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Comment by larrymyers | Hacker News Reader

My family and I decided to stay on the north side of Chicago, a very high cost of living location, despite no longer needing to head downtown every day for work. Why not move outside of Chicago where our cost living would be substantially lower?

  * We wanted to keep our kids in the same school, which is walking distance.
  * We like being walking distance to the grocery store, doctor's offices, etc.
  * Our kids can walk to their friends' houses.
  * Proximity to the lake is important to us.
  * We're close to family.

Moving to the suburbs would find us losing much of that freedom that comes with living in a dense neighborhood. The size of a house and a yard is only one factor here for quality of life. I hope the trend that comes from remote work isn't just people optimizing for the size of a house and low cost of living, especially if it comes at the expense of being able to be in a community with other people around.

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+1. Walkability is the main thing that keeps me in the city. A very large part of me wants to go back to the suburbs, rent a house, have a yard, garage -- space in general. However, every time I actually visit someone in the suburbs, the long drive there, watching things get more and more spread apart until it's just strip malls, grocery stores, and subdivisions, really saps the excitement out of having more space for me.

There's no reason (besides inertia) that we can't have both. This is how thriving smaller downtowns are, single family homes within walking distance to amenities. It's just that all those areas get really expensive because there are so few of them. But there don't have to be so few places like that.

How do those smaller downtowns thrive? The few I know usually have rich populations that do not mind spending more than what Costco/Target/Walmart/big grocery stores sell at.

All it takes is the big box stores to setup camp 10 minutes outside of town and almost everyone with a car will opt to save money and shop there.

Yes, it requires a population that appreciates the local amenities to the point of paying more for them. Lots of these people exist, even if they aren't the majority of people. It's just that right now they are concentrated in the dense part of cities. But many of them would love to live in a bigger house if they could still walk to amenities, and would still be willing to pay more for the privilege.

You put in stores that sell things that the big boxes wont sell. Such as specialized restaurants, vacuum repair shops and so on. You can also put smaller versions of 'big boxes' or other chains in these downtowns, such as chipolte, walgreens, trader joes, "city" target, etc. Downtowns can also have rather large things like movie theaters themselves.

Most consumer vacuum cleaners aren't really repairable any more. They're used for a few years until one of the plastic parts breaks, then discarded and replaced. Even if parts are available the repair service labor is too expensive.

As usual, it depends. As more people buy upscale gear (Miele or Oreck come to mind), they last much longer and are designed with servicing in mind. And the local vacuum shop services almost every vacuum around. Most vacuums are easy to fix assuming the motor isn't shot. It's replacing a frayed power cord, or a belt/beater.

It's kind of similar to how good shoes can be resoled.

I had an Oreck years ago, I thought it was a good brand, it looked solid, ads made a big deal of it being lightweight and used by hotels...but it didn't suck.

And I thought that's just the way things are.

But I got a Hoover upright, which was much cheaper, looks cheaper, like a toy, mostly garish purple plastic, and is also much heavier. But it sucks up an order of magnitude more dirt. It's bagless, which some people don't like, but it makes it very visible how much crud it's removing and allows it to be dumped after every use.

So I feel like the Oreck was perhaps a swindle, having the looks and characteristics that older people associate with appliances from long ago, except the actual performance.

And I'm glad I didn't spend a lot on a Dyson just to get a vacuum with no bag.

I've never gone there, but I think there's a storefront near me that says they repair vacuum cleaners. Don't recall what kind.

My Oreck worked great for 18 years, but it did have flaws. I disliked the bags (difficult to change), but it ran like a champ with a lot of abuse. My Miele isn't as light, but does a far better job (and is HEPA compliant). Hopefully it lasts as long as my Oreck.

I bought a dirt cheap bagless vacuum for 70€. The plastic parts broke off as usual. However, it lasted more than 5 years. I think it still works but I got a bag vacuum now.

I live in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and we just lost our vacuum cleaner repair shop next to our city target. It didn’t exactly go out of business, but had to move far away north on the highway where rent is cheaper and they have easier access to more customers.

In Europe many smaller stores are competitive by aiming for high turnaround. The cut down on the selection to the things that get sold fast. German Lidl and Aldi are based on these principles and known to have very low prices. In fact I think they outcompeted wall-mart when it tried to setup shop in Germany.

I remember quite good prices in the Netherlands as well which is quite densely populated and where people shop in downtown stores rather than out of town big box stores. The exception would be things like hardware and furniture.

Lidl and Aldi are also doing very well in the US, and putting pressure on big grocery stores. But these are still too big to be downtown stores, and the merchandise is usually sold in quantities that make sense for a car.

They very well might work in a downtown, but I have yet to see it in the US.

> They very well might work in a downtown, but I have yet to see it in the US.

But you see it in Europe. I walk to lidl and buy my groceries, basically every person I know walk to get groceries. Some do big weekend shopping trips now and then to bigger stores, but that isn't the norm.

Presumably, this is in an area where you have a big population without cars.

In the US, these are few and far between. And Aldi/Lidl are going to optimize for their costs, which means not paying rent in a downtown if they have the option to build on cheaper land 5 minutes away from downtown. Which makes no difference to them, because 99% of their customers have a car.

In most of the cities I've lived in Europe supermarkets are usually outside of downtown (though there may be a few there) but still in walkable residential neighbourhoods. You don't want to have to go all the way downtown to buy food.

It's pretty similar to the way medium sized Safeways are spread throughout San Francisco, except the rent isn't $3000/month for a 1 bed and the soap and shampoo doesn't have to be kept locked away.

In many European cities, at least NL where I live, there isn't such a big distinction between the downtown and the neighbourhoods where people live.

Sure, if you want a big electronics store, you go to the centre of the city (10m biking), but for groceries, coffee, takeaways, restaurants, doctors, DIY stores, pharmacies, etc there's tons of these scattered around the city. It's quite multi-polar, there are many shopping streets, for these kinds of needs you're rarely more than 10 min walk or 2-3 minutes cycle away from those.

Where I live, for example, there's even 2 branches of the same chain of supermarket within about 400m, so <5 min walk, about 1 min on a bike. (Handy on the rare occasion that one of them is out of something!)

How much is a beer after work hours at a given pub/bar?

One thing I hate about the majority of the US's urban centers is they are extremely touristy and expensive. It is common to be paying $6+ per beer (it's local but still) and that's not even on weekends.

In my very anecdotal observation – these small downtown areas don't rely on retail as much as food and entertainment. It's where the best restaurants, brewpubs, and general hangouts are.

If there is retail, it's _highly_ differentiated from Big Box.

Yes, but that is why there are so few places like that in the US. Not many people can afford to constantly eat out and consume entertainment at a sufficient frequency to keep those businesses going. And that was at the labor prices before the pandemic.

Not many relative or absolute? I think it is a fairly small percentage of people and also a very large number of people who can (and desire to) live this lifestyle.

It is common in Europe for small towns and villages to be quite walkable, have a large relative percentage multi-family housing, and have a decent train or bus connection to a regional hub. Of course, they have the advantage of being around longer than the automobile has existed.

