11 ms·

Most in U.S. (57%) prefer big houses, even if amenities farther away

34 points by 1270018080 3y ago

theandrewbailey 3y ago
> About three-quarters of Americans who describe their own communities as rural (74%) say they would prefer to live in places where houses are larger and farther apart, but also farther from schools, stores and restaurants. A narrower majority of suburban Americans (56%) also say they would prefer places with larger houses. > In contrast, more Americans who currently live in urban areas (57%) say they would prefer a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores and restaurants. Breaking news: most people prefer to live where they live.
- 1270018080 3y ago
  Based on this data I am seeing tens of millions of people who don't prefer where they live. It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood in most of the country.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    It is quite weird how few walkable neighborhoods exist. That and some other properties of modern USA life almost make it seem like someone is trying to prevent community formation. Who would have an incentive to do that?
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Who would have an incentive to do that? People already live in their car-centric houses. Creating walkable cores means pitching folks who can park outside their favorite restaurant on walking from a parking lot. It's easier to sell the concept to new folks, who will live within walking or biking distance of the new core, than gaining buy-in from incumbents. That, in turn, creates the opposition we observe.
      - trilbyglens 3y ago
        Most Americans are sort of afraid of walking.
        digging 3y ago
        Not afraid. Disgusted.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood in most of the country. What laws make it illegal to have walkable neighborhoods in the US?
    - Eric_WVGG 3y ago
      zoning laws
    - bretthoerner 3y ago
      Zoning laws.
    - lantry 3y ago
      Zoning laws
    - afavour 3y ago
      I might be wrong but the OP might be referring to ordinances forbidding the building of dense housing. Walkable neighborhoods require a certain level of density to be feasible (e.g. grocery store needs X potential customers within a ten minute walk or it's not going to be profitable) and a lot of towns disallow the building of apartment buildings instead of detached homes.
      - frumper 3y ago
        The grocery store doesn't have to have every customer walk to it for the homes around it to have people walk to it. There are plenty of homes near good shopping, schools and other services. If that's important to you then you can buy a home near them. Having dense housing doesn't mean anything about walkability. After all, you aren't walking to all of the other homes.
        afavour 3y ago
        > The grocery store doesn't have to have every customer walk to it Depends how much space you’re dedicating to car parking. Once the grocery store has a giant parking lot it’s swallowed up a lot of land that could have been housing. The more the store depends on car traffic the bigger the parking lot. The bigger the parking lot the less housing it’ll have in proximity, the longer everyone will have to walk. A successful walkable neighborhood has to balance allocated space with thought.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    And what is your read about number of people who prefer where they live? If two groups of people have contradictory desires, then elections are the best way to sort out the differences and reach a compromise. > It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood Big cities like NYC or Chicago are already walkable. > in most of the country. I am sure you can go build a walkable city in the middle of Nevada or Nebraska. Your problem is something else - nobody wants to go there yet so it is a bootstrapping problem. What you are essentially saying is "a lot of neighborhoods where the jobs are are controlled by NIMBYs and they are not letting us convert those to walkable areas"
- afavour 3y ago
  My takeaway from those stats is that it highlights how the suburbs are the worst of both worlds. I live in an apartment in the city, if I were to leave having a bigger house would be the primary reason. The fact that 44% of people already in the suburbs would prefer to move somewhere with bigger houses suggests that for a lot of people the suburbs aren't fulfilling their promise.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > that 44% of people already in the suburbs would prefer to move somewhere with bigger houses suggests that for a lot of people the suburbs aren't fulfilling their promise. Once you start playing the space game, particularly if you're in a location where you tend to get guests, it's always appealing to have another room.
  - pc86 3y ago
    Or more likely it just shows that if you ask someone "hey would you like a bigger house?" they're very likely to say yes. I don't think it's some profound statement on the promise of suburban living.
    - afavour 3y ago
      Well there are two halves to the question. "Would you like a bigger house even if it means amenities are further away?". So to me the 44% suggests that for a lot of people suburban amenity proximity is not worth the smaller home size. And I'm not that surprised. Not to over generalize but very few suburbs are walkable. Once you're in the car what's an extra 10 minutes on your drive? As a person sitting in the city pondering a life outside of it I can't see the point in the suburbs if I'm going to be driving and stuck in traffic anyway. I'd rather go whole hog and live rurally.
      - mindslight 3y ago
        > As a person sitting in the city pondering a life outside of it I can't see the point in the suburbs if I'm going to be driving and stuck in traffic anyway. I'd rather go whole hog and live rurally. I've though this way too for a long time, both now and when I lived in a city. Having thought about it often, I think the two things driving suburbs are those with daily commutes (that 15 extra minutes twice every day adds up), and many people are not well off enough to live in the denser city to begin with (as things stand). Cities are economic attractors, and suburbs are basically less concentrated instances (or addons) of that. Also note that the question specifically says "amenities". Likely most people aren't thinking about commuting while answering the question.
- uneekname 3y ago
  You're making it sound like this is the headline, but it is not. The national average is also 57%, and there are a number of other statistics broken down by partisanship, education, age, etc. From my ~YIMBY bubble it's a bit surprising, though I guess it shouldn't be, that the majority of Americans want to live in exactly the kind of neighborhood I despise.
- pj_mukh 3y ago
