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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

rare suburbanite HNer

I bet that's pretty wrong.

You could very well be right; I was just putting together a gut feeling about the HN community and anecdotal knowledge of where my coworkers in the industry live.

Most of the people who work for large tech companies in the Bay Area live in the suburbs.

I've been working remotely since long before the pandemic; perhaps my experience at remote-friendly companies has skewed my experience, as only a minority of my coworkers are in the bay area. I'd say the mode for my coworkers is living in a smaller/cheaper (non-SF, non-NY) urban center. Could just be a fluke, though; it's not as though the sample size is particularly large.

I doubt most HNers actually grew up in large cities. I would guess most were in the burbs or smaller cities (although they may be in large cities now). Just given the demographic distribution of cities (younger, less kids) and the urbanization trends over time (was more distributed 20+ years ago).

Ah, that's a fair point! I meant I was unusual in that I live in a suburb now, not that it was unusual to grow up in a suburb.

I don’t think so.

I’ve seen countless threads and front page articles about more bike-friendly, anti-car city development, as well as how suburban and rural cities requiring cars and more driving is definitely not a good thing.

It’s very hard to find anyone coming to defense of the allure of smaller, more open developments with actual land between your neighbors.

If you want to find rural or suburban folks, HN is not the community to engage with.

I'm into rural living myself. Spent enough time in cities & suburbs to appreciate wide open spaces without nosy neighbors & HOA rules. I also appreciate cars & the freedom they enable.

Re: anti-car people, one thing that is not acknowledged about America is that America is very large & people like having their own land. Public transportation is not a feasible option for mountain communities, low population density areas, & quiet areas with nature.

I was also attacked, though I got away, while riding my bike from BART in Hayward coming home from work. Havn't rode much public transportation since that experience. Public transportation is often in high crime areas.

Car accidents do happen, so there's danger there as well. I only had accidents in urban areas. Stressful conditions coupled with bad driving practices I suppose.

To paraphrase Bill Gates, "nobody needs more than 640 square feet".

Because so many of urbanite anti-car commenters are so strident that there’s very little point in engaging with them. (HN probably is younger which tends to correlate with more urban these days but it’s generally not worth trying to have certain discussions that will change no one’s mind.)

As a peer commented if you live in Silicon Valley, among other places, you live in the suburbs even if you can maybe walk to a few places.

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