The problem in the US is mostly cultural. Most rural/semi-rural/exurban people think nothing of an hour driving each way. So why would they want what they perceive as a tiny lot, with more expensive housing where they can hear their neighbors when they can get a huge lot and drive a little more?

The non-cultural part of the problem is that the drive-everywhere paradigm is so heavily invested that even in a small walking-oriented European -style village, everyone would need to own a car anyway. If you built a train to a regional hub it wouldn’t solve the problem of the regional hub itself having terrible public transit. Plus, it’s a lot easier to build a road than a train politically.

It's cultural but also institutional. Governments think nothing of blowing tens of millions of dollars on highway construction and do not typically think about or care to invest in alternatives.

Beyond a certain point (which was a long time ago) we're just building roads and highways to create artificial growth.

It blows my mind how people don't realize the cultural piece either. They travel, "omg it's so walkable here! this is awesome! wow that cafe is so cute. Of course i buy bread from the local shop." then come back and it's like their experiences were completely wiped clean from their memory: "wait what do you mean not drive a car a quarter mile down the road to sit in the Zaxby's line?".

Because cafes and bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries. Even if it's just $1 more a coffee/loaf that adds up to significant money over a year. That's the thing that I think people miss. Scale makes things cheaper and to have scale at retail you need to pull customers from a large area.

You could do the same in a dense area but then you run into housing cost/size problems. I don't see how you get the typical 4/3 suburban house and a low cost of living without driving.

> Because cafes and bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries. Even if it's just $1 more a coffee/loaf that adds up to significant money over a year. That's the thing that I think people miss. Scale makes things cheaper and to have scale at retail you need to pull customers from a large area.

I wonder if all those loaves of bread and coffees cost more than tires, having 2 or 3 cars, obesity, and lost productivity from car crashes and deaths (among other things)? Scale can make things cheaper, but is cheapness the goal? And scale in this context also creates centralization which has some fragile properties at times.

> You could do the same in a dense area but then you run into housing cost/size problems. I don't see how you get the typical 4/3 suburban house and a low cost of living without driving.

Tear down a house in the suburbs and put in a little market/grocery store and you don't need to drive anywhere you just walk over. The only reason all of the best neighborhoods you've ever been to are so expensive is because we just don't build mixed-use, medium density development. And also you can look at countries in places like Europe to see how it has been achieved. I'm not sure the premise of 4/3 suburban house is a good one. It's like saying how can you use AWS when you have this server rack in the basement that you have to use.

It's just cultural and institutional inertia driving us down bad paths because we don't have a good market mechanic to realize costs.

Small towns in the US already work similarly to European towns, though a bit more straightforward (pun intended).

The town itself is pretty self-sufficient, usually has a co-op, general store, single main road going through downtown, sidewalks, etc.

Larger cities do have suburbs like you're describing, but generally they do have their own amenities like fast food courts / grocery stores / school systems near the entrances of the housing developments, the commuting is generally only because of work, which hopefully we can make more remote to ease traffic for physical workers.

...and that's kinda what's missing in the US (and large parts of Southern Ontario) right now: small towns. Instead, you have bedroom communities that depend on an urban centre to make them work at all. No, not everywhere, but in too much of the populous parts of the country. It's gotten to the point that people just expect that that's just how things work. It made a certain basic sense, I suppose, with the GI Bill and the Levittowns it spawned post-WW2, but that should have been a very temporary solution to a baby boom housing crisis, not the permanent state of things. I grew up in a town with a population of about 1500 people, and we had two grocers, each with an actual butcher who not only cut meats, but made their own sausages, etc. Could you get fresh weirdo herbs that only grow halfway up Vesuvius in years that end in a 7? No, but we weren't missing anything anybody would actually miss either. (And if you want a really nice artisanal bread, make it - there are very few things that are easier, and autolysis means you don't have to spend hours working at it, you just wait.)

There's plenty of small towns, just takes moving there. I prefer them.

Remote work should make them more viable, before you could either just farm or mine.

Industrial period nearly killed small towns as people flocked to the city for factory work.

>but generally they do have their own amenities like fast food courts / grocery stores / school systems

Though some starkly do not. Before the pandemic, a friend was living in a San Diego area suburb apartment building that was located on a strip of land between freeways with the complex and a strip mall.

I've lived in multiple small towns in America and the reality is the nice central amenities are too expensive for most working people, and at least half of the storefronts are boarded up, which means most people end up driving to the Walmart. The majority of people that do use the centrally located boutiques drive in from their homes which aren't in the center. Most new construction doesn't even include sidewalks or crosswalks, making walking dangerous even if you wanted to.

There's at least one, but not more than a few, exceptions in each state (Asheville, NC for example) where people move in with their money to larp "small town living" but it depends on outside capital to work and the original residents end up getting priced out.

> Tear down a house in the suburbs and put in a little market/grocery store and you don't need to drive anywhere you just walk over.

Except everyone with a reliable car still drives to the large grocery store and with a wide selection which has lower prices and better selection on basics but makes it up with lower volume, high margin luxuries that the small market c doesn't have floor space for, and the small market, even if it starts as something else, ends up specializing in alcohol, tobacco, and dry goods, and neglecting general grocery items. Unless it's an area with a particular ethnic concentration and the small market survives by focussing on the unique demands of that ethnic community in a way that the larger store with a wider catchment area doesn't have any real incentive to.

Its not that there aren't enough small markets opened in areas of single-family homes to see this trend; you can't fix it with zoning, at least not in the manner you describe. (You can by driving density to transport capacity to the point where driving to the large grocery is impractical, of course, but that tends to be beyond allowing medium density, mixed use development.)

Suburban 7-11’s for example get a lot of foot traffic in the US. Much of it is from teens, but where available people end up including a stop while walking their dogs or doing other kinds of exercise.

High enough density to have a locals within ~1/2 mile, and or a location where people stop on their way to or from work are how you keep prices reasonable. It’s never directly competitive with Walmart etc but being much closer is a real advantage.

Ironically, my two best counter-examples of your claims above are both within 1 mile of each other.

Wiley St. Co-op and Jenifer St. Market are both relatively small grocery stores in the Marquette neighborhood of Madison, WI. The co-op is a bit larger, but less densely stocked and has no alcohol. Jenifer St. is packed to the gills, and sells alcohol. Both are surrounded by primarily single-family homes, with a few apartment buildings within walking distance. Neither are "ethnic" food stores, and neither sell much in the way of junk food, and neither sells tobacco.

I've been visiting them both for about 20 years whenever we visit relatives in Madison. I've always found them both remarkable, even given their placement in probably one of the most suitable locations in the USA for this sort of thing.

Of course, were I to comment on my own comment, I'd probably say "Yep, the exception(s) that prove the rule".

I think those are the exceptions that prove that it can be done, and can be viable. Totally agree that it's generally not a thing, but places like that show that all the other, similar neighborhoods are just missing out.

There are more than ten supermarkets within ten minutes of my walking distance, from the cheapest option to fanciest. In addition, even the fanciest bakeries sell the standardized type of bread for the standardized price.

