Most in U.S. (57%) prefer big houses, even if amenities farther away
pewresearch.org
pewresearch.org
> In contrast, more Americans who currently live in urban areas (57%) say they would prefer a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores and restaurants.
Breaking news: most people prefer to live where they live.
People already live in their car-centric houses. Creating walkable cores means pitching folks who can park outside their favorite restaurant on walking from a parking lot. It's easier to sell the concept to new folks, who will live within walking or biking distance of the new core, than gaining buy-in from incumbents. That, in turn, creates the opposition we observe.
What laws make it illegal to have walkable neighborhoods in the US?
Depends how much space you’re dedicating to car parking. Once the grocery store has a giant parking lot it’s swallowed up a lot of land that could have been housing.
The more the store depends on car traffic the bigger the parking lot. The bigger the parking lot the less housing it’ll have in proximity, the longer everyone will have to walk. A successful walkable neighborhood has to balance allocated space with thought.
That is not a walkable neighborhood. When people are talking about this stuff they're talking about an actual defined concept:
https://www.walkscore.com/walkable-neighborhoods.shtml
A home next to a strip mall might be close to a grocery store, it is not a walkable neighborhood.
> It's illegal to build a walkable neighborhood
Big cities like NYC or Chicago are already walkable.
> in most of the country.
I am sure you can go build a walkable city in the middle of Nevada or Nebraska. Your problem is something else - nobody wants to go there yet so it is a bootstrapping problem. What you are essentially saying is "a lot of neighborhoods where the jobs are are controlled by NIMBYs and they are not letting us convert those to walkable areas"
Once you start playing the space game, particularly if you're in a location where you tend to get guests, it's always appealing to have another room.
And I'm not that surprised. Not to over generalize but very few suburbs are walkable. Once you're in the car what's an extra 10 minutes on your drive? As a person sitting in the city pondering a life outside of it I can't see the point in the suburbs if I'm going to be driving and stuck in traffic anyway. I'd rather go whole hog and live rurally.
I've though this way too for a long time, both now and when I lived in a city. Having thought about it often, I think the two things driving suburbs are those with daily commutes (that 15 extra minutes twice every day adds up), and many people are not well off enough to live in the denser city to begin with (as things stand). Cities are economic attractors, and suburbs are basically less concentrated instances (or addons) of that.
Also note that the question specifically says "amenities". Likely most people aren't thinking about commuting while answering the question.
Rural setting doesn't have anything like that.
I think you are reading it backwards. 44% suburbanites would prefer to live in communities with smaller houses.
The reason people in the suburbs are moving to even bigger houses is because they are getting older and richer, or their families are growing.
Same can be said for large suburban houses.
From my ~YIMBY bubble it's a bit surprising, though I guess it shouldn't be, that the majority of Americans want to live in exactly the kind of neighborhood I despise.
Breaking News: Most people would like someone to do something about the environment. Not me. Someone else.
Also if that someone could subsidize my forest fire insurance, that’d be great. Kthxbai.
But even in much smaller ways you can get that mind shift. I didn’t really think about active transport until I thought electric scooters looked fun and ordered one, and it just blew my mind and opened up a whole new perspective (now I want an e-bike too, but using the scooter heaps).
I guess another aspect is that if you were looking at a lot of the cities and public transport that the US has, I guess I might even choose the ‘burbs and car culture over that… That’s a tricky thing to overcome, getting public transport especially in the US up to a reasonable international standard.
Actually, about a century ago there was better public transportation, both municipal and long-distance, serving even small-ish towns. Yes, most people then lived on farms, but farms were usually close to a small town.
Since then the auto industry has managed to change laws to make it more or less illegal to be killed by a car and get funding for things like paved roads. Same country, but it looks very different today. If it seems like it was always that way, it's because the auto industry's marketers were so good at their jobs.
While I fully 100% support car-centric development and I think we just need to fix emissions like we fixed pollution, technologically - via massive renewables/nuclear build-out and electric cars - and really dislike governments, I have to give credit where it's due. The car-centric development was all its fault (or was all to its credit). Businesses were building rail lines between cities, and tram lines in the cities around which the new neighborhoods developed (even in smaller cities, like Seattle). Then, the government built the highway system (and instituted zoning laws, for less-palatable reasons). Railroads are now marginal for passenger transport and tram lines have gone out of business. Woops!
