The era of cheap suburban growth and development is over
citylab.com
citylab.com
But the suburban dream of middle class life at low prices is alive and well in the midwest, south, and much of the NE too, where nice housing is still no more than 2x-3.5x median income levels.
Startups and tech companies should pick a few midwestern or NE cities and open offices there.
Imagine if Cleveland Ohio was a tech hub and "cool" by any vague stretch that a western city is, housing there is practically free by west coast standards.
https://www.zillow.com/homes/cleveland-ohio_rb/
Even cities like Albany or Rochester NY are dirt cheap compared to any city in a western state.
https://www.zillow.com/albany-ny/
But instead everyone piles into San Francisco, bay area, Seattle, Portland, LA, and overpays by small fortunes.
Cost of living is a small fraction compared to the bay area or west coast cities too.
No, it doesn't. It's hot. And the people are conservative; nothing nice about that.
Granted it is going to have less tech jobs, but it isn't really the middle of nowhere.
The comments coming out people who very likely are Bay Area residents are the most ignorant as well as close-minded. Unless you are killing it in R&D departments of Google, FB, Amazon, Microsoft etc. There is some one doing a similar job you are doing in 10 other metros in 'Murica.
disclaimer: detroit resident
Basically, AFAICT, Detroit sounds like someplace that would be OK if all you wanted was to live in the suburbs and never leave your house, and you have zero interest in outdoor activities, and don't care about going to nice restaurants downtown. The crime downtown is terrible, there's huge stretches of abandoned neighborhoods, the winters are horribly cold; I honestly don't know why anyone would want to live there. The location surely made sense a century ago back when shipping on the Great Lakes was a big thing and the location was sensible for manufacturing and shipping reasons, but those reasons are all gone now.
Moreover, why the hell should I believe some anonymous troll on HN over plenty of journalistic articles?
But for some American born engineer who has family outside of SF/NY/LA, being able to work remote while staying near family/hometown would be awesome for himself, the hometown and ultimately residents of those mega cities too as they would see some relief in ever increasing cost of living.
Google/Facebook/etc have to pay a lot higher salary to keep talented engineers in/near SF because of much higher cost of living.
Those employers probably COULD save $ if they paid lower salary and allowed full remote working. Even if they flew in the engineers on chartered jet every other week and housed them in hotel for regular face-2-face time in HQ, they still probably would end up saving $ in the end. Like instead of paying salary of half a million a year, they could pay $300,000 and use the $200,000 for chartered jets and housing when they are visiting SF.
The Internet so that you can work remotely, and a easy to use airport when you can't work remotely.
Also, the weather is noticeably nicer, plus you're in a city with an international airport hub.
>pays an extra $30,000 a year to live near SFO
>saves $50 on a flight to Asia once a year
rationale checks out
I grew up in a small town far from any airport and traveled internationally regularly. We either drove 50 miles to a small regional airport, which meant we'd have layovers and connections flying almost anywhere (more chances for lost luggage!), or we drove three+ hours to a big airport with expensive parking. Landing after a long international flight and having to get in the car and drive for three hours is a terrible way to end a trip.
These days I live within a 30 minute cab ride of LGA or JFK. The availability of flights and the ease of getting to and from the airport makes a huge difference in how annoying it is to fly. Cheap early morning flights don't require pulling an all nighter, there are direct flights to so many cities, and the wheels-down-to-hot-shower-and-beer-at-home time is so short.
Now I see why my parents like living in Albany!
1. top tech talent in austin is rare and they know they are rare 2. because of (1) they can always work remotely for big valley companies (e.g., the top ten by average eng salary) 3. so if they are working locally, you are mostly going to give the top guys valley-like comp 4. the rest of the talent is cheaper
... which doesn't sound too bad, as far as it goes. But then you run into an issue. There's going to be some specific skill that you need and you simply are not going to be able to hire it locally. So now you're in the position of hiring a remote worker or trying to get someone to move. Depending on your team, your product, team communications skills, how important in-person vs. remote is, etc. to the company, real or imagined, this can basically screw things up.
Such as?
