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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

The best things about cities come from density combined with diversity. Having a lot of diversity means there's lots of niche interests; having a lot of density means those niche interests have enough adherents to come together to create communities; whether they're specialist shops, restaurants, discussion groups, music, theatre, political movements, sexual interests - whatever - the more niche your interest is, the more likely you'll only find like-minded people in a city.

I could say I don't understand why people don't live in cities. The countryside is boring - if you're not interested in the outdoors, there's nothing to do. Suburbs make some sense for people in middle adulthood to raise children in a safer environment without being too far from the city, but otherwise they're just a space / commute tradeoff, getting more space for your money than somewhere closer.

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I don't think those things are always exclusive to cities. All of them go on in malls/community centers/etc. either in suburbs or the commercially zoned areas a few minutes away from them, or for some of them, certainly at the colleges. There will also tend to be more compact "mini-cities" (a real term probably exists) nearby with a lot more niche shops and different culture. I'm sure some of the more niche things do only go on in cities but just the internet plus conventions has been enough for me.

There are some more upsides to going a bit further into the country. No nearby neighbors means you can have an expectation of privacy doing whatever you want in the back yard and have no potential for noise complaints if you wanted to do something like an event with music or shoot guns, and on the flip side not hear any noise from neighbors. You'd also have more room to do home improvements if you wanted and have a much easier time getting zoned to build something like a fallout shelter if that kind of thing interests you or dig a pond.

As a parent, I've realized that all the things I used to love about cities are things I have no time or interest for now. Cities seem best suited for teens and young adults, but that's a minority of the population at any given time.

I'm sure there's a notable group of people who want to live in a city all their lives, but I also don't think it's a coincidence that as people start to have kids, they seem to start wanting to move out of cities.

People typically max out their housing budgets on urban apartments for themselves/their partners, but want kids to have their own rooms. To get the additional bedroom(s) for no more money, you have to compromise on something else, like location.

Also, suburban housing has the price of a decent school district built in, while in the city you need to pay private tuition for access to an institution which isn't completely non-functional (i.e. overwhelming majority of students are far below the extremely unambitious academic standards).

If urban schools were high quality and middle class families could afford family-sized apartments, things would be different.

It sounds like a lot of the issues here are very different depending on the country you live in.

Edit: No need to be so cryptic, right? Urban public schools are the top tier in my country. Affordability of housing in city centres is becoming more of an issue, but given the availability of jobs, I don't think it's a major driver of relocation.

In general, the situation here seems to be that a lot of families would prefer to live in a less urban environment, but cities make more economic sense still.

>in a safer environment

Cities are safer than rural areas or suburbs.

How? This seems to say otherwise. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=812

You're more likely to be in a car crash than the victim of a crime...

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