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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

A lot of upperwardly mobile, ambitious people don't realize this, or they generally understand it only in terms of chastising their high school peers who stayed home. If you build a society based on the assumption everyone will simply move and re-skill to the regions with economic opportunity, you get a lot of regions of bitter people who stayed behind somewhere and watched their local economy get destroyed by trade deals and technological advances, and that's how you get an anti-globalization populist political movement.

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Two sets of assumptions, though:

* The "stay behind" terminology is both evocative and biased. I didn't "stay behind". I moved away several times, thousands of miles, and lived in other places that ambitious people live, and then moved back to within 10 miles of where I grew up because the quality of life is better here. I can afford more, I have cultural amenities like world-class music and art, I'm near family and old friends as well as new friends, and people aren't all totally consumed by their work. The "upwardly mobile ambitious" set can frankly get stultifyingly boring and disconnected. I like having friends in construction, non-profits, pet services, etc.

* Like many Americans who really do "stay behind", I contribute to elder care in my family. A lot of people stay put because they need to care for someone, and America does not make it easy to get vulnerable or ill people services. This is part of what contributes to what you call the "bitterness" -- lack of support for child care, elder care, care for the mentally ill or those struggling with addiction, and in many cases it's a vicious circle: gotta stay in Podunkville to take care of grandma and your cousin 'cause you can't afford to get grandma other help and your cousin doesn't qualify for anything but SSI so he can't afford to move either, but staying in Podunkville you tank your own educational and job prospects, therefore keeping you in Podunkville forever. Sometimes it seems you can only truly be upwardly mobile if you can avoid caregiving responsibilities.

> Sometimes it seems you can only truly be upwardly mobile if you can avoid caregiving responsibilities.

This resonates strongly with me, I can't imagine being able to move around like I do when my parents become too old

It's strange the level of distrust in the west over institutions that the majority of the world find completely uncontroversial. It takes a village to raise a child, and in a world without villages families are the biggest support system most people have. I have a feeling this is another instance of the minority being louder than the majority.

America lost most of those villages that raise children and families with two parents decades ago.

> institutions that the majority of the world find completely uncontroversial

Not even remotely true. And yes, as de-facto "management", most of the blame is on these "institutions".

Where in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, etc do they not value family highly? It's the traditional culture in most countries

Part of it, as well, is that a lot of these regions that people moved out of are the suburbs. Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading.

> Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading.

Genuinely curious: what is the basis for that claim? Even if you don't cite a source.

Edit: these responses are very insightful. Thank you all for the responses.

At least American suburbs are ultra car-dependent meaning you're not walking anywhere (literally physically degrading to both you and the environment) and you do not have chance social encounters at nearly the frequency of any walking city (socially degrading).

This is not to say there aren't real benefits to life in the burbs and serious disadvantages to city life, but it's fairly evident by now that American suburbia is not the utopian dream it was sold as.

Perhaps for you city dweller's, but for the rest of us, we really like our suburbs.

Not being able to walk everywhere is literally not even a factor I look for when moving to a new area. I want quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and affordability.

I have yet to see the metropolis that checks all of those boxes, or any of them for the matter.

Pick any moderate sized city in Europe! There's no reason Americans have to choose between glass and concrete imposing megastructures a la (parts of) NYC or sprawling car-dependent and socially atomized burbs a la Houston/Phoenix etc.

We can have moderately dense, highly walkable, transit-connected, safe, clean, private, quiet, socially vibrant, affordable towns and suburbs all over the country.

We just choose not to in large part because many Americans, brainwashed by The Automobile, can't even imagine such a state of affairs.

If ZEV’s and alternative energy take off, and self driving eventually lives up to the hype, public transportation will be obsolete with the exception of dense cities.

Assuming such a future comes to pass (And that’s obviously a big question mark), desirability and property values in suburban-like neighborhoods would go up, since suburbs are no longer at a disadvantage for all those things you are arguing, like walkability, socially vibrancy, etc. A quick tap on your phone and 15 minutes later you can be at the bar or the shops or whatever else. Combine that with the remote work revolution and the future is looking great for suburbs and terrible for cities.

If anything, I’d argue Americans are ahead of the curve. In a society where self driving cars are cheap, environmentally sustainable, and always available people would naturally fan out into suburban living, with mixed-use development falling out of favor.

Unfortunately even in the optimistic case this will exacerbate many of the real insidious problems: obesity, loneliness/social atomization, extreme age and income stratification

The thing is, America is very big. For perspective, America is just shy of the square mileage of all of Europe - but America is just one country... and it has half the population of Europe.

This means things can be, and are, very spread out. It is not unusual for a person in the US to live 20-60+ miles from their work - by choice.

It is simply not possible for everyone in the US to live in or near these mega-cities. Nor do most people (by the numbers) want to live in or near these mega-cities.

When I visit mega-cities, I see overt drug usage on the streets, trash everywhere, homeless camps everywhere, parts of the city a visitor is unsafe being in... and worse. That doesn't mean these things don't exist in a suburb - but clearly they are more readily evident in a mega-city.

We can go on about externalized things like carbon emissions from the commuter cars... but every time I visit a mega-city, there's miles of idling cars just spewing emissions while in traffic.

