> Seems like the rents were probably within their means, and they're being forced out because now they're not. But that’s the thing. If they have little tolera

> Seems like the rents were probably within their means, and they're being forced out because now they're not. But that’s the thing. If they have little tolerance or flexibility to accommodate those costs, then they were living too close to their limits. As for the rest of what you said… I have lived in an urban environment for most of my life, and still do. But more recently I’ve come to feel that urban spaces are overrated - living in cramped apartments, huddled in wet and slushy subways, shadowed by tall buildings, is a certain kind of hell. You claimed that distributed populations are more socially isolated, but that’s not true. Having more space and slightly more physical isolation doesn’t mean you’re more socially isolated. Cities rarely have the sense of community and neighborly friendliness that rural areas have. Plenty of people are lonely in big cities in a fundamental way, and no, access to a collection of bars and restaurants does not make up for it. As for cost savings at scale - clearly that’s not true given we are talking about ballooning costs in cities. The environmental destruction is debatable - more people occupy cities, enabled by the model of living densely, and they still consume all the same plastics and electronics. Urban areas also have a massive amount of concentrated environmental impact, while less dense populations are more in line with their local environment‘s capacity. As an example, Seattle regularly has to dump millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the local waterways, leading to beach closures and marine life effects that are a result of the big concentrated impact (https://www.q13fox.com/news/heavy-rain-sends-11-million-gallons-of-untreated-wastewater-into-puget-sound https://www.q13fox.com/news/heavy-rain-sends-11-million-gall...). As for dependence on motor vehicles - that feels like a positive to me, as cars are fast and convenient and let me get to where I want when I want, instead of being restricted to the timetables and destinations of public transit. I get that there are other perspectives on all of this. But I wanted to share this perspective because it would be a mistake to take the alleged superiority of urban lifestyles as a foregone conclusion.