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Comment by mzw_mzw | Hacker News Reader

Really, the nerve of us crazy Americans, wanting to be able to live and work in different places depending on what we felt was best for our families. What were we thinking?

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But that is crazy. If you look deeper, why would you want to work separately from where you live? Like, "wanting what's best for [your] families" /could/ be that you don't need a long commute, AND where you live is nice :) It's shallow thinking that the only way to have a safe living environment is to separate it from where you work.

>why would you want to work separately from where you live?

Because separately, $300,000 is a beautiful 3bd/2ba house with a finished basement and a backyard in a safe, pleasant neighborhood with excellent services and infrastructure.

Together, it is maybe a "junior 1-bedroom" condo in a former industrial area just starting its gentrification curve where you really shouldn't let the 12-year-old walk the dog alone at night.

>It's shallow thinking

It's economics. High density apartments offer less space at higher cost.

The problem with this conversation (European 'let's walk everywhere' vs. American 'don't tell me how to live') is that it tends to rely on wrong assumptions from both sides, though obviously I can't read the minds of parent and GP. In the US we aggressively subsidize low-density living through school busing, infrastructure, the secondary market for federally insured single family home mortgages, and many other programs. So Europeans have a hard time recognizing that telling us to live in walkable places is like telling us to spit into the wind in so many parts of the country (after all, if a commute is bad for family, how about moving hundreds of miles from relatives?) Meanwhile, we Americans have a hard time recognizing that we're making choices on a severely biased playing field that discourages the living patterns that humans have used since the dawn of civilization.

We'll get back to the old way eventually, but it's going to hurt bad for a lot of people.

"The old way" is subsistence agriculture. If we're really going back there, we'll be too busy wrestling with questions like "will the harvest be enough to feed me this year?" and "will my child die of this treatable infection?" and "what are cars?" to worry about parking :).

>it's going to hurt bad for a lot of people.

Well yes, anything that ends the economic conditions which make current residential arrangements appropriate will have significant consequences.

It's so generous of you to acknowledge how both sides are wrong: Americans are wrong to want to live the way they do, while Europeans are wrong to not realize how severely deluded, wasteful, and out of touch with humanity Americans are.

Sure, you could express it that way, but mine includes some empathy, whereas yours is so carefully protected against the possibility of anyone benefitting from it: not Americans, because you're pushing us away by calling us stupid; and not Europeans, because you don't attempt to help anyone understand why others are so determined to be wrong.

You're still stuck in the broken mindset. The whole idea of suburbs was an invention. And what I'm saying is, invent something new! I don't discount that you need to start with where you're at, the day to day practicality of what isn't yet available, but to always dream of what only already exists is boring and deadening

The only place I'm stuck is between untenably high rents and miserable overcrowded public transit routes.

Good for those Americans. But then they shouldn't complain about being stuck in traffic 2 or 3 hours per day.

Yes they should - high density housing and everyone having to commute to the same few square miles in the middle of a densely populated area is one of the biggest scams of our time.

To each his/her own. I live in one of those "high density housing" places you mention and I have to say it's quite convenient to only be 3 tram stations away from work. It's actually faster to get to work using public transportation compared to taking the car (cause of difficulty finding parking). And half of the times I choose to walk to work anyway, it's a very effective way of relieving anxiety stress before the work day starts and of decompressing on the way home at the end of the day.

I live in one too - if we spread people out a bit more into localised communities and make work from home culture a real thing, all the pollution and lifestyle issues you get from high density housing and everyone having to work in the same few square miles would no longer be a problem.

I see one car accident on the sydney harbour bridge delay thousands of parents from getting home before their children's bed times - it's just not the right way to live, no wonder everyone is depressed and family units are struggling.

I live in high density housing - it's like being a caged hen compared to the freedom I had being brought up as a child in the countryside. The noise, the pollution, the high house prices. Not good.

Biggest scam? That sounds like heaven to me. I, however, would willingly live in the middle of Tokyo. (Perhaps we can alleviate the problem by having a better rapid transit system?)

The alternative is low density housing and everyone having to commute to the same few square miles in the middle of nowhere with no services culture or energy..

Nope - alternative is to have a work from home culture and local community culture.

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