14 ms·

Great, just make the city centres safe, clean, friendly places so that people who are "middle class, suburban, and white" want to live there. Then we can all li

• resonious 4y ago
  I moved to Tokyo a few years back, right before the pandemic. Seeing comments like this makes me feel very lucky that I didn't instead choose a large US city.
  • daveidol 4y ago
    I wonder if some of the people commenting here have ever been to a city like Tokyo. It is a great example of what is actually possible when it comes to cleanliness and safety in a massive urban environment.
    • Rapzid 4y ago
      Yeah, just move to Japan! Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, take your pick! Good luck with the visa and cultural barrier if you like families.
      • wincy 4y ago
        If Pewdiepie, a man worth millions of dollars can do it after four years of Byzantine bureaucracy can do it, anyone can! Seriously though, he documented just how difficult the process is on his YouTube channel. Moving to Japan is insanely difficult.
        • resonious 4y ago
          I think it's a lot easier for employees than for freelance types. Even the companies hiring language instructors will do most of the paperwork for you.
        • ryan_lane 4y ago
          Assuming you get a job, it's actually not difficult. If you work in tech, you can probably even get a visa that gets you PR in 3 years. I moved mostly on a whim directly prior to the pandemic, and haven't run into any major stumbling blocks. The language barrier is the biggest issue. Assuming you live in a large city (and really, you should), the town halls have translators. You may need to wait for them to be available, and the translations may not be amazing, but they'll help you solve any tasks you need to do. The next biggest issues are getting a phone number (you need a residence card first), getting a bank account (you need a residence card and a phone number), and getting a credit card (you need a residence card, a phone number, and will need to deal with them sending your card with your katakana name on the envelope). If you have a job, they'll help you do all of these things. Getting housing isn't really a problem. At this point there's lots of gaikokujin housing (short-term rentals, month-to-month leases, sharedhouses, etc). It's possible to find it online with no Japanese language skills. Again, if you have a job, they'll help you find housing. If you're coming in as a student, your school will also help you with all of these things. Pewdiepie makes money off of making content. Saying "hey, this isn't very hard" isn't entertaining. Don't use him as a real-life example.
      • ehnto 4y ago
        I think their point was that safe cities are possible, not that we should all move to Japan. Someone who has only experienced a dangerous city or a car centric city, the possibilities might not be obvious to them so there is a very defeatist attitude, as if this is just the way cities are. I remember cruising through the streets of Tokyo in the middle of the night, still worried that I might get jumped by a meth hear even though it was extremely unlikely. It's a pre-conception that is hard to let go of.
      • novok 4y ago
        There are many developed European cities that are totally fine and do not have major cultural barriers. Some of them even speak english as a first language!
• imapeopleperson 4y ago
  > just make the city centres safe, clean, friendly + good public schools
  • chillwaves 4y ago
    Or no public schools. What's even the point? The whole k-12 curriculum needs a revamp. Can they at least compress it to k-9 and leave the rest of those years for actual preparation for adulthood?
    • QuarterReptile 4y ago
      Ha, we're at most 5-10 years from public K-16.
    • y0d4 4y ago
      How about make them better? I hated public school, but you're an imbecile.
      • tekknik 4y ago
        You know name calling is against the rules here. * Bring back honors classes for those districts that removed them * Stop no child left behind * Teach more hardcore math at a younger age. Calculus should be introduced in 6-8 grades. * Require more writing and reading in general. In general bring the lower performing students up to par with the high performers, not the other way around.
    • escapedmoose 4y ago
      Oh dear lord no. Have you ever met a 9th-grader? They still have so much to explore about the world and themselves! It would be a tragedy to stop formally educating the public so soon.
• woodruffw 4y ago
  The perception of urban blight is, to the best of my understanding, a mostly separate cultural phenomenon. It doesn't have to be the case for every city in the US to be a shining pillar of civic excellence (many of them aren't!) for it to be the case that suburban living drives alienation that feeds into statistically irrational fears of strangers. In other words: we're talking about two separate things. You're describing an abstract quality of life concern, which is a valid concern that a lot of people share about major cities. I'm talking about a cultural zeitgeist around treating strangers as predators or latent criminals, which is statistically unborn. (We can also play the anecdote game: I've lived in NYC my entire life, and I've never dodged human excrement or needles. I've seen needles and human waste, but they're a vanishingly small component of my experiences living here.)
  • jvanderbot 4y ago
    LA /Minneapolis citizen here. Urban blight is so real it's a tautology to use two words. The lack of enforcement and the actual protests against enforcement of the most basic laws borders on satire.