So I know this problem is solvable because it is solved in places that are not the US

Most models outside the US would not work for the entire US, perhaps a few cities. Also, it doesn't seem possible to have more than 10 supermarkets within 10 minutes of your walking distance. They would have to be next door to each other. Of course, I'm thinking about this in the context of where I've lived in the US.

It would take me 3 minutes just to walk out of my apartment complex, and another 5 to get to the supermarket right next door to the apartments.

What you have as a supermarket in your country must be different than what we have here in the US: Kroger, Albertson's, SafeWay, Von's, etc... These are very large buildings that take up a lot of property.

Taking a friend's address in inner Copenhagen (a cheap place as she's a student), she has 4 supermarkets within 5 minutes walk (400m).

Taking a different friend's address in the suburbs, he has 3 supermarkets within a 10 minute walk (800m).

In the city centre, there are 10 supermarkets within a 5 minute walk.

The supermarkets in the city centre are smaller, and have a relatively limited range, although in practise I do 95% of my shopping at one. You choose a different supermarket if you need an upmarket/wider selection, but it doesn't matter as it's so close by (exception: if I really need something like a particular lactose free cheese for a recipe, I'll just go to an inner city supermarket rather than checking 3-4 shops in the centre). There is no parking.

In the inner city, perhaps 20% of them are large enough to be selling clothes, a few toys etc. There might be parking for 0-6 cars. Not having to walk across a ginormous car park saves a lot of distance.

You'll need to travel further (on average) to buy a barbecue, tent, etc. I think I remember the large American supermarkets selling this sort of thing — in Denmark, you'll need to go to the DIY / sports / etc shop. This will have a car park.

Example, though you could zoom into any European city and search "supermarket" on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/search/supermarket+in+Herlev/@55... -- Coop 365, Netto, Fakta, Føtex, Lidl and Rema 1000 are normal supermarkets.

> You'll need to travel further (on average) to buy a barbecue, tent, etc. I think I remember the large American supermarkets selling this sort of thing — in Denmark, you'll need to go to the DIY / sports / etc shop. This will have a car park.

And that's if you don't get it delivered. And even so that is when you use the car (hence why Europeans have a lot of hatchbacks). Not driving to a grocery store a quarter mile away to get a bag of chips that you forgot for a party. The energy expenditure for that is crazy. It's no wonder America has such high resource consumption.

I totally agree with all comments in favor of the European way. I just have to add something:

> The supermarkets in the city centre are smaller

Then maybe they are not actually supermarkets, instead small markets or grocery stores?

Two in the city centre are small enough that, if they were my nearest shop, I might not use them for most shopping. The proportion of ready-to-eat or ready-to-cook food (for workers / commuters) is too high, meaning there's less range of meat/fish/vegetables. I think the shop name is even a diminutive version of the normal supermarket to account for this.

Otherwise, I am not sure where to draw the line between a grocery and a supermarket.

It used to be that groceries were smaller shops with fewer categories of goods and less range within those categories -- they didn't sell toiletries, or light bulbs, or paper plates, or socks. Rice came in white and brown.

But around 10 years ago the large supermarkets started to take over shops this size, except with the same building they can use more floor space for retail. Their well-run logistics means they can deliver to them every day or two, so the smaller shop doesn't need a large stock room to maintain a wide range. Therefore, the smaller/independent general grocery businesses have mostly gone, but I can choose from perhaps 8-10 kinds of rice, compared to the 16-20 they have at the largest stores. The 8-10 kinds will be varied according to the area.

I do 80% of my shopping at one of these shops, 15% at another one (when I fancy a change, or walk home a different way), and less than 5% at a supermarket large enough to sell toasters, toys, televisions and t-shirts.

People in Europe mostly choose the suburbs too.

As for the rest of it, I'm not arguing that the suburbs is a good choice. It's just the one people do choose and they choose it because of space and cost of living.

Do they choose suburbs because it’s preferred or because it’s cheaper?

If the urban areas have more expensive housing for a given unit size, that would imply it is actually preferred.

It’s like saying nobody drives because there is too much traffic. Or sporting events always sell out so nobody goes.

You can't separate preference from cost. Or, in other words, they prefer it because it's cheaper.

Cost is part of the preference, I agree. I think though that we're not accurately capturing the true cost. The suburbs appear to be cheaper and they very well may be on an individual level, but are they cheaper for civilization? How do we price in your commute, for example? Or the cost of roads or the government building a new power plant? I don't think we have great market mechanics for this which makes the cost comparison a little difficult to do to begin with.

But to the point of the person you are replying to, the price of a house in almost any reasonable case I can think of reflects desirability for one reason or another. If you see that suburban homes are cheaper than a mixed-use, medium density neighborhood (the kind that everybody visits and take pictures of) that would indicate that the preference is for that. Though I guess you can argue that due to lack of supply that the cost is increased.

Cost (more accurately price) indicates what is called a revealed preference. Actually a revealed preference is precisely what I am trying to point out here. There is a revealed preference for urban homes which is indicated by the higher price.

The broader point I am trying to make is that if the main appeal of suburban living is lower cost (rather than the actual suburban lifestyle) this is addressable not necessarily by expanding suburbs but by addressing the costs of urban living. In fact that would be better if it were really true that urban living is preferred.

In practice though I am sure many people would choose suburban living even if costs were equal to an urban environment. But the price difference does indicate that one (urban environments) is in higher demand than the other (suburban environments)

Europe doesn’t have suburbs like the USA does. In California if you drive an hour you’re in the suburbs. In Germany if you drive an hour you’re in another country.

What I have seen in my travels is that those cafés and bakeries are not all that expensive in places where they are the norm. They occupy an environment where they have serious competition from truly comparable businesses, and a larger potential clientele. That brings market forces into play, which means they are more directly incentivized to compete on price and make it up on volume, while keeping quality high.

Compare with the Great Harvest Bread location a mile or two down the street from my dad's house. (It's a chain, I believe mostly concentrated in the midwestern USA.) The bread is overpriced and hastily made. The only reason they can command such high prices is that there's nowhere else anywhere nearby that makes bread that doesn't come in a plastic bag is because they can position themselves as a sort of luxury good. But they probably also need to have high prices because people only buy bread there for special occasions.

> The bread is overpriced and hastily made.

This is contradicted by this:

> But they probably also need to have high prices because people only buy bread there for special occasions.

It is not overpriced, it is prices according to its supply and demand.

Supply and demand is the simplest possible model for pricing, and only applies in certain contexts.

The argument I'm trying to make comes close to suggesting that their bread functions as a sort of Veblen good. Which is an example of a kind of product whose pricing dynamics are slightly more complex than can be neatly explained by the econ 101 model.

Supply and demand applies in all contexts. A veblen good simply has a different demand curve, but I would need to see more evidence that bread of all things would be a Veblen good, which are due to their (presumed) utility for displaying status.

Or maybe I do not hang out in circles where bread is considered a status symbol.

Bread from a bakery is a luxury? In Germany there is a bakery on every corner and a large, fresh loaf of bread costs under 1€!

> bread from bakeries are (relative) luxuries

They are not expensive. The price is comparable or the same as any other bread.

