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Comment by betwixthewires | Hacker News Reader

I'm opposed to high density housing as well, for myself, personally. That's why I don't live in a city.

But being opposed to it generally, in a city no less, is a bit ridiculous. Either you want/need to live in a place with a ton of people or you don't. If you don't like traffic and neighbors upstairs don't live in a city. If you don't like long drives to the grocery store and needing to rely on a car to get around and on interpersonal business instead of professional employment, live in a city. But this middle of the road, cake and eat it too, cities designed for cars, urban sprawl by ordinance just makes things suck for everyone involved, it's the worst of both worlds.

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> But this middle of the road, cake and eat it too, cities designed for cars, urban sprawl by ordinance just makes things suck for everyone involved, it's the worst of both worlds.

It probably seems nice to these people at first.

Their property values go up, undesirable (a.k.a. poor) neighbors get pushed away to the outskirts of town, gridlock traffic is kept at bay, the town maintains its low-rise charm (whatever that means), etc.

But longer term, it causes strange distortions. In San Francisco, the people working the customer services jobs are sometimes homeless because there is nowhere affordable within commuting distance. Artists and musicians just straight-up leave, causing the city to become a cultural wasteland. And in the past year or two we're finally starting to see talent flight due to the out-of-control rent spirals and the rise of remote work.

Nobody's really benefitting from this; it's just lousy regulatory capture by landowners that's begun to backfire on them. You can't encase a tree in a glass box and expect it to magically stop growing. Ultimately, you just have to let people build what they want on their land, or your city will not only stop growing, it will begin to wither.

The negatives of these zoning laws are vastly worse than most people know.

US GDP would be 50% higher than it is now if we did not have exclusionary zoning laws. (https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes...)

If New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area alone removed their exclusionary and needlessly restrictive zoning laws, the average worker's income would rise by $9,000 per year.

> But being opposed to it generally, in a city no less, is a bit ridiculous

Here in NYC we call these folks 'Manhattanites against the Manhattanization of Manhattan'. Shockingly, quite a few of them exist.

Walking my kid to his second favorite playground on the Upper East Side, there was a sign opposing the shadows from the Blood Center Tower (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/nyregion/new-york-blood-c...). Because why should Manhattan have a gasp 23 story building! It would ruin the character of this neighborhood in Manhattan to have a building that is 70 meters high!

What utter nonsense.

Many people are forced out of rural areas due to the availability of work. I would prefer a rural area with some land, but it's difficult to find a good job in those areas.

Those people get screwed the most by high rent and long commutes... that are the direct result of prohibiting dense housing.

How so?

My comment is that many people who prefer living in lower density areas are forced out due to lack of jobs in those areas.

If you had a smooth transition between high and low density, the total area covered by housing would be smaller. So oddly enough, even the lowest density housing would now be closer to jobs in the city. Furthermore, since public transport makes more sense for those in the 'middle'-density area, there would be less for those who choose to drive in from the low-density area.

https://missingmiddlehousing.com/

Why don't we address the root cause - location and density of the jobs? No reason most of them have to be clustered together, or even in the same city as others.

Because people moving to a city from a rural area have been making a lower salary and are now facing the high costs of a city. An engineer with a signing bonus can make the transition smoothly, but the people forced out of rural areas often don't get them.

The corollary to high housing prices is that people sprawl outward for lower prices and end up with very long commutes. Around me, ~40% of SF renters are paying more than 30% of income on housing. I for get the portion of people super commuting (> 90 minutes each way) but the % grows when SF adds more offices.

So prohibitions on dense housing screw over people that want a rural life, but are forced to take jobs in a city. They'll have a harder time even saving up to go back.

Ok, so you assumed they moved to a city.

"So prohibitions on dense housing screw over people that want a rural life, but are forced to take jobs in a city."

According to the article in this post, people prefer lower density housing. I don't see how adding more higher density housing will meaningfully change that. Because as you make the commutes shorter, etc you entice more people to move there.

People prefer housing they can’t afford. Allowing housing of different densities allows people to optimize their trade offs.

Cities do allow housing of different densities depending on location (zone). Why would mixed density make it any better, especially when the article/study already says people prefer low density housing?

Not really. In practice, there's a small area for apartment complexes and then a huge area for single family exclusive housing. In places without strict zoning, there's a whole spectrum of things https://missingmiddlehousing.com

The goal is that when prices go up, there should be a way for people to build more homes that have a reasonable commute.