    • honkycat 4y ago
      No. That's the point. The cops take all the money and don't fix the actual problems we have. Do you think cops should be responsible for finding homeless people homes? You can't just throw them all in jail. Being poor isn't illegal yet.
      • xyzzyz 4y ago
        > Do you think cops should be responsible for finding homeless people homes? You can't just throw them all in jail. We used to do just that, and it worked just fine.
        • honkycat 4y ago
          We have never done that. It is also extraordinarily expensive to do that.
• temp8964 4y ago
  LoL. I still won’t come, no matter how nice the city is. Living in a big house is waaaaaay better than a living in an apartment inside a building. No contest here.
  • eropple 4y ago
    At some point you're going to have to pay for the externalities you free-ride on to enjoy that life right now. (I have a modest house on the commuter rail network. I probably will, too.)
    • hedora 4y ago
      I'm already paying an order of magnitude more for the same facilities I'd get in states that are less dense than California. At least out here, things are so screwy that minor details like cost of materials are rounding error. Will happily pay for atmospheric carbon recapture, which covers the biggest externality. Also, like most other commenters from the west coast, I'd live in one of the cities if they weren't littered with human waste, and if they had reasonable public schools.
    • temp8964 4y ago
      How is paying property tax free-ride?
      • toomuchtodo 4y ago
        They are referring to sprawl externalities. Strong Towns delves into this (and they have some points, but are also overly pessimistic about suburban and rural costs). https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
• gexla 4y ago
  Dense living doesn't necessarily have to be a big city. I live in an area where I see people out and walking. The local neighbourhood feels bustling. If I needed someone to watch my kid, I could call outside for someone from a number of faces I have known for years. This is in a developing country. Houses are smaller, closer together, and without things like a driveway. I guess most people in the US still wouldn't want to give up these things. But I wouldn't want to live in a place where I never see people because they are all either in their house or their cars.
  • nightski 4y ago
    That's really not my experience with the U.S. I'm from a smaller city (250k) and there are constantly people out in my neighborhood. Kids playing, riding bike, people walking, pets, etc... Just a lot of activity! We have large windows too so it's fun seeing it all.
• deleted 4y ago
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• slg 4y ago
  • stagger87 4y ago
    > that you want cities that make middle class white folks feel safe I don't see where they say this. > "there are too many poor brown folks in the city" This comes off as projection. > What specifically do you think needs to change for that to be true? They listed several things.
    • slg 4y ago
      >I don't see where they say this. I literally quoted them saying this. Here it is again "just make the city centres safe, clean, friendly places so that people who are "middle class, suburban, and white" want to live there". >This comes off as projection. I don't understand what you think I am projecting. I'm afraid of poor brown people? I don't want white people in the city? For the record, I am a white person who has lived in the middle of various major American cities most of my life. I'm not going to argue with you if you cite housing costs, having a yard, privacy, calmness, or any of the numerous other advantages suburban life has over city living. But when I see someone complain that cities aren't "safe, clean, [or] friendly" for middle class white folks, I will call out what I see as a recycled dog whistle from the 1950s and 1960s. >They listed several things. I questioned those listed things because the implication behind them is not true. White people aren't waiting for cities to become safe because the cities have already gotten safe.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • kcplate 4y ago
        > I literally quoted them saying this. Here it is again "just make the city centres safe, clean, friendly places so that people who are "middle class, suburban, and white" want to live there". That commenter was actually quoting part of the comment above him… > The communities that hand-wring the most about predators and risks to children tend to be middle class, suburban, and white
• tshaddox 4y ago
  It's common to see arguments of this form, which are essentially "the current state of the affairs is simply the result of what people prefer: they prefer to drive everywhere, live in big houses with big backyards in sprawling suburbs, etc." In other words, just explaining (and excusing!) the state of affairs as being "what the market wants." I do think there is some truth in these arguments. Of course there will always be some people who prefer that and some people who prefer living in more dense communities/cities. But what's missing from this is discussion about how non-market forces affect the state of affairs? What about city planning, zoning, even direct subsidies like paying for freeways and streets?
  • philips 4y ago
    100% I am in the suburbs because the two cities we love (Portland and San Francisco) have inconvenient busing and/or lottery systems for their public schools. And we would prefer to use public schools over private. That being said we picked a suburb that is actually quite walkable for our daily needs due a good public trail system and being adjacent to a large community college campus.
  • HWR_14 4y ago
    That's a good point. I think there's also the question of us this really the result of what people prefer? Maybe there are other inefficiencies that are not non-market forces that caused this.
