburbs near me seem to depend on how good the schools are supposed to be, what types are jobs are nearby, and, maybe ironically given the discussion, how easy it is to access the city.
• echelon 5y ago
  > It's only through the subsidisation of suburbia and the low supply/high demand of high density urban areas that this is the case. This is a myth espoused by cityfolk. Oregon trail settlers didn't need subways. Those in Alaska and that live in the woods do just fine without your "help". Many people have ranches, like to hunt, and enjoy nature. Some city thinkers like to prescribe ways for others to live, but these people should look inwardly first. City air is toxic and is killing your pulmonary system. Zoning is NIMBY and school funding shows even the most liberal prefer to protect their own. Live your life and stop telling others they are wrong in their lifestyle. It's like nails on a chalkboard. Elitist, and will contribute to a Republican win in 2022 and 2024. (I'm a social liberal, fwiw. I think most of us are doing this wrong and are increasing polarization.)
• munificent 5y ago
  The structure of the US economy changed faster in the past 50 years than infrastructure could adapt to. With globalization and automation, the US pretty quickly turned into a mostly-service economy and shed tons of manufacturing and agriculture jobs. Service and other white-collar jobs mean working either for or with others, so they concentrate in cities. Manufacturing and ag jobs are where the raw materials, shipping, or farmland is, so tend to be more spread out. The result is that jobs in small towns and cities evaporated and most opportunity became concentrated in large metro areas. People go where the jobs are, but the cities couldn't grow fast enough to keep up. So, yes, even though cities are more economically efficient, they are still more expensive simply because the demand grew much faster than the supply.
• jedberg 5y ago
  > Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation Not really. Firstly, it costs a lot more per square foot to build a high rise than a single family home. Secondly, it costs a lot more to maintain it (elevators need constant maintenance, you can't just run to Home Depot to get replacement drain parts, etc.). And the infrastructure costs more to maintain -- running power to a high rise requires a lot of specialized commercial electric equipment that can handle the high loads and variability. Same with water -- you need special pumps and extra big boilers. Sure you can gain some efficiency by sharing those resources, but at the end of the day the costs per person are roughly the same. The main impact comes from needing less transport of goods and people, which is an environmental plus, but not something priced into the cost of living.
  • milkytron 5y ago
    > And the infrastructure costs more to maintain Wouldn't this be addressed by economies of scale? If you have 400 people living in a building, even if the complexity of the infrastructure is greater, isn't it more efficient than having 400 single family homes? Not that one can directly replace another, but I'm talking about the number of people being the constant. > The main impact comes from needing less transport of goods and people, which is an environmental plus, but not something priced into the cost of living. Transportation I think is especially huge, but I imagine there are other efficiencies of living in a dense urban area. And I think that regardless of whether or not external costs are priced in, they should be counted towards efficiency of infrastructure.
    • jedberg 5y ago
      > Wouldn't this be addressed by economies of scale? It would seem not. It's hard to find data, but a good proxy is condo fees for high rise condos vs low rise condos. Typically the high rise condo fees are higher than the low rise condos in similar areas, when the offer similar amenities. And usually condo fees are true cost representations, because the residents control the spending of their own money, so it's not a profit area for the owner, like the rent is. Which means by proxy it's more expensive to maintain a high rise than a low rise complex.
• Tiktaalik 5y ago
  Suburbs are "cheaper" because it's a ponzi scheme. When older suburbs eventually have to face the bills of renewing their ultra expensive infrastructure costs hollow out and decline, developers simply build a new suburb and people move. That new suburb is of course in no way economically sustainable. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...