4 ms·

I think it is almost entirely job driven. Given the choice of equal pay, most people would pick a cheap suburban 2000sqft house with a garden for 10% the price

I think it is almost entirely job driven. Given the choice of equal pay, most people would pick a cheap suburban 2000sqft house with a garden for 10% the price of a SF condo. Of course, variation exists

renewiltord 2y ago
If this were true, we wouldn’t need to enforce the single family home through zoning.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  The fact that you can build 200 condos on the same acre as 1 ranch house does not negate the fact that most people would choose the ranchouse over the condo if presented a choice between the two. It is numbers game. Its not about what any single wants best, but how many times you can sell people their 2nd choice using the same land.
  - wrl 2y ago
    "most people"? Genuine question – do you have any data to back this up?
    - dagw 2y ago
      While I would much rather have a nice downtown condo in a major city over a ranch house in the sticks. I would rather have the ranch house in the sticks than a condo in the same location as that ranch house. Some dream of living in a condo in the city, some of a rural ranch house. I don't think anybody dreams of a rural condo.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
        The ones that like living out in the country but don't want to/can't mow lawns and shovel snow do.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  'If this were true, we wouldn't need to protect our water bodies with EPA laws. Obviously people prefer polluted bodies of water, and it's the artificial EPA laws that prevent it.'
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    What this analogy says is that people don't want other people living at high density near them. This is expected, since those other people are going to be poor and often dark skinned. Needless to say "other people are pollution, yuck" is not a good argument for zoning.
    - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
      Nah bro. You didn't call me a racist for this? WTF?
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I think the argument would be much stronger if it just stopped at poor. While Im sure that type of racist exists, I have never met someone who would object to a rich dark doctor moving in next door. To the extent I encounter racism, it almost always follows the logic that dark = poor = crime & dysfunction
ghaff 2y ago
I strongly suspect that had remote work remained a bigger trend post-COVID peak, you'd be seeing a lot less core urban residential demand (and all that would imply). After all, a lot of large US cities were seeing urban flight of both residents and companies in the late 1990s. When I graduated from grad school--other than NYC finance--pretty much none of my classmates went to live in a city or worked there. Urban living/working is hardly an immutable law of nature.
vineyardmike 2y ago
I think you have it backwards, and I think “most” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Given equal cost of a home, most people would prefer to live in a city. Especially if you look globally, cities are absolutely trampling suburbs with demand. Yes, people in the suburbs often chose that preferentially, but there are less people in suburbs. In America, suburbs are disproportionately popular. I’m guessing that has more to do with civics than preferences. Most of suburbanites I know in America either live near their suburban job, or express some fear/distrust of various aspects of city life - and it’s mostly related to cars and transportation.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  costs aren't equal. The price of an acre plot in downtown SF is not the same as the suburbs. My point is that if you remove jobs and pay from the current incentives, city demand would decrease dramatically.
  - marssaxman 2y ago
    If you removed the legal protectionism imposed by zoning codes, which require the reservation of large tracts of land for single-family housing regardless of actual market forces, suburb demand would decrease even more dramatically.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Im not sure I follow your point. What does demand have to do with zoning? I agree that if you remove zoning, many areas of single family homes would be built up if they are in and around urban cores. That isnt new demand, but existing demand, not able to be expressed by current law. However, my point is that if your [random small town] job paid the same as NY or SF, you would see a flux out of those cities to the small towns. WE are describing two different situations.
      - marssaxman 2y ago
        You appear to be asserting that the demand for suburban-style low-density housing is naturally quite high, and that many people who live in cities are merely settling for less-desirable dense urban housing, as a sacrifice they must make for a higher income. I counter that if this were the case there would be no need for single-family zoning, because people would naturally choose such housing whenever possible, and the market would respond. > you would see a flux out of those cities to the small towns Having actually tried this, hated it, and moved back, I am skeptical.
marssaxman 2y ago
Cities are not just where the jobs are, cities are where everything is. You'd likely have to offer double my salary before I'd consider exchanging my life here in the heart of it all for the lonely, empty, car-dependent barrenness of the suburbs.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It's obviously fine if that's your preference. But many jobs are in the suburbs and you can access many city amenities pretty conveniently without living in the wilds.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I guess it depends on your idea of the suburbs. I can walk to a major grocery store, coffee shops, restaurants, and breweries, but have a quarter acre with fruit trees and gardens. Im happy to trade that for having to spend an hour in car/train a few times a year to see a show or museum. I would take a pay cut to work closer to home.
  - xerox13ster 2y ago
    Like many in the suburbs have convinced themselves they're rural as a result of oil company propaganda (rural identity sells big mall crawler trucks), it sounds to me like you live in a central, quite urban area that's otherwise sparse on local options and have convinced yourself it's your extra special private enclave in the hills, completely separated from the economic center, despite it literally being your economic center. Ditch the suburbanite identity politics and start advocating for the development of shows and museums in your local area that you could walk to, instead of taking your money away from your economic center at the benefit of oil companies (bc let's be real, suburban identity sells car dependence and even if you take the train, all the cultural momentum from the propaganda shaped your life decisions to move there and what's that train run on?).
    - int_19h 2y ago
      I find it amusing that so many activists in US believe that the sole reason why people like the suburbs over the cities is some kind of "propaganda". I'm from a country where suburbs are far less common and I grew up in a city of 300k and then lived in a megapolis for several years. And yes, we did have public transportation etc. When I moved to US, I chose to live pretty much as far as I can from the nearest large city that wouldn't be considered straight up "rural" (although we do have a bunch of farms around here). And the reason is because I don't want to live in what is, in effect, a giant human anthill.
smt88 2y ago
> Given the choice of equal pay, most people would pick a cheap suburban 2000sqft house with a garden for 10% the price of a SF condo. This already happened during Covid, and no country substantially de-urbanized. In fact, urban real estate prices skyrocketed. The only cities where prices stayed flat or went down were highly over-priced places that people hated living anyway (like the Bay Area).
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  If we are talking about Tier 1 cities, those are the ones that de-urbanized. Interest rates had a huge impact on prices, but my understanding is that suburban real-estate, especially ones with outdoor attractions skyrocketed as much or more.

