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I think it's because the young people online are much more drawn to the active, exciting urban lifestyle than the average American. The average American would m

I think it's because the young people online are much more drawn to the active, exciting urban lifestyle than the average American. The average American would much rather have the safety, quiet, and just space that comes with suburban living. People want yards to play with their kids, and that sort of spread-out living just necessitates cars. Housing prices aren't high because of cars. Housing prices are high because people want their own personal space. Nobody's going to build a rail system with a thousand subway stations connecting every neighborhood in a US metro area. That would cost like a trillion dollars, plus maintenance. It's just not feasible to cater good public transport to people living that spread out. And no one wants to walk miles to a less-dense rail system or take some slow bus route. And outside of major cities, I've never heard of someone complain about cars. Most people are perfectly happy with cars. Sure they might think trains are cool, but they wouldn't want to move inward for it or pay whatever cost would be necessary for trains to come outward.

cycomanic 4y ago
While all that might be true, it is also true that hardly anyone would be willing to cover the true cost of living in rural areas far away from things. In pretty much every country I'm aware of the urban population is strongly subsidising the rural. And that is only covering first order cost (just look at the massive subsidies to get broadband to rural communities), if we would put prizes on second order cost like pollution, CO2... rural living would become unpopular very quickly (the reality already is that there is a massive move into the cities not the other way around).
- econonut 4y ago
  Could you be specific about how the urban population is subsidizing the rural? Also, where does most of your food come from? What do you mean in regards to CO2? I'd suggest that many people living a rural lifestyle completely offset their CO2 footprint due to carbon sequestration. I know I have enough trees and vegetation on my acreage to completely offset my carbon emissions. But, of course, to counter your argument I really only need to offset the extra emissions that come with driving an extra n miles into the city.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulmd 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 4y ago
      You posted this comment once, it was flagged by users, and you deleted it. If your intention was to post a new version that didn't break the site guidelines, I think that's probably ok (albeit borderline). But in that case you should have removed this too: > Love the "gosh if you want to eat we need to fund lifestyle ruralism with billions of dollars of infrastructure annually" whataboutism, like that's supposed to be some kind of a gotcha That's obviously against the site guidelines. Please make your substantive points without doing that in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - aaaddaaaaa1112 4y ago
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - _ktx2 4y ago
      Recreating your post after it was flagged and dead is classless. I'm surprised someone did this so brazenly. I'm not going to respond to all of the points that you raised that I think are false or misleading, but I'll respond to some. > There's a lot of miles of power lines and roads for what is, in the end, maybe 10k people in that county outside the cities/towns. Power plants are (mostly) created in rural areas, so your argument is a bit backwards: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-every-power-plant-in-the-united-states/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-every-power-plant-in... Your story that the last miles are costing us an arm and leg don't really hold up to comprehensive analysis: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-electric-grids-cost-in-2-charts/#:~:text=First%2C%20administrative%20costs%20are%20more%20than%20a%20third,per%20kWh%20have%20increased%20significantly%20in%20recent%20years https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-elec.... The tldr of this is that the higher number of connections to the energy grid, the higher the cost of the grid. It doesn't really matter how you distribute them. > But we don't need to be encouraging "lifestyle ruralism". That's extremely infrastructure-heavy and it's absolutely true that people living in, say, Mikado MI (pop 899) or along one of the state highways out there are using disproportionate amount of infrastructure funding relative to the number of actual people there. I grew up near rural areas and lived in one for a bit. I don't know what "infrastructure heavy" you're talking about. My water was drawn from a well into a community water storage tank that was then pumped to the local community. This was repeated all through that area. Water, in this case, was a co-op as well as energy. Sewage was done on-site; I had an aerobic septic system. For all intents and purposes, with respect to the angle of your argument, the footprint of my town was miniscule compared to a city. More anecdotally, when I worked for a water startup we had a way easier time getting into rural areas because many of them had never had public water infrastructure.
- mminer237 4y ago
  > the reality already is that there is a massive move into the cities not the other way around That's not what the data says, at least in the US. We consistently see a net change of about 2 million people per year moving out of cities and into the surrounding suburbs: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/16/in-2020-fewer-americans-moved-exodus-from-cities-slowed/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/16/in-2020-few... And the desire to live in cities is shrinking as well, now at under 20%: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/americans-are-less-likely-than-before-covid-19-to-want-to-live-in-cities-more-likely-to-prefer-suburbs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...
  - greggman3 4y ago
    That is arguably because US cities suck. They don't have good public transportation, the kind that even well to do people choose to ride regularly like they do in say Tokyo, London, Switerland, Netherlands, etc.. They also don't have good bicycle infrustructure. And they have lots of crime or crime of the types and amounts that get people to want to live in the safer suburbs. Even the cities in the US are usually designed around cars, not people