  Generalizing a bit more: Breaking News: Most people would like someone to do something about the environment. Not me. Someone else. Also if that someone could subsidize my forest fire insurance, that’d be great. Kthxbai.
isykt 3y ago
Great! Less competition for me. I’d take a small apartment in a walkable city over a big house any day of the week.
bearjaws 3y ago
Will be hilarious when oil is continually $100+ a barrel and their roads become dirt roads, their commutes costing significant portion of their income.
- clove 3y ago
  I also hate living outside cities and have a deeply rooted contempt for (non-old) people who choose to live in rural areas, essentially choosing stagnation over risk. But... What, exactly, is hilarious about people suffering and having financial difficulties?
  - replygirl 3y ago
    renting forever and casual dating into your 40s is its own stagnation
  - throwawa14223 3y ago
    I recently moved from the city to the country, and the quality of life increase is amazing. Why the contempt? I'm not hurting you, in fact you probably don't want me in your city.
  - bearjaws 3y ago
    Hilarious might have been the wrong word, but short sighted is what I meant, especially when the warning light has been flashing for 20 years now. The rising price of oil was taught in my middle school, its not news at this point.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  My commute is only 7 minutes even if I hit every stoplight. I could walk it in about 15 but I'll ride my motorcycle any chance I can. absolutely zero chance of some guy in a faraday cage box truck picking it off the lot while I'm at work, too. population 12k
- deleted 3y ago
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- 3y ago
mindcrime 3y ago
My take is, IF I'm going to live in a city anyway (as I currently do) then I'd like to have as many things as possible within walking distance. And in point of fact, I can walk to the grocery store, many restaurants, another grocery store, a hardware store, my insurance agent, my dentist, etc. And I can easily bicycle to my doctor's office. So yeah, that's nice. And living in an apartment is part of that current setup, which is acceptable, but a bit stifling. In particular, I'm running out of room for all of my books. BUT... all things being equal, I'd rather NOT live in a city environment to begin with. I would actually prefer to live on a large enough plot of land, with enough trees surrounding me, to where I can't see another house without making some effort (eg, walking out to the edge of the road). Ideally I should be able to walk around naked outside my house with zero risk of anybody calling the cops. Because I like to walk around naked? NO. It's just the principle of the thing. And more to the point, I should be able to start a big bonfire in my yard, play loud heavy metal, and have a dozen or more people over, drinking and partying, and not have to worry about bothering my neighbors and having the cops called. The size of the house doesn't actually matter a whole lot, but I would like a fair amount more space than I currently have in my apartment. Anyway... I moved from the latter environment to the former for career reasons, but I strongly desire to eventually move back to latter - at least part time.
- falcolas 3y ago
  I've made this move back, and it was great for my mental health. I work from home and like having the ability to live out of my house, instead of a city (i.e. leaving the house for various daily activities because the house isn't big enough to support them). And when I want that city environment experience, I can go there.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    You’ve pointed out something key: some people have the mindset of “I live in my home” and others say “I live in my city.” I can see if you are young and have a city job and love restaurants and night clubs and museums and all these other city amenities, then you consider your life to be in various spots in a city. I don’t give a shit about any of that. My life is my family and my dog and my in-home hobbies and working on my vehicle: all of which goes on in my house. I could (and have many times) gone weeks without even leaving my property. No one way is correct.
fvdessen 3y ago
A big part of wanting to live in a big house far away from the place you go is that it insulates you from the pollution you bring with your car to the place you go. This is basically a prisoner dilemma, you enjoy the common goods of the city but don't get the downsides by defecting to the countryside, making the city worse in the process. In the end everybody loses.
- falcolas 3y ago
  > is that it insulates you from the pollution you bring with your car to the place you go This is a citation needed comment to me. It's one heck of an assertion that I have never heard. Most folks I've chatted with who have made this transition do it because of the density of people, not the pollution (which is miles better in cities than it was even 20 years ago).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - fowkswe 3y ago
    Does this need a citation? The car is the thing that brings the pollution. You live in the burbs, you drive the car, you pollute. You live in the city, you walk/bike/transit, you pollute less.
    - mym1990 3y ago
      I have lived in quite a few cities in the US, and people who live in the city are still driving a majority of the time. There are not that many US cities that have the appropriate biking and transit capabilities to match their size.
    - replygirl 3y ago
      > A big part of wanting to live in a big house far away from the place you go is
    - School-Cotton 3y ago
      The part that needs a citation is not "cars make pollution" but rather "pollution is the main reason people want to move to the suburbs".
TekMol 3y ago
I guess that is because most people have a family or plan to have one. Is this the same among the HN gang? Or is staying single long term an option? If so, what's the best way to live as a single? In tech, you can work from everywhere. So travel the world and / or have an appartment in a big city?
nsavage 3y ago
The whole strong cities movement, which has many laudable goals, I think fails in the same way that many public health initiatives do. The proponents always assume they know more than everyone else, and therefore are better than everyone else. Strong town supporters just have this smugness that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and its a big turn off from the movement. The problem is they don't have to convince me, they have to convince the 57% of Americans (from the title), many of whom are not in the online echo chamber about strong towns, It's not that strong towns is wrong, its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it", when it should be "we should develop better places for all of us to live". Note that this is more a problem with internet commentators vs the actual source material. It's obviously (to me at least) right. But on the other hand, I'm Canadian, I grew up in a car-dependent suburb. I lived downtown in my city in a walkable neighbourhood, and now I live in the car-dependent suburbs again with my family. I've been to Europe too, the walkable neighbourhoods there are great! But I also like my suburban house. Changing hearts and minds on this will take more than smugness though.
