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I know a lot of Americans who are well-travelled and have seen world-class transit in Europe and Asia, and most of them still choose to live in suburbs. The av

I know a lot of Americans who are well-travelled and have seen world-class transit in Europe and Asia, and most of them still choose to live in suburbs. The average American wants to live in a detached house that they own. This does not lead to dense cities. It leads to sprawl, which is what we got because it’s what we want.

kiba 4y ago
Our choices are limited by options available to us.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  Yup. And the options available to us have been limited by decades of zoning policy encouraging single-family homes only. My girlfriend and I are about to move to the suburbs to be closer to her family, but it’s to an inner-ring suburb with excellent transit back into the city. There are maybe two towns for this in the area that aren’t outrageously priced, and even those two are above average. See also, “The myth of revealed preference for suburbs”: https://cityobservatory.org/the-myth-of-revealed-preference-4-suburbs/ https://cityobservatory.org/the-myth-of-revealed-preference-...
refurb 4y ago
I spent time in Singapore where living in dense high rises and traveling on a very well run public transit system is commonplace. Same thing. I found that people who could afford cars bought them for the convenience (despite the 100% import duty and $100,000 COE charge for 10 year permit). And same with detached housing. It’s was pretty much the ideal for families. Constant complaints of noise in apartment buildings, crappy neighbors, limited space. Don’t get me wrong, many people like the apartment living car-free. Mostly, young, childless people. But when kids came into the picture or even wealth increased and people got older, preferences changed.
- digdugdirk 4y ago
  The problem is the vast middle ground between those two extremes that just doesn't exist in America. In Europe they seem to be more commonly called some variation of "villages". Single family homes with small lots, with larger community greenspace, and a small central hub with some shopping for necessities and a reliable connection to a larger public transit system. Meanwhile, the American suburb seems to have been modeled after manor estates but shrunk down to a level where it doesn't make sense. Each property has more personal land, but not enough to be "self-sufficient". That slight lowering of density prevents easy walkable access to any sort of central community hub, which makes it financially unviable to have a small community shopping district. That makes a shared public transit access point difficult to implement, since there's no community hub. Everything else spirals from there, making cars (and particularly bigger cars - remember, you need to keep the "estate" supplied with the necessities from a store located a 20-30 minute drive away) the only way for a family to function. I don't want to live in Hong Kong density, but I absolutely don't want to live in the typical American suburbia.
  - tmh88j 4y ago
    >Meanwhile, the American suburb seems to have been modeled after manor estates but shrunk down to a level where it doesn't make sense. Each property has more personal land, but not enough to be "self-sufficient". > remember, you need to keep the "estate" supplied with the necessities from a store located a 20-30 minute drive away) People don't live in the suburbs to start a mini-farm. If you have to drive 20-30 minutes just for necessities you live in a rural area, not suburbs.
- gautamdivgi 4y ago