The problem isn’t cultural, it’s governmental. It costs america so much more to build and maintain transit that it’s not a very attractive alternative to cars. My state just spent $6 billion on a 16 mile light rail line through the suburbs that’s not even grade separated: https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2021/02/26/purpl....

The DC metro, which I used to ride, is extremely well funded. It’s actually regressed since it was built in the late 1970s, with the automated train control (which used to provide a smooth ride) having to be shut down due to poor maintenance. Headways are now 33% longer than they were a decade ago. (Well even longer now due to covid related collapse.) Trip times are slower—everything takes 10-20% more time than advertised.

Or look at Biden’s build back better plan. Amtrak would get $30 billion and build nothing: https://www.slowboring.com/p/amtrak-should-bring-in-foreign-...

> Because as Henry Grabar points out, while $30 billion should be a game-changing investment in the Northeast Corridor, the actual plan from Amtrak is to spend about $30 billion on one tunnel under the Hudson River.

Americans are not as dumb as Europeans think. If we could build light rail for $30 million/mile like Germany, instead of $350 million per mile, that stupid 16 mile light rail could be a 160 mile network all around the Maryland suburbs. That would be a totally different value proposition. The high costs mean that

Afaict, the primary driver of non-walkable suburbs is neighborhood layout, which is driven by maximizing house:land ratio.

I live in a suburban master planned development now that oriented itself around the residential-commercial interface.

Having previously lived in an urban core, it's not too much of a downgrade. Sure, you inevitably trade local for chain (boo!), because that's who the anchor tenants originally were. But over the decades the smaller spaces have filled out with organic stuff.

Yeah this is the kind of layout I prefer.

This honestly doesn’t sound too bad compared to the soul-crushing suburbs by me. But, the problem I usually find with all suburbs is that you have to get in a car to get to even one bar (let alone having a choice). Is that the case there too?

> There's no reason (besides inertia)

And the fact that re-building cities is really expensive and hard and we're (somewhat) stuck with what we have.

That's inertia.

My wife and I currently live in Providence, RI (by way of NYC). We highly value walkability, but feel like we've aged out of tolerating some other big-city "annoyances." When Americans think of "suburbs" they think of culs-de-sac and arterials, but it doesn't have to be that way. New England is dotted with "small towns" that are basically just suburbs of Providence and/or Boston that are laid out on a grid -- with a main street, walkable amenities, and access to commuter rail. In St. Louis, where I'm from, there are half-a-dozen inner ring suburbs that meet this description (minus the commuter rail), so I assume it's the same in most cities.

There's a kind of exurban suburb that was built in the 1990s that has an outsized influence on our conception of suburban living. But there are lots of older "suburbs" that are actually quite pleasant.

I'm willing to bet most, if not all, of those wonderful suburbs were built before WW2 and really before the car itself. Aside from a literal handful of experiments, we haven't built places like that in a long time here in the US.

My current neighborhood (in greater silicon valley area) was built in 1997-98 and I can walk to pretty much anything I need.

That seems mostly the norm in my experience. These HN threads always talk about suburbs where you need to drive 10 minutes on a highway to get to the nearest store but to be honest I don't know where those are, I don't think I've seen areas like that.

Even arterials and cul-de-sacs can be great if you build them that way. Many Dutch post-war neighbourhoods are built around arterials and cul-de-sacs, but they all have sidewalks, independent bicycle paths, and each neighbourhood gets a shopping center and 3 primary schools (protestant, catholic and public, because that's how that works here) within walking distance.

These neighbourhoods are denser than American suburbs of course; houses come in rows, and you get a front and back yard, but not an entire plot of land around your home. But that also means plenty of kids to play with. In the street, because often cars are required to drive at walking pace and playing kids have right of way.

I grew up in a street like that. I hated it, and preferred a real city, but it's pretty comfortable living.

I'm not sure how universal this is, though. A friend of mine lives in Holliston, MA (a small town that's about a 45 minute drive from Boston), but still drives most places locally, even just to go to downtown, park, and walk from there. The problem isn't the distance, it's that the roads were not designed with pedestrians in mind. The route from their house to downtown has mostly no sidewalks, and roads with enough traffic on them that walking along the shoulder doesn't feel safe. In the winter it's impossible to walk, with plowed snow piled up along the only places you could potentially walk.

There's a lot of that in New England, too.

They aren’t all really that expensive, near Seattle consider Aberdeen or similar small old mill towns that have reasonable small urban areas next to housing. Farther away, Walla Walla or even Spokane. But the areas are economically depressed, the schools aren’t very good, they are unlikely to become WFH tech centers.

If you're willing to get a bike, it can greatly increase your range while allowing for more space. I'm in Baltimore now in a sfh and still within riding distance of everything in the city

Paris is the Walkability by definition city. 20-min ride on a regular bike, and you've crossed half of it.

Lots to dislike, but I love Paris human side ^^

Thats Paris centre however, where about 600k quite rich people live. Ile-de-Paris is a bit larger, and is where most of us reside. We're happy if the RER is only 20m away from our house and work.

Ile de France is bigger than LA, it's not small.

For me, the COVID has really opened my eyes to how little I need walkability. My preferences completely flipped from "I want walkscore 75+ and ideally 90+" to "I want walkscore to be <15"

I used to be very pro-transit and walking (didn't even learn to drive till 30), and even as I was not walking as much just before COVID, I reflexively remained so. When most things closed nearby (so we went out less and finally discovered food delivery), I realized I don't really need to walk places - I don't miss them. With spotty reopenings, when some places were indoors and some outdoor-only in bad weather, we drove to go out and turns out it's much better (unless you plan to drink a lot). With more grocery shopping, walking to groceries was out of the question and turns out, even in a dense city, driving for the same amount of time to get groceries is so much more convenient. Etc.

I can see benefits of a park nearby, but that's about it... and then again, in overall less walkable areas parks are less crowded, larger, and also cleaner/nicer.

EDIT: reading other comments I guess I can see benefits for kids, although only with more old-style parenting. I could take a subway by myself when I was 10 or so, and walk around everywhere obviously, so that gives a lot of independence you cannot have in suburbs.

Automobile travel is nice in rural areas but it introduces too many problems for cities with any sort of density.

Traffic, noise pollution, air quality, and auto accidents are all things the unfortunate city dweller is forced to live with because cars are given free reign on streets.

Cities need to convert their freeways to toll roads and limit the registration of vehicles to what the infrastructure can actually handle.

If people prefer driving, that may just cause more people to move away.

I certainly drove more during the pandemic (though this may have been because I stopped using Lyft due to safety concerns), but I never stopped appreciating living in a walkable neighborhood. Certainly openings were a bit spotty here and there, but having a small grocery nearby, as well as a few restaurants with outdoor seating, was a boon to our mental health while otherwise stuck at home most of the time. We got food delivered more than usual, to be sure, but that still felt like a supplement, not the main mode of eating.

But "small places nearby" were also closed... that is what made me realize how little I need them. Having to drive to more distant places, something I previously might not have preferred, turned out to be much more convenient, something I didn't expect... try it ;)

I grew up in the country, used to live in the suburbs, and currently live in Chicago.