The weather is what keeps me in the SF Bay Area despite the traffic congestion and high cost of living. Being able to bike to work nearly every day of the year goes a long way toward making up for heavy traffic.
While the PNW isnt ideal compared to drought ridden california, its vastly nicer weather than what millions of americans put up with every year.
Biking in sub-freezing weather and snow is entirely different.
Does Cleveland even have any bike lanes?
Interesting how you call people who seek practical, comfortable weather "trend seekers", and you seem to think that enduring brutal winters is normal.
I've never been to Cleveland, Ohio, but most of these flyer states in America where housing is cheap are boring. Add to that the chicken-and-egg problem, you're going to have a tough time convincing young single people to move there.
Only practical solution to avoid high cost of living is to embrace remote work and give employees the freedom to work from wherever they want.
The suburbs are finding it harder to attract educated 20 somethings because of a lack of professional opportunities as well as changing lifestyle trends. I think there will be a graying-out of the suburbs as they get older until property prices become affordable to young professionals and the work/commute times become more bearable. I have no idea why working remotely is not more common in 2017 but that would be a massive improvement over the ridiculous commutes so many people have to suffer through.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennials-prefer...
As an American-in-training I too would be terrified of having a kid in a place like San Francisco. Ain't nobody got money for that.
That said, when I did live in the suburbs for a while, I found it to be depressing and miserable. But I grew up in a small city, 10min walk from as downtown as it gets, so I'm biased.
Americans were just the first culture to make it practical for large numbers of people to actually do it.
The presence of all the other people ruins the dacha vibe.
Wow, what you describe as gross tasteless suburb is I imagine a dream come true for 90% of world population.
There are multiple generations of people who have willingly lived in suburbs.
I repeat: their tastes are not the same as yours.
People buy houses in those "gross, tasteless suburbs" by choice. No one is putting a gun to their head.
Their tastes are not yours.
I think the difference is that Americans are forced to do that dance, even the ones that actively don't want this.
Kids are crazy expensive to have and raise. Just child daycare alone starts at around $1,000/month and goes up from there. Housing costs are so high in every single city that if you want to give your kid a bedroom of any kind, you are effectively required to live in the suburbs, unless your extremely wealthy.
If you do have the money to stay, then comes the network. Housing in cities gets hard to find at all (no one wants to live near you, since you bring the screaming infant into the building). And American buildings are all built like shit, so everyone can hear everything. Childcare isn't just expensive -- it's difficult to find at all. (As one example, Seattle daycare waitlists are 2 years long in some cases - http://crosscut.com/2014/09/parents-seek-alternatives-tough-... )
And we haven't even started on the mess that is schooling.
Generally, American society treat parents and children like shit, and then forces families to live elsewhere. It's no surprise that those parents just up-and-leave to form their own little enclaves out in the suburbs, where they can at least try to remove some of that pain.
> That said, when I did live in the suburbs for a while, I found it to be depressing and miserable.
Well yeah. It can be depressing and miserable to be poor or working-class-poor. But at least suburbs are a safe and somewhat-affordable place to live. It's not like there is an alternative -- there are no functional cities willing to house people. And especially no cities willing to house families at all.
(Take note: I'm originally from New York. There is a rivalry at work here.)
@sremani: We have really fucked this up. The lack of a direct rail link from any one of our three airports to Manhattan is shameful.
Further the articles main point may be that mitigating those problems in the suburbs may be harder than the all ready tricky task of mitigating them in denser urban areas due to higher infrastructure costs, increased transportation costs and more limited areas for new development.
When the risk of unemployment or underemployment is higher, why live somewhere that limits your opportunities? An expensive house or a cheap house is irrelevant if you are unemployed for a significant stretch of time and can't afford a mortgage period.
When I moved to the Bay Area, I justified the increased cost of living as the sunshine tax as well as the cost of reducing the risk of unemployment in a down economy. Even in the event of another crash specific to the tech industry, I guarantee I'd have an easier time getting another job out here compared to flyover country.
This is the specific reason why I have self-limited my living situation to one of the major tech centers in the US. The downside is nearly unlimited if you're in a rural area: particularly if you have a house. You must be able to get a job if your company collapses, and most companies get shirty about remote work for people they don't know. So you're stuck trying to move in a hurry, to a place where you have no network. Hopefully it's not a down economy and lots of people are looking... then things are even dicier.