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  > we should develop better places for all of us to live That still sounds like an assumption that "all" of us will prefer strong towns, which is doubtful. How about: "We should develop some new types of places to live for those who would prefer this new type of place"
- deleted 3y ago
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- afavour 3y ago
  > its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it" I'm not sure what you've been reading but I can't say I've ever seen that approach. However, I do agree that the wrong tack is often taken. It's usually "environmental concerns mean we're all going to have to live in dense cities whether we like it or not", which is hardly an appealing take (irrespective of how true or false it is!). Personally I love living in the city with my family. I bike the kids to school in the morning, the city has more museums than I can count, we have a giant park nearby with a zoo, a half dozen playgrounds... it's great. But you're right that you rarely see this kind of appeal actually made.
scythe 3y ago
Most of the places I have seen posting this data have missed what I think is the major story here: >Public preferences were more evenly divided on this question in fall 2019, a few months before the coronavirus outbreak. COVID-19 caused a measurable shift in living preferences that appears to be durable.
stephen_g 3y ago
There’s always a “you don’t know what you haven’t experienced” element to this kind of thing. A lot of my YouTube recommendations at the moment have been ‘culture shock’ things from Americans (weird because I’m not American or European myself, but I do find it interesting so the algorithm works I guess!) who have gone to live in the UK or Europe for a bit and talk about how amazed they are at living in European cities and how they just had no concept of the way of life until they came over. But even in much smaller ways you can get that mind shift. I didn’t really think about active transport until I thought electric scooters looked fun and ordered one, and it just blew my mind and opened up a whole new perspective (now I want an e-bike too, but using the scooter heaps). I guess another aspect is that if you were looking at a lot of the cities and public transport that the US has, I guess I might even choose the ‘burbs and car culture over that… That’s a tricky thing to overcome, getting public transport especially in the US up to a reasonable international standard.
- mindcrime 3y ago
  I will say this: IF you're going to live in a "big city" it's definitely nice to pick one with good public transit. I spent quite a lot of time in Chicago a few years ago, and I was really surprised at how accessible things were without a car, compared to where I live. Like I said in my other comment, I have a lot of stuff within walking distance of me. But what I didn't say, is that for everything else getting there without a car would be a nightmare. We have some buses, and that's about it. Chicago, OTOH, with the L-train system and the comprehensive bus route coverage, is relatively easy to get around, despite its size.
- GiorgioG 3y ago
  I'm an American. My parents are 1st generation immigrants. I spent a lot of time in Europe visiting grandparents growing up. I don't think one way of living is better than another, just personal preferences. I enjoyed my visits to Europe, but for my own life I prefer living in the US. Public transport in the US just isn't a priority and never will be outside of large cities. Scooters and eBikes are great in cities, but awful for suburbs. I wouldn't risk riding one outside my neighborhood on the larger/faster roads.
falcolas 3y ago
One advantage of a large house is that you can have specialized spaces. You can have a "cave" or two. You can have a shop. You can have rooms for guests. You can have greenhouses. You can have a dedicated office to work from home from. You can have pets with far fewer limitations placed upon you. While technically possible in a city, it's going to generally be cost prohibitive - especially for a couple or a family.
- edhelas 3y ago
  And most of that will not be used 95% of the time. My parents have a large house with 4 bedrooms. They are only filled when we come seeing them. To me it's just wasted space. Multiply that by millions of houses and you have a huge volume of space that is built heated/ACed for basically nothing most of the time. We must rationalized all this, same with office spaces or "4 persons cars" :)
  - tivert 3y ago
    > And most of that will not be used 95% of the time. Honestly, urban apartments are pretty wasteful. Why does everyone have a kitchen? A bedroom? To me, it's all just wasted space. It would be far, far less wasteful if everyone lived in barracks and hot-bunked/hot-desked. Meals could be served in a common mess, in shifts. Communal activities could be available for recreation. If we maximize colocation of work and living spaces, we could also significantly cut down on space wasted on transportation in general, not just cars. The shift will be hard, but the efficiency gains will be worth it.
    - edhelas 3y ago
      I'm sure we can find some balance between those two extremes :) The kitchen and bedroom you use them everyday. Same with the "one-seat" in your car.
      - tivert 3y ago
        > I'm sure we can find some balance between those two extremes :) No, if wasted space is a problem, let's get rid of it. No half-measures that just happen to stop when it starts interfering with your preferences. > The kitchen and bedroom you use them everyday. Same with the "one-seat" in your car. Come on. Just used everyday? That's a total waste. They should be in constant use.
bilsbie 3y ago
I think there’s just less and less to outside the home so we tend to desire larger spaces. That plus more remote working. Restaurants are getting super expensive. And I’m not sure why fast casual didn’t off. Why do I need to add 20% tip to every meal if I could just order at a counter? Coffee shops mostly don’t seem super comfortable to just hang out. Libraries don’t have great hours or reading nooks. Bars like cheers aren’t a thing. You’re mostly stuck in your house.
- houseatrielah 3y ago
  Coffee shops are not "the living room of the city" anymore, now they're "the office space of the city", people quietly working on laptops.
- mym1990 3y ago
  Well now most places are asking for a 20% tip for ordering at the counter hah.
tivert 3y ago
Terrible! That 57% needs to be enrolled in a mandatory indoctrination program to teach them to hate cars and love urban microapartments; like all good, right-thinking people do.
