I’m constantly surprised how tech folks seem to undervalue the suburbs.
They're amazing if you love sitting in traffic.
If we want to park a car in there, it's about an hour of moving stuff out of the way. I stand at the back as a spotter while my wife drives at me. Once she hit me, she turns the car off and climbs out through the back seat. I then climb over the roof of the car.
I wish I was making this up. Glad it's 12 years old with no sun roof. I don't have to feel bad about sliding over it.
I'm a European who's lived in an "American downtown" because I was told the suburbs are horrible, but what you're describing sounds great.
Where are you? SF? SD? NY? Miami? You're paying a premium for the right to brag about it. Not for the amenities.
Probably shouldn’t be taking advice from Reddit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you broke the site guidelines elsewhere in thread as well - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38003753. Please don't do that.
Of course, it's not equivalent to being able to walk to places, but I feel the pros outweigh the cons in terms of what you do get from the suburbs.
This is why we can’t have nice things. We simply can’t rely on a class of workers to dote on us simply because we fancy living in the burbs. The amount of waste just so you can get your instacart. The reality is near 8% mortgages have put suburbs with garages out of reach for almost everyone without a trust fund or selling their startup.
Simple example would be to reduce the scale up and install cost of clean energy.
You make zero sense. Going to the grocery store involves the same workers helping you pay for gas and selling you groceries, or cooking your meals. Are you a recluse that interacts with zero workers? Who in their right mind calls someone else out for using a regular service? You'd prefer those people to not have jobs surely.
The planet can’t take any more “conveniences” on our behalf. We need to find a more efficient way of delivering goods and getting our goods. Throwing your hands up and saying “I’ll just get everything delivered” is about the worst option you can do from a logistics perspective to reduce carbon.
If you're annoyed about low efficiency of ordering food, what do you think of vacation traveling, hobbies, any sort of vehicles etc. Most efficiency would be to have no humans with our superfluous wants and needs. Otherwise you're just shaming others for doing things you happen not to like, while forgetting all the useless things you do. Surely you have done consumist purchases that weren't required for your immediate survival or health preservation before.
Yes because carrying groceries by 15m walk to home is surely on the same level as demanding population reduction measures.
You’re the exception.
I would call the entire peninsula from SF to San Jose one big suburb.
Hell, everything West of Gough St in SF is pretty suburb-like: mostly residential, a few shopping streets and no offices.
Despite that there are plenty of areas that are very walkable, including public transportation and shopping for daily needs.
Not every suburb looks like a cluster of single family homes with nothing else within 10 miles.
1) California is a noted outlier. The tax base/road budget ratio does not scale well to the rest of the country.
2) The wealth of affluent suburbs is driven by the cities they surround. The cities generate enough wealth to nominally support the market rate labor that keep them running AND the professional/managerial class that cut and run.
3) The top quintile or two of earners are likelier to live in newer developments, where the cost of maintenance has not built up yet. As regions become older and less desirable, the affluent leave and are replaced by the less-so, just as replacement costs come due. This model is a burden on the state and national levels because it's so prevalent.
If, instead, the model were to have most people living were their wealth was generated - and therefore have amenities scale to means more closely - you would have fewer extremely wealthy individuals and families but a more sustainable and equitable society. I know this is anathema to many, who value getting ahead over getting together.