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We haven’t built new housing in cities in decades, so this isn’t surprising. Suburban hellscapes where you have to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries are cheap,

by pkulak 3y ago

We haven’t built new housing in cities in decades, so this isn’t surprising. Suburban hellscapes where you have to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries are cheap, but who wants that?

t-writescode 3y ago
Where I live, even __they__ aren't cheap. It's absurd.
palashkulsh 3y ago
Just curious why aren't groceries near by, are local shops also not available. Is it because of price of real estate for shop Or high labour cost with low margin
- t-writescode 3y ago
  Zoning laws do not allow mixed use zoning in suburbia, so it's literally just vast, endless lands of single family homes (not even apartments)
- lukevp 3y ago
  It’s just hyperbole. Suburbs have grocery stores too. I’ve lived in many small towns, cities, and suburbs on several states and was never more than 10 mins from a grocery store. I live on the outskirts of the suburbs in an unincorporated part of the county ( not even in a city) and I have multiple grocery stores within 10 minutes.
  - opportune 3y ago
    It really depends on the structure of the suburb. If you are in a large planned suburb in some areas, it’s actually possible that driving out of your suburb takes 5-10m and you may need to get on the highway to get to the nearest supermarket. 40minutes is probably a rare one way scenario even with traffic but 25-30m is not out of the question. Haven’t you been in one of those kinds of suburbs? They were common in the Tier 2-3 city I grew up in in the South although I guess in the Northeast and West I haven’t seen it as often
  - t-writescode 3y ago
    10 minutes, by car going 30-50 mph
  - bronsonkhmai 3y ago
    That comment has so little to do with reality I have to assume their mom still does the grocery shopping.
- MichaelRo 3y ago
  I don't believe for a bit that in a relatively densely populated suburban area there are no independent shops, it violates the fundamental presumption of capitalism which is that there's always an entrepreneur looking to make money out of dry stone. My observation is that literally where there's 10 people, the 11'th one will try to sell them something. Hamlets of 100 houses have 2 grocery stores, 3 bars and a slot machine parlor. I also live in a suburban area in Europe and there's shops everywhere. Noone "planned them", it's just the observation above. And yeah, house prices went through the roof also, probably went up everywhere where there's no war or famine going on regularly. The thing I hate most about housing are traffic jams. The more they build and cram more "affordable housing", the worse the nightmare of getting anywhere becomes. Coze at some point you know, you'll need something that's just not within "walking distance" and then you're funked.
  - opportune 3y ago
    It doesn’t matter whether you believe in it or not lol, it simply is that way. I can send you a Google maps link to somewhere in the US that is a food desert simply by virtue of being a large suburb with residential zoning. My guess is your conception of a suburban area (relatively densely populated?) is a bit different from ours in the US. Also for some reason you seem to think that because your area doesn’t have zoning or enforce it, other places don’t.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    You really should have visited American suburbia before posting that. American zoning is too strict and, due to a sprawl of single-family homes, population numbers too low to permit shops in many suburbs. Once has to leave the maze of residential roads and get onto a main thoroughfare before one will find a convenience store or, often more likely, a petrol station with a shop. And that is too long a distance to reasonably walk even for avid walkers. And if you write "independent shops", that is no longer true of even many European countries. While people do have a nearby shop, it might be typically from a chain (R-Kioski in Finland is essentially a monopoly, Żabka in Poland is omnipresent). The situation of, say, Spain, with its Chinese and Pakistani-owned independent shops, or Romania with its local family-owned shops does not extend over the whole EU.
- ulfw 3y ago
  Because of low density. If a three person family lives on a 1000sqm plot of land rather than say 300 or 3000 in a skyscraper on the same plot, you inevitably have a harder time providing essential services. Hence the need to drive, built large parking lots, etc.
guestbest 3y ago
What makes a suburban area a hellscape? Is it unusually hot? Are there a large amount of murders? Just curious what that means since I grew up with the term and years later still bought a house in a city next to a large city which is really an unbroken metropolis without a real green space between. There are a few farms nearby and ranches getting converted to 5 story apartments and 4 lane roads, and that seems less friendly than the small city of homeowners the city has evolved from which is what it was when I bought my house here. Small cities seem nice to me.
- t-writescode 3y ago
  Nothing is walkable. It cannot pay for itself in taxes because the income is too spread out. You have to use a car everywhere. The proliferation of car-centricness that it encourages also encourages the increase of stroads which becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that forces more car usage, and so on.
  - guestbest 3y ago
    It pays for itself with property taxes (Texas) and sales taxes from car dealerships.
    - t-writescode 3y ago
      The property taxes don't anywhere near cover its costs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
      - guestbest 3y ago
        That’s a link to a video. Just summarize in text what you mean
        t-writescode 3y ago
        Summary: it cannot pay for itself in taxes because the income is too spread out. To the downvoter: I don't know what more you want. That's the synopsis. The density is too low, so they don't get enough money to sustain themselves with all the infrastructure that is required to have suburbia
Always_Anon 3y ago
>Suburban hellscapes where you have to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries are cheap These so called "hellscapes" are no longer cheap. Waves of people are fleeing the cities to these "hellscapes."
- pkulak 3y ago
  Cheap per square foot. Here's a random pin drop I did outside Houston: http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150246.png http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150246.png and here's central Portland: http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150343.png http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150343.png Those may be expensive houses in the first image, but I guarantee cost per square foot is an order of magnitude cheaper. If waves of folks want the first image, more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it.
  - Always_Anon 3y ago
    >Those may be expensive houses in the first image, but I guarantee cost per square foot is an order of magnitude cheaper. I guarantee they're not. Portland average house price is $500k [0]. Your example of Katy, TX is $365k [1]. Not even close to an order of magnitude. >If waves of folks want the first image, more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it. If waves of folks want this image [2], more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it. [0] https://www.redfin.com/city/30772/OR/Portland/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/city/30772/OR/Portland/housing-market [1] https://www.redfin.com/city/9764/TX/Katy/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/city/9764/TX/Katy/housing-market [2] https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/portland-bans-homeless-camps-streets-07.jpg https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/portla... https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.kgw.com%2Fassets%2FKGW%2Fimages%2Fd4334424-d89d-4dfd-bee6-573c20f775a5%2Fd4334424-d89d-4dfd-bee6-573c20f775a5_1920x1080.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=537ee32c44af61113d2c8d601d141ee2b4ab8467ff6115e7f1c487b98f8f3592&ipo=images https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
scruple 3y ago
I can walk to 3 grocery stores (and these are on shopping centers with a few dozen restaurants and other stores, Target, Walmart, etc... theoretically everything I need) in under 15 minutes from my front door in Orange county, California, next door to Irvine, the birth place of modern suburbia. You have a point but you need to get rid of the hyperbole.
- mint2 3y ago
  Okay but to many people Irvine is a sterile wasteland. And that’s one of the mode suburbs?! It feels like living in a corporate office park. And no, it’s predominantly not walking friendly. Not only is is massively spread out, the roads one has to walk next to are all 4-6 lanes wide and have freeway like speed limits. It’s unpleasant to walk a mile with that traffic noise and bland invariant office park landscaping. Some people are okay with that setting, other do find it a soul sucking sterile place. I live there a number of years for a job, was ecstatic to move away. Should have done it sooner. And that place is a super nice upscale suburb, like the one all suburbs aspire to be. and yet this paragon of suburbs is awful. I didn’t even get into how bad ecologically the office park landscaping is. I haven’t scratched the surface of the many ways suburbs like Irvine are intrinsically bad. I do find most people who enjoy the place are tend not question the why of things or ask questions about their defaults.