GiorgioG 3y ago
I live in a big house in a suburb that used to be farmland. As our town population has exploded, more and more amenities have come to us. Young folks without families love cities, as they should, but if they have a family, most people want a house. There's nothing wrong with changing your preferences. Once our kids are gone, maybe we'll go back to city living. There is no "better", it's all in what works for you at the current stage in your life.
macNchz 3y ago
I think a lot of people in America simply don’t have a great concept of what living somewhere within walking distance of amenities can be like. Walking totally sucks in most of the country, so it’s very reasonable to devalue it. I grew up in a rural place but live in NYC now. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of having things nearby. My family from suburban and rural places always seem surprised when I mention I need to run out to the grocery store at 6pm on a Tuesday. For them that’s a once a week trip at most–I can probably get there and back in the time that it takes them to get to just get to the store. I am not making a case for the superiority of one lifestyle over the other (though I see suburbia as kind of a worst of both worlds between urban and rural), just offering my interpretation of why people in America might feel this way.
- mattw2121 3y ago
  I have a great concept of walking in a city. I enjoy the walkability of NYC. When I am there I take transit everywhere and it's great. I live in Florida. It gets into the high 90's with 80% humidity. At the same time NYC is in the 80's with 50% humidity. There are places that just aren't walkable certain times of the year.
  - rufus_foreman 3y ago
    >> It gets into the high 90's with 80% humidity 96 degrees and 80% humidity is a dew point of 89. The highest verified dew point ever recorded in the US is 88, and that was in Minnesota which might sound odd to people who have never heard the term "corn sweat". But yeah, even high 90's with 65% humidity (dew point in low 80's) is not healthy to be walking around in.
    - mattw2121 3y ago
      Yes, my bad...humidity decreases some in the hottest part of the day. So the 80% humidity is overnight while the high 90's temperature is during the day. As you said, still not walkable :).
  - digging 3y ago
kredd 3y ago
Whenever I talk to my friends from rural areas of the provinces, it becomes clear they just prefer the way they used to live as a child. I lived my entire life in different cities and can’t imagine myself driving for a simple grocery run. Other thing is, a lot of people who move into a city later in life don’t bother taking advantage of city life and say how much they hate it. I’ve heard time and time again from my friends how “they feel trapped in an apartment”, but they don’t go out for walks or city adventures. Personally, when I go into rural sides of the countries, I feel extremely trapped and crave some sights of people. It doesn’t have to be crowded, but there’s a beauty of an okay-ishly functioning city going through it’s morning routine.
- GloomyBoots 3y ago
  In rural America, we used to have more very small towns that were actual towns, with sidewalks, main streets, grocery stores, cafés, and cinemas. One of the places I lived used to be one, and I never would have known if the old folks wouldn’t randomly bring up the old bowling alley or something, and when I had no idea what they were talking about they would go on to explain that it used to be in some empty field maybe a quarter mile from my house. Most shocking one was when I was with someone who mentioned a town I’d never heard of. She said oh, it used to be just up the highway and brought me there. We went into a wooded area in the middle of a farm, and there were the remnants of wooden walkways everywhere (low elevation and frequent flooding). She showed me where the train station and the hotel had been, talked about the different shops and the amusement park that was owned by the local dentist. But that was all a long time ago. Now that whole area which used to contain multiple such communities is just farmland, loose clusters of houses, a plant, a gas station, and five of the ugliest churches you’ve ever laid eyes on. If you drive for half an hour you can go to Walmart or Taco Bell in the “small city” that used to be an actual small city.
- throwawa14223 3y ago
  I'm one of those who hates city life, but I don't want to do any of those things you list as advantages of city life, they are undesirable to me.
tenebrisalietum 3y ago
> A majority of Americans (57%) say they would prefer to live in a community where “houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away,” I would rather have enough distance not to have to hear/see my neighbors than have stores and restaurants within walkable distance, at least in this point in time. If you are a quiet-loving person this is really your only way to get what you need.
coolbreezetft22 3y ago
A few years ago I made this exact tradeoff. Moving from my townhouse in a urban-suburban neighborhood that was closer to my work and the major urban center to a more a big house in an isolated suburb that was ~15 minutes farther away. Having a bigger house is good when you have kids like I do, but I definitely prefer the former, where it wasn't exactly living in a big city but still had a lot of the benefits. I just hate having to drive more and how much time it takes up.
nsm 3y ago
One of the problems with mainly anglophone countries is that they have made other kinds of housing so difficult or even illegal to build in large swathes of major cities that single family homes - big, with everything far apart, is the only reality. No one is saying everyone has to live in apartments. But people who want to live in apartments should be able to where there is demand. Nearly all new apartment stock in, say SF, is "luxury" instead of just being straightforward apartments or multi family dwellings.
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
I think at a 'wanting a better world' makes sense. The problem I think is that people don't really want to act like they're in a shared space. Maybe because they have different standards, maybe because they're not tuned to it. I was raised being conscious of my presence and how it affected others. While I live in a single family home I still walk like in my 2nd floor apartment to avoid annoying the neighbors downstairs (so far the termites haven't lodged a complaint), or automatically turn down the volume later in the evening, even when I'm home alone. Not doing this causes friction, and I don't think everybody realizes the presence they have while sharing a space. So it's only natural people want to avoid that friction. Larges spaces accomplish this naturally.
aaron695 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dirtyid 3y ago
What percent would prefer to live in moderate size spaces if amenities in walking distance?