cycomanic 4y ago

While all that might be true, it is also true that hardly anyone would be willing to cover the true cost of living in rural areas far away from things. In pretty much every country I'm aware of the urban population is strongly subsidising the rural. And that is only covering first order cost (just look at the massive subsidies to get broadband to rural communities), if we would put prizes on second order cost like pollution, CO2... rural living would become unpopular very quickly (the reality already is that there is a massive move into the cities not the other way around).

econonut 4y ago
Could you be specific about how the urban population is subsidizing the rural? Also, where does most of your food come from? What do you mean in regards to CO2? I'd suggest that many people living a rural lifestyle completely offset their CO2 footprint due to carbon sequestration. I know I have enough trees and vegetation on my acreage to completely offset my carbon emissions. But, of course, to counter your argument I really only need to offset the extra emissions that come with driving an extra n miles into the city.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- paulmd 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 4y ago
    You posted this comment once, it was flagged by users, and you deleted it. If your intention was to post a new version that didn't break the site guidelines, I think that's probably ok (albeit borderline). But in that case you should have removed this too: > Love the "gosh if you want to eat we need to fund lifestyle ruralism with billions of dollars of infrastructure annually" whataboutism, like that's supposed to be some kind of a gotcha That's obviously against the site guidelines. Please make your substantive points without doing that in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - aaaddaaaaa1112 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - _ktx2 4y ago
    Recreating your post after it was flagged and dead is classless. I'm surprised someone did this so brazenly. I'm not going to respond to all of the points that you raised that I think are false or misleading, but I'll respond to some. > There's a lot of miles of power lines and roads for what is, in the end, maybe 10k people in that county outside the cities/towns. Power plants are (mostly) created in rural areas, so your argument is a bit backwards: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-every-power-plant-in-the-united-states/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-every-power-plant-in... Your story that the last miles are costing us an arm and leg don't really hold up to comprehensive analysis: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-electric-grids-cost-in-2-charts/#:~:text=First%2C%20administrative%20costs%20are%20more%20than%20a%20third,per%20kWh%20have%20increased%20significantly%20in%20recent%20years https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-elec.... The tldr of this is that the higher number of connections to the energy grid, the higher the cost of the grid. It doesn't really matter how you distribute them. > But we don't need to be encouraging "lifestyle ruralism". That's extremely infrastructure-heavy and it's absolutely true that people living in, say, Mikado MI (pop 899) or along one of the state highways out there are using disproportionate amount of infrastructure funding relative to the number of actual people there. I grew up near rural areas and lived in one for a bit. I don't know what "infrastructure heavy" you're talking about. My water was drawn from a well into a community water storage tank that was then pumped to the local community. This was repeated all through that area. Water, in this case, was a co-op as well as energy. Sewage was done on-site; I had an aerobic septic system. For all intents and purposes, with respect to the angle of your argument, the footprint of my town was miniscule compared to a city. More anecdotally, when I worked for a water startup we had a way easier time getting into rural areas because many of them had never had public water infrastructure.
mminer237 4y ago
> the reality already is that there is a massive move into the cities not the other way around That's not what the data says, at least in the US. We consistently see a net change of about 2 million people per year moving out of cities and into the surrounding suburbs: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/16/in-2020-fewer-americans-moved-exodus-from-cities-slowed/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/16/in-2020-few... And the desire to live in cities is shrinking as well, now at under 20%: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/americans-are-less-likely-than-before-covid-19-to-want-to-live-in-cities-more-likely-to-prefer-suburbs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...
- greggman3 4y ago
  That is arguably because US cities suck. They don't have good public transportation, the kind that even well to do people choose to ride regularly like they do in say Tokyo, London, Switerland, Netherlands, etc.. They also don't have good bicycle infrustructure. And they have lots of crime or crime of the types and amounts that get people to want to live in the safer suburbs. Even the cities in the US are usually designed around cars, not people