Big houses means big hobbies: you’re not gonna fire up a tablesaw on your tiny balcony, probably not gonna install a lift in your one car garage to do your own mechanical automotive work. Probably not going to throw big parties of 20+ people firing up a grill in the yard and sitting around a fire pit drinking beers and having conversation while kids jump in a pool. Probably not going to build a model train town in a spare bedroom.
Anyway, that may be the single biggest thing I miss about "back home". Where I live now, I can't even (officially) change the oil in my car or replace a set of brake pads without violating a rule of the place where I live. I swapped out an alternator a few weeks ago and managed not to get yelled at by the management people, but that's about as extensive as you can go here, either due to lack of amenities/equipment, or "the rules". Aaarggghh.
Not really. It's personal preference, not ignorance.
As a counter-anecdote: I know many people who moved to US suburbs from dense, walkable places; and they wouldn't want to go back. They like having a big house with a yard, and that's just not a realistic option where they're from.
BUT... all things being equal, I'd rather NOT live in a city environment to begin with. I would actually prefer to live on a large enough plot of land, with enough trees surrounding me, to where I can't see another house without making some effort (eg, walking out to the edge of the road). Ideally I should be able to walk around naked outside my house with zero risk of anybody calling the cops. Because I like to walk around naked? NO. It's just the principle of the thing. And more to the point, I should be able to start a big bonfire in my yard, play loud heavy metal, and have a dozen or more people over, drinking and partying, and not have to worry about bothering my neighbors and having the cops called.
The size of the house doesn't actually matter a whole lot, but I would like a fair amount more space than I currently have in my apartment.
Anyway... I moved from the latter environment to the former for career reasons, but I strongly desire to eventually move back to latter - at least part time.
I work from home and like having the ability to live out of my house, instead of a city (i.e. leaving the house for various daily activities because the house isn't big enough to support them). And when I want that city environment experience, I can go there.
I don't want stuff, but buying a home (i'm in my first) led me to realize all the practical stuff you accumulate. Organization of it is challenging. Doubly so if you're super space constrained.
And when you're space constrained, just allocating a room to one purpose - such as recreation or hobbies - is super hard. Every space is shared with the whole family.
I know some dyed in the wool country lifers are recoiling in horror at my comment, but my point is to be aware of the path dependence, including the path dependence of culture (eg why you want to work on old cars).
There's also the circular path dependence of (not) relying on socially shared venues, eg hacker spaces, local markets, etc. The US doesn't have great availability of these things, meaning that people use more space at their personal house to replicate their functionality. Rather than going to a corner market and buying food for a few days, we go to the grocery store every week or two and buy huge quantities. Rather than looking around at hacker spaces to scratch my machining itch, I think how it would be great to find some room for a CNC mill. Most of my garage is currently being taken up because I can't even rely on Home Depot to function as a warehouse that sells non-broken goods on demand.
In my estimation the largest unescapable dynamic in the US is that when you're in a city or even a suburb, you're running on the financial treadmill much harder. Which is fine when you're young, rent is comparable to the money you spend on experiences, and you're happy fitting into the corporate societal structure where you can. But when you get tired of running so fast for someone else, want to have a bit more autonomy, perhaps run your own business or other productive endeavor, the main way to do that comfortably is to move to a lower cost of living area where things like office/hobby space comes bundled with your dwelling.
Now, if I want to shoot I have to pack my stuff in the car, drive to a range, pay a fee, etc. etc. Doable, but definitely adds some friction to the process.
This is basically a prisoner dilemma, you enjoy the common goods of the city but don't get the downsides by defecting to the countryside, making the city worse in the process. In the end everybody loses.
This is a citation needed comment to me. It's one heck of an assertion that I have never heard. Most folks I've chatted with who have made this transition do it because of the density of people, not the pollution (which is miles better in cities than it was even 20 years ago).
The first and biggest pollution is the noise. The ambient car noise has a huge effect on stress level and sleep quality. When you remove the car from the city, it's almost at silent as the countryside.
