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> People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there

> People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburbs. Yes, I know it seems illogical. Of course. There are also people who enjoy walkable pedestrian and bike friendly places with lots of small local businesses to patronize. That doesn't require living in a "big dirty city", it really just means making actual towns with dense downtown centers where people can work, live, shop, and dine. Based on my experience with real estate prices, where townhomes near such thriving downtown developments can cost easily double of one in a suburban neighborhood a 15 minute drive away, the demand for that kind of living currently exceeds supply in many places. The answer isn't to remove all suburbia and replace it with dense walkability, the answer is to stop preventing the dense walkable development with strict single-family-detached zoning laws, parking minimums, etc. and let the supply of such places increase to meet demand. Nobody will come take your suburban house away from you, they just want to have as much freedom in choosing what they want as you get to choose what you want. And those that do prefer to live in big cities are just advocating for making those places better. The US has a lot of places that are definitely "city" but are still also car-dependent or at least not as friendly to walking, cycling, and mass transit as they should be. We can improve those without changing your suburban life one bit.

trgn 2y ago
it's and/and. Suburbanites impose their values on the city (free parking, highways, vote against bikelanes, ...). I don't care if they'd be in their suburbs and just live there. go live in the burbs, be happy, but don't degrade my neighborhood with your cars. we really can have our cake and eat it, nice cities for the people who prefer them, suburbs for the others, so much room.
- mtalantikite 2y ago
  Absolutely this. Every time someone suggests dense urban living or asking for people to pay for their car-dependent life, suburbanites come out of the woodwork and scream and holler that their rights are being taken away. As if the majority of the country isn't suburban sprawl catering to car dependent life. We only have a handful of dense, walkable cities with public transit in the entire country. Suburbanites have plenty of places to choose from, literally anywhere else outside of NYC, Chicago, SF, and Boston. As a New Yorker, I'm totally fine with people choosing a suburban life. Do you, I don't care. But don't kill congestion pricing and think you're entitled to drive into the densest part of the United States and park for free in my neighborhood just because. Don't block funding for public transit for 40 years and then complain you need your car because the train is scary to you the two times a year you use it.
  - trgn 2y ago
    congestion pricing in manhattan is the best example. unreal this got shot down by intervention from the governor.
- bpt3 2y ago
  Do non-residents get to vote in your city elections? If not, how are suburbanites imposing their values on your city?
  - trgn 2y ago
    my city has consolidated with the burbs. so anything that benefits the core areas gets no traction because it doesn't immediately benefit the burbs. vice versa, other cities haven't consolidated, and they do have better city amenities.
    - bpt3 2y ago
      Those people are your fellow city dwellers then, and deserve to be heard just as much as people in the urban core.
      - trgn 2y ago
        they're not my fellow city dwellers. they've turned their back on city life, live 15-30miles away, rarely if ever visit. it's just an administrative, historical quirk that they have a claim on the city and local politics. other cities have different administrative boundaries, that hug the city proper much closer. Those cities have much better urban amenities (traffic calming, light rail, bikelanes, ...) than mine, because they don't have people who loathe city life have a voice in city matters.
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    There’s drain effect where as the city gets defunded, people with money and an interest in civic engagement move to the suburbs, and start voting accordingly. Having kids is a pivotal moment. Suddenly that rich urban life looks like danger for your little ones. I was an urban kid and we stayed in the city when we had kids, so my kids got to go to a school where the janitor had to arrive early and remove the needles and broken beer bottles from the playground.
    - bpt3 2y ago
MichaelZuo 2y ago
The people advocating to replace suburban homes in the Bay Area with multiplexes, low rises, etc., do seem to want to ‘come take your suburban house away’? It’s been mentioned many times on HN in regards to Palo Alto, Atherton, Cupertino, etc… and often times not for altruistic motives either.
- stetrain 2y ago
  If zoning allows a multiplex to be built on your lot, and you decide to sell it because the market values redeveloping it more than you value staying, then I think that's your decision. In the big picture, if you want single-family suburbs to continue to exist and be affordable it makes sense to allow at least some places to become dense. The more people who want density and can choose it, the less competition there will be for farther-out suburban houses.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Homeowners in the Bay Area can predict the second and third order consequences of a zoning change? And predict the actual ulterior motives of anyone advocating for such a change before it occurs? They’re not automatons that can be fooled so easily.
    - stetrain 2y ago
      If redevelopment is the assumed outcome of the zoning change, then that means the single-family suburb is existing in spite of market demands, held back only by such zoning laws preventing denser development. I don't know the specific situation there, and I'm not saying that shouldn't ever exist, but it's worth considering why we are using zoning to preserve artificial anti-density in a place that has grown to demand higher housing density, and what the effects are of doing so on a widespread basis. The immediate first order consequence would be higher housing prices, which seems to be the case across the US, with the cost of housing increasing much more rapidly than overall inflation or wages.
      - 2y ago
nine_k 2y ago
Suburbs efficiently filter out poor people. To live in suburbs, you have to sustain a particular burn rate. You (or your parents) also have to have had enough money to get and keep paying the mortgage. College kids hope to make it big, or at least big enough to afford a pampered expensive living among other such people. It's not an unreasonable hope to have. Some of course dream to live in a penthouse on top of a skyscraper, but that's much less realistic. (Of course there are poor suburban areas with rundown houses and clunker cars, but it's not where the college kids aspire to go.) Dense walkable cities are few in the US; they predate the advent of the car, and accepted a lot of immigrants when Ellis Island was still open for "the wretched refuse" [1]. After WWII, a lot of better-off families moved to suburbs, but the worse-off had to stay. It does not help that some cities, in a misguided attempt to not trample on the rights of the destitute, or maybe out of incompetence, don't keep their streets clean, and even don't enforce the law. The authorities of San Francisco are, of course, way ahead of the pack; what they have done to their once-beautiful city tarnishes the reputation of cities as the form of living. (Disclaimer: I live in NYC, take subway and/or buses every day, walk for my grocery shopping, don't own a car, etc, and love it. Politically not left-wing though.) [1]: https://www.statueofliberty.org/new-colossus/ https://www.statueofliberty.org/new-colossus/