If you like living in a mega-city - good for you. Enjoy it, as is your right. That, however, also means I get to enjoy my suburbs. We don't get to tell each other how to live.

The thing is, I grew up in a tiny town in rural Arizona. I’m amply familiar with how large our country is.

It simply does not track that because our country is huge, we must either live in uncomfortable mega-cities or in car-dependent and socially/economically/environmentally unworkable SFH sprawl. Americans overwhelmingly live in one of these two. They both have significant downsides that we truly don’t have to accept!

Americans have multiple health disasters on our hands - physical, emotional, and social - due at least in large part to the way we’ve built our living situation. It’s frankly sad that you think we have to accept it because… errr… mega cities are a bit dirty? You really think we ought to condemn generation after generation after generation of American to deteriorating quality of life because we couldn’t pull our heads out of our asses enough to build moderately sized cities with the physical infrastructure necessary to support strong communities? Good grief, what a low opinion of our country!

The problems you attribute to how American's live are not unique to America. Therefore, correlation does not equal causation.

> tiny town in rural Arizona

I don't think most of us would say a tiny rural town is anything like a suburban area surrounding a moderate/mega city.

My suburb is near one of these moderately sized cities (less than 1 million population). None of these fantasies are working well for this moderately sized city. All of the same problems exist... drugs, crime, safety, privacy, homeless, trash, exceedingly expensive... plus public transit isn't sufficient to rely on either. It's literally the worst qualities of both combined into one special dump.

And... if you truly believe suburbs are a deterioration of quality of life in America, you really need to try living in one. I can just as easily wave my hand and exclaim mega-cities are the root of all problems in this nation. In fact, I'd have a lot more evidence to support condemnation of mega-cities, including how they doom people into permanently impoverished lives.

Gee wiz, I’ve lived in a tiny rural town in AZ, moderate sized city in Northern AZ, Palo Alto, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Seattle, Raleigh, and a small town outside of Albany.

Yes, the fact that your nearby city is the worst of both worlds is my point. This is a condemnation of the way we build cities. Note that you are still near a city due to the amenities and opportunities that only cities can provide. This effect appears only to get stronger, not weaker, with time. So how can we not condemn later generations to abysmal living conditions?

It doesn’t look like either of the options on the menu in the US today.

I think you are mistaking the European way of policing with how cities are constructed. Most of the problems big cities have in the US come from high tolerance of overt crime, drug abuse, homelessness and more. - things that are mostly not tolerated elsewhere, and used to not be tolerated here either.

Half of the names of cities you have lived in are definitely mega-cities, or very close to being a mega-city. Manhattan, Brooklyn, Seattle, Palo Alto - none of these are even remotely similar to typical modern-day suburbs.

Right, and the other half is not.

I’m clearly having difficulty speaking a language you understand, so have a good rest of your evening!

> high tolerance of overt crime

I'm curious what you mean by this, given the unusually high incarceration rate in the US.

> it used to not be tolerated here either

Seems pretty evident GP lacks both historical and geographical context.

Palo Alto qualifies as a mega-city?

What exactly do you consider a "city" as opposed to a mega city?

Have you.... even lived in a city? You see miles of idling cars in cities... do you think those are city residents sitting in cars? Those cars are suburban commuters. People in cities don't own cars. You know that right? The whole point of living in a city is to avoid wasting hours of your life every day sitting in a car. What a depressing existence that is. And even so, the miles and miles of highway are an order of magnitude more - you just don't experience it the same way so it's hard to compare. Think about it.

It's not really debated that the carbon emissions of suburban life is an order of magnitude more than urban life. They just aren't comparable.

> This means things can be, and are, very spread out. It is not unusual for a person in the US to live 20-60+ miles from their work - by choice.

Probably less common, but it is not that unusual to meet someone in Europe who commutes long distance by train. Probably it will become even more common as WFH or partial WFH becomes the norm in many industries.

> The thing is, America is very big. For perspective, America is just shy of the square mileage of all of Europe - but America is just one country... and it has half the population of Europe.

Every time Americans use that argument to defend anything that is wrong with the US policy, it looks crazy to people who are looking at the situation from another place around the world.

Neither size nor population are arguments for anything. There are gigantic countries on the planet that do not have America's suburb/car problem. They not only have well-run cities, but they also build fast trains and whatnot. The main trick is in not setting up entire urbanization and infrastructure to maximize profit for real estate, automotive and oil industries by spreading out people to immense areas like in the US. So, in that regard, the people who say that the 'suburban American dream' was a scam, they are right: It can be sustained in a few very rich regions. It is unsustainable for anywhere else. Even in those rich regions it causes many problems ranging from inefficiency to traffic congestion in the cities where the suburbanites have to go to work.

> When I visit mega-cities, I see overt drug usage on the streets, trash everywhere, homeless camps everywhere

Those have nothing to do with the concept of cities but everything to do with the US policies that prevent social services with public spending in order to maximize the tax breaks for the corporations and the rich.

> We don't get to tell each other how to live.