34 points by 1270018080 3y ago

> About three-quarters of Americans who describe their own communities as rural (74%) say they would prefer to live in places where houses are larger and farther apart, but also farther from schools, stores and restaurants. A narrower majority of suburban Americans (56%) also say they would prefer places with larger houses. > In contrast, more Americans who currently live in urban areas (57%) say they would prefer a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores and restaurants. Breaking news: most people prefer to live where they live.

1270018080 3y ago
Based on this data I am seeing tens of millions of people who don't prefer where they live. It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood in most of the country.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  It is quite weird how few walkable neighborhoods exist. That and some other properties of modern USA life almost make it seem like someone is trying to prevent community formation. Who would have an incentive to do that?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Who would have an incentive to do that? People already live in their car-centric houses. Creating walkable cores means pitching folks who can park outside their favorite restaurant on walking from a parking lot. It's easier to sell the concept to new folks, who will live within walking or biking distance of the new core, than gaining buy-in from incumbents. That, in turn, creates the opposition we observe.
    - trilbyglens 3y ago
      Most Americans are sort of afraid of walking.
      - digging 3y ago
        Not afraid. Disgusted.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood in most of the country. What laws make it illegal to have walkable neighborhoods in the US?
  - Eric_WVGG 3y ago
    zoning laws
  - bretthoerner 3y ago
    Zoning laws.
  - lantry 3y ago
    Zoning laws
  - afavour 3y ago
    I might be wrong but the OP might be referring to ordinances forbidding the building of dense housing. Walkable neighborhoods require a certain level of density to be feasible (e.g. grocery store needs X potential customers within a ten minute walk or it's not going to be profitable) and a lot of towns disallow the building of apartment buildings instead of detached homes.
    - frumper 3y ago
      The grocery store doesn't have to have every customer walk to it for the homes around it to have people walk to it. There are plenty of homes near good shopping, schools and other services. If that's important to you then you can buy a home near them. Having dense housing doesn't mean anything about walkability. After all, you aren't walking to all of the other homes.
      - afavour 3y ago
        > The grocery store doesn't have to have every customer walk to it Depends how much space you’re dedicating to car parking. Once the grocery store has a giant parking lot it’s swallowed up a lot of land that could have been housing. The more the store depends on car traffic the bigger the parking lot. The bigger the parking lot the less housing it’ll have in proximity, the longer everyone will have to walk. A successful walkable neighborhood has to balance allocated space with thought.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  And what is your read about number of people who prefer where they live? If two groups of people have contradictory desires, then elections are the best way to sort out the differences and reach a compromise. > It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood Big cities like NYC or Chicago are already walkable. > in most of the country. I am sure you can go build a walkable city in the middle of Nevada or Nebraska. Your problem is something else - nobody wants to go there yet so it is a bootstrapping problem. What you are essentially saying is "a lot of neighborhoods where the jobs are are controlled by NIMBYs and they are not letting us convert those to walkable areas"
afavour 3y ago
My takeaway from those stats is that it highlights how the suburbs are the worst of both worlds. I live in an apartment in the city, if I were to leave having a bigger house would be the primary reason. The fact that 44% of people already in the suburbs would prefer to move somewhere with bigger houses suggests that for a lot of people the suburbs aren't fulfilling their promise.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > that 44% of people already in the suburbs would prefer to move somewhere with bigger houses suggests that for a lot of people the suburbs aren't fulfilling their promise. Once you start playing the space game, particularly if you're in a location where you tend to get guests, it's always appealing to have another room.
- pc86 3y ago
  Or more likely it just shows that if you ask someone "hey would you like a bigger house?" they're very likely to say yes. I don't think it's some profound statement on the promise of suburban living.
  - afavour 3y ago
    Well there are two halves to the question. "Would you like a bigger house even if it means amenities are further away?". So to me the 44% suggests that for a lot of people suburban amenity proximity is not worth the smaller home size. And I'm not that surprised. Not to over generalize but very few suburbs are walkable. Once you're in the car what's an extra 10 minutes on your drive? As a person sitting in the city pondering a life outside of it I can't see the point in the suburbs if I'm going to be driving and stuck in traffic anyway. I'd rather go whole hog and live rurally.
    - mindslight 3y ago
      > As a person sitting in the city pondering a life outside of it I can't see the point in the suburbs if I'm going to be driving and stuck in traffic anyway. I'd rather go whole hog and live rurally. I've though this way too for a long time, both now and when I lived in a city. Having thought about it often, I think the two things driving suburbs are those with daily commutes (that 15 extra minutes twice every day adds up), and many people are not well off enough to live in the denser city to begin with (as things stand). Cities are economic attractors, and suburbs are basically less concentrated instances (or addons) of that. Also note that the question specifically says "amenities". Likely most people aren't thinking about commuting while answering the question.
uneekname 3y ago
You're making it sound like this is the headline, but it is not. The national average is also 57%, and there are a number of other statistics broken down by partisanship, education, age, etc. From my ~YIMBY bubble it's a bit surprising, though I guess it shouldn't be, that the majority of Americans want to live in exactly the kind of neighborhood I despise.
pj_mukh 3y ago
Generalizing a bit more: Breaking News: Most people would like someone to do something about the environment. Not me. Someone else. Also if that someone could subsidize my forest fire insurance, that’d be great. Kthxbai.

