5 ms·

> However it seems that when density occurs I have no recourse but move. Sure, and what's wrong with that? If your goal is to live in a rural area without many

> However it seems that when density occurs I have no recourse but move. Sure, and what's wrong with that? If your goal is to live in a rural area without many people, then many countries today have plenty of depopulated areas on the outskirts of rural towns. Why not live there? It's like the parent commenter said; expecting desirable land near a city not to densify is like expecting a puppy to never grow into a dog.

teakettle42 5y ago
> If your goal is to live in a rural area without many people, then many countries today have plenty of depopulated areas on the outskirts of rural towns. Why not live there? If your goal is to live in a dense area packed with people, then many countries today have plenty of densely populated areas in the center of urban cities. Why not live there?
- novok 5y ago
  The entire point for many americans, is there is really no choice for the most part. It's either rural areas, suburbs or hyper expensive urban areas because building an urban city is effectively illegal in most of the USA, so the few legacy cities that still exist have extremely high demand. In countries where there is a choice, this debate hardly happens. People who want their village life surrounded by farmland can go live in a small village with a train line stop and commute into the huge downtown city for work within 45 - 60 minutes. Look at berlin for example: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dabendorf,+15806+Zossen,+Germany/Bahnhof+Berlin+Friedrichstraße/@52.3915289,13.3798942,10.34z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47a86a5297705675:0xd7efd5d6ac572508!2m2!1d13.4375771!2d52.2376804!1m5!1m1!1s0x47a851c303492d73:0x6c4ed0dc30b6dc04!2m2!1d13.3869776!2d52.5202894!3e3!5m1!1e2 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dabendorf,+15806+Zossen,+Ger... "Move to another country" is a complete non-starter for most Americans too. What Americans have done to their country is a fence sitting exercise that creates the worse of both worlds. Cities in Europe are smaller, more dense and the drop off into nature is significantly faster. When americans attempt to make something city like, they're noisy, dirty, traffic clogged and crime ridden because it's against the culture to make walkable, transit orientated cities that are significantly quieter, than an american car dependent 'city'. They still give themselves long commutes, but you get huge suburban sprawl that never really ends until your hours out, so you still don't get your log cabin lifestyle anyway. By allowing cities to properly happen, you ironically create the conditions that make what you want more frequent and would still let you work close enough to a city core to actually make good money. A key issue with rural living is a bad income, because your too far away from other humans to make large productive groups than can make money.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    Desirable cities in Europe also have the same “housing affordability crisis”, so I’m not sure I buy your hypothesis.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      They don't have the same affordability crisis. It's actually much worse in Europe. Prices are as high as they are in US, but people make even less, and pay higher taxes. Go to https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=150 https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/region_rankings_c... and check out some European cities you know by name. I recommend looking at the "Mortgage as Percentage of Income" metric: Mortgage as Percentage of Income is a ratio of the actual monthly cost of the mortgage to take-home family income (lower is better). Average monthly salary is used to estimate family income. It assumes 100% mortgage is taken on 20 years for the house(or apt) of 90 square meters which price per square meter is the average of price in the city center and outside of city center. 