While I generally don't support this view, in my corner of the world there's an unexpected advantage of having access to cars, namely they give one leverage whe

While I generally don't support this view, in my corner of the world there's an unexpected advantage of having access to cars, namely they give one leverage when picking where to live. Around here the middle class can't afford real estate - not in 2022 at least. The credit advisor working for a housing development company who I met the other day told me that 75% of their clients pay cash, because the pool of those who are eligible for a mortgage is so small nowadays. Housing close to public transport gets expensive really quick. Meanwhile if you have a car you can live in the middle of buttfuck nowhere and actually have the credit score for the property because it costs half of anything close to civilisation. Of course there are fuel costs and whatnot, but you can work with/around that. There's no going around not having the credit score for a even a one-bedroom apartment in the city. Here's a collection of European countries where there's no consistent trend in urbanization vs the Netherlands, which apparently are turning into a collection of cities: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?end=2021&locations=PL-CZ-AT-RO-NL&start=1960 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?end=2... I know for a fact that where I live the decrease is caused by people moving to the suburbs - it's a widely talked about topic.