I had a cab driver in Austin tell me that he and his friends all bought $150k houses in the suburbs, with great schools, pools, etc., on 15-year mortgages that many had paid off already.
Sounds like the issue is that our cities aren't liveable in the first place.
Source: I bought a house in one of these neighborhoods recently because it was so cheap. While there was absolutely nothing near me to do, going downtown still only took 15 minutes, so I had absolutely no problem with life there. I had my silence and my work-from-home office in my comedically large, cheap house and then if I wanted to catch a show or get dinner I would hop in the car and go downtown to meet up with friends.
I actually live in Boston now and am paying twice as much as my mortgage for a third of the space. Not an exaggeration. And it actually takes me twice as long to get out and do some things because Boston is so congested with traffic. Sadly, I think by the time I ever return to Austin, I'm sure it will have seen enough growth that it will be much the same cost to get culture from my suburban house.
I would find it very hard not to have a supermarket or a corner shop nearby for when I run out of this or that and it isn't time for the weekly shopping. And I would think it's an excellent small business opportunity.
For others that have existed for longer, sometimes the zoning seems to just be residential forever so sometimes you have to drive for a bit to get to the nearest "stuff". I think that's pretty standard for suburbia.
And then for yet others sometimes they're just too far out and too small of developments to make building a supermarket just for them financially viable.
Wait till you have kids. Turns out it doesn't matter whether you can see a post-alt-rock band in a small venue, it's past bedtime anyways, and spongebob on youtube works everywhere.
The parent poster is right: most of the USA is cultural wasteland. It's also largely an entrepreneurial wasteland. New value creation is concentrated in the same hot spots as new culture creation.
This is always true everywhere to some extent but it's gotten much worse over my life time. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and I remember being a teen and an early twenty something there. You knew you weren't New York but there was a sense that things were possible. I worked on some pretty cutting edge software stuff around web and Internet there in the late 90s. Today it's an opium addiction ward and everyone who wants to do anything leaves. Meanwhile the "alpha cities" are experiencing uncontrollable real estate hyperinflation since everyone who wants to do anything must move there. This real estate hyperinflation problem is a symptom of something much larger.
The majority of the USA (by land area) is in a permanent malaise and has been since ~2000-2001. I quite frankly find it terrifying. It's a precursor to fascism, totalitarian socialism, or dissolution.
Uhh, I think we live in very different realities. Drugs and video games are proper subcultures in their own right. It has nothing to do with where you live and more to do with your identity.
Teens do drugs and play video games even in your shining coastal beacons of civilization.
>It's also largely an entrepreneurial wasteland ... Meanwhile the "alpha cities" are experiencing uncontrollable real estate hyperinflation since everyone who wants to do anything must move there If you're trying to become a millionaire making trash like Uber for banana hammocks, sure. Small businesses do just fine outside of dying small rural towns. Midwestern cities have plenty of work in my experience, it's just not the sexy "let's trick ourselves into thinking we're changing the world with our app" kind of work.
I mean, you're not wrong that there's a malaise going around the country in a seriously troubling way. We live in an era where remote work is very doable for many of us and there's no good reason we have to all live in coastal cities. My reflex is to blame the VCs for this, but there's plenty of other businesses that also don't do it for whatever reason. IMO this mindset needs to change, and quickly.
I agree about VCs. In my experience the coastal cities do not have a monopoly on talent but they do have a strong monopoly on investment capital for new businesses.
I think it's a branding thing too. If you were an angel and saw a company on AngelList would you be more likely to fund them if they were from:
(a) Mountain View, California
(b) Los Angeles, California
(c) New York, New York
(d) Cincinnati, Ohio
(e) Louisville, Kentucky
I bet you picked (a).
People with kids and responsibilities have different concerns from those who don't. Whether what I ate or what entertainment I consume are fashionable enough doesn't even hit the radar -- I'm happy if I can eat anything in peace or get any downtime whatsoever for entertainment. You'll be there one day.
The set of people living in the burbs with families are generally living for their kids first and themselves a distant second. Consuming more interesting culture is great and all but it's still just consumption. Even if you're producing art or music, that's something for people with a lot of time for it unless they're doing it professionally. (and lots of great music has been created by bored suburban kids, FWIW).
So the question is, how do you make the best of what you've got to work with? My wife and I moved from downtown DC to just outside the Annapolis city limits. We probably do more culture/community stuff now, because thanks to Uber and a low cost of living, we can easily justify trying those things out.
If I could find a comparable job in Topeka, I'd totally try that out. Yuppie cultural amenities are everywhere these days. Yeah, it won't be New York, but only New York is New York, but somehow the rest of the country manages to get by with their second-string versions of things.