90 square meters is around 1000 square feet. In San Francisco, that's 50%. Sounds bad, huh? Well, it's 70% in Madrid, 92% in London and Munich, 101% in Rome, and 117% in Paris, and these are not even the worst: Kiev, Moscow, Minsk, Krakow or Dubrovnik are much worse than that. Maybe it's better in 2nd tier cities? Well, in some (e.g. 31% in Antwerp or 37% in Aarhus), but not in most: 115% in Brno, 93% in Zagreb, or 61% in Lyon. Back to US: San Francisco 50% is basically as bad as it gets in US, outside of NYC (where it's 66%). Most places in US are in 20-30%s. You think Seattle or Denver are not affordable? Well, the mortgage-to-income ratio there is only around 27%. That's cheaper than basically any major European city. So yeah, compared to most of European cities, San Francisco houses are a steal.
everdrive 5y ago
>expecting desirable land near a city not to densify I think that's fair. I'm worried that some of this conversation is just a misunderstanding between the California-based population on HN. I'm fine with residents of California voting to modify their zoning laws to allow more density in principle. My claim is that even areas away from dense urban environments seem to be getting more crowded. It seems like every place is. If it were restricted to urban environments and their suburbs I wouldn't worry so much. Even the rural areas are growing up and getting more crowded.
- phil21 5y ago
  > My claim is that even areas away from dense urban environments seem to be getting more crowded. It seems like every place is. Of course it is. No one likes density, even those that say they like it (they enjoy the benefits, not the drawbacks) so it gets voted down almost literally everywhere - such as how you feel about greater density in your community. Due to this, the only option to build was sprawl as density was banned. The US really doesn't have "urban" other than for a few legacy pre-war cities that have marginally functional mass transit. The suburban/exurban way of life is pretty much the default for most of the country. I'd feel a lot better about this debate if there were truly reasonable urban living choices. It would be nice to remove all forms of subsidy so everyone was paying their actual externalized costs. One thing I've made note of my entire life as I watched sprawl continue unabated was that this is a historical anomaly. The human condition seems to be enough density to keep agriculture going in the hinterlands, with only a very select few being able to afford the upkeep/transport/etc. costs of maintaining an estate outside of the "dirty" city. To me it seems we might have spent a couple generations building a wildly unsustainable house of cards.
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  > My claim is that even areas away from dense urban environments seem to be getting more crowded. It seems like every place is. Look at this picture: http://www.dannyquah.com/writings/en/files/2015/09/2015.09.22-Danny.Quah-3d-population-cluster-side-More-People-Inside.png http://www.dannyquah.com/writings/en/files/2015/09/2015.09.2... Notice how even in that circle most of that is water. People are moving out of that area for a variety of reasons, some density, some environmental (both natural and pollution), and some economic. The current low-density north american way of living is a historical anomaly outside of agrarian lifestyles (farms are just open air biological farms). Expecting post-war living to continue is like expecting the post-war economy to continue. Personally, I bought a 100 acres that are remote and off-road to build my own place off-grid. This is put-up-or-shut-up. You cannot expect to find less dense living without purposefully securing it.

