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I’m constantly surprised how tech folks seem to undervalue the suburbs.
by ccorcos 3y ago
I’m constantly surprised how tech folks seem to undervalue the suburbs.
- dleslie 3y agoMost American suburbs are awful if you enjoy any sort of regular physical activity, and simply prefer to walk to the market instead of drive. They're amazing if you love sitting in traffic.
- resonious 3y agoSounds like they're also good if you want a garage to tinker in!
- trimethylpurine 3y agoI'm in a suburb. Not an expensive one. Downtown is a 20 minute drive in light traffic. Within a 10 minute walk there are office buildings, grocery stores, shopping mall, gyms, parks, hiking and biking trails, etc. There are many cities to choose from; some are better planned than others. Based on your comment I would guess that you've opted to live in one of the "cool" cities in America.
- xvedejas 3y agoThat you need to drive to downtown suggests you might not have much garage space after all?
- trimethylpurine 3y ago[flagged]
- xvedejas 3y agoYour comment seems unnecessarily antagonistic. Given whatever size of garage I have, being somewhere I can live without a car gives me more garage space, regardless of whether it's a suburb. If I want to maximize garage space given my choice of a car-free lifestyle, I would probably move to a suburb with a good train station, not one where "only 20 minutes' drive to downtown" is seen as the selling point. Those are subtly different kinds of places, in my experience, where most people are going to fill their garage space with cars.
- trimethylpurine 3y agoNah, I'm joking, hopefully not antagonizing. My point was that since you're not downtown, you can park in the street. Minutes to downtown isn't a selling point I'm making. I don't typically go downtown. I've put 10k miles on my car in 3 years. This was in response to someone saying they can't get exercise in a suburb, which I find absurd.
- akovaski 3y ago> when you too are ready to grow up The antagonism is from effectively calling them immature (and thus implying that their opinion is coming from a place of naivety) and placing yourself above them. This is a pretty standard insult that people use to try to be persuasive. I suppose you could say that posting that insult itself is so immature that readers should recognize it as a joke, but I suggest that you should try to stay away from sarcasm when posting in online forums. It can be quite difficult to detect the sarcasm of a bunch of people you don't know. I could end my post by sarcastically saying "don't worry, you'll learn what a joke is when you grow up", but hopefully you can imagine how some people would take that as a genuine insult rather than a joke. Though it would be punchier ending.
- trimethylpurine 3y ago>and placing yourself above them. Like you did by downvoting? Are you young? Because this comment shouldn't be offensive unless you're harboring doubt about immature decisions you've made. For everyone else, it's a tongue in cheek poke at the bad decisions I made when I was younger. Statistically, people tend to leave the city when they get older. If you're insulted by that, you probably still belong in the city. Maybe you should look inward instead of downvoting, or offering explanations that presume a lesser understanding in your audience. Looking up to experience isn't a bad thing. It shows maturity. How's that for a punchy finish? /Shrug.
- jstanley 3y agoYou don't need to park the car in the garage you know. Park the car on the drive, keep the garage for a workshop.
- dang 3y agoBreaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned here. Please don't post like this, no matter how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- saulpw 3y agoNo one parks in the garage in the suburbs :) They either park in the driveway or on the street, both of which have ample room to store vehicles.
- checkyoursudo 3y agoI tried parking in my garage for a while, but the car took up too much valuable space.
- doubled112 3y agoThis is it. My garage is full of kid's stuff. I don't have a backyard for a shed, plus my landlords installed shelving on all three sides, some not above car roof level. If we want to park a car in there, it's about an hour of moving stuff out of the way. I stand at the back as a spotter while my wife drives at me. Once she hit me, she turns the car off and climbs out through the back seat. I then climb over the roof of the car. I wish I was making this up. Glad it's 12 years old with no sun roof. I don't have to feel bad about sliding over it.
- gautamcgoel 3y agoWhich city are you in?
- saurik 3y agoIf we knew, we might all move there and ruin it ;P.
- CodeNest 3y agohahahaha :)
- trimethylpurine 3y agoExactly.
- assimpleaspossi 3y agoWas going to say the same. I have never lived in a house that did not have a garage.
- tjrgergw 3y agoWould you please share which city is this, that has everything within 10 minute walk in its suburbs? I'm a European who's lived in an "American downtown" because I was told the suburbs are horrible, but what you're describing sounds great.