That depends on which cities we're looking at. We also have to look at percentage and not just area. If we're packing people in 10:1, then the space can be 5-10% of the area and hold a large portion of population. This may be sufficient based on the desires of the people (back to the article).we

"The goal is that when prices go up, there should be a way for people to build more homes that have a reasonable commute."

If they can't, then that should encourage employers to look elsewhere and move.

> If they can't, then that should encourage employers to look elsewhere and move.

It doesn't. That's why the most prosperous American cities have the longest commutes and least affordable housing.

If a metro area decided they don't want job growth and limited new office construction I'd be fine with that. But when a municipality allows new offices and prohibits new housing it hurts a lot of people.

Yet we are seeing some companies leave places like CA for TX. So it does happen.

Pandemic aside, total employment in SF has been increasing as fast as offices can be constructed.

I think you are the path to where I am. Which is society is pay an very steep price so that upper managers can live where they want and force everyone else to come to them.

Hasn't one of the big lessons of COVID been that anyone can work from anywhere that there's a decent internet connection?

Maybe as a Dev or similar, but that's not true for all industries. Even as a dev, there are many companies that don't allow fully remote, like mine.

> Hasn't one of the big lessons of COVID been that anyone can work from anywhere that there's a decent internet connection?

No, one of the biggest lessons of COVID is that lots of people can't, and being in a field where you can can be a massive advantage in certain circumstances, which accelerates inequality when those manifest because it correlates strongly (though not perfectly) with higher income work.

> I would prefer a rural area with some land, but it's difficult to find a good job in those areas.

Ironically, that's because we restrict density in cities.

Suppose you have a city, San Francisco, ~17,000 people per square mile. About a quarter of what it is in Manhattan.

For the same number of people, if the density was higher, the city would cover less area. And then the number of miles away from the city center you would have to go before you were living with cows would go down.

The article in the post suggests otherwise. Right in the abstract it says that people prefer lower density. So if living in a rural area is now more attractive because it's a shorter distance, more people will choose to live there.

There are entire regions with small cities and towns where the commute is already reasonable, but the companies choose to bunch together in the biggest cities. Just look at Appalachia - plenty of small cities to choose from with vacant factories to be repurposed, vacant housing from population shrinkage, etc.

It all boils down to choices, and it's very difficult to influence those choices - where company locate, where people want to live, etc.

The bottleneck isn't exactly number of miles until you see cows, it's minutes driven.

That is, rural folks would be much happier if the city had more density and a great public transit system that integrates with cars. But just the density would make things worse.

I wouldn't call that being forced, I'd call that weighing your priorities and making a decision.

Where I live, you can pay your own rent alone working a full time minimum wage job. If you're turning that down, the trade off isn't worth it. You would rather live in a densely packed place if it enables you to do professional work not available to you otherwise.

It's always a trade off.

That seems to imply there are enough jobs in the area for the population. That might be true today, but in the prior decade it can be tough to find a minimum wage job with benefits.

> with benefits

Again, a trade off. Why are benefits sacrosanct when we talk about this? Why is anything?

If a rural town doesn't have enough business to go around to support it's population, it shrinks. It becomes more rural. People make trade offs. Cities get denser. When it has enough business to support a larger population, it grows. When a city becomes unable to support it's population, it decays. People move away. There's an ebb and flow. But it is important to understand that nobody is being forced to do anything here, they're moving where their priorities are, no place is perfect, it's all about what you're willing to live with to get the benefits of where you live.

"Again, a trade off. Why are benefits sacrosanct when we talk about this?"

Because we're talking about supporting oneself. You can't support yourself with a minimum wage job and paying healthcare out of pocket.

Yes you can. I literally live in a small community of people who mostly work minimum wage service jobs and support themselves just fine, have disposable income even.

That's my whole point. If you live in an urban environment it is hard to see how someone could do it, I understand, but you need to understand just how much cheaper it is to live in a place where you're not competing with 100 people for a place to live. When your rent is 350 bucks a month you can 100% support yourself on 1000 bucks a month, paying for insurance out of pocket.

Not in my state. You can find rent at $350/month depending on the area and stuff. It's at least $450/month for health insurance, and that's with a $5k deductible, so you need a substantial savings. That leaves $200 per month for food, car (because it's rural), utilities, etc. Unlikely.

Do your options to live end at your state borders?

