4 ms·

> People routinely leave their community for their job all the time here. Sure, where the compensation is sufficient to cover your travel costs you would reaso

by 9rx 1y ago

> People routinely leave their community for their job all the time here. Sure, where the compensation is sufficient to cover your travel costs you would reasonably consider it. But then transportation costs aren't an issue, making the unaffordability idea that started this moot. But, if we want to move beyond the topic of cost, that just brings us right back to the point that travel time ends up being the same living in the city and living in the country, so what have you gained by living in the city? What one normally thinks you would gain is having other amenities, like bars, restaurants, healthcare, shopping, and just an all round vibrant community right there to enjoy when you get home from work. But the particular city homes we are talking about don't even have that. They are just houses upon houses upon houses all jammed up against each other with nothing in-between. And it is that way because people want it to be that way. They don't want the restaurants, shopping, healthcare, etc. to be anywhere nearby. Even though they cry that they afford to the transportation to get to them, funnily enough. But why? What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them?

acuozzo 1y ago
> What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them? Children, among other things. Let's make this concrete. I live ~40 minutes from Washington DC and ~30 minutes from Baltimore. I have three children. I'd need, at minimum, a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property in the city. It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons. The 30y mortgage on my six-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home in the suburbs is ~$3,500/month. Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less? (For reference: my property value at the time of purchase was $575,000.)
- 9rx 1y ago
  > I'd need, at minimum, a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property in the city. Check out a settler home sometime. They were tiny, one room houses that housed themselves and their eight+ children just fine. You don't need this in any way, shape, or form. I do understand why you find it desirable, though. > It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons. I don't live in crazy orange man land. What are the (unfortunately, not so) obvious reasons? It befuddles me that different school zones would be different in any way beyond their geographic positioning, which isn't usually a concern when it comes to schooling. I've never heard of such a thing before. > Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less? What's wrong with where you already are? If you found the lack of jobs, restaurants, entertainment, healthcare, etc. in walking to be a problem, you'd have changed it already. Like we established, the only reason those things aren't found where you are is because you and your neighbours have decided you don't want it. I just don't understand your logic as to why you don't want it, but also don't want to live in the country. What's the benefit of living where you have all the downsides of the city and all the downsides of the country all wrapped up in one?
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    Attitudes around education in the US vary wildly across the population. To a first approximation, "good schools" are really "good students" (i.e. "good peers"), which generally means that the families within the school's catchment area place higher value on education, which generally correlates with class. There are feedback mechanisms at play here: the people who want a good education for their kids want to be around the types of people who want a good education for their kids, and they will pay a premium to be around the kinds of people who will pay a premium to do so, reinforcing the class effect. It can't hurt to have bright, engaged kids when trying to recruit and retain good teachers either. The net result is that in some areas the schools have literally 0% of students meeting standards while others have most of the students completing the first year or two of university during high school. Somewhere like DC where GP lives, schools struggle to get the kids to show up[0]. Meanwhile I live a 10 minute walk from a school where over half the students are in AP classes and 80% of those pass the AP exams. [0] https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/about-4-in-10-dc-students-are-chronically-truant-report-says/3484717/ https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/about-4-in-10-d...