Actually, they do - you are spending their tax money for your inefficient suburb in a much higher rate than your tax money that they are spending for their city. An inefficient system is inefficient, even if those who run that system can afford to run it - like your local prosperous suburb. For the regional infrastructure in your own locale to be affordable by your suburb, a lot of taxpayer money will have to be spent for the society-wide infrastructure. So that the costs of being integrated to the larger infrastructure can even be affordable in your region regardless of its prosperity. From the larger power network to the transportation and communication networks, from production & supply chains to judiciary, police, even defense & military.

There is no small region that can afford the modern local amenities that they have without having a much larger society making those possible through society's aggregated spending regardless of how rich the region is.

Efficiency doesn't matter when billions just goes poof. Accountability is much more important.

You are also making the mistake of using gpd as a measure of productivity. It's not, it's just a measure of nickel and diming.

That has nothing to do with the way a society's economic output is measured.

I see why you like the suburbs. But it's essentially a hoax, it's like living above your means on a bunch of credit cards - at least for most people (not all).

Affordability for a lot of suburbs is when you allow for degrading infrastructure and moving more and more towards bankruptcy of cities. Budget analysis for a lot of suburbs show very troubling trends. In essence, living in a properly maintained suburbia is not affordable. Too much street, pipe and wire per capita.

Cleanliness - it's only in appearance. The dirtiness is externalized to the environment by means of CO2 and other emissions due to personal transport. A lot of concrete and asphalt being poured require massive excavations and destruction of nature elsewhere. More than cities.

Quiet is also externalized - cars are extremely noisy and suburbia basically requires a lot of 4000 lbs metal hunks with mostly a single person inside.

Privacy is there, but it costs quite a lot in total societal costs.

> Budget analysis for a lot of suburbs show very troubling trends

Do you have real examples of this? The past few suburbs I've lived in have been very prosperous, as a counter-example anecdote. I don't doubt some towns/suburbs are having financial troubles... but so are mega-cities too. Recall all the city bailout money that got spread around during the pandemic? How much of it went to small suburbs vs. mega-cities?

> The dirtiness is externalized to the environment by means of CO2 and other emissions due to personal transport.

I disagree here. A lot of hand-waving has been done about commuter cars - but somehow we ignore the miles of idling cars stuck in traffic every day for hours in these mega-cities. Fewer individuals may own vehicles in a mega-city, but the pollution is still there.

> Quiet is also externalized - cars are extremely noisy

On a freeway maybe. Inside a neighborhood? You can't hear any traffic noises.

There's been this movement to villainize suburbs and push everyone into mega-cities. It's rather misguided at best.

> miles of idling cars stuck in traffic every day for hours in these mega-cities

A US problem, created by the very suburbia that forces people to buy cars. All those suburbans are going to go downtown to work. Naturally you get congestion.

The argument for cities is that you can build no-car-required infrastructure that is both cheaper and easier for humans. Like in Europe etc.

As long as I get to make 90% of streets in my city also dead ends to prevent through traffic, we're on the same page. I too want my neighborhood streets safe enough for kids to play in; the only reason they're not is through traffic, mostly from the suburbs.

This is a bizarre take. The suburbs of the Bay Area are often wealthier and better run than the cities. In fact, it's true of most major cities. The urban core is likely lower income and the surrounding suburbs are where the wealthy live.

Kind of weird to talk about "living on a bunch of credit cards" when it's the cities who seem to burn cash with little to show for it.

That's how it was in the 90s... please look at real estate date today :)

Cities generate the tax base and subsidize the rest. This is shown in every case. It's not good or bad, just a reality of how density works.

But look at the trend post-Covid. It's basically reversing itself. San Francisco is going be completely screwed by the exodus of workers who live in the city and commuters.

It's one big cycle, people moved to cities during WW2, then out to the suburbs during the 60's. Then back into cities in the 90's, now back out in the 2020's.

So which is it -- is SF a hell hole because it's too expensive or is it dying because real estate is getting cheaper?

SF will be fine.

Sure it’ll be fine. Just like it was “fine” in the 60-70s when it lost 30% of its population.

But with plunging tax revenue the city is going to be faced with some tough choices.

> I want quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and affordability.

Most of these are pretty cliche. New York City is one of the safest cities in the country per capita. But as with “cleanliness” is usually trotted out in a dog whistly kind of way that really is about something else. And affordability: yep. You’ve got that for a couple reasons: 1. People LIKE living in cities. Good old supply/demand. 2. As this thread is discussing, suburbs are massively subsidized to the detriment of the cities they neighbor.

> Most of these are pretty cliche. New York City is one of the safest cities in the country per capita. But as with “cleanliness” is usually trotted out in a dog whistly kind of way that really is about something else.

Calling someone's preferences cliches and dog whistles is a really lazy way to have a discussion and degrades this forum.

> New York City is one of the safest cities in the country per capita. But as with “cleanliness” is usually trotted out in a dog whistly kind of way

Having lived in other big cities that manage to collect garbage in containers, NYC's continued practice of dumping uncontained garbage on the sidewalk for collection gives it a very real non-dog-whistly feeling(/sight/odor) of dirtyness.

I just heard they were working on that. It looks like it actually started in April. Clean Curbs Pilot Program https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/site/our-work/containerized...

A step in the right direction, it sounds like.

>I have yet to see the metropolis that checks all of those boxes, or any of them for the matter.