  Kids are noisy and have plenty of energy. You don’t want to be staying below me in an apartment building. The noise of my 2 kids jumping and running around would drive you nuts. And oh - they will have friends over as well. And if they’re doing band or music practice - oh boy :) Yeah - they could go out. But they’ll come back in and its messy and noisy everywhere. It’s just the way kids are. I guess folks need to be careful what they wish for. I’m all for accessible and densely populated housing. But I’m used to the noise.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    I'd have no problem with having you as my neighbor. Living in a German brick apartment building, when my neighbor has his subwoofer on maximum, I can still barely hear it over the sound of my own breath. I can watch movies at cinema reference volume at home at 3am and my neighbors don't notice it either. Your problem isn't with apartment buildings, it's with shoddy american construction standards.
    - refurb 4y ago
      Nahhh... even the best apartment buildings suck compared to a detached home. I've lived in all concrete apartment buildings and you can still here some noise as it travels through solid concrete pretty well.
falcolas 4y ago
You're right - I do not want to live in dense cities. I did it for years, and hated it. I was happy when I was able to move out into a detached home where I can use speakers and not have to worry about a neighbor getting angry. It's only one neighbor out of the 6 I would share separating walls with, but one is all it takes.
- xsmasher 4y ago
  If you could live in a detached home but the next block over had a restaurant or two and a small grocery, wouldn't that be pleasant? Zoning that allows ONLY single-family detached housing, and no retail or business, forces car-dependency. "Detached home or high-rise apartment in a city" is a false dichotomy.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    > wouldn't that be pleasant Not really. Small grocery stores lack variety (by necessity, when their potential market is limited to families living in a 1-2 mile radius). Two restaurants lack variety. It makes for stupidly boring food choices over time. Frankly, I'd end up not using them, ordering even more over the internet, and interacting even less with folks nearby.
  - mantas 4y ago
    As living in such place.. It's still „oh let's drive to bigger shop or THAT butcher this time“. Or „other“ restaurant. And people living downtown still do the same - driving to same big malls in outskirts, restaurants in other towns etc. The funniest case is when people live downtown and drive to non-downtown workplaces :)
  - twblalock 4y ago
    > Zoning that allows ONLY single-family detached housing, and no retail or business, forces car-dependency. A lot of suburbs are not like that. I've lived in the Bay Area suburbs for most of my life and I don't think I've ever lived more than half a mile from a shopping center with a grocery store and restaurants. Every main road has them. Between the main roads, there are houses.
tristor 4y ago
I fall into this boat. I lived abroad for many years, did the digital nomad thing, have been really all over the world. I love walkability and have looked for it here in the US as a driving basis for housing selection. All that said, I absolutely will not share walls with someone else. I used to work nights, and sleep in the day, and I'm still a night owl. It is untenable to me to have to deal with complaints because I am watching Netflix at 9:30PM, or to have to have any shared systems which I am now limited away from being able to fix myself. On the flipside, I don't want a huge place to live, so I am actively trying to find (or build) a small (less than 1800sqft) narrow (3 stories, like a detached townhouse) house that is extremely ecological (passive house standards) in a walkable area. When I considered permanently moving to Europe, places like this were actually not horribly uncommon, although they weren't as common as apartment blocks. In the US, places like this are near impossible to find because most houses are built by "production builders" who optimize for the largest square footage possible on a lot space allowed by local code to increase selling price, and do it as the lowest cost (meets code, maybe, basically same as getting a C grade).