  • erosenbe0 4y ago
    With low birth rates, certainly a lot of people may have large backyard suburbia as the ideal but do not want to deal with single family homes for their small family of 2 or 3. A condo or townhome with green space can be a life with much fewer hassles. Detached homes, especially the lovely ones with mature trees and gardens, require a lot of work. Things like snow removal, leaf pickup, scrubbing mildew off the siding, tree trimming, concrete repair, roofs, hvac maintenance, cleaning and servicing multiple vehicles, and the list goes on. And of course older homes are booby trapped wrecks of lead, asbestos, cloth-insulated wiring, corroded pipe, and shoddy insulation. Naturally, in many desirable locations old is the only affordable type, too.
• czinck 4y ago
  > But I got sick of the fights [...] got too many concussions While lots of people in cities live very different lives, either you were very unlucky or this is your own fault. Or do you think the majority of the 8 million people in NYC have gotten a concussion since moving there? The filth, yeah, it's neighborhood dependent but NYC as a whole (really anywhere other than right on Central Park) has a lot of room to improve. Pretty rare to see needles or human excrement (dog excrement is way too common).
  • newestpersona 4y ago
    I believe the multiple concussions are related to the danger of bicycling in the city, which he also states he did. The appropriate question, then, is "Do you think the majority of the N people in NYC that commute primarily by bicycle have gotten a concussion while living there?" His answer might well be yes.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      Cycling in NYC is indeed very dangerous (I do it every day). That being said, I've done it for about 20 years now and I haven't gotten a concussion.
      • erosenbe0 4y ago
        Yep, and there is a major difference between a casual ride to pick up a sandwich at 2pm on Sundays compared to the morning hustle jockeying for position in the delivery truck avoidance dystopia--surely gamified somewhere on Steam.
  • LAC-Tech 4y ago
    First big concussion I got was me walking home at night. I was living right in the centre of town, a few minutes from a grocery store. You know, like how people on HN moralise we should all do. Three people jumped out of a car, beat me up and left. It was a gang initiation thing - beat up a random civilian and get to the first rank, or something. After that concussion I was a lot more susceptible to other concussions. Can't make an NYC analogue - do people feel safe there walking at all hours of the night by themselves, even in dark areas? If so great, maybe that's a place I'd live too, like Tokyo or Taipei.
• shepardrtc 4y ago
  > Make it nicer and we'll come back. The people that live there are what make it nicer. You can help and be part of the solution, or you can continue to live in your 1500 sqft kingdom and let Queen Karen out every so often to harass the local teenage serfs, er, service workers.
  • felix_n 4y ago
    "Savage Department, Randy speaking." For serious though you hit the nail square. Pearl-clutching suburban types are actually moving back into the city where I'm at (to my neighborhood, among others), and it sucks in every way except my house's value is shooting up.
  • tekknik 4y ago
    > 1500 sqft kingdom it’s sad that you think this is a kingdom. I live in a single bedroom apartment with 1/2 this square footage.
• refurb 4y ago
  Pretty much. For some reason people see the suburbs as some forced development decision when in fact it's pretty much housing consumers choosing what they want.
  • woodruffw 4y ago
    To be clear: I don't see them as a forced development decision. It's clear that they're extremely preferable for many people, in a large part because the economic envelope for suburbs includes massive externalities. Unsustainable road and utility networks are the standard example. Put another way: consumers are choosing the best option for them, because they don't have to pay the true cost of their living environment. If the economic envelope matched the underlying reality, suburban development would be mostly an economic dead end.
  • beaconstudios 4y ago
    the American style of suburb is quite unusual compared to e.g. Europe though, and AFAIK is driven by zoning laws and car-centric infrastructure more so than by consumer choice. Markets don't necessarily offer people what they want, people's imaginations are often constrained by what's available on the market. Something something, "faster horses".
    • refurb 4y ago
      I don't buy it based on my own experience living around the world. I lived in Asia for a while where an apartment was the norm and public transit meant you didn't need a car (and most didn't have one). What would the majority do if they had the money? What was their "dream lifestyle"? Buy a single family home, with it's own land and a car. Sure, not everyone likes that lifestyle, but a hell of a lot of people do like it.
      • beaconstudios 4y ago
        I was thinking the infrastructure and amenities state of US suburbs, where they're basically stamped down in blocks off a highway. I live in a single family home and drive a car in the UK, but there are tons of amenities within walking distance (and I can walk anywhere), community events and green spaces, etc. I can drive, get a bus or cycle into the nearest city, which my town is clustered near to, so opportunities are aplenty. I know my neighbours, family are nearby, and so on. The vibe I get from American suburbs is that they're much more like isolated house-units and if you want to do anything you have to drive to somewhere totally different.