by pkulak 3y ago

We haven’t built new housing in cities in decades, so this isn’t surprising. Suburban hellscapes where you have to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries are cheap, but who wants that?

t-writescode 3y ago

Where I live, even __they__ aren't cheap. It's absurd.

palashkulsh 3y ago

Just curious why aren't groceries near by, are local shops also not available. Is it because of price of real estate for shop Or high labour cost with low margin

t-writescode 3y ago
Zoning laws do not allow mixed use zoning in suburbia, so it's literally just vast, endless lands of single family homes (not even apartments)
lukevp 3y ago
It’s just hyperbole. Suburbs have grocery stores too. I’ve lived in many small towns, cities, and suburbs on several states and was never more than 10 mins from a grocery store. I live on the outskirts of the suburbs in an unincorporated part of the county ( not even in a city) and I have multiple grocery stores within 10 minutes.
- opportune 3y ago
  It really depends on the structure of the suburb. If you are in a large planned suburb in some areas, it’s actually possible that driving out of your suburb takes 5-10m and you may need to get on the highway to get to the nearest supermarket. 40minutes is probably a rare one way scenario even with traffic but 25-30m is not out of the question. Haven’t you been in one of those kinds of suburbs? They were common in the Tier 2-3 city I grew up in in the South although I guess in the Northeast and West I haven’t seen it as often
- t-writescode 3y ago
  10 minutes, by car going 30-50 mph
- bronsonkhmai 3y ago
  That comment has so little to do with reality I have to assume their mom still does the grocery shopping.
MichaelRo 3y ago
I don't believe for a bit that in a relatively densely populated suburban area there are no independent shops, it violates the fundamental presumption of capitalism which is that there's always an entrepreneur looking to make money out of dry stone. My observation is that literally where there's 10 people, the 11'th one will try to sell them something. Hamlets of 100 houses have 2 grocery stores, 3 bars and a slot machine parlor. I also live in a suburban area in Europe and there's shops everywhere. Noone "planned them", it's just the observation above. And yeah, house prices went through the roof also, probably went up everywhere where there's no war or famine going on regularly. The thing I hate most about housing are traffic jams. The more they build and cram more "affordable housing", the worse the nightmare of getting anywhere becomes. Coze at some point you know, you'll need something that's just not within "walking distance" and then you're funked.
- opportune 3y ago
  It doesn’t matter whether you believe in it or not lol, it simply is that way. I can send you a Google maps link to somewhere in the US that is a food desert simply by virtue of being a large suburb with residential zoning. My guess is your conception of a suburban area (relatively densely populated?) is a bit different from ours in the US. Also for some reason you seem to think that because your area doesn’t have zoning or enforce it, other places don’t.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  You really should have visited American suburbia before posting that. American zoning is too strict and, due to a sprawl of single-family homes, population numbers too low to permit shops in many suburbs. Once has to leave the maze of residential roads and get onto a main thoroughfare before one will find a convenience store or, often more likely, a petrol station with a shop. And that is too long a distance to reasonably walk even for avid walkers. And if you write "independent shops", that is no longer true of even many European countries. While people do have a nearby shop, it might be typically from a chain (R-Kioski in Finland is essentially a monopoly, Żabka in Poland is omnipresent). The situation of, say, Spain, with its Chinese and Pakistani-owned independent shops, or Romania with its local family-owned shops does not extend over the whole EU.
ulfw 3y ago
Because of low density. If a three person family lives on a 1000sqm plot of land rather than say 300 or 3000 in a skyscraper on the same plot, you inevitably have a harder time providing essential services. Hence the need to drive, built large parking lots, etc.