I hate beating this drum because it's borderline stereotypical at this point, but Tokyo really should be studied because for an incredibly dense city of nearly 14 million people they manage to achieve quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy, and affordability

>I want quiet

Visit the residential neighborhoods of the largest city in the world, Tokyo, and discover that you can get quiet with density. These are not mutually exclusive items, we as American society have somehow decided that noise pollution was an acceptable feature of urban landscapes. Japan decided, as a society, that anti-social noise activities in residential areas were bad and makes sure it stays that way.

>safety

A controversial topic pre-loaded with mountains of baggage, but IMO this is a result of policy and philosophical decisions. Japanese cities are incredibly safe at all times of the day -- you can leave a phone out in the open and no one will steal it. A lot of theories as to why that is, but the end result is clear: Japan, a city of 14million residents, is safe.

>cleanliness

Interestingly enough, 1960s and 70s Tokyo was a bit infamous for its litter/trash problem. I am a little fuzzy on how they turned that around, but they did and today it's one of the cleanest cities in the world. Again, a societal decision that has enforcement with teeth. And mind you, there aren't a lot of trash cans on the street. You have to carry around your trash with you if you generate any until you find a suitable trashcan or take it home with you. Yet the streets stay really clean.

>privacy

I will hand it to you, a big city can be a lot less private. But there are ways to create that sense of privacy within a more dense urban residential area without sacrificing density. Also, as density rises, you can get a weird counter-intuitive effect where the crowd affords you even greater privacy.

>affordability

The average house in Japan costs around $400,000 to build from scratch. Yes. You heard me right. When you buy a house in Japan you buy the lot it sits on, demolish the previous house, and build a house customized to your liking (designed and built by one of many competing housing companies). All for around $400,000.

Now, is it smaller than the current average American 2-story house? Yes. Is such a house size necessary? As it turns out, that's also a philosophical question and society over there has decided that in a trade off between smaller house + more urban density vs bigger house + less density, the density was worth the trade. You can definitely spend a million dollars and get yourself a proper sized mansion. But at least you get a proper sized mansion.

---

This isn't direct at you specifically, but one thing that frustrates me in the debates between urbanization vs non-urbanization in the USA is the lack of imagination everyone possess. So much possibility, so much possibility that IS ALREADY PROVEN and yet we circle back around the same things. American cities aren't the only way cities are. Our cities can be so much better, they HAVE been better, and we can make them better again if we collectively as a society choose to.

At least with WFH, the trend is reversing. People are leaving urban cores and moving to the suburbs where they can get more space for less money and avoid a lot of the QOL issues.

San Francisco is a great example. The once bustling downtown is losing business at a rapid click not only because residents have left, but also office workers aren't coming in anywhere near as often.

I predict it'll be a positive feedback loop. As more businesses close, QOL issues become worse, it'll accelerate the exodus. It's like a repeat of the 60's.

I predict that with people who weren't interested in the amenities of the city and not contributing to the culture and community gone, SF will recover some of the culture it lost when high rents pushed all the creatives out. It'll make SF even better than before.

Cities are the lifeblood of any culture and economy, after all.

Sure. To be honest the most interesting cities are the unpopular ones. They tend to have a bigger mix of people, long established communities and lower cost of living.

Once they become “hot” they tend to lose a lot of what makes them unique.

Until suddenly it’s trendy to live their again.

Lots of resources on the subject from Strong Towns[1], Not Just Bikes[2], and various consulting firms like Urban3[3]

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI [3] https://www.urbanthree.com/

Not the OP. It's a literal claim, not metaphorical.

Pipes break. Schools wear out. Roads wear out. Houses and fencing wear out, etc.

Many cities don't budget in perpetuity and (further) can't maintain existing infrastructure as a population bulge dissipates or as young people move away.

You can move into cities whose mayor is constantly reinvesting.

Or you can move out if the mayor does not bother to reinvest into its community.

Aye, some communities get it (mayors don't typically have a lot of power or knowledge in these matters). These tend to be communities that have an industrial base of some sector, the more varied the better. Farming communities tend to have more maintainable infrastructure than bedroom communities under stable or growth regimes.

All hell breaks loose when the population sinks. Its hard to justify higher taxes now to pay for things 10 years away.

Aldermen or council folks typically have too much power over their mayor such that it renders such city inert and non-responsive to rapid market changes (technologies).

I am reminded of some cities having "weak mayor" government structure. And it is painfully self-evident by looking at the unmaintained roads and sidewalks.

Also I noticed unchecked huge retirement benefits used as an award for "good" governance toward token administrators, and disproportionate sapping of local taxation by its state government (one such tax example, Robin Hood school funding).

See the Strong Towns article "The Growth Ponzi Scheme" [1] and the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card for more concrete data [2].

The gist is that we've funded the construction of our infrastructure nationwide without accounting for the cost of maintenance. Now after decades of neglect, the cost of fixing all of our infrastructure is astronomical, far worse than if we had been doing it correctly from the beginning.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

[2] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/

If it is indeed that much cheaper to start from scratch, we have the open land to do so. Housing prices might fall in the areas that are chosen for divestment, but if we can't afford it, it's unclear what other paths remain. I largely believe in Strong Town's thesis, but we can't make everything a 5+1 because there is too much underdeveloped land use to justify that level of density everywhere given the total population size. There certainly are plenty of areas where's it's economical to upzone, but in many areas it won't be.