• osrec 4y ago
  Concussions?! Which city were you living in?!
  • RavingGoat 4y ago
    He's riding a bike so when he crashes he probably sometimes gets a concussion. Riding a bike anywhere is kinda scary though, not just big cities.
    • osrec 4y ago
      Ah, that makes more sense. I was imagining them getting in to multiple random fights across the city!
    • leoedin 4y ago
      Until the pandemic I commuted through London by bike for about 7 years - ranging from 5 to 12 miles a day. I fell off maybe a couple of times, never hitting my head. If the OP is sustaining multiple concussions from bike riding, they're either riding a lot (bike messenger?) or riding very recklessly (or perhaps both).
    • theartfuldodger 4y ago
      There are different attitudes,congestion and interactions for cyclists in different cities. NYC drivers seems particularly antagonistic towards cyclists, I have seen many examples of what seemed like intentional strikes to me by taxis and commercial drivers who are likely to be more time crunched and build up a frustration towards cyclists. But cyclists also seem to be of a more daring rugged stock there too. Granted, my only personal comparison would be to Buffalo, Albany, Poughkeepsie and San Diego, all which have much less congested city centers. The only east coast city that matched the "needles and feces" attitudes I have seen was Philadelphia. As soon as you start driving into the city it is impossible to notice how much trash and car debris is in the road. The moment I parked, we saw needles on the ground and as a result I was more likely to notice I imagine. But, it was truly a filthy city. Buffalo city centers do have a high rate of panhandling and street scams, you just learn coping skills.
    • 4y ago
• soheil 4y ago
  > I used to love the concept of relatively high density living. Have you been to Japan? High density is not the problem.
  • calculatte 4y ago
    Unless you can (and want to) replicate the monoculture of Japan in the US, this will remain an unhelpful comparison.
    • Schroedingersat 4y ago
      • not_really 4y ago
        Nice non-sequitor you got there
• AlecSchueler 4y ago
  Sounds like you might want to live in the Netherlands.
  • designium 4y ago
    Or Toronto.
    • JimtheCoder 4y ago
      Most people think they want to live in Toronto until they actually live in Toronto...
• Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Maybe if the middle class suburban whites hadn't spent seventy years pushing crack into black neighborhoods, systematically breaking up families, demolishing communities to replace them with highways, extracting tax money and spending it on services for suburban middle class neighborhoods, arresting people for feeding the homeless, guarding discarded food so it doesn't get eaten, undermining education in poor neighborhoods, and straight up killing them when they request help from the authorities, some of those problems would not be as bad.
  • not_really 4y ago
    Ah yes. Racism really is the cause of all the world's problems, isn't it?
• RandomUser4567 4y ago
  Honestly, I feel the same way. My wife and I left a bigger city for similar reasons. Now we life in the country, and it’s inconvenient, but it’s just nicer out here.
• screye 4y ago
  > make the city centres safe, clean, friendly places Agreed. Exactly as most of the rest of the world has done. In the developing world (India, China) and the old west (Europe), cities are the place to be. They are safe, easy to get around and much much more happening. > without having to dodge heroin needles or human excrement or have abuse hurled it us or be assaulted This is such a west coast experience. I have seen this in SF/Seattle, but Boston/NYC's homeless have seemed pretty innocuous. It is local politics problem. Cities around the world don't have these issues either. Cities continue to be expected to be havens for every kind of person, while suburbs create their own walled gardens. But if a city every proposes suburb style discriminatory policy, it will immediately be viewed as 'racist'. (Usually Racism of this form is just people looking out for their own socio-economic interests. I won't always call it hatred driven Racism. But, the standard west-coast suburbanite surely would) Because it is, and suburbs have been able to get away with massive unsustainable, economically draining and exclusionary policies for half a century. > fights and the filth, got too many concussions Where did you live ? I have spent my entire life in high-density cities and have never come close to anything like this.
  • pojzon 4y ago
    • watwut 4y ago
      Have you ever checked actual crime rates? Cause this does not passes smell test. You are way more likely to be robbed or attacked in Prague or Warsaw then in Vienna or Munich or whatever. And the cops will be harder to deal with in Eastern Europe. Eastern European cities are safer then they used to be in the nineties, sure. They are safe enough to have kids walk around. They are not safer then wester cities which are even more safer in general.
      • pojzon 4y ago
        Noone ever robbed me in 30 years of living in a big Eastern city. On the other hand I was robbed twice in a single day in Paris. Police was watching the dude run away. I wont say his ethnicity.