    - 9rx 1y ago
      > Attitudes around education in the US vary wildly across the population. Is that in some way unique to the US? I would say the same is true here. Certainly when talking to people out on the street, there are clearly some who value schooling to the utmost degree while others dismiss it entirely. I expect this is the case anywhere a sizeable population is found. > the people who want a good education for their kids want to be around the types of people who want a good education for their kids …But I have never heard of this happening. Looking at the data, I don't see any significant variation between schools found within a general area where you might conceivably choose a different school by moving a few miles in another direction. A couple of schools in extremely remote areas show up with struggles, in the worst case seeing only ~40% of the students meeting the standard, but I think it is fair to say that the goings on in remote places is something else entirely. > It can't hurt to have bright, engaged kids when trying to recruit and retain good teachers either. So would it be reasonable to think that it is ultimately an issue of lacking teacher standards in the US? Different people are going to be different, sure, but around here you aren't allowed to be a teacher within the school system unless you at least are able to live up to a minimum standard that carries a sufficiently high bar such that there really aren't any qualms about what teacher a student gets. I take from this that in the US, the schools that don't have sufficiently bright, sufficiently engaged kids are apt to get teachers who aren't capable of doing the job. Here, if a school lacking sufficiently bright, sufficiently engaged kids scared off good teachers, the school simply wouldn't have any teachers.
vel0city 1y ago
> so what have you gained by living in the city? Jobs, hopefully paying a good bit more than minimum wage. If not for the city they wouldn't have any kind of income. They don't move to the city because they want some Parisian lifestyle, they move to the city because there are practically no jobs in the actually rural areas. > They don't want the restaurants, shopping, healthcare, etc. to be anywhere nearby Correct. They see these things as unsafe for their families to be around. They don't want to live within walking distance of a nightclub. > Even though they cry that they afford to the transportation to get to them, funnily enough. Most of the people arguing for better walkability and better transit access are absolutely not the same people actively choosing to live in places like Forney and Princeton and what not. They're generally fine having that commute and are fine driving to the Walmart when they need something that isn't just delivered to their home. Why even bother getting in the car to go to a restaurant, Uber Eats will bring the restaurant to them, and they don't have to deal with the crowds. Which, the few places with actual stores in these areas are massively crowded, because it's just oceans of houses around a few dots of shopping areas with giant parking areas surrounding them. > What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them? That they were willing to settle for the hour commute and not a two-hour commute, and that was the biggest single-family home they could afford in that hour commute radius and had a decent school district. You're looking at it in pretty much the opposite direction from how they're looking at it. You're looking at a community you want to live in and then decide the home you can afford. They're looking for the house they want to live in, and then find the community they can afford to buy in. People didn't choose to live in Princeton or Forney or Melissa or Anna (or dozens of other "cities" around DFW) because of city amenities, outside of maybe a school district. They live there because they could buy a big single house cheap. When I talk to friends about "if you could just move tomorrow, where would you want to live in DFW", their choices are rarely based in closeness to amenities. It is often about wanting more land, more space, more rooms. A family of four with a four-bedroom house with a dining room and two living rooms, too cramped. Need to move further out and get a bigger house. Definitely down to trade close access to the bike trails, walking distance to a large shopping area, walkable to the transit system to go all over the city, public parks with public swimming pools within walking distance, the elementary school around the corner and the middle school down the street for another few hundred square feet of land.