"Not in my city" is the same thing on a smaller scale. We could take it to an absurd conclusion and say "let's just move to the jungle in the amazon and live for free, there's no traffic there either!" but that's not the point I'm making.

Health insurance is a big sticking point, I'm not trying to downplay the overinflated cost at all, even where I live it's still a huge burden and consideration. Too many people do without it, but that's anywhere you go, city or rural town. I don't believe this is a distinction of living inside or outside of a city, if anything, working class people in cities are more likely to do without because of inflated housing cost, and there's more working class people in cities than outside of them.

It's not easy living anywhere. But what negatives are you willing to live with for what positives?

Those people voluntarily leave rural areas due to their personal preferences. They would rather have a good job in an area that can support them than live in a pleasant area with worse job prospects.

People are rarely interested in living in dense urban areas due to the density itself. They are usually far more interested in the consequences of the density and the opportunities enabled by it.

It depends on what you consider voluntary. If you can't get a job in your hometown, then it doesn't feel very voluntary when forced to move to support yourself (survive). Sure, it's a choice but there's pressure behind it.

If someone says give me your wallet or I'll stab you, that's still a choice. I wouldn't call it voluntary. It's a choice of survival.

I've responded about this already, but nobody is really forced to move to the city. They can get jobs, just not the job they want. You have to provide a service to your local economy, and in small towns, that means mending fences and cooking barbecue and working on cars. Thankfully the low density also means you can afford to pay your bills doing jobs like that.

Some people want to do something they consider more rewarding and meaningful, its like the age old trope of the small town girl moving to Los Angeles to be a movie star. They move to the city because it's a trade off, their priorities tell them that living in a more densely packed environment will make their life better.

But at the end of the day, it is always a choice.

Nobody is forced to do anything ever. Everything is a choice.

Exactly. People can even choose to die instead of doing something they don't want to do.

We aren't talking about dying here. This isn't analogous to being robbed at knife point. No need to be so dramatic.

We are talking about deciding to move somewhere with a higher quality of life. For some, that means better pay in an office and diverse food options a short drive/walk/subway ride away, in exchange for more rent and more people. For others, it means a better view of the night sky and less traffic and cheaper rent in exchange for lower paying work.

"For some, that means "

Exaclty, it varies by person. For some, it is a matter of survival, and can be dramatic with consequences on par with being physically attacked.

But that's not the point you've been making, it's not what I've been arguing against. Your point has been "survival in rural areas is untenable and so people have to move to cities for better prospects, therefore moving to the city is not a choice." My point was always "people go where they need to go based on their needs and priorities and survival outside of cities is not any harder than inside them, therefore moving to them is a choice."

If anything, survival is easier outside of cities, because cost of living is cheaper and the minimum wage rate is the same.

Anyway, we started with you saying you want to move more rural but you can't. But is that true? Could you do it, if you were willing to work a different type of job?

Nope

> Thankfully the low density also means you can afford to pay your bills doing jobs like that.

Financial margins in rural areas have been decreasing over the last 100 years as corporations take over farms and people move to urban areas for more opportunities. There's not a lot of opportunity left in rural America.

Not a lot of opportunity for what?

Cities are economic machines. Everything is abstracted. There are overarching systems to everything. And it has to be that way, that's both the draw and the solution to the density.

Rural areas are entirely interpersonal relationships. People do business with one another. You have to do something within your local economy to get along.

So there's not a lot of opportunity to go work for the big chemical factory that used to support your entire company town. But there's plenty of opportunity to live a simple life, if that's what you want. The bug difference is that you have to do things for the people you directly interact with to get paid, it's much smaller scale. It's less about employment and more about interpersonal business.

There is pressure behind every reason for every choice we make, and that's the entire point. We don't choose between urban and rural areas assuming that everything else is equal. We choose between fundamentally different lifestyles and opportunities, subject to constraints based on our wealth, connections, marketable skills, formal qualifications, and so on.

Besides, in a modern society, unemployment rarely causes people to starve/freeze to death. The choice between urban/rural living is about quality of life, not survival.

In other words, "not in my backyard". But other people's backyard is fine!

The important part here is that the OP moved their backyard in order to avoid high density next to it.

Commendable, I'd say.

So continuing that, let's say OP moved to a small rural town. 10 years later, the media proclaims the town for best schools, living, etc. and a lot of folks want to move there and want to build up in OP's backyard.