What? We can't do 5+1 everywhere because first we need to litter every last bit of countryside with failed sprawling towns that were swallowed by their own maintenance costs?

That doesn't seem workable.

You can't do 5+1 on the current total land area occupied by low-density because you'd end up with far more housing than 330 million or so people need. You add that level of density to the core of small towns, then you have enough for everyone. That leaves a long tail of abandoned infrastructure in the areas that you're describing (rural/exurbs not picked for 5+1 upzoning).

The suburbs take a huge amount of land. If everyone lived in NYC-level of density, we could all fit in New Jersey. If we all lived in middle-missing housing level density, that amount of land is still far less than the total area of all the suburbs.

Oh... it sounds like you're saying the proposal is to actually convert all existing developed land to 5+1. I don't think that's anyone's proposal?

Upzoning does not mean you automatically get a building at maximum allowed density, it means you increase what is allowed and let the market decide what makes sense where. It would play out exactly as you describe.

I think the point is that not all the suburban sprawl will get converted to 5+1 so some of it's going to decay/devolve.

Ah, I see. Yeah. Undoing decades of malinvestment at the lowest levels of infrastructure is going to have some sharp edges.

You just have to densify existing towns and smaller cities, and go back to something more like the traditional model of small-scale urbanization. Density is more efficient than suburban sprawl.

No thank you. I would rather burn this country to the ground than deal with the noise of density.

Music. Street racing. 24/7 dog barking. Density is hell.

I live in one of top 20 densest municipalities in the US (Somerville MA) with 18k people per square mile, and none of those things are an issue here. You can have density without noise.

Having lived in Somerville I’m going to disagree on the “without noise”.

Sure it’s not like living next to Times Square but it’s far noisier than a neighborhood of single family homes.

No thanks, leaf blowers and other lawn care equipment is pretty damn noisy.

That and the crushing car dependency.

Sounds like it’s not for you. Great.

But a lot of people like it, so hey, good for them too!

To each his/her own.

To each their own is the problem -- building mid-density housing often isn't permitted in the USA.

It would be great if it could be "to each his/her own". Unfortunately, throughout large parts of the US it is illegal to build anything but low-density suburban-style developments. These laws were largely created out of racism, a reaction to the Great Migration of the 20th century, but now that we're stuck with them it will take decades to clean up the mess.

Wait, I thought people didn’t want to live in the suburbs? You saying if they built low rise medium density housing in the ‘burbs people would live there? What’s the point?

Some people would prefer not to live in the suburbs, but do so anyway, because they can't afford anything else.

If it were legal to build low-rise, medium-density housing throughout the cities, more people would choose to live there, rather than the suburbs, because commuting sucks and city amenities are great.

Instead, restrictive zoning codes set aside large swaths of the city for single-family homes; the large plots of land they occupy mean that only rich people can afford them, which forces everyone else to compete for a limited number of apartments. Land for apartments being artificially limited means that construction cannot keep up with demand, so apartment prices rise too. The working class get forced out to the suburbs; eventually the middle-class have to go, too, whether they like it or not.

We should repeal these zoning codes and let people build dense housing wherever it's economically justified. Then, the choice really could be "to each his/her own": people who genuinely prefer to live in the suburbs could still go there, while people who would rather live in the city could do that instead.

I disagree 100%. I would agree some people prefer the city and can’t now.

We have suburbs because people want them.

The best example is when I lived in Singapore. Great public transit and high density housing. No need for a car.

When I talked to Singaporeans, most dreamed of owning a single family home (a landed home) with its own yard and a car. And we’re talking 90% preference.

Perhaps you're right. Why don't we put it to the test? If I'm right, the current US regime of restrictive zoning is causing serious harm, and ought to be repealed; if you're right, however, the market is already doing a good job of satisfying demand, which means restrictive zoning is merely an unnecessary administrative burden. Either way, we would come out ahead by liberalizing urban zoning codes.

Sorry, shouldn't have phrased this as "without noise". Without that level of noise? Having lived in both East Somerville and West Somerville for almost a decade I've never heard the OP's music (except for porchfest, an annual music festival in the neighborhood), street racing, or continuous dog barking.

When we all have windows open in summer we can hear one of our neighbors' TVs a bit though, and there can be noise between floors of multifamilies.

And yet, the entire cost of FDRs New Deal was $1-Trillion (2022 dollars) compared to $5-6 Trillion in COVID stimulus...

Is Strong Towns an unbiased source? I mean, would they ever publish an article that runs counter to their policy position?

I’d assume one needs a bit broader set of data than that that comes from a clearly anti-suburb position.

It’s like only looking at NRA sources on the need for gun control.

Aside from the other replies, they are degrading in terms of "living experience" - infrastructure, budgets, HOAs and whatnot. The infrastructure is being subsidised by dense cities, as there's simply too much street/pipe/wire per capita to support. So you either get prohibitive taxes, unsustainable budgets or subsidies from some level of government. Either way, they're not heading in a good direction.