trgn 2y ago

it's and/and. Suburbanites impose their values on the city (free parking, highways, vote against bikelanes, ...). I don't care if they'd be in their suburbs and just live there. go live in the burbs, be happy, but don't degrade my neighborhood with your cars. we really can have our cake and eat it, nice cities for the people who prefer them, suburbs for the others, so much room.

mtalantikite 2y ago
Absolutely this. Every time someone suggests dense urban living or asking for people to pay for their car-dependent life, suburbanites come out of the woodwork and scream and holler that their rights are being taken away. As if the majority of the country isn't suburban sprawl catering to car dependent life. We only have a handful of dense, walkable cities with public transit in the entire country. Suburbanites have plenty of places to choose from, literally anywhere else outside of NYC, Chicago, SF, and Boston. As a New Yorker, I'm totally fine with people choosing a suburban life. Do you, I don't care. But don't kill congestion pricing and think you're entitled to drive into the densest part of the United States and park for free in my neighborhood just because. Don't block funding for public transit for 40 years and then complain you need your car because the train is scary to you the two times a year you use it.
- trgn 2y ago
  congestion pricing in manhattan is the best example. unreal this got shot down by intervention from the governor.
bpt3 2y ago
Do non-residents get to vote in your city elections? If not, how are suburbanites imposing their values on your city?
- trgn 2y ago
  my city has consolidated with the burbs. so anything that benefits the core areas gets no traction because it doesn't immediately benefit the burbs. vice versa, other cities haven't consolidated, and they do have better city amenities.
  - bpt3 2y ago
    Those people are your fellow city dwellers then, and deserve to be heard just as much as people in the urban core.
    - trgn 2y ago
      they're not my fellow city dwellers. they've turned their back on city life, live 15-30miles away, rarely if ever visit. it's just an administrative, historical quirk that they have a claim on the city and local politics. other cities have different administrative boundaries, that hug the city proper much closer. Those cities have much better urban amenities (traffic calming, light rail, bikelanes, ...) than mine, because they don't have people who loathe city life have a voice in city matters.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  There’s drain effect where as the city gets defunded, people with money and an interest in civic engagement move to the suburbs, and start voting accordingly. Having kids is a pivotal moment. Suddenly that rich urban life looks like danger for your little ones. I was an urban kid and we stayed in the city when we had kids, so my kids got to go to a school where the janitor had to arrive early and remove the needles and broken beer bottles from the playground.
  - bpt3 2y ago

MichaelZuo 2y ago

The people advocating to replace suburban homes in the Bay Area with multiplexes, low rises, etc., do seem to want to ‘come take your suburban house away’? It’s been mentioned many times on HN in regards to Palo Alto, Atherton, Cupertino, etc… and often times not for altruistic motives either.

stetrain 2y ago
If zoning allows a multiplex to be built on your lot, and you decide to sell it because the market values redeveloping it more than you value staying, then I think that's your decision. In the big picture, if you want single-family suburbs to continue to exist and be affordable it makes sense to allow at least some places to become dense. The more people who want density and can choose it, the less competition there will be for farther-out suburban houses.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Homeowners in the Bay Area can predict the second and third order consequences of a zoning change? And predict the actual ulterior motives of anyone advocating for such a change before it occurs? They’re not automatons that can be fooled so easily.
  - stetrain 2y ago
    If redevelopment is the assumed outcome of the zoning change, then that means the single-family suburb is existing in spite of market demands, held back only by such zoning laws preventing denser development. I don't know the specific situation there, and I'm not saying that shouldn't ever exist, but it's worth considering why we are using zoning to preserve artificial anti-density in a place that has grown to demand higher housing density, and what the effects are of doing so on a widespread basis. The immediate first order consequence would be higher housing prices, which seems to be the case across the US, with the cost of housing increasing much more rapidly than overall inflation or wages.
    - 2y ago

nine_k 2y ago

Suburbs efficiently filter out poor people. To live in suburbs, you have to sustain a particular burn rate. You (or your parents) also have to have had enough money to get and keep paying the mortgage. College kids hope to make it big, or at least big enough to afford a pampered expensive living among other such people. It's not an unreasonable hope to have. Some of course dream to live in a penthouse on top of a skyscraper, but that's much less realistic. (Of course there are poor suburban areas with rundown houses and clunker cars, but it's not where the college kids aspire to go.) Dense walkable cities are few in the US; they predate the advent of the car, and accepted a lot of immigrants when Ellis Island was still open for "the wretched refuse" [1]. After WWII, a lot of better-off families moved to suburbs, but the worse-off had to stay. It does not help that some cities, in a misguided attempt to not trample on the rights of the destitute, or maybe out of incompetence, don't keep their streets clean, and even don't enforce the law. The authorities of San Francisco are, of course, way ahead of the pack; what they have done to their once-beautiful city tarnishes the reputation of cities as the form of living. (Disclaimer: I live in NYC, take subway and/or buses every day, walk for my grocery shopping, don't own a car, etc, and love it. Politically not left-wing though.) [1]: https://www.statueofliberty.org/new-colossus/ https://www.statueofliberty.org/new-colossus/