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Counterpoint: moved to the burbs after 40 years of city life (Europe and NYC) and I absolutely love it. Cars work absolutely great and with the decreased need t

Counterpoint: moved to the burbs after 40 years of city life (Europe and NYC) and I absolutely love it. Cars work absolutely great and with the decreased need to be physically in the office, suburban life is better and more convenient than ever. I feel like every post that shits on the suburbs should include how many kids do you have, for transparency. No family or kids, of course the city is better for you.

ffssffss 4y ago
I think you're missing the bigger problem here - climate change. We cannot drive in ICE cars forever if we want our environment to remain livable. Your car-based lifestyle might be fine for you, right now, but it's still unsustainable and contributing to a worse world for your kids and their kids. If EVs aren't going to to be a drop in solution, then we really do need to talk about reorganizing society away from cars, so that we can have a society at all in the future. The only other option is some kind of technological silver bullet for carbon capture that manages to arrive in time. Personally I'm fairly pessimistic about this problem. I don't see a political path to widespread mass transit in the US, and I don't know how you remove the incentive that developing economies have to pollute. It feels like a prisoners' dilemma.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I think I am less stressed about this than you are. I remember someone ranting at me in the 90s about peak oil and how our kids will live in the stone ages because we'll run out (their thesis of course was that ppl shouldn't have kids) Science evolves as does technology, and inevitably both factors will change over the coming decades. To base your life around the worst case predictions of models (where the disaster moment keeps pushing back as time progresses) is not logical. And then specifically. I work from home as does my wife. Most of my driving (in a hybrid btw) is 2 miles to drop our kid at school or go to the grocery store. Really hard to connect this lifestyle to dooming the plannet honestly.
  - ffssffss 4y ago
    Ah, if you don't think climate change is going to be an issue, then I think I see where you're coming from. I hope you're right.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    > Science evolves as does technology, and inevitably both factors will change over the coming decades. To base your life around the worst case predictions of models (where the disaster moment keeps pushing back as time progresses) is not logical. Operating on the basis of the most extremist "worst case" scenarios that are very unlikely (like your "peak oil" example) probably doesn't make too much sense, but it's probably not a bad thing to be rather pessimistic about these sort of things when making policy. We can take no thought for the morrow and trust that future technology will sort it all out. Maybe it will, but what if it doesn't? There are no guarantees and hard constraints on our physical universe and planet. It certainly wouldn't be the first time in history human-made ecological changes caused large problems. Or we can be more pessimistic today. Maybe it will later turn out that won't have been necessary, but it still would have been the smart thing to do as a matter of risk management, since we couldn't have known in the past how things would work out in the future. As with all things, you can of course exaggerate, but it's a mistake to throw our the baby with the bathwater because some extremist said something extreme.
    - xyzelement 4y ago
      I am in favor of a risk-based approach as you're describing. Some certain sacrifice today is worth some unclear reduction in an uncertain future event. The question is - how much? If you wanted to be extreme in CO2 reduction, I guess your best bet is to kill every living human and animal on the planet (to be clear, not advocating this!) Clearly that's "too high" a price to pay. On the other hand, you can be very practical and look for CO2 reduction in ways that don't harm people's current lives. Increasing vehicle mileage is an example of this - mileage has doubled and emissions per vehicles halved since 1975.[1] In fact, I suspect this is going to get even better very quickly. My Highlander Hybrid, which is a large vehicle, gets roughly 50% more MPG than in this chart. So we can say we're already doing a lot (and that's just one thing.) The idea that somehow the line between acceptable and unacceptable just happens to be right between suburban and city living feels a little too convenient for me. [1] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-trends-report https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...
javajosh 4y ago
Well, you've got to do the experiment. Move to a major European city center, with kids, without a car, and see how you like it. I tried this in Berlin, and it was quite good! Getting around on the U-Bahn with kids is so nice. You get to hang out with your kids as you travel! Having a free, walkable Kita (daycare/school) is incredible. Being able to walk to useful things like groceries, or a coffee shop, was great. Also, in Berlin they have some of the best playgrounds, and lots of them! Plus on "going out nights" you can get anywhere and back and never worry about finding a designated driver. But yeah, would I try this in downtown LA? No, never. (Although you could argue that LA is weird because it's neighborhoods are like suburbs. Would I try this in k-town? No. You need a car, for everything.) Of course I have to admit that there is some circularity with the LA situation - no-one wants to live in the city center, so only the destitute live there, which makes it less desirable. In many places in the world, this situation doesn't apply. Would I try it in Manhattan? Maybe.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I'm the person you're replying to. My original plan was to raise kids in Manhattan. Luckily my wife talked me out of it and we moved to the suburbs. Stories like yours are great but unsaid are things like: do your kids have a back yard to play in? How fresh is the air? Do they get to watch dad take care of a house and yard so they learn skills like that? Are they dodging shit on the street as they walk to school ( always was the case in NYC but extra bad now). Are their neighbors families with minimum two kids, or are they a much less family friendly demographic? Etc. I used to not think about these things until I experienced the better version of these things in the burbs. The self-selection of neighbors who made the move to a family friendly location alone is a game changer
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Downtown and K-town are two of the very few places that are actually walkable in LA.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Yeah. But would you raise a family in DT? (Ktown already has a lot of families - and wealthy ones, too, these days).