Not GP but locally there are a few exurbs that have serious budget problems because they overbuilt infrastructure and don't have the tax base to fully maintain it which creates a feedback loop of poorly maintained roads, water systems, parks, etc.

Some of it had to do with the murder of brick and mortar retail in tightly packed downtowns in favor of the big box stores on the edge of town. That creates an enormous waste in municipal resources, doubly so if the store got property/sales tax subsidies.

This is less of an issue in the denser near suburbs where populations and revenues have been consistently rising the last few years.

> doubly so if the store got property/sales tax subsidies.

Walmart is particularly good at this. Search for Walmart property tax lawsuit and you'll find hundreds of examples of Walmart filing lawsuits to get their property taxes lowered. The latest ploy for these big retailers is to push to have their property taxes valued as if the store was empty and shut down and had no inventory.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/to-cut-ta...

It is said that the infrastructure required to sustain suburbs costs more money than these suburbs bring in. In the US a city gets federal money to build new suburbs, but when it comes to renewing them after a few decades, the city has to pay on its own and it often has not enough money to do it.

I am by no means an expert on this topic and just poorly summarized the contents of this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

It's also affecting some cities, such as Chicago. Wacker Drive is an example of this.

It turns out that core infrastructure should be built to be inexpensive to maintain, and density helps greatly with that goal.

Density. North American suburbs built around cars spread taxpayers thin over a large area that requires a lot of expensive infrastructure. These places can’t actually afford the services they depend on and infrastructure debt is usually paid off by new developments kind of like a ponzi scheme.

We got our gas line and sewer in the streets replaced. And replaced too.

Just need a willing city mayor to be re-investing into infrastructure.

> Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading.

If the suburbs aren't sustainable, then what about rural? What about seaside? Where everything is super spread. It sounds to me that the "because roads" is an argument constantly made by those who levy taxes and by those who wants ever more taxes to be levied on others.

I live in a super-spread out rural/seaside area where I drive across vineyards to drive my kid to school. Businesses here aren't making a lot of money and yet there are roads. I somehow don't buy that very hard that sell that the suburbs aren't sustainable "because roads".

Do I really need to pay huge income taxes (France BTW) then 21% value added tax on everything I buy then 30% on any profit I'd make in the stock market, placing there money that's already been taxed? And paying four different (yup, four) taxes on real estate (land tax, "living tax", yearly tax on real estate wealth and now, the new, to me, one: "real estate tax for micro entrepreneurs")?

The tax never stops. And then, in addition to that, I've got to listen telling me that my area is too spread out "because roads and sewers" and I should pack my stuff and go live in a city?

Just FUCK THAT.

It's not the same. Rural areas in Europe (and mostly anywhere else, for that matter; this is not about Euro-exceptionalism) are not 100% residential urban sprawl like the typical U.S. suburb. They have locally densified villages and towns, each with a self-sustaining mix of housing and local business. That's what a sensible model looks like.

The US doesn't keep local businesses the way Europe does. Corporations with local branches is about as close as we get. A small rural CVS next to a small rural Texaco next to a small rural Dennys is a rural town economy.

Dollar Store not CVS. Dennys will be locally owned and not a Dennys diner. Might be the town bar though. May not be a Texaco, that will depend on where you live. There are some rural chain gas stations like Caseys though (great pizza). Your gas station might sell bait too. Maybe.

The Dollar General is basically a pickup with a machine gun in the back going from town to town obliterating local businesses, it is awful

Renote work is going to change the equation for tax. Your options used to be rural France (if I understand from your post) and metro France. But now you can choose from many jurisdictions around the globe. Now they’ll have to start competing with one another on taxes charged and services provided.

you are right to be suspicious of the explanation -- the truth is partly what is said in other comments, and partly that core City Hall employees, local Police and Fire unions have built retirement and 401k investments that are insolvent -- also a Ponzi. There is soft money being pushed around a LOT right now to pretend its OK.

Yeah but you get to live in France which is kind of awesome. Way better food and quality of life perhaps.

Your France taxes though are not far off US taxes either (30% capital gains)... The USA has property tax with multiple levies on them and they are a function of real estate wealth in most places. And you don't have the crazy healthcare premiums.

> If the suburbs aren't sustainable, then what about rural?

Having lived in urban, suburban, and rural areas, I would say that rural areas can sustain themselves because they have significantly less infrastructure.

People have wells for water, septic for sewage, poorer (or satellite only) internet, and less reliable/resilient electricity. The roads are narrower, sometimes without lane markers, sometimes unpaved. Fewer cars on the roads means less maintenance.

This lowers costs.

Suburbs typically have none of these options due to density. They have city-like amenities but have to run them greater distances.

There are ways to improve suburbs. One is consolidate housing but keep the same overall density with greenspace (less wire and pipe to rowhouses). Also, mixed use development with small businesses can reduce roads needed and generate tax revenue.

Rural areas are also heavily subsidized by urban areas. This is necessary because we need rural areas to make food. Suburbs are also subsidized, but without the benefits.

> The tax never stops. And then, in addition to that, I've got to listen telling me that my area is too spread out "because roads and sewers" and I should pack my stuff and go live in a city?