isykt 3y ago

Great! Less competition for me. I’d take a small apartment in a walkable city over a big house any day of the week.

bearjaws 3y ago

Will be hilarious when oil is continually $100+ a barrel and their roads become dirt roads, their commutes costing significant portion of their income.

clove 3y ago
I also hate living outside cities and have a deeply rooted contempt for (non-old) people who choose to live in rural areas, essentially choosing stagnation over risk. But... What, exactly, is hilarious about people suffering and having financial difficulties?
- replygirl 3y ago
  renting forever and casual dating into your 40s is its own stagnation
- throwawa14223 3y ago
  I recently moved from the city to the country, and the quality of life increase is amazing. Why the contempt? I'm not hurting you, in fact you probably don't want me in your city.
- bearjaws 3y ago
  Hilarious might have been the wrong word, but short sighted is what I meant, especially when the warning light has been flashing for 20 years now. The rising price of oil was taught in my middle school, its not news at this point.
jabroni_salad 3y ago
My commute is only 7 minutes even if I hit every stoplight. I could walk it in about 15 but I'll ride my motorcycle any chance I can. absolutely zero chance of some guy in a faraday cage box truck picking it off the lot while I'm at work, too. population 12k
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mindcrime 3y ago

My take is, IF I'm going to live in a city anyway (as I currently do) then I'd like to have as many things as possible within walking distance. And in point of fact, I can walk to the grocery store, many restaurants, another grocery store, a hardware store, my insurance agent, my dentist, etc. And I can easily bicycle to my doctor's office. So yeah, that's nice. And living in an apartment is part of that current setup, which is acceptable, but a bit stifling. In particular, I'm running out of room for all of my books. BUT... all things being equal, I'd rather NOT live in a city environment to begin with. I would actually prefer to live on a large enough plot of land, with enough trees surrounding me, to where I can't see another house without making some effort (eg, walking out to the edge of the road). Ideally I should be able to walk around naked outside my house with zero risk of anybody calling the cops. Because I like to walk around naked? NO. It's just the principle of the thing. And more to the point, I should be able to start a big bonfire in my yard, play loud heavy metal, and have a dozen or more people over, drinking and partying, and not have to worry about bothering my neighbors and having the cops called. The size of the house doesn't actually matter a whole lot, but I would like a fair amount more space than I currently have in my apartment. Anyway... I moved from the latter environment to the former for career reasons, but I strongly desire to eventually move back to latter - at least part time.

falcolas 3y ago
I've made this move back, and it was great for my mental health. I work from home and like having the ability to live out of my house, instead of a city (i.e. leaving the house for various daily activities because the house isn't big enough to support them). And when I want that city environment experience, I can go there.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  You’ve pointed out something key: some people have the mindset of “I live in my home” and others say “I live in my city.” I can see if you are young and have a city job and love restaurants and night clubs and museums and all these other city amenities, then you consider your life to be in various spots in a city. I don’t give a shit about any of that. My life is my family and my dog and my in-home hobbies and working on my vehicle: all of which goes on in my house. I could (and have many times) gone weeks without even leaving my property. No one way is correct.

fvdessen 3y ago

A big part of wanting to live in a big house far away from the place you go is that it insulates you from the pollution you bring with your car to the place you go. This is basically a prisoner dilemma, you enjoy the common goods of the city but don't get the downsides by defecting to the countryside, making the city worse in the process. In the end everybody loses.

falcolas 3y ago
> is that it insulates you from the pollution you bring with your car to the place you go This is a citation needed comment to me. It's one heck of an assertion that I have never heard. Most folks I've chatted with who have made this transition do it because of the density of people, not the pollution (which is miles better in cities than it was even 20 years ago).
- deleted 3y ago
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- fowkswe 3y ago
  Does this need a citation? The car is the thing that brings the pollution. You live in the burbs, you drive the car, you pollute. You live in the city, you walk/bike/transit, you pollute less.
  - mym1990 3y ago
    I have lived in quite a few cities in the US, and people who live in the city are still driving a majority of the time. There are not that many US cities that have the appropriate biking and transit capabilities to match their size.
  - replygirl 3y ago
    > A big part of wanting to live in a big house far away from the place you go is
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    The part that needs a citation is not "cars make pollution" but rather "pollution is the main reason people want to move to the suburbs".

TekMol 3y ago

I guess that is because most people have a family or plan to have one. Is this the same among the HN gang? Or is staying single long term an option? If so, what's the best way to live as a single? In tech, you can work from everywhere. So travel the world and / or have an appartment in a big city?

nsavage 3y ago

The whole strong cities movement, which has many laudable goals, I think fails in the same way that many public health initiatives do. The proponents always assume they know more than everyone else, and therefore are better than everyone else. Strong town supporters just have this smugness that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and its a big turn off from the movement. The problem is they don't have to convince me, they have to convince the 57% of Americans (from the title), many of whom are not in the online echo chamber about strong towns, It's not that strong towns is wrong, its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it", when it should be "we should develop better places for all of us to live". Note that this is more a problem with internet commentators vs the actual source material. It's obviously (to me at least) right. But on the other hand, I'm Canadian, I grew up in a car-dependent suburb. I lived downtown in my city in a walkable neighbourhood, and now I live in the car-dependent suburbs again with my family. I've been to Europe too, the walkable neighbourhoods there are great! But I also like my suburban house. Changing hearts and minds on this will take more than smugness though.