teakettle42 5y ago

> If your goal is to live in a rural area without many people, then many countries today have plenty of depopulated areas on the outskirts of rural towns. Why not live there? If your goal is to live in a dense area packed with people, then many countries today have plenty of densely populated areas in the center of urban cities. Why not live there?

novok 5y ago
The entire point for many americans, is there is really no choice for the most part. It's either rural areas, suburbs or hyper expensive urban areas because building an urban city is effectively illegal in most of the USA, so the few legacy cities that still exist have extremely high demand. In countries where there is a choice, this debate hardly happens. People who want their village life surrounded by farmland can go live in a small village with a train line stop and commute into the huge downtown city for work within 45 - 60 minutes. Look at berlin for example: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dabendorf,+15806+Zossen,+Germany/Bahnhof+Berlin+Friedrichstraße/@52.3915289,13.3798942,10.34z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47a86a5297705675:0xd7efd5d6ac572508!2m2!1d13.4375771!2d52.2376804!1m5!1m1!1s0x47a851c303492d73:0x6c4ed0dc30b6dc04!2m2!1d13.3869776!2d52.5202894!3e3!5m1!1e2 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dabendorf,+15806+Zossen,+Ger... "Move to another country" is a complete non-starter for most Americans too. What Americans have done to their country is a fence sitting exercise that creates the worse of both worlds. Cities in Europe are smaller, more dense and the drop off into nature is significantly faster. When americans attempt to make something city like, they're noisy, dirty, traffic clogged and crime ridden because it's against the culture to make walkable, transit orientated cities that are significantly quieter, than an american car dependent 'city'. They still give themselves long commutes, but you get huge suburban sprawl that never really ends until your hours out, so you still don't get your log cabin lifestyle anyway. By allowing cities to properly happen, you ironically create the conditions that make what you want more frequent and would still let you work close enough to a city core to actually make good money. A key issue with rural living is a bad income, because your too far away from other humans to make large productive groups than can make money.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  Desirable cities in Europe also have the same “housing affordability crisis”, so I’m not sure I buy your hypothesis.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    They don't have the same affordability crisis. It's actually much worse in Europe. Prices are as high as they are in US, but people make even less, and pay higher taxes. Go to https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=150 https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/region_rankings_c... and check out some European cities you know by name. I recommend looking at the "Mortgage as Percentage of Income" metric: Mortgage as Percentage of Income is a ratio of the actual monthly cost of the mortgage to take-home family income (lower is better). Average monthly salary is used to estimate family income. It assumes 100% mortgage is taken on 20 years for the house(or apt) of 90 square meters which price per square meter is the average of price in the city center and outside of city center. 90 square meters is around 1000 square feet. In San Francisco, that's 50%. Sounds bad, huh? Well, it's 70% in Madrid, 92% in London and Munich, 101% in Rome, and 117% in Paris, and these are not even the worst: Kiev, Moscow, Minsk, Krakow or Dubrovnik are much worse than that. Maybe it's better in 2nd tier cities? Well, in some (e.g. 31% in Antwerp or 37% in Aarhus), but not in most: 115% in Brno, 93% in Zagreb, or 61% in Lyon. Back to US: San Francisco 50% is basically as bad as it gets in US, outside of NYC (where it's 66%). Most places in US are in 20-30%s. You think Seattle or Denver are not affordable? Well, the mortgage-to-income ratio there is only around 27%. That's cheaper than basically any major European city. So yeah, compared to most of European cities, San Francisco houses are a steal.

everdrive 5y ago

>expecting desirable land near a city not to densify I think that's fair. I'm worried that some of this conversation is just a misunderstanding between the California-based population on HN. I'm fine with residents of California voting to modify their zoning laws to allow more density in principle. My claim is that even areas away from dense urban environments seem to be getting more crowded. It seems like every place is. If it were restricted to urban environments and their suburbs I wouldn't worry so much. Even the rural areas are growing up and getting more crowded.

phil21 5y ago
> My claim is that even areas away from dense urban environments seem to be getting more crowded. It seems like every place is. Of course it is. No one likes density, even those that say they like it (they enjoy the benefits, not the drawbacks) so it gets voted down almost literally everywhere - such as how you feel about greater density in your community. Due to this, the only option to build was sprawl as density was banned. The US really doesn't have "urban" other than for a few legacy pre-war cities that have marginally functional mass transit. The suburban/exurban way of life is pretty much the default for most of the country. I'd feel a lot better about this debate if there were truly reasonable urban living choices. It would be nice to remove all forms of subsidy so everyone was paying their actual externalized costs. One thing I've made note of my entire life as I watched sprawl continue unabated was that this is a historical anomaly. The human condition seems to be enough density to keep agriculture going in the hinterlands, with only a very select few being able to afford the upkeep/transport/etc. costs of maintaining an estate outside of the "dirty" city. To me it seems we might have spent a couple generations building a wildly unsustainable house of cards.
Pet_Ant 5y ago
> My claim is that even areas away from dense urban environments seem to be getting more crowded. It seems like every place is. Look at this picture: http://www.dannyquah.com/writings/en/files/2015/09/2015.09.22-Danny.Quah-3d-population-cluster-side-More-People-Inside.png http://www.dannyquah.com/writings/en/files/2015/09/2015.09.2... Notice how even in that circle most of that is water. People are moving out of that area for a variety of reasons, some density, some environmental (both natural and pollution), and some economic. The current low-density north american way of living is a historical anomaly outside of agrarian lifestyles (farms are just open air biological farms). Expecting post-war living to continue is like expecting the post-war economy to continue. Personally, I bought a 100 acres that are remote and off-road to build my own place off-grid. This is put-up-or-shut-up. You cannot expect to find less dense living without purposefully securing it.