Yes, we could afford to have a lot more space that we personally own if we lived in a less dense area. But no, I don't miss it. I don't feel cooped up in a small space where I live right now. Nor did I feel cooped up living in a college dormitory, for that matter.

I do feel cooped up in a small space when I'm staying with friends and family who have palatial homes out in the suburbs for any length of time. My sense of how much space I have at my disposal changes drastically when I'm in an environment where the only space I'm allowed to use freely is space I'm personally owning or renting.

It hits my kids even worse. For them, one backyard, even a big one, is simply not enough room to run.

Sure a small backyard isn't great... But I live in a major city and instead we just walk to the enormous park, which is way bigger than any backyard.

It's a very different mindset that I thought I'd hate but now that I'm here I couldn't imagine it any other way.

The enormous parks here were closed multiple times over the past 2 years. I'll never depend on such amenities again because they can be taken at will.

How did they close them? In Toronto they put up caution tape. The people walked through it. They placed reasonable restrictions, and the unreasonable ones were ignored. Honestly one of the biggest benefits of the pandemic (and there were very, very few) was the transition of classrooms, community and family events to the parks. I've never seen them so active and busy and it gave a liveliness to the neighbourhood that was refreshing.

> Sure a small backyard isn't great... But I live in a major city and instead we just walk to the enormous park, which is way bigger than any backyard.

In the suburbs you typically have both. We have a yard to play in (not huge, but a good yard with a few trees to climb, a treehouse, etc) and we have a large park about 1 minute away on foot. It's not only the major cities that have parks.

> isn't just people optimizing for the size of a house and low cost of living

An important point!

I moved recently to a small village from a large town in the UK mainly so that I could afford a good size of house compared to what I could afford in the town. Despite never considering my self a "city boy", I have found the move very challenging. I initially thought it was isolating because of lockdown but then realised that the pace here is very slow and I find the lack of activity troubling. I just have to get used to driving to everything, something I have never had to do before.

The driving aspect is the main thing that kills any daydreaming I do about moving to the Scottish Highlands. It doesn't stop the daydreaming, however.

Inverness might be a reasonable middle ground between the remoteness of the Highlands and the walkability of a city.

Thank you! I was mulling Inverness and looking a bit closer, it does seem like a bit of both.

Also Perth

My friend moved to a little village in Scotland. Super cute, walkable, near the Spey, easy drive to a city or two for a flight back to civilization. Great schools, no healthcare costs. The equity he cashed out from selling his place in California bought the nicest place in town for cash. He’s really liking it. I’ve gone to visit a few times. Makes me reconsider spending so much for my shoebox house in SF.

Just like any important decision in life, you need to ask him about it after 1 year, 5 years, 10 years.

Honeymoon phases are common.

I couldn’t live in a small village - I’ve tried it, I found it suffocating, the gossip mill, the forced friendships with people who you otherwise wouldn’t associate with, the never ending charity drives and village hall events that make you want to crawl under a rock. (Young Farmer’s Association Charity Raffle! Over 55’s only!)

I now live a long way from anyone, in a cabin deep in the forest, about 10km from the nearest village over inhospitable terrain, 2km from the nearest trackway along windy and wild paths I cut along the side of a sheer valley. We don’t get visitors, apart from those that we invite.

It wasn’t the lack of activity that I found troubling - rather, the village people, filling their days with forced smiles and petty vendettas. Every time I sat down it felt like someone would knock on the door and ask me to sign their petition.

Here, it’s just me, my wife, and the wildlife.

The pace here is frantic, as surviving and thriving off-grid is a lot of work. I smile and nod at the villagers when I drive by on the weekly provisioning run, and that’s enough for me.

I think a city almost has more in common with being alone than it does with a small settlement - in a city, the crowds allow anonymity and this creates a virtual space for the individual. In the boonies, there is actual space for the individual. In a village, all is cloying, suffocating togetherness. Great if you like that kind of thing, but it really wasn’t for me.

No offense, but presumably your parents did the same thing when they had you for similar reasons. This is simply what happens when you have kids.

However, there are separate but related trends which the articles points out:

   - The south's quality of living has drastically increased over the last 20~30 years
   - People aren't seeing state localized benefits from high state taxes (IMHO Illinois might the worst tax:benefit ratio in the country)
   - Work from home acceleration has accelerated lower cost of living with high quality of life centers (see -> the south)

P.S.- I grew up in the north shore Chicago. /wave

>People aren't seeing state localized benefits from high state taxes

I always think this, and then I leave Illinois and immediately notice that the infrastructure in neighboring states (Indiana and Missouri, namely) is abhorrent. I think it's just all relative.

Its too bad we can't build new places like this, and make this a more affordable option for people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

It’s funny. Every human could tell you the things that make a place pleasant. (Walkability, cute shops and cafes, green space) And yet we have people who’s whole job is “planning” and we get spaces that are aggressively unpleasant. No sidewalks let alone dedicated waking paths. Strip malls everywhere. It baffles me.

> And yet we have people who’s whole job is “planning” and we get spaces that are aggressively unpleasant.

These things are related. The person who's job is "planning," the one who demands that your store be surrounded by a sprawling parking lot, is neither the person who would build the store, nor shop there.

I enjoy watching a couple of shows about home renovations that take place in the US (some twin brothers and love or list it, or something like that). Two things always strike me as odd as an European:

* People on that show always needs a shit load of space. Especially in the kitchens, for some reason. Sometimes they are a couple without kids or maybe have one kid but they want 2 ovens? And a huge island is a must. Most of the kitchens in those shows are bigger than the average living room in my country.

* Houses made out of wood and walls that you can punch through. This is a different matter though.

Exactly. Those houses always strike me as simultaneously extravagant and cheap quality. A weird combination.

Do Europeans not cook all that much? I imagine most suburban US families cook most of their meals, both for cost reasons and because taking children to a restaurant is viewed as a chore here.

Even without kids, my partner and I try to cook often. We have a decent-sized kitchen by urban US standards (it would probably be considered on the small side if we lived in the suburbs), but could still stand to have more counter space for food prep (and cabinet space for storage). Agree that 2 ovens is a bit much, but a huge island can be incredibly useful.

I personally don’t cook but luckily for me my girlfriend loves it, and even though we have a decent kitchen now that we bought a place, she seemed to do fine in smaller kitchens. And I’ve never met anyone with 2 ovens.

And even though kitchens are way smaller than in the US (or at least the average one in those shows), another difference is that we have the washer in the kitchen (almost no one has a drier though, and after using one in London I wonder why anyone would use one for anything other than sheets and towels, those things destroy clothes) and usually the kitchen was a separate room (due to the smell, I guess?), but nowadays an “open plan” has grown a lot in demand.

Putting the washing machine in the kitchen is just a result of limited space.

Houses in Britain with enough space will put it a different room, often called a utility room, scullery or laundry room. That would be difficult to find in London.

(Apartments in Denmark will put it in the bathroom, since the building regulations require a floor drain in case of leaks.)

I would guess Europeans cook more than Americans, since the average disposable income is less in Europe. Beyond that, I'm unwilling to generalize over Europe. HN people are unlikely to be typical on either continent.