by 9rx 1y ago

acuozzo 1y ago

> What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them? Children, among other things. Let's make this concrete. I live ~40 minutes from Washington DC and ~30 minutes from Baltimore. I have three children. I'd need, at minimum, a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property in the city. It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons. The 30y mortgage on my six-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home in the suburbs is ~$3,500/month. Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less? (For reference: my property value at the time of purchase was $575,000.)

9rx 1y ago
> I'd need, at minimum, a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property in the city. Check out a settler home sometime. They were tiny, one room houses that housed themselves and their eight+ children just fine. You don't need this in any way, shape, or form. I do understand why you find it desirable, though. > It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons. I don't live in crazy orange man land. What are the (unfortunately, not so) obvious reasons? It befuddles me that different school zones would be different in any way beyond their geographic positioning, which isn't usually a concern when it comes to schooling. I've never heard of such a thing before. > Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less? What's wrong with where you already are? If you found the lack of jobs, restaurants, entertainment, healthcare, etc. in walking to be a problem, you'd have changed it already. Like we established, the only reason those things aren't found where you are is because you and your neighbours have decided you don't want it. I just don't understand your logic as to why you don't want it, but also don't want to live in the country. What's the benefit of living where you have all the downsides of the city and all the downsides of the country all wrapped up in one?
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  Attitudes around education in the US vary wildly across the population. To a first approximation, "good schools" are really "good students" (i.e. "good peers"), which generally means that the families within the school's catchment area place higher value on education, which generally correlates with class. There are feedback mechanisms at play here: the people who want a good education for their kids want to be around the types of people who want a good education for their kids, and they will pay a premium to be around the kinds of people who will pay a premium to do so, reinforcing the class effect. It can't hurt to have bright, engaged kids when trying to recruit and retain good teachers either. The net result is that in some areas the schools have literally 0% of students meeting standards while others have most of the students completing the first year or two of university during high school. Somewhere like DC where GP lives, schools struggle to get the kids to show up[0]. Meanwhile I live a 10 minute walk from a school where over half the students are in AP classes and 80% of those pass the AP exams. [0] https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/about-4-in-10-dc-students-are-chronically-truant-report-says/3484717/ https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/about-4-in-10-d...
  - 9rx 1y ago
    > Attitudes around education in the US vary wildly across the population. Is that in some way unique to the US? I would say the same is true here. Certainly when talking to people out on the street, there are clearly some who value schooling to the utmost degree while others dismiss it entirely. I expect this is the case anywhere a sizeable population is found. > the people who want a good education for their kids want to be around the types of people who want a good education for their kids …But I have never heard of this happening. Looking at the data, I don't see any significant variation between schools found within a general area where you might conceivably choose a different school by moving a few miles in another direction. A couple of schools in extremely remote areas show up with struggles, in the worst case seeing only ~40% of the students meeting the standard, but I think it is fair to say that the goings on in remote places is something else entirely. > It can't hurt to have bright, engaged kids when trying to recruit and retain good teachers either. So would it be reasonable to think that it is ultimately an issue of lacking teacher standards in the US? Different people are going to be different, sure, but around here you aren't allowed to be a teacher within the school system unless you at least are able to live up to a minimum standard that carries a sufficiently high bar such that there really aren't any qualms about what teacher a student gets. I take from this that in the US, the schools that don't have sufficiently bright, sufficiently engaged kids are apt to get teachers who aren't capable of doing the job. Here, if a school lacking sufficiently bright, sufficiently engaged kids scared off good teachers, the school simply wouldn't have any teachers.

vel0city 1y ago

> so what have you gained by living in the city? Jobs, hopefully paying a good bit more than minimum wage. If not for the city they wouldn't have any kind of income. They don't move to the city because they want some Parisian lifestyle, they move to the city because there are practically no jobs in the actually rural areas. > They don't want the restaurants, shopping, healthcare, etc. to be anywhere nearby Correct. They see these things as unsafe for their families to be around. They don't want to live within walking distance of a nightclub. > Even though they cry that they afford to the transportation to get to them, funnily enough. Most of the people arguing for better walkability and better transit access are absolutely not the same people actively choosing to live in places like Forney and Princeton and what not. They're generally fine having that commute and are fine driving to the Walmart when they need something that isn't just delivered to their home. Why even bother getting in the car to go to a restaurant, Uber Eats will bring the restaurant to them, and they don't have to deal with the crowds. Which, the few places with actual stores in these areas are massively crowded, because it's just oceans of houses around a few dots of shopping areas with giant parking areas surrounding them. > What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them? That they were willing to settle for the hour commute and not a two-hour commute, and that was the biggest single-family home they could afford in that hour commute radius and had a decent school district. You're looking at it in pretty much the opposite direction from how they're looking at it. You're looking at a community you want to live in and then decide the home you can afford. They're looking for the house they want to live in, and then find the community they can afford to buy in. People didn't choose to live in Princeton or Forney or Melissa or Anna (or dozens of other "cities" around DFW) because of city amenities, outside of maybe a school district. They live there because they could buy a big single house cheap. When I talk to friends about "if you could just move tomorrow, where would you want to live in DFW", their choices are rarely based in closeness to amenities. It is often about wanting more land, more space, more rooms. A family of four with a four-bedroom house with a dining room and two living rooms, too cramped. Need to move further out and get a bigger house. Definitely down to trade close access to the bike trails, walking distance to a large shopping area, walkable to the transit system to go all over the city, public parks with public swimming pools within walking distance, the elementary school around the corner and the middle school down the street for another few hundred square feet of land.