renewiltord 2y ago

If this were true, we wouldn’t need to enforce the single family home through zoning.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
The fact that you can build 200 condos on the same acre as 1 ranch house does not negate the fact that most people would choose the ranchouse over the condo if presented a choice between the two. It is numbers game. Its not about what any single wants best, but how many times you can sell people their 2nd choice using the same land.
- wrl 2y ago
  "most people"? Genuine question – do you have any data to back this up?
  - dagw 2y ago
    While I would much rather have a nice downtown condo in a major city over a ranch house in the sticks. I would rather have the ranch house in the sticks than a condo in the same location as that ranch house. Some dream of living in a condo in the city, some of a rural ranch house. I don't think anybody dreams of a rural condo.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
      The ones that like living out in the country but don't want to/can't mow lawns and shovel snow do.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
'If this were true, we wouldn't need to protect our water bodies with EPA laws. Obviously people prefer polluted bodies of water, and it's the artificial EPA laws that prevent it.'
- pfdietz 2y ago
  What this analogy says is that people don't want other people living at high density near them. This is expected, since those other people are going to be poor and often dark skinned. Needless to say "other people are pollution, yuck" is not a good argument for zoning.
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    Nah bro. You didn't call me a racist for this? WTF?
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think the argument would be much stronger if it just stopped at poor. While Im sure that type of racist exists, I have never met someone who would object to a rich dark doctor moving in next door. To the extent I encounter racism, it almost always follows the logic that dark = poor = crime & dysfunction

ghaff 2y ago

I strongly suspect that had remote work remained a bigger trend post-COVID peak, you'd be seeing a lot less core urban residential demand (and all that would imply). After all, a lot of large US cities were seeing urban flight of both residents and companies in the late 1990s. When I graduated from grad school--other than NYC finance--pretty much none of my classmates went to live in a city or worked there. Urban living/working is hardly an immutable law of nature.