• fwip 4y ago
  There's a big, but disappearing, middle ground between "urban city center" and "suburban housing development." Single-use zoning laws are a big part of why we have this model where everyone living in a house needs to drive just to get to the corner store, and everyone who can walk anywhere is living in a small apartment in an expensive city. I grew up in two different suburban small towns, where we were each just a couple blocks from the corner store, the laundromat, and the local library. I could walk to my friends' houses to hang out, ride my bike around, and pick up a pizza for $5 to share with my friends. It wasn't glamorous or fashionable like city life, and it wasn't as sterile as a housing development, but it was a good place to grow up.
  • escapedmoose 4y ago
    That multi-use zoning “middle-ground” town describes what I live in now and it’s lovely. I wish there was more like it so that everyone could live like this.
• spanktheuser 4y ago
  Where did you live? Right now I'm in the middle of Chicago with my elementary aged children sleeping peacefully. I don't live in the wealthiest neighborhood. I don't live in the poorest. It's pretty diverse (by the standards of Chicago). I haven't been assaulted. I'm pretty sure the excrement I see is canine, not human. I haven't seen any heroin needles, though I don't live far from a methadone treatment clinic. And a halfway house for recently released prisoners. And am only a mile from the lakefront where we now have year-round tent camps for the first time in anyones' memory (homeless who camp through Chicago's winter are a tough breed). Maybe the rabbits eat the heroin needles before I see them. Lord knows they eat everything else. Everyone on social media complains about the coyotes and how they're everywhere. But I think that's bullshit - if there were as many coyotes as people claim we'd have way less rabbits. Surprising how much of what people post on the Internet is bullshit like that, isn't it?
  • lelanthran 4y ago
    > But I think that's bullshit - if there were as many coyotes as people claim we'd have way less rabbits. Not necessarily - the rabbit population might be large and sustaining enough to support a fairly large coyote population. It's not the case that the existence of prey means that there are no predators around - usually it is the opposite. Predators go where the prey is.
• watwut 4y ago
  I hate how some people are determined to make all cities sound like hellholes full of junkies. This is just not true.
• xmprt 4y ago
  I think we need to stop talking about cities and suburbs as if it's a binary decision. There are a ton of options in the middle which are not as loud or dense as cities while also not being as isolating and unwalkable as suburbs. Building more missing middle housing would help solve the problem significantly but no one (at least no one with the power and means to do so) wants to do that.
• op00to 4y ago
  I live in a walkable community on the US east coast that is clean, safe, and downright affordable compared to SF. Every student in town can walk to school, we walk to stores, restaurants, bars, and a train that takes us into the city center. No fights, no filth. There are plenty of places that fit the bill.
• deanCommie 4y ago
  > without having to dodge heroin needles or human excrement or have abuse hurled it us or be assaulted. What a failure of imagination for what civic policy could be. The idea is to build a social net in society such that you take care of people so that they never need to fall low enough to be shitting in the street or using hard drugs to get through a miserable existence. This is expensive, requires compassion, and extremely socialist policies. The Hackernews crowd wouldn't love it. But the money is there in society, it just requires a few less billionaires, and a few less multi-mansion lifestyles.
  • LAC-Tech 4y ago
    The idea is to build a social net in society such that you take care of people so that they never need to fall low enough to be shitting in the street or using hard drugs to get through a miserable existence. Where did the meme that this would work originate? Work backwards from cities that are actually clean & safe. Is Singapore this way because of their "extremely socialist policies"?
    • deanCommie 4y ago
      Is the goal a clean and safe city at all costs no matter what the cost? Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. The Singapore way is easier, no doubt. But I don't think it's that ludicrous to believe we could have a free AND a socialist society.
• eecc 4y ago
  “Make it nicer and we'll come back.” Oh boy, there’s so much wrong in that attitude! Anyhow, some advice from Amsterdam, NL (yes, the country of decriminalized marijuana and legal prostitution): we pay taxes and a significant portion of it — less so as the conservative government tries to shore up waning consensus with spending cuts to sustain windfalls for its constituency — goes to social programs aimed at housing homeless, supporting the addicted (often by addressing the underlying mental illness or trauma), managing dysfunctional families (which in several cases can be a bit paternalistic, but it also helps contain spillover to the previous problem class), helping sustainable employment. Now, conservatives have systematically eroded all this societal infrastructure, but most of it is still here and it does help avoiding the situations you strawmanned. Society is not a zero-sum game, it’s a force multiplier.