What's OP's course of action now? To move again?

I'm not excusing the effects of NIMBYism, but it's natural phenomena for many people and often not about raising property values, but resistance to change--especially as folks age and become less willing to adapt or move elsewhere.

> What's OP's course of action now? To move again?

Yes, if that's what I want. It's not really my backyard. it's proverbial, but we can't make the mistake of taking it literally. it's someone else's front yard. I have no say in it.

So I have a choice, move somewhere more rural, or enjoy the financial benefit of being an early resident of a growing community. But the onus is always on me, I cannot externalize my preferences onto others unwillingly. There are always decisions to be made, there is always a trade off. You're right about resistance to change.

Personally if where I live began to urbanize, I'd leave.

I cannot externalize my preferences onto others unwillingly

Isn't that exactly what those arguing for higher densities are doing?

No? Telling someone else they can't build an apartment building because they live next to you and you like zoning is externalizing on others unwillingly, telling people they have to commute hours in traffic because you like to see the smoggy sunset from your backyard is externalizing. Letting people build more dense housing in a densely populated area to profit and simultaneously reduce the cost on their own property is not externalizing anything, unless you consider your view of the sky to be your property and you somehow having a say in your neighbor building on his property as he sees fit.

Just flip the coin.

telling people they:

- have to live next to a skyrise is externalizing.

- have to use public transit is externalizing.

- can't let their kids get a good education is externalizing.

- can't let their kids play safely without adult supervision is externalizing.

I'll freely admit zoning laws kind of suck in some instances, but you are going to be hard pressed to find a place that does not have them. In fact, the more dense the housing, the more rigorous the zone laws are likely to be. The reality almost everywhere is that one simply cannot do whatever one pleases with their property including keeping it from the government.

So, yes my proverbial view of your smog may well be legally protected and that might suck, but you and I are both also protected from a neighbor converting their property into a toxic waste dump.

> Yes, if that's what I want. It's not really my backyard. it's proverbial, but we can't make the mistake of taking it literally. it's someone else's front yard. I have no say in it.

A century of established case law say otherwise. If a private landowner wants to change the zoning on a parcel of land near established residences and the residences can show decrease in property values as a result of rezoning the courts have consistently awarded financial damages to the owners of the residences from the city that decides to change the zoning.

Generally it's the suburbs immediately outside a prosperous city that start to urbanize. Genuinely rural areas in America often have the opposite problem - they shrink.

That's exactly what the people opposing zoning changes did too. They move somewhere to avoid high density. Then demand follows them. The entire discussion right now is about increasing density where it is currently low, not about static high or low density.

The people opposing zoning changes did not do that. They moved to a suburb right next to a city so they can commute in. Getting outraged that the city grows is ridiculous.

It's even more ridiculous when you realize they were a part of it's growth. Like they only wanted it to grow up until the point they moved in.

What about those of us who grew up where we live?

The whole conversation around displacement is people being pushed away from where they grew up.

It’s just not reasonable to say, “the houses I saw growing up cannot change”

That's basically the point of democracy and local levels of government - sufficient support at the local level means they make a change that fits the desires of the constituents. Different areas have different desires, and thus different laws.

Why should I care if there's high density housing in cities if I don't live there? Let those people decide what they want for that area.

> Different areas have different desires, and thus different laws.

The problem in this case is that it's not different desires. The existing landowners in every area have the same incentive -- to increase artificial scarcity so that the land they already own increases in value.

The people this comes at the expense of are the future residents of that area, who for that very reason don't have a vote there. If you live in town A and get a job in town B, you might like for town A to have restrictive zoning (where you're selling your old house) and town B to have relaxed zoning (where you're buying a new one), but you only get a vote in town A, until you've actually moved to town B at which point your incentives invert. So if zoning is local, every place structurally has unduly restrictive zoning.

This is one of the few places where local control doesn't work, specifically because the interests of current residents and future residents are in conflict.

"So every place structurally has unduly restrictive zoning."

Only above a certain population number. Many smaller cities and towns don't have this issue.

"at which point your incentives invert."

Only if you own land. And only if your ideals support it. With a sufficient renting population there can be change.

"The existing landowners in every area have the same incentive -- to increase artificial scarcity so that the land they already own increases in value."

If this is true, then why even have a discussion? I mean, it's settled then - this is a democracy and the voting base will not support changes. Otherwise, there are multiple incentives and desires, so your statement would be an over simplification.