vineyardmike 2y ago

I think you have it backwards, and I think “most” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Given equal cost of a home, most people would prefer to live in a city. Especially if you look globally, cities are absolutely trampling suburbs with demand. Yes, people in the suburbs often chose that preferentially, but there are less people in suburbs. In America, suburbs are disproportionately popular. I’m guessing that has more to do with civics than preferences. Most of suburbanites I know in America either live near their suburban job, or express some fear/distrust of various aspects of city life - and it’s mostly related to cars and transportation.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
costs aren't equal. The price of an acre plot in downtown SF is not the same as the suburbs. My point is that if you remove jobs and pay from the current incentives, city demand would decrease dramatically.
- marssaxman 2y ago
  If you removed the legal protectionism imposed by zoning codes, which require the reservation of large tracts of land for single-family housing regardless of actual market forces, suburb demand would decrease even more dramatically.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Im not sure I follow your point. What does demand have to do with zoning? I agree that if you remove zoning, many areas of single family homes would be built up if they are in and around urban cores. That isnt new demand, but existing demand, not able to be expressed by current law. However, my point is that if your [random small town] job paid the same as NY or SF, you would see a flux out of those cities to the small towns. WE are describing two different situations.
    - marssaxman 2y ago
      You appear to be asserting that the demand for suburban-style low-density housing is naturally quite high, and that many people who live in cities are merely settling for less-desirable dense urban housing, as a sacrifice they must make for a higher income. I counter that if this were the case there would be no need for single-family zoning, because people would naturally choose such housing whenever possible, and the market would respond. > you would see a flux out of those cities to the small towns Having actually tried this, hated it, and moved back, I am skeptical.

marssaxman 2y ago

Cities are not just where the jobs are, cities are where everything is. You'd likely have to offer double my salary before I'd consider exchanging my life here in the heart of it all for the lonely, empty, car-dependent barrenness of the suburbs.

ghaff 2y ago
It's obviously fine if that's your preference. But many jobs are in the suburbs and you can access many city amenities pretty conveniently without living in the wilds.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
I guess it depends on your idea of the suburbs. I can walk to a major grocery store, coffee shops, restaurants, and breweries, but have a quarter acre with fruit trees and gardens. Im happy to trade that for having to spend an hour in car/train a few times a year to see a show or museum. I would take a pay cut to work closer to home.
- xerox13ster 2y ago
  Like many in the suburbs have convinced themselves they're rural as a result of oil company propaganda (rural identity sells big mall crawler trucks), it sounds to me like you live in a central, quite urban area that's otherwise sparse on local options and have convinced yourself it's your extra special private enclave in the hills, completely separated from the economic center, despite it literally being your economic center. Ditch the suburbanite identity politics and start advocating for the development of shows and museums in your local area that you could walk to, instead of taking your money away from your economic center at the benefit of oil companies (bc let's be real, suburban identity sells car dependence and even if you take the train, all the cultural momentum from the propaganda shaped your life decisions to move there and what's that train run on?).
  - int_19h 2y ago
    I find it amusing that so many activists in US believe that the sole reason why people like the suburbs over the cities is some kind of "propaganda". I'm from a country where suburbs are far less common and I grew up in a city of 300k and then lived in a megapolis for several years. And yes, we did have public transportation etc. When I moved to US, I chose to live pretty much as far as I can from the nearest large city that wouldn't be considered straight up "rural" (although we do have a bunch of farms around here). And the reason is because I don't want to live in what is, in effect, a giant human anthill.

smt88 2y ago

> Given the choice of equal pay, most people would pick a cheap suburban 2000sqft house with a garden for 10% the price of a SF condo. This already happened during Covid, and no country substantially de-urbanized. In fact, urban real estate prices skyrocketed. The only cities where prices stayed flat or went down were highly over-priced places that people hated living anyway (like the Bay Area).

s1artibartfast 2y ago
If we are talking about Tier 1 cities, those are the ones that de-urbanized. Interest rates had a huge impact on prices, but my understanding is that suburban real-estate, especially ones with outdoor attractions skyrocketed as much or more.