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Comment by mfer | Hacker News Reader

Here are some reasons...

1. You have a yard for you and your kids to play in. I know a number of people who love this. You can send the kids out to the yard without having to be there with them. When the weather is nice you can do this most days. And, the kids can have a blast doing it.

2. You can grow a garden. Flower garden or vegetable garden... I know a number of people who do this. This brings them pleasure in multiple forms.

3. It's a place that's yours rather than someone else's. When you rent there is someone else that owns it and you live there. Some people like to own and have more control over their space. It's about agency.

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All three of those can be true in a city.

Like I said, I'm not anti-suburb. I am anti-car-dependent development planning.

Technically true; we own* such a place in Cambridge, MA. It's not something that's affordable for the median household income though. Structurally, I suspect it could never be, because the inherent low density required for that means that places nearest the city with that density will be bid up beyond what the median household can afford.

Which in turn means someone of median (or even 75th percentile) income who wants to buy a house with a yard big enough for kids to meaningfully play in isn't going to do so in Cambridge, but can readily do it in a number of suburbs within an hour's commuting distance of Cambridge/Boston.

* - or rather the bank owns more of it than we do and we’re slowly buying it from them...

> It's not something that's affordable for the median household income though.

Unless you have building codes that encourages the same type of domiciles as 'the city'. The Roncesvalles neighbourhood of Toronto used to be a suburb of "the city", but now it is in the city, and the houses have big lots, lanes/garages, and plenty of square footage:

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/200+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+...

They're expensive now because urban living is cool again, but up until the late-1990s/early-2000s, land was not that expensive "in the city": urban living was generally considered only for immigrants, and the WASPs lived out in the 'burbs.

For some stuff that's a little less palatial, just go up the street for some good examples:

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...

There's no technical reason why areas/neighbourhoods couldn't be built like that again.

> I suspect it could never be, because the inherent low density required for that means that places nearest the city with that density will be bid up beyond what the median household can afford.

I see no reason why. Cambridge was, once upon a time, a streetcar suburb of Boston. There's no reason you can't just build more dense suburbs and outlying cities. You just don't need them to be car-dependent. There are tons of suburbs outside of major European cities that are just less dense and more family oriented while still being well served by transit and being walkable for all peoples' daily needs.

Having a private yard for your kids and their friends to play in (as listed #1 upthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556317) is the thing that necessarily constrains maximum density. We have about 1/4 acre in the city. That’s somewhat more than the minimum, but you’ll be hard pressed to get 10 units per acre and have everyone have a meaningful yard.

Why does everyone need a meaningful yard? The point of mixed use development is that you mix housing aimed at people at various phases of their lives. There's no reason why everything has to be one or another. You can have a 10 unit multi-family building amidst a block of rowhomes.

There's also no reason all the land has to be personal and private. Condo buildings can have yards and gardens. Kids also do fine playing in public parks, rec centers, and playgrounds. There's a variety of built environments that serve families' needs that we simply do not build because of zoning restrictions. Singapore manages to build extremely densely, keep housing costs accessible to median income families, and still have their kids grow up happy and well adjusted. It's a policy choice America makes to be this wasteful and it's mostly done by making it illegal to build any other way.

Not everyone needs it, obviously. Many people want it, also fairly obviously. This subthread is discussing the preferences of families who do and those units will, by geometric necessity, have a lower maximum density.

Some of the benefits: During COVID, we put up a trampoline for the kids to play on and get some exercise. Private yard meant we didn’t have to ask or fight anyone about it and there’s no additional COVID risk because everyone already lives together.

We put up a vegetable garden as well; no one is bothered by it.

Plenty of people want to (or are okay with) live in high-density housing in an urban environment. Not everyone does; as you say, there’s no reason everything has to be one or the other.

> All three of those can be true in a city.

At what multiple of price?

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