baggy_trough 3y ago
> we should develop better places for all of us to live That still sounds like an assumption that "all" of us will prefer strong towns, which is doubtful. How about: "We should develop some new types of places to live for those who would prefer this new type of place"
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afavour 3y ago
> its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it" I'm not sure what you've been reading but I can't say I've ever seen that approach. However, I do agree that the wrong tack is often taken. It's usually "environmental concerns mean we're all going to have to live in dense cities whether we like it or not", which is hardly an appealing take (irrespective of how true or false it is!). Personally I love living in the city with my family. I bike the kids to school in the morning, the city has more museums than I can count, we have a giant park nearby with a zoo, a half dozen playgrounds... it's great. But you're right that you rarely see this kind of appeal actually made.

scythe 3y ago

Most of the places I have seen posting this data have missed what I think is the major story here: >Public preferences were more evenly divided on this question in fall 2019, a few months before the coronavirus outbreak. COVID-19 caused a measurable shift in living preferences that appears to be durable.

stephen_g 3y ago

There’s always a “you don’t know what you haven’t experienced” element to this kind of thing. A lot of my YouTube recommendations at the moment have been ‘culture shock’ things from Americans (weird because I’m not American or European myself, but I do find it interesting so the algorithm works I guess!) who have gone to live in the UK or Europe for a bit and talk about how amazed they are at living in European cities and how they just had no concept of the way of life until they came over. But even in much smaller ways you can get that mind shift. I didn’t really think about active transport until I thought electric scooters looked fun and ordered one, and it just blew my mind and opened up a whole new perspective (now I want an e-bike too, but using the scooter heaps). I guess another aspect is that if you were looking at a lot of the cities and public transport that the US has, I guess I might even choose the ‘burbs and car culture over that… That’s a tricky thing to overcome, getting public transport especially in the US up to a reasonable international standard.

mindcrime 3y ago
I will say this: IF you're going to live in a "big city" it's definitely nice to pick one with good public transit. I spent quite a lot of time in Chicago a few years ago, and I was really surprised at how accessible things were without a car, compared to where I live. Like I said in my other comment, I have a lot of stuff within walking distance of me. But what I didn't say, is that for everything else getting there without a car would be a nightmare. We have some buses, and that's about it. Chicago, OTOH, with the L-train system and the comprehensive bus route coverage, is relatively easy to get around, despite its size.
GiorgioG 3y ago
I'm an American. My parents are 1st generation immigrants. I spent a lot of time in Europe visiting grandparents growing up. I don't think one way of living is better than another, just personal preferences. I enjoyed my visits to Europe, but for my own life I prefer living in the US. Public transport in the US just isn't a priority and never will be outside of large cities. Scooters and eBikes are great in cities, but awful for suburbs. I wouldn't risk riding one outside my neighborhood on the larger/faster roads.

falcolas 3y ago

One advantage of a large house is that you can have specialized spaces. You can have a "cave" or two. You can have a shop. You can have rooms for guests. You can have greenhouses. You can have a dedicated office to work from home from. You can have pets with far fewer limitations placed upon you. While technically possible in a city, it's going to generally be cost prohibitive - especially for a couple or a family.

edhelas 3y ago
And most of that will not be used 95% of the time. My parents have a large house with 4 bedrooms. They are only filled when we come seeing them. To me it's just wasted space. Multiply that by millions of houses and you have a huge volume of space that is built heated/ACed for basically nothing most of the time. We must rationalized all this, same with office spaces or "4 persons cars" :)
- tivert 3y ago
  > And most of that will not be used 95% of the time. Honestly, urban apartments are pretty wasteful. Why does everyone have a kitchen? A bedroom? To me, it's all just wasted space. It would be far, far less wasteful if everyone lived in barracks and hot-bunked/hot-desked. Meals could be served in a common mess, in shifts. Communal activities could be available for recreation. If we maximize colocation of work and living spaces, we could also significantly cut down on space wasted on transportation in general, not just cars. The shift will be hard, but the efficiency gains will be worth it.
  - edhelas 3y ago
    I'm sure we can find some balance between those two extremes :) The kitchen and bedroom you use them everyday. Same with the "one-seat" in your car.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > I'm sure we can find some balance between those two extremes :) No, if wasted space is a problem, let's get rid of it. No half-measures that just happen to stop when it starts interfering with your preferences. > The kitchen and bedroom you use them everyday. Same with the "one-seat" in your car. Come on. Just used everyday? That's a total waste. They should be in constant use.

bilsbie 3y ago

I think there’s just less and less to outside the home so we tend to desire larger spaces. That plus more remote working. Restaurants are getting super expensive. And I’m not sure why fast casual didn’t off. Why do I need to add 20% tip to every meal if I could just order at a counter? Coffee shops mostly don’t seem super comfortable to just hang out. Libraries don’t have great hours or reading nooks. Bars like cheers aren’t a thing. You’re mostly stuck in your house.

houseatrielah 3y ago
Coffee shops are not "the living room of the city" anymore, now they're "the office space of the city", people quietly working on laptops.
mym1990 3y ago
Well now most places are asking for a 20% tip for ordering at the counter hah.

tivert 3y ago

Terrible! That 57% needs to be enrolled in a mandatory indoctrination program to teach them to hate cars and love urban microapartments; like all good, right-thinking people do.