The second is the danger in the street. Your brain registers those big fast moving cars as potential danger to avoid and raises your stress level and makes you want to move away from it.
The third one is the space the car take. When you remove the cars you have the opportunity to either make things easier to walk to, or to add parks and greenery. When you remove cars, modern cities are surprisingly empty, much less dense than a village.
Then there's the air pollution.
What do you plan on doing about emergency vehicles and their sirens and construction? Those are by far the biggest sources of noise for me in a city. Normal car traffic is omnipresent but usually has a fairly low ceiling that doesn't go through walls all that much.
Normal car traffic absolutely goes through walls, you think you are used to it, but it actually stresses you quite a lot.
Construction work can be an issue indeed
As it is in suburbs too. My parents' house is fairly quiet, until a neighbor is hammering or sawing. And that doesn't even include the loud insanity of lawn mowing in the desert.
For example, the legislature just passed a law that stripped Austin of the ability to make various ordinances. It also funds its rural schools with payments from the cities — a consequence of having no state income tax and instead a high property tax.
How is Texas funding rural schools with urban property taxes if they're in different districts?
The money doesn’t even go to education in rural areas, not completely. It just goes into the general state budget.
The really fucked up thing is that local ISDs are intentionally underfunded because of this policy.
Stick the liberals with the pollution, kill their public schools, take their money and spend it on vouchers for private religious schools.
Oh, and gerrymander the fuck out of their districts so the suburbs and ranch dwellers have all the say, all the time.
Not saying it's not worth looking into but it's like trying to get unbiased information on all political candidates in a race by going to one candidate's campaign website.
It seems like the answer to "How is Texas funding rural schools with urban property taxes" is most likely "they're not, they're taking money from both schools for general budget appropriations."
Citation is badly needed. I live in Austin and I don't pay any taxes to the state. My property taxes are going to the city, Travis county and multiple school districts.
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/education/2023/06/26/au...
It's 2.1 budget for the year:
* 940 million goes to the state as recapture (1.8 billion was collected in property taxes)
* There is a few hundred million in state and federal grants coming in
* They are spending 52 million more than grants + leftover property taxes
Over 60% of Austin voted to end unregulated camping: the former progressive mayor of Austin said he would not enforce it, and that he would designate all parks as legal unhoused camping zones. This pissed off a lot of the local population, the governor and the senate.
By trying to get around the local vote against allowing unregulated vagrancy from the houseless population he pushed the state senate to strip the city of those rights. The other pork just came along with it as a nice bonus "screw you"
Can I hear the neighbor's kids when they're screeching because they're fighting or playing? Can I hear the neighbors having sex? Can they hear me?
I can tell you're almost certainly totally wrong, and "fleeing from car pollution" not a big part at all. IMHO, the biggest driver by far is wanting more space. If there's any pollution people want to escape from, it's probably noise pollution (e.g. seeking peace and quiet).
If that's true, I think the right way to think about it is transportation is the contributor to noise pollution, not cars specifically. We're not getting rid of transportation. If you somehow got rid of cars, bus, train, and truck traffic would have to increase to compensate.
As for the others, you're probably right.
That said, we don't necessarily need to get rid of cars. EVs are much less pollutant than ICEs, both in terms of air and noise. They don't solve tyre pollution.
Getting rid of (or massively reducing the reliance on) cars might have other advantages though. Less honking, for one. Probably less police, ambulance and firefighter sirens since it's likely to be less traffic. Fewer people shouting with other drivers. Busses can be made fairly silent. Trains, especially underground metro ones, are not all that disruptive to the general city life.
Again, I'm not saying any particular solution is necessarily correct or desired. I just went off and tried to picture what it could look like.
I grew up in a rural place but live in NYC now. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of having things nearby. My family from suburban and rural places always seem surprised when I mention I need to run out to the grocery store at 6pm on a Tuesday. For them that’s a once a week trip at most–I can probably get there and back in the time that it takes them to get to just get to the store.
I am not making a case for the superiority of one lifestyle over the other (though I see suburbia as kind of a worst of both worlds between urban and rural), just offering my interpretation of why people in America might feel this way.