I do know a European with two ovens. It's very unusual, but they really like cooking. Even so, they only use the second oven rarely -- perhaps roasting meat in one, and baking in the other. The additional oven was installed after seeing two ovens in a kitchen on a trip to the USA.

A kitchen much like a server is designed for peak use, not average use. having the space to prep and cook thanksgiving for the extended family or host a party is valuable even if you need maybe half of it on most days.

Being on the north side of Chicago, you're probably already in one of the "move-to" and not the "move-away" from areas.

It's expensive, but let's be serious it's nothing compared to the coast – with a good quality of life (as the reasons you stated).

By "move-to", not sure if you mean Chicago overall, or the north side in particular, but if the former Chicago is growing slower than the national average. 2% last decade (vs 8% nationally) https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/8/12/22622062/chicago-cens...

I had the impression Chicago was actually losing people, but that info was old, from the previous decade where it lost 7%.

North Chicago, or really any of the nicer parts.

Chicago is a weird place for various political and economic reasons (I’m from Minneapolis, so just a neighbor), and was not growing pre-pandemic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that trend reverse given its relative LCOL - especially with the Denver/Austins of the world no longer being very affordable.

I think the important part is not where you decided to live, but the fact you had the freedom to seriously considering moving.

I think people are social creatures and will always choose to have social interactions. The difference between high and low density living is whether you can choose the absence of these interactions, even temporarily.

I live in a city and it suits me just fine overall, but I also need some of the "I don't want to deal with loads of people and their drama right now" time to remain sane.

I live in the burbs. Here's my metrics relative to yours

* Kid's school is technically walking distance, bike ride more reasonably

* Walking distance from grocery store, doctor's office, dentist

* Kid can walk to friends' house

* Can ride my bike to a conservation area with camping

* Lakes are all around, but not really fair since I live in FL

* Multiple outdoor parks within walking/biking distance

* Neighborhood/community swimming pool

* Walking distance to gym

* Extremely low crime rate

I'm not saying you should move, especially because of the close to family bit. Nor am I suggesting most of suburbia is like where I live. But if you seek out suburban areas that are designed to be in proximity to things, you will find them.

Chicago, and the rest of Illinois, is in the middle of an ongoing fiscal crisis with no clear path to a solution. Will you continue to stay while taxes increase and government services decrease?

At least for me, still way way cheaper than the coasts so no plans on leaving yet.

I found the difference in land price appreciation in other more expensive areas (specifically Western and Southern US) more than made up for the extra up front costs. Although it is not "coast" vs "not coast", as NJ/CT land prices changes were in a similar situation to IL land prices.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Different people value different things. You prioritize your kids school and proximity to important destinations and so that neighborhood makes a lot of sense.

When your kids move away after college, does that change the calculation much for you? Both of my kids are away at college and so I'm looking at where I live and what kind of life I want and am leaning more and more to moving further out of the city (I'm already in the suburbs).

Suburbs are very unfriendly for the elderly compared to cities.

The ideal suburbanite is an upper-middle-class person in their 30s–50s in good health who really likes driving their large car and has hobbies they can do individually from inside their own home (e.g. woodworking, gardening), and doesn’t mind that life is miserable* there for their kids. Everyone else is more or less a second-class citizen.

* Edit: suburbs are unpleasant for kids because anyone who can’t drive is completely dependent on someone else (for kids, usually a parent) for transportation: few destinations are within walking/cycling distance, buses are few and infrequent, in general non-car transportation is discouraged by the urban design. Everything is harder to get to, and there are far fewer resources available for people with particular interests.

Why do you automatically assume that kids are miserable in the suburbs? My kids rather like running around in our backyard, use our pool everyday in the summer, and having tons of friends on the block.

At the same time, I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment, having no yard to play in, etc.

This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch. It's okay to think differently. I'm glad you enjoy living in the city! Luckily, this country is big and there's enough space for all of us!

It wildly varies by suburb. The one I grew up in had few-to-no kids on the block, and even if there had been, there were only a couple of small, underwhelming parks within walking/biking distance. Comparing notes with other people, this seems like the more common experience of the suburbs.

The disdain (at least for me) comes when you do the math and realized how absurdly subsidized the suburban lifestyle is.

Who is doing the subsidizing? You hear about cities annexing suburbs to access the tax base. If suburbs were a drain, wouldn't they be doing whatever the opposite of annexing is?

A few of the wealthiest suburbs in the country are enclaves of people who rely economically on the city but don’t want their property taxes to pay for poor people’s amenities and services, so carve out a separate municipality. Cities want to re-absorb these, because the current setup is grossly unfair.

This is not representative of suburbs in general. Many suburbs, especially older ones whose infrastructure construction (but not maintenance) was heavily state-subsidized, are struggling and financially unsustainable, leaving their (less wealthy) residents in deep trouble in the long term.

After asking this question I started reading more about it. The biggest subsidization is about mortgage interest tax deductions. I never thought about that as a subsidy, but I suppose it is. They should end it.

Yes, and in California Prop 13 is an even bigger distortion.

==This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch.==

It's also out of touch to assume every family in "the city" lives in a 2 bedroom apartment with no yard. Lots of families in my city (Chicago) live in 3 story walk-ups, duplex-downs or even single family homes which all have yards.

Perhaps we could all be a little more open-minded about how other people live.

A 3 story walk up is going to be a 2 br apartment in most cases, and may have a shared outdoor space but it’ll cost as much as a large house in the suburbs with a big garage and 2 big lawns.

==but it’ll cost as much as a large house in the suburbs with a big garage and 2 big lawns.==

Based on what metric?

Here [1] is a three-bedroom apartment in one of Chicago's nicest areas (Ravenswood/Lincoln Square), with heat/water included, right by the Brown Line for $2,100/month.

Find me the large house in the suburbs that will run you $2,100/month. Don't forget to include the 20% down payment, on-going maintenance, utilities, and an additional car.

[1] https://www.apartments.com/4742-n-oakley-ave-chicago-il/4d99...

> disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch

Have you yourself been a child growing up in places of different density? I personally did (my time spent mostly in one of the nicest suburbs in southern California, but alternating for a couple months every year with a walkable small Mexican city), and then since then have been in cities (where my small kids are now growing up).

Are you sure I am the “out of touch” one here? Have you ever tried living with kids in a 2-bedroom apartment? It’s really not a big deal (though note, there are also plenty of larger apartments/condos and single-family houses in cities, and plenty of cities around the world without outrageous housing prices). In the city you might not play in your yard, but you can play at the nearby playground or park with the many neighborhood kids.

I think you underestimate to what degree people design their life to provide what they think is the best thing for their kids.

A lot of people ended up in the suburbs because of their kids, not in spite of them. Proximity to other kids, organized sports, good schools, after-school activities, etc... It can be very car-centric as you pointed out, but when there are other families on your block going to the same things, you quickly figure out how to car pool to share the burden.

There's more than one way to live a great life with kids.

Kids like suburbs just fine before they understand there's a big world out there outside the family unit. Often things fall apart after that phase.

