11 ms·

> 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 n

> 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.

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.