ffssffss 4y ago

I think you're missing the bigger problem here - climate change. We cannot drive in ICE cars forever if we want our environment to remain livable. Your car-based lifestyle might be fine for you, right now, but it's still unsustainable and contributing to a worse world for your kids and their kids. If EVs aren't going to to be a drop in solution, then we really do need to talk about reorganizing society away from cars, so that we can have a society at all in the future. The only other option is some kind of technological silver bullet for carbon capture that manages to arrive in time. Personally I'm fairly pessimistic about this problem. I don't see a political path to widespread mass transit in the US, and I don't know how you remove the incentive that developing economies have to pollute. It feels like a prisoners' dilemma.

xyzelement 4y ago
I think I am less stressed about this than you are. I remember someone ranting at me in the 90s about peak oil and how our kids will live in the stone ages because we'll run out (their thesis of course was that ppl shouldn't have kids) Science evolves as does technology, and inevitably both factors will change over the coming decades. To base your life around the worst case predictions of models (where the disaster moment keeps pushing back as time progresses) is not logical. And then specifically. I work from home as does my wife. Most of my driving (in a hybrid btw) is 2 miles to drop our kid at school or go to the grocery store. Really hard to connect this lifestyle to dooming the plannet honestly.
- ffssffss 4y ago
  Ah, if you don't think climate change is going to be an issue, then I think I see where you're coming from. I hope you're right.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  > Science evolves as does technology, and inevitably both factors will change over the coming decades. To base your life around the worst case predictions of models (where the disaster moment keeps pushing back as time progresses) is not logical. Operating on the basis of the most extremist "worst case" scenarios that are very unlikely (like your "peak oil" example) probably doesn't make too much sense, but it's probably not a bad thing to be rather pessimistic about these sort of things when making policy. We can take no thought for the morrow and trust that future technology will sort it all out. Maybe it will, but what if it doesn't? There are no guarantees and hard constraints on our physical universe and planet. It certainly wouldn't be the first time in history human-made ecological changes caused large problems. Or we can be more pessimistic today. Maybe it will later turn out that won't have been necessary, but it still would have been the smart thing to do as a matter of risk management, since we couldn't have known in the past how things would work out in the future. As with all things, you can of course exaggerate, but it's a mistake to throw our the baby with the bathwater because some extremist said something extreme.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    I am in favor of a risk-based approach as you're describing. Some certain sacrifice today is worth some unclear reduction in an uncertain future event. The question is - how much? If you wanted to be extreme in CO2 reduction, I guess your best bet is to kill every living human and animal on the planet (to be clear, not advocating this!) Clearly that's "too high" a price to pay. On the other hand, you can be very practical and look for CO2 reduction in ways that don't harm people's current lives. Increasing vehicle mileage is an example of this - mileage has doubled and emissions per vehicles halved since 1975.[1] In fact, I suspect this is going to get even better very quickly. My Highlander Hybrid, which is a large vehicle, gets roughly 50% more MPG than in this chart. So we can say we're already doing a lot (and that's just one thing.) The idea that somehow the line between acceptable and unacceptable just happens to be right between suburban and city living feels a little too convenient for me. [1] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-trends-report https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...

javajosh 4y ago

Well, you've got to do the experiment. Move to a major European city center, with kids, without a car, and see how you like it. I tried this in Berlin, and it was quite good! Getting around on the U-Bahn with kids is so nice. You get to hang out with your kids as you travel! Having a free, walkable Kita (daycare/school) is incredible. Being able to walk to useful things like groceries, or a coffee shop, was great. Also, in Berlin they have some of the best playgrounds, and lots of them! Plus on "going out nights" you can get anywhere and back and never worry about finding a designated driver. But yeah, would I try this in downtown LA? No, never. (Although you could argue that LA is weird because it's neighborhoods are like suburbs. Would I try this in k-town? No. You need a car, for everything.) Of course I have to admit that there is some circularity with the LA situation - no-one wants to live in the city center, so only the destitute live there, which makes it less desirable. In many places in the world, this situation doesn't apply. Would I try it in Manhattan? Maybe.

xyzelement 4y ago
I'm the person you're replying to. My original plan was to raise kids in Manhattan. Luckily my wife talked me out of it and we moved to the suburbs. Stories like yours are great but unsaid are things like: do your kids have a back yard to play in? How fresh is the air? Do they get to watch dad take care of a house and yard so they learn skills like that? Are they dodging shit on the street as they walk to school ( always was the case in NYC but extra bad now). Are their neighbors families with minimum two kids, or are they a much less family friendly demographic? Etc. I used to not think about these things until I experienced the better version of these things in the burbs. The self-selection of neighbors who made the move to a family friendly location alone is a game changer
mixmastamyk 4y ago
Downtown and K-town are two of the very few places that are actually walkable in LA.
- javajosh 4y ago
  Yeah. But would you raise a family in DT? (Ktown already has a lot of families - and wealthy ones, too, these days).