I live in Florida. It gets into the high 90's with 80% humidity. At the same time NYC is in the 80's with 50% humidity.
There are places that just aren't walkable certain times of the year.
96 degrees and 80% humidity is a dew point of 89. The highest verified dew point ever recorded in the US is 88, and that was in Minnesota which might sound odd to people who have never heard the term "corn sweat".
But yeah, even high 90's with 65% humidity (dew point in low 80's) is not healthy to be walking around in.
As you said, still not walkable :).
Because we built them to be unwalkable. We ripped out the trees so there's no shade. We paved the soil so we could drive portable furnaces over it. You're not wrong that it's unwalkable where you live - it is also unwalkable where I live. But it not just because of natural climate.
The main benefit was having easy access to grocery stores and cafes. For everything else that's not basically interchangeable, I still used a car. Going to work, dancing classes, well equipped gym (there are 2-3 in the city that are worth going to), other sport facilities. So I was still driving basically every day.
And even meeting at cafes and pubs meant using a car (or taxi) most of the time, as most of my friends are living in their own (also walkable) neighbourhoods.
Public transit exist, but that means 30-40 minute bus ride (with waiting, if you need to switch buses - which you often will) vs. 10 minute car ride.
Restaurants are getting super expensive. And I’m not sure why fast casual didn’t off. Why do I need to add 20% tip to every meal if I could just order at a counter?
Coffee shops mostly don’t seem super comfortable to just hang out.
Libraries don’t have great hours or reading nooks.
Bars like cheers aren’t a thing.
You’re mostly stuck in your house.
While technically possible in a city, it's going to generally be cost prohibitive - especially for a couple or a family.
My parents have a large house with 4 bedrooms. They are only filled when we come seeing them. To me it's just wasted space.
Multiply that by millions of houses and you have a huge volume of space that is built heated/ACed for basically nothing most of the time.
We must rationalized all this, same with office spaces or "4 persons cars" :)
Honestly, urban apartments are pretty wasteful. Why does everyone have a kitchen? A bedroom? To me, it's all just wasted space.
It would be far, far less wasteful if everyone lived in barracks and hot-bunked/hot-desked. Meals could be served in a common mess, in shifts. Communal activities could be available for recreation.
If we maximize colocation of work and living spaces, we could also significantly cut down on space wasted on transportation in general, not just cars.
The shift will be hard, but the efficiency gains will be worth it.
The kitchen and bedroom you use them everyday. Same with the "one-seat" in your car.
No, if wasted space is a problem, let's get rid of it. No half-measures that just happen to stop when it starts interfering with your preferences.
> The kitchen and bedroom you use them everyday. Same with the "one-seat" in your car.
Come on. Just used everyday? That's a total waste. They should be in constant use.
They have those: motorcycles and bicycles. Not family compatible though.
That's OK. Because the alternative is not having one of those spaces to begin with, or having to change a space to fit the needs (i.e. friction).
Specifically, how often would your parents have you over if they had a 2br apartment and had to change the function of the second bedroom (or living room) every time?
And honestly, they may be OK with it. But they also may not - they rationalized the additional cost of a 4br house in the first place.
> 4 persons cars
That space might not be used all the time, but again the friction of having to rent a different car when you do need the space would be pretty significant. Not to mention a 4 seat car is effectively required (assuming suburban or rural US) once you have even one child.
I’m sure that’s worth it for them
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to come by in cities lol.
Think "man cave." I understand it to be a personal space dedicated to hobbies/interests/decor not shared by one's spouse, so they can be pursued in a way that won't bother the other.
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to findp in cities lol.
You can have all of these things and much more living in a small apartment in a city. The shop will probably be a basement or a garage and the greenhouse will be on your roof or at a community garden, but apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to p in cities lol.
An example: I want to sand and revarnish a chest of drawers we have. If I do that inside the apartment I'll have dust everywhere and then the stink of varnish will pervade the space. There are also no suitable shared spaces for me to use.
It is what it is, I accept it as a price of city life. But it's definitely a downside.
It's basically a space with a door that's dedicated to one of the inhabitants and their interests.