kiba 4y ago

Our choices are limited by options available to us.

ryukafalz 4y ago
Yup. And the options available to us have been limited by decades of zoning policy encouraging single-family homes only. My girlfriend and I are about to move to the suburbs to be closer to her family, but it’s to an inner-ring suburb with excellent transit back into the city. There are maybe two towns for this in the area that aren’t outrageously priced, and even those two are above average. See also, “The myth of revealed preference for suburbs”: https://cityobservatory.org/the-myth-of-revealed-preference-4-suburbs/ https://cityobservatory.org/the-myth-of-revealed-preference-...

refurb 4y ago

I spent time in Singapore where living in dense high rises and traveling on a very well run public transit system is commonplace. Same thing. I found that people who could afford cars bought them for the convenience (despite the 100% import duty and $100,000 COE charge for 10 year permit). And same with detached housing. It’s was pretty much the ideal for families. Constant complaints of noise in apartment buildings, crappy neighbors, limited space. Don’t get me wrong, many people like the apartment living car-free. Mostly, young, childless people. But when kids came into the picture or even wealth increased and people got older, preferences changed.

digdugdirk 4y ago
The problem is the vast middle ground between those two extremes that just doesn't exist in America. In Europe they seem to be more commonly called some variation of "villages". Single family homes with small lots, with larger community greenspace, and a small central hub with some shopping for necessities and a reliable connection to a larger public transit system. Meanwhile, the American suburb seems to have been modeled after manor estates but shrunk down to a level where it doesn't make sense. Each property has more personal land, but not enough to be "self-sufficient". That slight lowering of density prevents easy walkable access to any sort of central community hub, which makes it financially unviable to have a small community shopping district. That makes a shared public transit access point difficult to implement, since there's no community hub. Everything else spirals from there, making cars (and particularly bigger cars - remember, you need to keep the "estate" supplied with the necessities from a store located a 20-30 minute drive away) the only way for a family to function. I don't want to live in Hong Kong density, but I absolutely don't want to live in the typical American suburbia.
- tmh88j 4y ago
  >Meanwhile, the American suburb seems to have been modeled after manor estates but shrunk down to a level where it doesn't make sense. Each property has more personal land, but not enough to be "self-sufficient". > remember, you need to keep the "estate" supplied with the necessities from a store located a 20-30 minute drive away) People don't live in the suburbs to start a mini-farm. If you have to drive 20-30 minutes just for necessities you live in a rural area, not suburbs.
gautamdivgi 4y ago
Kids are noisy and have plenty of energy. You don’t want to be staying below me in an apartment building. The noise of my 2 kids jumping and running around would drive you nuts. And oh - they will have friends over as well. And if they’re doing band or music practice - oh boy :) Yeah - they could go out. But they’ll come back in and its messy and noisy everywhere. It’s just the way kids are. I guess folks need to be careful what they wish for. I’m all for accessible and densely populated housing. But I’m used to the noise.
- kuschku 4y ago
  I'd have no problem with having you as my neighbor. Living in a German brick apartment building, when my neighbor has his subwoofer on maximum, I can still barely hear it over the sound of my own breath. I can watch movies at cinema reference volume at home at 3am and my neighbors don't notice it either. Your problem isn't with apartment buildings, it's with shoddy american construction standards.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Nahhh... even the best apartment buildings suck compared to a detached home. I've lived in all concrete apartment buildings and you can still here some noise as it travels through solid concrete pretty well.

falcolas 4y ago

You're right - I do not want to live in dense cities. I did it for years, and hated it. I was happy when I was able to move out into a detached home where I can use speakers and not have to worry about a neighbor getting angry. It's only one neighbor out of the 6 I would share separating walls with, but one is all it takes.

xsmasher 4y ago
If you could live in a detached home but the next block over had a restaurant or two and a small grocery, wouldn't that be pleasant? Zoning that allows ONLY single-family detached housing, and no retail or business, forces car-dependency. "Detached home or high-rise apartment in a city" is a false dichotomy.
- falcolas 4y ago
  > wouldn't that be pleasant Not really. Small grocery stores lack variety (by necessity, when their potential market is limited to families living in a 1-2 mile radius). Two restaurants lack variety. It makes for stupidly boring food choices over time. Frankly, I'd end up not using them, ordering even more over the internet, and interacting even less with folks nearby.
- mantas 4y ago
  As living in such place.. It's still „oh let's drive to bigger shop or THAT butcher this time“. Or „other“ restaurant. And people living downtown still do the same - driving to same big malls in outskirts, restaurants in other towns etc. The funniest case is when people live downtown and drive to non-downtown workplaces :)
- twblalock 4y ago
  > Zoning that allows ONLY single-family detached housing, and no retail or business, forces car-dependency. A lot of suburbs are not like that. I've lived in the Bay Area suburbs for most of my life and I don't think I've ever lived more than half a mile from a shopping center with a grocery store and restaurants. Every main road has them. Between the main roads, there are houses.

tristor 4y ago

I fall into this boat. I lived abroad for many years, did the digital nomad thing, have been really all over the world. I love walkability and have looked for it here in the US as a driving basis for housing selection. All that said, I absolutely will not share walls with someone else. I used to work nights, and sleep in the day, and I'm still a night owl. It is untenable to me to have to deal with complaints because I am watching Netflix at 9:30PM, or to have to have any shared systems which I am now limited away from being able to fix myself. On the flipside, I don't want a huge place to live, so I am actively trying to find (or build) a small (less than 1800sqft) narrow (3 stories, like a detached townhouse) house that is extremely ecological (passive house standards) in a walkable area. When I considered permanently moving to Europe, places like this were actually not horribly uncommon, although they weren't as common as apartment blocks. In the US, places like this are near impossible to find because most houses are built by "production builders" who optimize for the largest square footage possible on a lot space allowed by local code to increase selling price, and do it as the lowest cost (meets code, maybe, basically same as getting a C grade).