> What's wrong with sprawl? It allows people to live in spacious houses. That's fine in an ideal world when you have a low population density and consistent or

> What's wrong with sprawl? It allows people to live in spacious houses. That's fine in an ideal world when you have a low population density and consistent or declining population. The reality is sprawl in the US coincides with population growth or migration quite often. Person 1 moves to a place where they can be far from people, have a nice forest behind their home, and have open roads. While the distance from their home to their destination is long, the roads are empty so it's stress free driving. Persons 2 through 300000 think that sounds great, so they move there as well. They all want to be far from people and have empty roads, so they abandon their 30 minute train commute for free living in the city. The forest behind Person 1's home gets chopped down and replaced by a packed suburb. The main road Person 1 took is now packed with traffic from the other people that moved there dreaming of his lifestyle. His 25 minute smooth commute is now 80 minutes. Construction is constantly ongoing to widen the roads to handle more traffic, instead of reduce the source of the traffic, and this makes traffic worse due to lanes being shut down. Roads quickly become full after construction ends, resulting in more traffic. This is the story of basically any city in America since the 1950s. People want more space and the freedom to drive to work, and end up in a packed neighborhood and whining about traffic when everyone else follows them. Someone who gets their first taste of it thinks "wow, this is great!" But it's becoming a nightmare for people who moved there 10 years prior. And it'll transition into a nightmare 10 years later for those who are loving it now. The nice nature gets knocked down and you're back to living in a space with too many people, but with none of the benefits of a proper city. You can't walk 2 minutes to a dozen different restaurants, relax by the river, or sit down on transport and read a book while going somewhere. You're stuck in traffic while every tree around you is being chopped down. And because HN is mostly programmers, most people here probably love the sprawl because they work from home and don't need to wake up at 6 AM to sit in traffic and huff car exhaust from 7 AM to 8:25 AM and arrive at the office at 8:30. But millions in the US are trapped in that loop.