- xw3098 3y agoPrice is relative. That could be Los Altos, California. Which is very nice, walkable with garages, great parks and outdoors, but not what most people would call affordable. :)
- trimethylpurine 3y agoI would argue that it's objectively cheaper to live in the suburbs. And I can assert with confidence that $100/mo in HOA fees provides walkable parks, trails, pools, gyms, tennis courts, basketball courts, etc. I vote on the financial management of all these things so I can be sure they are provided by that amount of money, objectively. Major builders do suburbs like this one across the country. And they make a killing managing them too. Where are you? SF? SD? NY? Miami? You're paying a premium for the right to brag about it. Not for the amenities.
- acheron 3y ago> because I was told the suburbs are horrible Probably shouldn’t be taking advice from Reddit.
- carom 3y agoColumbia, MD was one of the earlier planned suburbs. Each neighborhood has a grocery store. Worth looking at.
- trimethylpurine 3y agoI won't. But I'm basically describing the entire USA except the coasts, and a few major cities in between. For perspective, houses in SF sell for 10x the value per square foot compared with my neighborhood. And I'm not remotely in the cheapest place in the country. America is big. Look around. There is a LOT of space in the middle.
- jhatemyjob 3y agoSilicon Valley is great for running and biking. Just look at Rancho San Antonio for example.
- dottjt 3y agoI think the key is to have everything delivered to you. Once you figure that out, suburbs are great. Of course, it's not equivalent to being able to walk to places, but I feel the pros outweigh the cons in terms of what you do get from the suburbs.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThere are plenty of suburbs where you can also walk to places.
- reactordev 3y ago>”I think the key is to have everything delivered to you.“ This is why we can’t have nice things. We simply can’t rely on a class of workers to dote on us simply because we fancy living in the burbs. The amount of waste just so you can get your instacart. The reality is near 8% mortgages have put suburbs with garages out of reach for almost everyone without a trust fund or selling their startup.
- dbtc 3y agoWhat if robots did it?
- jeffreygoesto 3y agoWorse. The main damage is done building things and robots have a much higher total cost of being developed and built.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoTrue to first order, not to second. Economy of scale making robots cheaper would dramatically improve economies and the environment. Simple example would be to reduce the scale up and install cost of clean energy.
- reactordev 3y ago
- refurb 3y agoThis is a very black and white view of the suburbs. I would call the entire peninsula from SF to San Jose one big suburb. Hell, everything West of Gough St in SF is pretty suburb-like: mostly residential, a few shopping streets and no offices. Despite that there are plenty of areas that are very walkable, including public transportation and shopping for daily needs. Not every suburb looks like a cluster of single family homes with nothing else within 10 miles.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoPlenty of suburbs are walkable. I live in one with three grocery stores and a farmers market in walking distance.
- Blackthorn 3y agoPrices in the suburbs aren't any better.
- grishka 3y agoAmerican tech folks. In my part of the world, you either have good access to civilization, or your own land. Having both at the same time (buying land close enough to a major city) is prohibitively expensive.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoI like the "concrete suburbs" we have here in Finland. I get why people born here don't have the highest opinion of them, but something about seeing identical 8-story high unadorned buildings for several blocks in a row, separated by little patches of park and forest sets me at ease. It feels like even if I were to lose my job I would still be able to pay rent here. Maybe it comes from growing up in an American city and seeing just how brutal the rent race can get firsthand.
- yterdy 3y agoSuburbs aren't defined by having personal space. That can be achieved in cities and small towns with in-fill development of high square-footage apartments, n-plexes, and townhouses, or collective workspaces. The suburbs that people complain about are car-centric and are generally underfunded in the long-term, putting significant burdens on municipal and state finances for things like infrastructure maintenance (roads, sewers, etc.). Every suburban garage/city parking space pair is a half-dozen kids without up-to-date science textbooks and equipment.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoPlenty of car centric suburbs do fine with the budget too. You got suburbs in california where homes are $2m. They aren’t hurting for road budget. High school class offerings in such a district might look downright collegiate from the additional funding the parents raise for the local school.
- yterdy 3y agoThere are several contentious aspects to this characterization: 1) California is a noted outlier. The tax base/road budget ratio does not scale well to the rest of the country. 2) The wealth of affluent suburbs is driven by the cities they surround. The cities generate enough wealth to nominally support the market rate labor that keep them running AND the professional/managerial class that cut and run. 3) The top quintile or two of earners are likelier to live in newer developments, where the cost of maintenance has not built up yet. As regions become older and less desirable, the affluent leave and are replaced by the less-so, just as replacement costs come due. This model is a burden on the state and national levels because it's so prevalent. If, instead, the model were to have most people living were their wealth was generated - and therefore have amenities scale to means more closely - you would have fewer extremely wealthy individuals and families but a more sustainable and equitable society. I know this is anathema to many, who value getting ahead over getting together.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]