guestbest 3y ago

What makes a suburban area a hellscape? Is it unusually hot? Are there a large amount of murders? Just curious what that means since I grew up with the term and years later still bought a house in a city next to a large city which is really an unbroken metropolis without a real green space between. There are a few farms nearby and ranches getting converted to 5 story apartments and 4 lane roads, and that seems less friendly than the small city of homeowners the city has evolved from which is what it was when I bought my house here. Small cities seem nice to me.

t-writescode 3y ago
Nothing is walkable. It cannot pay for itself in taxes because the income is too spread out. You have to use a car everywhere. The proliferation of car-centricness that it encourages also encourages the increase of stroads which becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that forces more car usage, and so on.
- guestbest 3y ago
  It pays for itself with property taxes (Texas) and sales taxes from car dealerships.
  - t-writescode 3y ago
    The property taxes don't anywhere near cover its costs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
    - guestbest 3y ago
      That’s a link to a video. Just summarize in text what you mean
      - t-writescode 3y ago
        Summary: it cannot pay for itself in taxes because the income is too spread out. To the downvoter: I don't know what more you want. That's the synopsis. The density is too low, so they don't get enough money to sustain themselves with all the infrastructure that is required to have suburbia

Always_Anon 3y ago

>Suburban hellscapes where you have to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries are cheap These so called "hellscapes" are no longer cheap. Waves of people are fleeing the cities to these "hellscapes."

pkulak 3y ago
Cheap per square foot. Here's a random pin drop I did outside Houston: http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150246.png http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150246.png and here's central Portland: http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150343.png http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150343.png Those may be expensive houses in the first image, but I guarantee cost per square foot is an order of magnitude cheaper. If waves of folks want the first image, more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it.
- Always_Anon 3y ago
  >Those may be expensive houses in the first image, but I guarantee cost per square foot is an order of magnitude cheaper. I guarantee they're not. Portland average house price is $500k [0]. Your example of Katy, TX is $365k [1]. Not even close to an order of magnitude. >If waves of folks want the first image, more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it. If waves of folks want this image [2], more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it. [0] https://www.redfin.com/city/30772/OR/Portland/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/city/30772/OR/Portland/housing-market [1] https://www.redfin.com/city/9764/TX/Katy/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/city/9764/TX/Katy/housing-market [2] https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/portland-bans-homeless-camps-streets-07.jpg https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/portla... https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.kgw.com%2Fassets%2FKGW%2Fimages%2Fd4334424-d89d-4dfd-bee6-573c20f775a5%2Fd4334424-d89d-4dfd-bee6-573c20f775a5_1920x1080.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=537ee32c44af61113d2c8d601d141ee2b4ab8467ff6115e7f1c487b98f8f3592&ipo=images https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

scruple 3y ago

I can walk to 3 grocery stores (and these are on shopping centers with a few dozen restaurants and other stores, Target, Walmart, etc... theoretically everything I need) in under 15 minutes from my front door in Orange county, California, next door to Irvine, the birth place of modern suburbia. You have a point but you need to get rid of the hyperbole.

mint2 3y ago
Okay but to many people Irvine is a sterile wasteland. And that’s one of the mode suburbs?! It feels like living in a corporate office park. And no, it’s predominantly not walking friendly. Not only is is massively spread out, the roads one has to walk next to are all 4-6 lanes wide and have freeway like speed limits. It’s unpleasant to walk a mile with that traffic noise and bland invariant office park landscaping. Some people are okay with that setting, other do find it a soul sucking sterile place. I live there a number of years for a job, was ecstatic to move away. Should have done it sooner. And that place is a super nice upscale suburb, like the one all suburbs aspire to be. and yet this paragon of suburbs is awful. I didn’t even get into how bad ecologically the office park landscaping is. I haven’t scratched the surface of the many ways suburbs like Irvine are intrinsically bad. I do find most people who enjoy the place are tend not question the why of things or ask questions about their defaults.