> I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment

OK but that's a problem with a limited imagination, not how your kids would actually feel. Do you know that 90% of families in the world live in close quarters, in places like 2 bedroom apartments (or -- gasp! -- smaller)? Do you think all these kids really hate their lives because of the size of their apartments? Do you think young kids even realize that they "should" prefer a 3000sqft house to an apartment?

> this country is big and there's enough space for all of us!

Sure there's space, but space isn't really the issue. The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable. Future generations are going to look back on our settlement patterns and think we were truly insane, hundreds of millions of people each with multiple personal cars spread out from each other such that cars are necessary to do even the most minor tasks. It's taken some incredibly opaque collective blinders for us to have ended up thinking suburbs are a responsible way of living.

"The negative social and environmental impact of a suburban lifestyle is unsustainable." That's a problem with a limited imagination. Cars are becoming electric. There are things called towns that exist in suburbia and can be reached easily by bike or walking.

The environmental impact of suburban lifestyle is not limited to personal transportation carbon emissions. It also involves huge amounts of expensive (in land and resources) infrastructure, and individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint than other people.

> individual suburbanites have a much larger resource footprint.

Suburbs have higher median personal income than urban cores; so that individual suburbanites consume more resources isn't surprising.

These people would also consume more resources if they lived in urban cores.

The same people would consume dramatically fewer resources (each, individually) and cause dramatically less environmental destruction if they lived in a smaller personal space with far less bulky/expensive per-person infrastructure and used shared rather than individual services (e.g. transportation).

The problem is solved in my suburbia since the county has resisted any sort of building for the past 50 years. Also, the new suburbia housing I see being built, is much more concentrated. Seems people like houses but don't care as much about big yards.

My suburbia is trending the same way. Almost all new construction is on a lot of 5000 sq ft max. Most is closer to 3000 or multi-family. The trouble is that the old way of zoning still prevails and all of this semi-dense housing sits multiple miles away from the retail and job centers in the town. Everyone still needs one car per working adult, so really nothing of substance has changed.

> That's a problem with a limited imagination

Only if you examine the problem so superficially you can't think of any other cost of personal vehicles than burning gas.

Cars burning gasoline isn't the only or even the smallest problem with everyone needing to own a car. Think of the supply chain required to produce, deliver, and dispose of personal vehicles for everyone. Think of the civil infrastructure required to enable everyone to have a personal car. Think of the human cost that humans being terrible, irresponsible drivers takes on society. For starters.

> There are things called towns that exist in suburbia and can be reached easily by bike or walking.

There is a thing called weather in much of the US and world that makes this unrealistic. Further it's disingenuous to claim it's feasible to walk to a town to do your groceries from a suburb. You're going to need to walk at least 2-3 miles (best case) to a grocery store and you're not going to be able to carry more than a couple days' worth of stuff, less for a full family.

The suburban way of life is going to crash and burn, spectacularly. It is running on credit it can never pay back. At least 2 generations have covered their eyes and ears and yelled "naaa naaa we don't believe it". It's time to acknowledge that we can't carry on that "tradition'. Either we voluntarily adapt, or our surroundings will force the change.

I've lived in countries where families living in 2 bedroom apartments is the norm, and sure, they don't hate their lives. But they live in them because they can't afford more. The families I knew all aspired to a more suburban home.

I grew up in the DC suburbs. The closest pool was a few miles away, so required a car. The schools were all miles away, so required car/bus. By the time I got to high school, most of my friends lived miles away, so for a few years, seeing them required transportation. Grocery store required a car. Heck, even the closest corner store required a car. Fortunately, my mom was able to stay home for many years, and when she did return to work, she went into teaching, so that transport was readily available. For kids with 2 working parents, getting around kinda sucked - it impacted their ability to get to/from school off-hours, get to sports, etc.

I still live in the DC suburbs, but picked an area with a lot more walkability. Walkable grocery store (plus pharmacy, coffee, dining). Schools are walkable. Bike paths and walking trails everywhere. Golf course out my back door. Walk to work. Walk to Metro. But, the median home price is higher here than my parents' area, and that's in an area that's already expensive.

When I was a kid in a suburban/rural area I used a bicycle to solve all those problems, besides groceries, which my parents took care of.

When I was old enough, I did as well. Didn't help for some things... middle school was ~7 miles from home and across several major arterial roads - making that ride in winter wouldn't have been safe (would have been in the dark on way to school).

Fwiw, I hated growing up in a suburb precisely due to the inability to get anywhere without being driven. I had to rely on my parents any time I wanted to see my friends. Having a back yard to play in wasn't much of a consolation.

I raised (or rather shared in raising) a kid in a 2BR apartment in Manhattan with no yard.

We also happened to have a weekend/summer cottage in the suburbs. It was near the beach and had a yard and bikes and all those wonderful suburban pleasures.

He absolutely begged us every weekend to let him stay in the city where he could see his friends by subway/walking, didn't need us to drive him anywhere, had freedom etc.

> having no yard to play in

You don't need a yard as much when you have parks :-)

Or neighborhood play areas, where they can play with class mates.

Evidently it's somewhat odd, but the suburb we bought in has an elementary school and middle school built right in the middle of it. It's very walkable for a large portion of the neighborhood (though, it's the outer Seattle area - so the rain does keep many from walking for a large portion of the year, anyway).

I certainly don't think we put our child's mental health second. I'm not sure how to quantify that for a stranger on the internet, nor do I feel the need to... I am in the 30-50 range, though.

The thought of living in Seattle, personally, is abysmal. It smells of piss, all of the time. The homeless have taken over and there are no decent programs to help them out, nor do there seem to be any effective programs on the horizon. City corruption seems to take care of that. Business is taking a nose dive. There are no grocery stores. Food deserts are a very real thing. Rent is unimaginable. You can buy in the suburbs for a fraction of the cost of renting in downtown, easily. People in the area are not the most outgoing in the first place (the colloquialism is the Seattle Freeze), but add into that the normal distance of city dwelling and you are almost robotic to each other. While public transport is lacking (to say the least), it is there and available from these horrible suburbs you have warned us about.

The dream of city living seems, honestly, to be for the VERY rich or the young and naive, to be honest =/

EDIT: spelling

Have you ever actually lived in the city of Seattle? Your description is a caricature that doesn't really exist. Particularly amusing is the idea of food deserts here. What parts of the city suffer from this? Where I live, I can walk to 3 major supermarkets, a produce market, a weekend farmers market, countless cafes, bakeries, delis, restaurants... And somehow I manage to breathe over the constant smell of piss. Lol.

My kids love the suburbs. There's almost no crime. They can bike into the hills, forests, lakes, downtown, friends houses, the mall. Schools are great. One of my friends raised his kid in SF before finally moving out to suburbia when she was a teenager, stayed in the house most of the time. Now she's got a great circle of friends and is never in the house. Cities are for single adults trying to find a mate.

Are all American cities so crime ridden that kids can't just bike around the neighborhood?

> Edit: suburbs are unpleasant for kids because anyone who can’t drive is completely dependent on someone else

You're operating on some limited/different definition of suburb.