Then we are also ignoring effects of housing crunches. In theory, jobs people are moving to should have leadership that realizes the issue and moves to alleviate it (and have competitive cost advantages), or doesn't move there in the first place. Same for people, if it doesn't make financial sense to move somewhere, then they will select other options. We are already seeing some of these affects in movement from places like CA to TX.

> Only above a certain population number. Many smaller cities and towns don't have this issue.

So only every place where it matters then.

Not having restrictions on 20 story buildings in farm country where nobody has any incentive to build 20 story buildings is irrelevant.

> Only if you own land. And only if your ideals support it. With a sufficient renting population there can be change.

This is another instance of "only where it matters" -- you have an area zoned exclusively for single family homes and nobody is renting because nobody who has to rent can afford to live there.

Also, this is "solved" by the scam of rent control. You bring just enough of the existing renters into the "screw the new guys" fold to prevent changes adverse to landlords.

> If this is true, then why even have a discussion? I mean, it's settled then - this is a democracy and the voting base will not support changes.

The question is at which level of government it should be decided. You do it at the state level instead of the town level and now there are a lot of people willing to remove zoning restrictions in the places they want to move to.

"So only every place where it matters then.

Not having restrictions on 20 story buildings in farm country where nobody has any incentive to build 20 story buildings is irrelevant."

This brings us to the root of the issue - job location and density. There's no reason companies can't move to existing small cities or towns. They don't have to cluster together in places like SF. It's tough to influence those choices, just like the preference of people to want low density housing. Some of it occurs naturally, at least for the worst offenders, like CA to TX in recent years.

"You do it at the state level instead of the town level and now there are a lot of people willing to remove zoning restrictions in the places they want to move to."

Are there though? I haven't really seen this. It also ignore local concerns. Maybe in low density places they don't care about higher density housing going in because the setbacks are naturally large. This changes if you go to a medium density area.

> There's no reason companies can't move to existing small cities or towns.

There is. They put their offices where they can find workers. You can staff a Google office from the people who already live in San Francisco, not from the people who already live in Tuscon.

And people don't want to live in a company town. If you live in a major city which has offices for every major company in your industry, you can buy a house there and not worry about what happens if you switch jobs. Are you going to want to buy a house some place you'd have to sell it if you ever wanted to work for a different company?

> Some of it occurs naturally, at least for the worst offenders, like CA to TX in recent years.

That only happens when the offenders are extraordinarily egregious. And even then, they're not moving from San Francisco to a thousand separate little towns. They're pretty much all going to Austin -- which has a higher population than San Francisco.

> Are there though? I haven't really seen this.

Have they actually moved zoning control to the state level anywhere? There are proposals to do it in California but I'm not sure that any of them have been implemented.

"Have they actually moved zoning control to the state level anywhere? There are proposals to do it in California but I'm not sure that any of them have been implemented."

Not just implemented, but even studied/surveyed.

I think you're misreading the incentives of homeowners; in general, they want to maintain or improve their quality of life, property values are a secondary concern (this idea that everyone would be happy with a shitty neighborhood and a giant bank account is absurd.) The big problem with increasing the density of a previously low-density area is that it adds load to the public services which make the quality of life high, without the commensurate increase in property tax per resident. And future residents generally choose places to live based on quality of life and afforability; so a place which has lots of great public services due to historically high property tax collection, where new high-density housing is built, is very attractive, for a while, because you get the best of both worlds, until the public services eventually decline to the level commensurate with the average property tax receipt per resident.

> The big problem with increasing the density of a previously low-density area is that it adds load to the public services which make the quality of life high, without the commensurate increase in property tax per resident.

If you need a given amount of tax revenue per person, set the tax rate so that you get that amount of tax revenue per person. This might be a different rate based on a different housing market. So what?

Oversubscribed public services AND tax increases? Can’t imagine why anyone is against this.

the problem is thought that people don't pay local school and property tax based on individuals. They pay based on per $k of property value.

To be blunt, a high density housing project going into a low density community is literally leaching off the existing tax basis. Exacerbating this is the fact that developers often know how to game local tax laws further reducing their tax burdens and thus shouldering it on others.

For those who want it, let them have it - all of it. Not the halfway version we have now.

Doing so, generally, will make things worse for someone like GP, because when they do go into the city, it will be less car-friendly.