Even the closest of couples needs their own space occasionally, and having a "man cave" or "she shed" (yes, sadly they're needlessly gendered) provides that environment. They can also frequently double as a WFH office.
> apartments with multiple rooms are not difficult to p in cities lol
Sure, but at what cost? How much does a 4 bedroom apartment cost in most cities? $4k a month?
Strong town supporters just have this smugness that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and its a big turn off from the movement. The problem is they don't have to convince me, they have to convince the 57% of Americans (from the title), many of whom are not in the online echo chamber about strong towns,
It's not that strong towns is wrong, its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it", when it should be "we should develop better places for all of us to live".
Note that this is more a problem with internet commentators vs the actual source material. It's obviously (to me at least) right.
But on the other hand, I'm Canadian, I grew up in a car-dependent suburb. I lived downtown in my city in a walkable neighbourhood, and now I live in the car-dependent suburbs again with my family. I've been to Europe too, the walkable neighbourhoods there are great! But I also like my suburban house. Changing hearts and minds on this will take more than smugness though.
That still sounds like an assumption that "all" of us will prefer strong towns, which is doubtful. How about: "We should develop some new types of places to live for those who would prefer this new type of place"
I'm not sure what you've been reading but I can't say I've ever seen that approach. However, I do agree that the wrong tack is often taken. It's usually "environmental concerns mean we're all going to have to live in dense cities whether we like it or not", which is hardly an appealing take (irrespective of how true or false it is!).
Personally I love living in the city with my family. I bike the kids to school in the morning, the city has more museums than I can count, we have a giant park nearby with a zoo, a half dozen playgrounds... it's great. But you're right that you rarely see this kind of appeal actually made.
I generally hear the more convincing "we've been lied to our entire lives and you have been forbidden from experiencing other ways that you could be living, some of which you may prefer."
>Public preferences were more evenly divided on this question in fall 2019, a few months before the coronavirus outbreak.
COVID-19 caused a measurable shift in living preferences that appears to be durable.
Other thing is, a lot of people who move into a city later in life don’t bother taking advantage of city life and say how much they hate it. I’ve heard time and time again from my friends how “they feel trapped in an apartment”, but they don’t go out for walks or city adventures.
Personally, when I go into rural sides of the countries, I feel extremely trapped and crave some sights of people. It doesn’t have to be crowded, but there’s a beauty of an okay-ishly functioning city going through it’s morning routine.
Most shocking one was when I was with someone who mentioned a town I’d never heard of. She said oh, it used to be just up the highway and brought me there. We went into a wooded area in the middle of a farm, and there were the remnants of wooden walkways everywhere (low elevation and frequent flooding). She showed me where the train station and the hotel had been, talked about the different shops and the amusement park that was owned by the local dentist.
But that was all a long time ago. Now that whole area which used to contain multiple such communities is just farmland, loose clusters of houses, a plant, a gas station, and five of the ugliest churches you’ve ever laid eyes on. If you drive for half an hour you can go to Walmart or Taco Bell in the “small city” that used to be an actual small city.
I would rather have enough distance not to have to hear/see my neighbors than have stores and restaurants within walkable distance, at least in this point in time. If you are a quiet-loving person this is really your only way to get what you need.
I was raised being conscious of my presence and how it affected others. While I live in a single family home I still walk like in my 2nd floor apartment to avoid annoying the neighbors downstairs (so far the termites haven't lodged a complaint), or automatically turn down the volume later in the evening, even when I'm home alone.
Not doing this causes friction, and I don't think everybody realizes the presence they have while sharing a space.
So it's only natural people want to avoid that friction. Larges spaces accomplish this naturally.
Having a bigger house is good when you have kids like I do, but I definitely prefer the former, where it wasn't exactly living in a big city but still had a lot of the benefits. I just hate having to drive more and how much time it takes up.
Is this the same among the HN gang? Or is staying single long term an option?
If so, what's the best way to live as a single?
In tech, you can work from everywhere. So travel the world and / or have an appartment in a big city?
But...
What, exactly, is hilarious about people suffering and having financial difficulties?
The rising price of oil was taught in my middle school, its not news at this point.
population 12k