We stay in the suburb precisely because my kid has multiple friends within walking distance.

Can you fill me in on sth? Where Ive lived in Europe, the onlt car-only areas are burbs. Small towns tend to be walkable too, on account of being small. Now, not every small town has a wide variety of shops of course, but most things are bikeable. The only things that are not where I now live are places I'd need a car anyway (furniture, construction, etc). I thought it'd be the same for small town America, but I guess you're saying it's not?

You're right, it's not like that in small-town America: small towns aren't walkable in the US.

There aren't many walkable or bikeable areas in the US, and those that exist are in a handful of large cities. Many US cities aren't very walkable, e.g. Los Angeles (the second largest US city).

What would you think of a combination of high density and large green space? Lay out a city like a fractal with the interior being dense, but you're always close to woodlands, open fields (farms?), or parks. I know zoning boards are incapable of maintaining such a structure without constantly making exceptions for developers, but what would you think of such an arrangement?

That's not far from London, a pretty dense city as they go, but also one that just about, technically speaking, counts as a forest thanks to the number of trees [1]. I live in one of the densest boroughs of London, on a main road, and I've got ample access to parks and green space.

[1] https://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/did-you-know-tha...

Toronto is very similar. Outside of the very dense core, but still very much in Toronto proper, you can get lost in forests and ravines and have to be on the lookout for coyote!

> I know zoning boards are incapable of maintaining such a structure without constantly making exceptions for developers,

Also not a lot of undeveloped cities either to try it out.

For what its worth, something similar (but less dramatic in scale) was already tried before [1]. People tended to not like it. The park space made it a lot harder to get around. You lose the "its ony three block away" nature of cities when you add lots of dead space, and things like rain cover along sidewalks become a problem.

One of the major things that make city streets "walkable" and enjoyable is stuff happening on the street frontage. The complexity of various shops, eateries and city amenities abutting the sidewalk mean there is reason to be there and things to do. You lose that when you recess a building.

I think a much better approach is just to cede some land to be in-city-grid parks, and take over some minor roads and alleys as green-walks where the road is reduced (eg. curved to force slow traffic) or removed, and theres lots of trees and gardens and walkways. Basically get that green space from incremental reclamation, and protection of existing opens spaces. Leave actual city structure as it is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park

I think the point of this change is you can now make a personal decision based on factors other than your commute.

I want to also note there is a lot in between a dense neighborhood and having no people around.

most people move to hcol areas due to jobs, they don't really have much of a community or family in those areas, so it is an easy decision for many to move away if they could. I myself have lived in dense cities, although i enjoyed the walkability of everything, i also felt myself missing time with nature, to enjoy the peace that life offers etc... and weirdly enough felt more disconnected to humanity living in the midst of a lot of humans.

> Moving to the suburbs would find us losing much of that freedom that comes with living in a dense neighborhood.

This does not make sense. Yes, moving to the suburbs and not using a car would lose much of freedom, but it is not how you live in the suburbs...

When you live the suburbs (with a car or multiple cars), you have way more choices to grocery stores, doctor's offices, friends' houses, public parks, lakes, etc.

I will say, if anybody cares a lot about freedom, would want to live in the suburbs. The whole idea of prioritizing walkability is against freedom.

Walkability means limiting choices, not expanding choices. You are basically shrinking the area of 15 min driving distance (radius of eight miles) to the area of 15 min walking distance (radius of three-quarters of a mile). No matter how dense you set in the area of 15 min walking distance, it will never be comparable to the area of 15 min driving distance (around x100 area space).

In addition, you gain more freedom when you live in the suburbs with a backyard and a garage (or a shed in the backyard). You have lots of things you can do (like home lab, wood workshop, etc.) which aren't available to you if you live in a small house or apartment in the city.

If you chose not to own a car, that's a totally separate topic.

> When you live the suburbs (with a car or multiple cars), you have way more choices to grocery stores, doctor's offices, friends' houses, public parks, lakes, etc. Walkability means limiting choices, not expanding choices.

Walkability doesn't strictly limit choices, especially if you consider walking+biking+transit since they go hand-in-hand. E.g. compared to a car-oriented suburb, personally I certainly have more food options within an X-minute accessible radius, but I don't have as many nature options. It's a tradeoff.

I also don't need to drive, which is probably the freedom OP was talking about, and one that both of us value even if some others like yourself don't. I like that having a no-car option means it's easier to be healthy and active when walking and biking are practical choices for day-to-day errands, that I don't have to think about parking or traffic for popular events, that I'm more likely to bump into friends on the street, and that I don't have to think about designed drivers when alcohol is involved. You may not value any of that, but some people do, and so they prefer living somewhere with that choice.

It's fine if you prefer living with a car, but it's rather silly to say it "does not make sense" to consider it freeing to live in a place that doesn't require one given that many people make that choice.

Did you see my last sentence? If you chose to not using a car, it's a different topic. But not using a car does not give you more freedom.

Also, your thinking reflects a typical young person live alone on this forum. Not much need to be said.

> Did you see my last sentence? If you chose to not using a car, it's a different topic. But not using a car does not give you more freedom.

Yes I did, but if that's your counter-point, then I fear you've misunderstood this thread: it was about how where you live, not whether to have a car. Buying a car when you don't have one clearly adds options, and avoiding having a car when you need one clearly restricts your options. But that's obvious, and nobody was claiming otherwise. The point is you can't live without a car anywhere, and there exist people who are not you who prefer the freedom of living in places where they don't need a car (even if do have a car!).

> Also, your thinking reflects a typical young person live alone on this forum. Not much need to be said.

Yikes, "I suspect you belong to a specific demographic" should never be a reason to dismiss someone's opinion out of hand. I hope you see how disrespectful that is, and how it closes the door on mutual understanding. (Your assumption isn't even right, BTW.) Otherwise, I suppose our discussion ends here.

Also in Chicago (northwest side). After our kids were born, we stayed for many of the same reasons.

+1 on school within walking distance. Walking to-and-from each day with my son has been an amazing experience. A big surprise for us has been the sense of community within our neighborhood and school.

You like your Strong Town, what living was like before cars ruined everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o

I grew up in the north suburbs of Milwaukee. Did you consider it? Outside of keeping your kids in the same schools (and the schools north of Milwaukee are great), it hits all the same marks and it’s a LOT cheaper.

I love visiting Milwaukee, and Wisconsin in general for the sheer amount of outdoor activities. Unfortunately it would send us the wrong direction with respect to visiting family. I want to spend less time in a car in general.

Have you considered remote/teleconference family visits? The last two years have shown that it's perfectly possible to lead a normal social life on Zoom, etc. There isn't really any need to get into a car and drive several hours just to see someone.

You can't hug someone through zoom, so that's basically a non-starter for a very large portion of people.

It's not. How do even chat in a group of say, 4-6 people or more? Bigger in person groups naturally diverge and converge in real time, while with Zoom you're either completely separated or have people taking turns speaking in a very unnatural fashion that kind of works for business meetings but not for casual social interaction.

And some of us in the burbs wouldn’t mind moving down there too for the same reasons.

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