So I think your reply is somewhat less than charitable.

> That's why I don't live in a city.

“city” encompasses suburbs/exurbs as well as urban cores

A city only "encompasses" suburbs because suburbanites drive to the city to work.

Functionally I'd say that the urban space ends where mass transit ends.

> A city only "encompasses" suburbs because suburbanites drive to the city to work.

I didn’t say that a city encompasses (it's associated) suburbs, I said that the term “city” encompasses, within its meaning, suburbs, to the extent that these are often literally their own cities. The term does not only refer to metropolitan cores. When the source article refers to “virtually every city in the USA bans single family homes...”, you have to understand that virtually every city in the USA is not a metropolitan core city. The vast majority of cities in the USA are suburbs or isolated small cities in rural areas that are exurbs of or even not associated tightly with a metropolitan core.

Weighted by population things are different, but that's not what is referenced.

I agree; this is why I have hard time calling many agglomerations cities proper. They are like parts of Silicon Valley, just giant interconnected suburban tissue with some spots of urban space.

Naturally, people living in suburbia mostly do so willingly, and resist attempts to erect cities on the middle of that tissue. If they wanted to live in a city, they'd move to one!

I think that depends. You could be talking about the actually city (like jurisdiction and laws within the city limits) or you could be talking about the Greater [city] Area/Metro Area. Or even something else.

Sure, and those suburbs are for people that want the benefits of the city and are willing to pay a premium for less of the downsides, and also create more traffic for themselves to sit in. They've made a trade off as well, they live a little more densely packed than I do, but a little less than true urban dwellers, and their commute is longer, property maintenance is higher, living cost is usually a little more, they rely on a car. Personally not worth it to me, so I don't choose to live there either.

> I'm opposed to high density housing as well, for myself, personally. That's why I don't live in a city.

Sometimes the city comes to you. That's what's happening all over, where people are in suburbs outside the city, but the city grows and suddenly they learn that where they live isn't considered the outskirts anymore, and everyone's pissed that they oppose high density housing.

The city didn't come to them. They chose to live in close proximity to enjoy it's benefits thinking they could avoid the trade off entirely, forever.

They even considered this a benefit when they decided that as the population rose their property value would go up. They considered the state of affairs they're complaining about to be a good investment decision.

The suburbs are never truly outside the city, this is an illusion, and everyone knows it, and they knew it going in, they're just pretending they're getting the short end of the stick here.

> The city didn't come to them. They chose to live in close proximity to enjoy it's benefits thinking they could avoid the trade off entirely, forever.

In every place except for a handful of cities on the West Coast this is still true.

If I had moved to San Francisco or San Jose in 1980 to live in a nice single-family neighborhood setting, there is no way that anyone could have predicted just how many people would have moved to Silicon Valley in the next 40 years. If I had moved to Minneapolis, or Kansas City, or Austin, TX in 1980, I would still (most likely) be in that single-family neighborhood and not having to worry about developers wanting to put up a boatload of high-rises around me.

> If I had moved to San Francisco or San Jose in 1980 to live in a nice single-family neighborhood setting, there is no way that anyone could have predicted just how many people would have moved to Silicon Valley in the next 40 years.

Well, thanks to restrictive zoning, they probably could have, in net if not in gross; there's a reason that while lots of money has moved into Silicon Valley, it (San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties combined) have seen less growth since 1980 than the East Bay, absolutely and relatively.

> The city didn't come to them. They chose to live in close proximity to enjoy it's benefits thinking they could avoid the trade off entirely, forever.

That's not always true either. I moved as far away from the city as I could, while still remaining close to my job, friends, and family. I chose my particular, because they already had zoning laws against high-density housing on the books. One of those was, no buildings over 6 stories. Now all of a sudden, they're allowing buildings up to 36 stories, and I get to have one overlooking my back yard. This isn't what I signed up for.

> while still remaining close to my job, friends, and family.

So you stayed in proximity to enjoy the benefits?

I'm not downplaying it BTW, I've been in that situation before. It's a little different when you're from a city, and it's more than just exotic food at midnight. I'm from a city too, that's where my life was, that's where my family is. I have experienced first hand my little suburb becoming an urban-clinging-onto-suburban-delusion hellscape.

Still though, we stayed in proximity and expected the world to stagnate for us. I realized that's not going to happen and I left. The city will grow, and like it or not you never left it, you just avoided the trade off for a while.

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