It seems like you are agreeing with the parent poster but are also mad at them because they are right? Unsustainable suburban development leads to crushing taxes is exactly what most folks are saying in this thread. That's how infrastructure like "roads and sewers" are funded.

You can move to the city. You could also move to a more rural area, if you like. If you want suburbs with urban amenties, it's going to be expensive.

Secret is to foster flip economy in updating houses.

Can't be crushing that too after what we did to our beleaguered housing industry.

That honestly sounds like a lot of spurious causal assumptions. The Rust Belt and coal mining regions didn't get economically depressed because people left. People left because of the economic collapse. You seem to be saying if all those college kids just moved back to Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, the people there wouldn't be mad about their economies being destroyed? Because they still would have been destroyed.

More people (economists/policy makers) just ignore the rust belt's (or local regional) problems, because aggregate GDP is going up and to the right and people just go where the labor is needed so everything is going great. We don't need factory workers anymore, just learn to code and travel across the country for a job what's the problem?

No, it's we don't need factory workers and factory towns any more, so travel across the country for a job because there's no alternative, the town is gone and nobody can save it. Learn to code isn't going to work for most people, sure, but travel across the country isn't something that can be avoided.

Not everyone is agreeable to this prescription because they live in X and can't or don't want to move, and they then equate economic growth / globalization with economic death, cause that's what it means for their town and that's my original point.

I'm one of the "upwardly mobile" folks who moved out, and I'm a bit shocked at all the comments here treating the headline like it's a bad thing. Having a local and consistent community is an essential part of a "good" city. I know that many of the places we moved away from were... lacking, but simply abandoning everything isn't going to help at all either.

I have moved quite a bit myself and honestly still miss 'home'. Hopefully soon I'll stay somewhere for the rest of my life, or a good chunk of it, so I can be 'home' again. My wifes a researcher and we follow the academic positions so I probably have another 3 or 4 locations to live in first (:

There are a lot of perks of having that stable community feeling around you.

Worse: Because humans have evolved to live in close-knit communities that cooperate and human species have a 'bonding period' in which young adults bond with others in their group in order to create a social group that will collaborate to survive in the future, people leaving not only their early neighborhoods, but also their families creates subconscious anxiety in those who left. They go and live in locations where they don't know other people, changing places multiple times, often way past the early adulthood bonding period. This further isolates them and amps up the subconscious anxiety. The result are societies with psychological problems, or in worse cases like the US, entire societies running on prozac and other medication. Even further exacerbated with the system trying to isolate people more to make them into individual consumers to get maximum profit and work output out of them, pushing them also to compete with each other, further alienating people from each other.

The system uses concepts like "Social mobility" etc, but these are just terms pushed forward to avoid calling it what it is - the system forcing people to do this in order to maximize its profit by not investing where there is no immediate and maximal return, and instead milking economic centers and urban centers that are already highly profitable. For the same reason the US rural areas lack broadband - there isnt immediate, maximal profit for private companies in bringing broadband to those regions, and they also prevent municipalities from starting their own broadband service for their people with the excuse of 'free market'.

While I partially agree with your assessment, it's worth noting that much of the dynamic settlement of the US has been based on commodity booms, which really can't be considered perpetual parts of the economy. People had to leave their homes to go clear the prairie, log virtually all of the US forest, mine the West Virginia coal and then the Wyoming coal after that, etc. Once those resources are used up, there is little left for people to do, regardless of technological advances that require fewer workers for the same output, much less trade deals (how much wood and grain do we import?). The economies oriented around renewable resources (Oregon timber for example) simply can't sustain as many people because the environment can't continually produce the output that it did during the initial exploitation.

This of course affects the downstream, more industrial elements concentrated in cities as well, which process the ore and lumber and make engines and furniture.

You also have the issue of people who move to high cost locales, raise kids and then their kids who especially can't afford it move away (or wait to inherit the house from you).

It's funny how globalised the anti-globalisation populist political movements may be. Yesterday's news included "Reichsbürger" getting busted in Deutschland for conspiring to coup, and it was mentioned the suspects were also pretty QAnon-aligned. However, Reichsbürger are not indigenous, but are derived from US "Sovereign Citizens", who result from an amalgam of nuttery derived from XIX and XX conspiracies wishing to stand athwart history yelling "stop!": from those who thought the 14A is bogus to those who thought the 16A is bogus to those who didn't care for the Civil Rights Act, etc. Anyway, all these conspiracies apparently became more mainstream in the 1970s US because of the many newly embittered people due to the farming policies of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz .

(incidentally, our farming policy here is diametrically opposed to both "get big or get out" and "plant fencerow to fencerow", and we still have major political centre parties, as well as left and right wing parties. But that correlation may have no relation to causation...)

This heavily underestimates the influence of Ezra Pound through his disciple and biographer Eustace Mullins. Butz certainly upped the economic pressure on rural people, but the theory is regular old European conspiratorial antisemitism as revived through Dreyfus, then post-WWI central European "stabbed in the back" fantasies, and interpreted by the fascist Europhile Pound.

If the US government hadn't just completed a program of left-wing eradication in the early part of the 20c, the pressure probably would have turned rural people towards the populism that they had turned to throughout the 19c and very early 20c; the kind of populism that culminated in the 4-term FDR presidency and the New Deal.