GiorgioG 3y ago

I live in a big house in a suburb that used to be farmland. As our town population has exploded, more and more amenities have come to us. Young folks without families love cities, as they should, but if they have a family, most people want a house. There's nothing wrong with changing your preferences. Once our kids are gone, maybe we'll go back to city living. There is no "better", it's all in what works for you at the current stage in your life.

macNchz 3y ago

I think a lot of people in America simply don’t have a great concept of what living somewhere within walking distance of amenities can be like. Walking totally sucks in most of the country, so it’s very reasonable to devalue it. I grew up in a rural place but live in NYC now. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of having things nearby. My family from suburban and rural places always seem surprised when I mention I need to run out to the grocery store at 6pm on a Tuesday. For them that’s a once a week trip at most–I can probably get there and back in the time that it takes them to get to just get to the store. I am not making a case for the superiority of one lifestyle over the other (though I see suburbia as kind of a worst of both worlds between urban and rural), just offering my interpretation of why people in America might feel this way.

mattw2121 3y ago
I have a great concept of walking in a city. I enjoy the walkability of NYC. When I am there I take transit everywhere and it's great. I live in Florida. It gets into the high 90's with 80% humidity. At the same time NYC is in the 80's with 50% humidity. There are places that just aren't walkable certain times of the year.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  >> It gets into the high 90's with 80% humidity 96 degrees and 80% humidity is a dew point of 89. The highest verified dew point ever recorded in the US is 88, and that was in Minnesota which might sound odd to people who have never heard the term "corn sweat". But yeah, even high 90's with 65% humidity (dew point in low 80's) is not healthy to be walking around in.
  - mattw2121 3y ago
    Yes, my bad...humidity decreases some in the hottest part of the day. So the 80% humidity is overnight while the high 90's temperature is during the day. As you said, still not walkable :).
- digging 3y ago

kredd 3y ago

Whenever I talk to my friends from rural areas of the provinces, it becomes clear they just prefer the way they used to live as a child. I lived my entire life in different cities and can’t imagine myself driving for a simple grocery run. Other thing is, a lot of people who move into a city later in life don’t bother taking advantage of city life and say how much they hate it. I’ve heard time and time again from my friends how “they feel trapped in an apartment”, but they don’t go out for walks or city adventures. Personally, when I go into rural sides of the countries, I feel extremely trapped and crave some sights of people. It doesn’t have to be crowded, but there’s a beauty of an okay-ishly functioning city going through it’s morning routine.

GloomyBoots 3y ago
In rural America, we used to have more very small towns that were actual towns, with sidewalks, main streets, grocery stores, cafés, and cinemas. One of the places I lived used to be one, and I never would have known if the old folks wouldn’t randomly bring up the old bowling alley or something, and when I had no idea what they were talking about they would go on to explain that it used to be in some empty field maybe a quarter mile from my house. Most shocking one was when I was with someone who mentioned a town I’d never heard of. She said oh, it used to be just up the highway and brought me there. We went into a wooded area in the middle of a farm, and there were the remnants of wooden walkways everywhere (low elevation and frequent flooding). She showed me where the train station and the hotel had been, talked about the different shops and the amusement park that was owned by the local dentist. But that was all a long time ago. Now that whole area which used to contain multiple such communities is just farmland, loose clusters of houses, a plant, a gas station, and five of the ugliest churches you’ve ever laid eyes on. If you drive for half an hour you can go to Walmart or Taco Bell in the “small city” that used to be an actual small city.
throwawa14223 3y ago
I'm one of those who hates city life, but I don't want to do any of those things you list as advantages of city life, they are undesirable to me.

tenebrisalietum 3y ago

> A majority of Americans (57%) say they would prefer to live in a community where “houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away,” I would rather have enough distance not to have to hear/see my neighbors than have stores and restaurants within walkable distance, at least in this point in time. If you are a quiet-loving person this is really your only way to get what you need.

coolbreezetft22 3y ago

A few years ago I made this exact tradeoff. Moving from my townhouse in a urban-suburban neighborhood that was closer to my work and the major urban center to a more a big house in an isolated suburb that was ~15 minutes farther away. Having a bigger house is good when you have kids like I do, but I definitely prefer the former, where it wasn't exactly living in a big city but still had a lot of the benefits. I just hate having to drive more and how much time it takes up.

nsm 3y ago

One of the problems with mainly anglophone countries is that they have made other kinds of housing so difficult or even illegal to build in large swathes of major cities that single family homes - big, with everything far apart, is the only reality. No one is saying everyone has to live in apartments. But people who want to live in apartments should be able to where there is demand. Nearly all new apartment stock in, say SF, is "luxury" instead of just being straightforward apartments or multi family dwellings.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

I think at a 'wanting a better world' makes sense. The problem I think is that people don't really want to act like they're in a shared space. Maybe because they have different standards, maybe because they're not tuned to it. I was raised being conscious of my presence and how it affected others. While I live in a single family home I still walk like in my 2nd floor apartment to avoid annoying the neighbors downstairs (so far the termites haven't lodged a complaint), or automatically turn down the volume later in the evening, even when I'm home alone. Not doing this causes friction, and I don't think everybody realizes the presence they have while sharing a space. So it's only natural people want to avoid that friction. Larges spaces accomplish this naturally.

aaron695 3y ago

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dirtyid 3y ago

What percent would prefer to live in moderate size spaces if amenities in walking distance?