Move to the city, young man (or woman). There be jobs there.
On the bright side, with lower cost of housing the mortgage will cost you less and will be easier to pay off. I'm in my early 40s, have three kids, and we actually own our house. If we had lived in a similar house in a larger city we'd still be grinding through the mortgage.
I guess what I'm tring to say is that there plenty of middle ground between living in San Francisco and living the Unabomber dream in the Montana forests. There are a lot of places on the face of the earth where there are not hundreds of nerby companies hiring, but maybe five or ten within driving distance. And where you can actually afford to buy a house.
Texas offers more sun and a solid stable economy as well as much lower costs. Something to consider?
And all of these cities are downright cheap compared to pretty much anywhere on either of the coasts.
In the event of a tech crash you're better if in nearly any major city outside of SV where even tech companies are based around more "blue chip" industries.
In "flyover country" many (possibly most) tech jobs are created by other industries and would be insulated.
Detroit's been doing that, the biggest expense seems to be having to tear up the roads since gravel/dirt is safer than an unmaintained paved road. For the places that do have growth potential, the cheapness of real estate should just encourage people to redevelop as infill.
Are we worried about crumbling building materials leaching toxins into the surrounding environment or is it more of a concern about blight/eye-sores?
That is assuming the people there have the resources to move. We'd mitigate them to provide opportunity for that choice. Those crumbling houses and decaying ruins will be the home to the members of our society least able to help themselves.
That solution isn't in building up the burbs though. It would be in making it easier to move to and live in places that aren't dying.
In any developing country there is a constant pull of rural to urban migration. The big stumbling block is having a place to live and a job for when you get to the city, not how fancy your village was.
Obviously, looking at mayoral demographics is a pretty crude way of judging a city's tolerance, but it is better than extrapolating from news reports, which can hardly give a detailed picture of a region that encompasses a dozen or so states.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annise_Parker [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Turner
I dunno, it seceded to protect slavery from twice as many countries as any other state in the South; that's got to count for something.
When you get a chance, visit (in person) Jacksonville, Savannah, Asheville, Charleston, Austin, Birmingham, Atlanta...and on and on. It's amazing how they're just like the other non-hateful cities from time to time.
So explain to me how well things are going in Columbus, OH, Johnstown, PA, or Rochester, NY?
And I don't see people clamoring to move to Tennessee, Alabama or Mississippi.
Only challenge here is tech jobs: remote or bust.
I've been doing remote until I started my own company.
Wow, and that is exactly my point. For what is barely a down payment out west you could theoretically just buy a home outright.
Imagine the equivalent in the bay area or LA, it'd be $3 million+. Even in Seattle or Portland it'd be $700k-800k+ or likely higher given their trendy status.
OK, but those are not specific to suburbs, are they? Shopping malls are kind of a trend that fell out of fashion, and it was partially replaced by internet sales and other forms of brick and mortar shopping. Factories have gone overseas, but I don't see how that's related to suburbia. Certainly the suburban area I grew up in in the 70s and 80s never really had factories in the first place.
Which will drive up housing prices in high density areas, which will make suburbs look more attractive.
Those of us paying attention knew in the late 70s that suburbs were a dumb idea.
Edit: OK, so "dumb idea" unpacks to ecologically destructive, racist, socially disruptive, and fundamentally incompatible with energy and resource efficiency.
Edit: What I mean is that, if negative externalities of energy and resource use were priced in, most people couldn't afford to live in the suburbs. Or at least, not in the manner that they've been accustomed to.
You say so. Gasoline is cheap and roads need not be first class to support travel.
Depending upon the definition of "negative externalities", this may be true for most of the developed world.
Maybe the Amish were right after all ..
Technological development is on a path to AI, I think. People have been dreaming of it for at least a couple thousand years.
Better quality of life is exactly why people (especially people with children) prefer to live in the suburbs. Better schools, safer, having your own yard to play in rather than a park littered with discarded syringes and full of scary homeless people...