"Populism" as you use it here (to refer to right-wing antisemitic groups), was intentionally turned into a slur that was used to attack the working-class left-wing:

> Most of the Progressives, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, and Woodrow Wilson, were bitter enemies of the Populists. In American political rhetoric, "populist" was originally associated with the Populist Party and related left-wing movements, but beginning in the 1950s it began to take on a more generic meaning, describing any anti-establishment movement regardless of its position on the left–right political spectrum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_(United_States)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustace_Mullins

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edit: as far as I can tell, the only two things that are characteristic across all European cultures are drinking cow's milk and conspiracist antisemitism. Although America further developed it and fed it back to Europe (note Ford's influence on Hitler), the framework is definitely European. And of course, a lot of fascism in Europe was financed by the US post-WWII.

no thanks for this simplified explanation -- "regular old European conspiratorial anti-whatever" is not the same as being suspicious of debt-and-foreign-trade driven core economies. There are winners and losers -- Farmers and their communities are sometimes the losers when you get cheap fruit from 5000km away, and lend money to people for basic needs from centralized and international banking.

One may be suspicious of debt-and-foreign-trade, but: are there (or have there ever been) any successful autarkic economies?

this question is either naive or not sincere. Instead of empty symbolic theory, look at the real history of real people in place and time. All food and territory systems involve "trade" -- a specialists' word on a display shelf adds nothing to real inquiry IMO

It was naive: I agree farmers and their communities are sometimes (in times after both industrialisation and the "green revolution", even often) the losers, but the best solution to that problem of which I am aware is "take some of the benefits of development and use that to compensate losers". I know of no examples of competitive autarkic economies, so unless you have any, that couldn't be a better solution.

And of course, if you have an even better solution than autarky, I'm all ears.

(more background: I'm partial to Jane Jacobs' theory that market agriculture has throughout history been subject to the vagaries of fortunes in nearby trade centres. If you have evidence that this theory is mistaken, I'm also willing to revisit that belief)

Interesting that these memetics[0] have been ping-ponging back and forth across the Atlantic. If you wish, search my HN comments for what (little) I know about Pound — I had not realised he'd been influential, as I'd thought he'd been dismissed as a crank upon openly embracing fascism[1].

[0] The Master and Margarita is my favourite take on deicide.

[1] with the benefit of hindsight, this is perhaps the victors' history. After all, NATO (although it no longer does) had openly fascist members within my lifetime. cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grândola,_Vila_Morena

(also: I'm not so sure about the cow's milk going all the way to the Med. Consider: "All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part that cooks with lard and goose fat, the part that cooks with olive oil, and the part that cooks with butter.")

Edit: Wow, Mullins met Pound post-WW2. ... and I guess if the goldbuggery I'd noticed earlier in Pound was coded antisemitism whose whistle I'd missed, it explains much more about how an educated, culturally open, intellectual (cf Pound's juvenilia) could embrace fascism.

I'd indeed missed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound#Antisemitism,_socia...

Really have to love / hate the reduction of complex topics in to pithy “gotcha” quips.

what complexity do you wish to add?

Well, wtf is wrong with them that they stay when the economy gets destroyed? Move and make money elsewhere? Do they know there is skills and worker shortage all over the country?

Why do they think their little corner in the world is special? I think it is mix of fear and complacency because when it gets bad, it doesn't get bad enough.

As an adult you are responsible for taking care of yourself and those you love above any other obligation. Not just moving towand and states but people move to different countries and continents primarily out of their obligation and desire to fulfi that duty and lead a better life.

Why the vitriol?

>fear and complacency

Not everyone wants to live in a big city, or away from people they know.

Then povery is the price. It's not enough that you can do pretty much what you want for a living and make good money but it also has to be available at random towns in the middle of nowhere? My experience is, people are stuck on the past when their area was prosperous. If they're not leaving because they like it there, then what's the problem? Just don't complain about it. Either work to change things there or move to a better place. America as a nation was built by people that kept moving for better opportunities elsewhere.

Only fix could be Soviet style registration system right? Where you are tied to the place where you were born unless Party sends you somewhere else? I mean, we are over that phase even on international level. People move countries all the time. Complaining about this being the case within one country is just out of place. And to mitigate enti-globalization populists, just better propaganda is needed. Let's face it: democracy only works when people are brainwashed (or there is a poll tax or other system that lets only well-to-do vote).

I mean, there is definitely a connection between "area is insanely inhospitable to educated youth, who then leave, and as a result those who remain have diminished opportunities," but this formulation feels like blaming those who leave instead of those who created the environment that ran the escapees off.

I grew up in a shitty place. I knew from early childhood I would leave, and I knew this even though I was living a very privileged existence in that place. My parents were upper-middle class; we had new cars and a country club membership and all that shit. And I knew this despite being low-key discouraged from wanting to leave because Family.

It was (and remains) a racist, sexist, homophobic state, and nothing is likely to change that.

There’s a deeper level here. Conforming economic, security, n judicial blocks to geography more strongly maps onto the governance structure for the US. In other words, this is a system that inherently creates and maintains divisions.

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