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Comment by mindwok | Hacker News Reader

Well said. Personally, I find modern suburbs to be dystopian. They are full of cookie cutter houses with zero creativity or self expression of the owner, and built with the cheapest materials possible. Their only purpose is to be the dark prison you go back to from your job so you can sit inside and watch TikTok until you fall asleep. Then you wake up, drive to work or sit inside and work remotely, then do it all over again.

On top of that, zoning laws usually mean there's no businesses or community spaces where you might gather to eat or hang out with the people who live around you.

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You are misconstruing creativity of appearance for creativity of experience. Cookie cutter is not an issue. The happiest people are those driving honda civics, buying jeans at Ross and spending most of their energy, money and time on their hobbies, visiting their friends, families and having constant stream of guests over. Some of the best conversations in life happens in the most ordinaries kitchens, at most ordinary tables, on unremarkable front porches, etc.

I love architecture and find it can be very inspiring. But if one’s personal creativity is hamstrung by facade of their home, then I assume they don’t have much of it to begin with.

> Cookie cutter is not an issue

It is an issue... not because it's built in a cookie cutter way (that's fine, and our suburb has tons of kit homes). What is an issue is the restrictive HOAs and crazy suburban design standards intended to basically prevent any modification.

Like I said, our suburb started off with lots of kit homes, lots of 'cookie cutter' looks, but over time, due to the lack of regulation during the bulk of the development, the houses have been turned into duplexes; they've been added on to; various owners with different personalities have added decorations, etc. In other words, it becomes less 'cookie cutter' over time until everything looks different.

> visiting their friends, families and having constant stream of guests over.

Except that these sorts of visitations / gatherings become far less frequent in suburban settings unless you have the good fortune to have many of your friends / family living close to you.

I live in SoCal, which is far denser than many other parts of the US and despite this, the sprawl is immense - far greater than many other large cities of the world. It doesn't help that public transport is a joke as it takes hours and hours to get anywhere using that and you'd still need a car anyway for the last mile or so if you're heading into a suburb somewhere.

Living in a suburb isn't all bad, it has its perks but it 100% takes a significant toll on your social life for most people I know and have known. I've lived in NYC and other "proper" cities before and this is actually one of the things I miss most about life there - it made it way easier to spontaneously get together after work or on the weekends because of the smaller and much easier commutes.

That is exactly right. In fact, cookie cutter stuff helps to express oneself even more. If the standard stuff serves its utility well, then it spares the energy of having to think and care about it, and leaves more for the rest of the stuff, including self-expression.

at risk of throwing out a beat up cliché, Steve Jobs famously wore the same black shirts as a way of simplifying his life. One less thing to burn brain power on, to have to navigate

Good example, it's the same with Zuckerberg and his wardrobe. And this idea carries over many aspects of life, for example, the meal prep Sunday is a bit similar, but applied to food, and minimalism as a lifestyle also touches on this.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could keep the art but get rid of those messy, opinionated artists?

> Then you wake up, drive to work or sit inside and work remotely, then do it all over again.

The mass preponderance of work from home is going to cause major social issues. Most Americans have very little family and social ties, so this just makes things worse. The COVID lockdowns were a huge mistake and have greatly damaged the social fabric of the country

This is gonna upset people on this site but you are 100% right. We already lost the third space, now we are losing the second one as well.

The average person in 20 years might never leave home. Remote education, remote work, home deliveries for food and anything you need. It’ll be an epidemic of Agoraphobia.

Yeah it’s a bit troubling. My hope is that it causes us to look at what we can do to make our cities more encouraging to social interaction. Fill in the missing middle housing, make them more human centric, etc.

It’s going to take at least a generation for that to happen though.

I wish that would happen, but honestly I see it all getting progressively worse. Offices cost lots of money so there is a pressure to reduce them. Universities are getting rid of in person lectures and classes to replace them with cheaper standardized online content. Social media, VR, and gaming is becoming increasingly engaging. And the cost of going out and doing things in person is becoming increasingly prohibitive. Local governments are becoming increasingly poor and unable to sustain unnecessary facilities like libraries and free hang out spaces.

I don't think this is a problem the free market can solve since sense of community and socialization doesn't generate revenue efficiently. We need to start using tax money to build more free public spaces and public transport to get people connected.

> We need to start using tax money to build more free public spaces and public transport to get people connected.

All the original public transit projects (including my own streetcar suburb and corresponding streetcar), were privately funded.

What governments need to do is make it clear that they will expedite permits for these projects and not put up roadblocks or attempt to extract profit from the investors.

There was much more of a sense of community when the government was a lot smaller and the market was much free'er.

I refer you to the pirates/average global temperature graph.

Is it just historical correlation or do you imply casuation?

Often the sort of jobs you can do from home are not that social to start with.

While working in software at an office I definitely noticed that working with a PC all day was definitely not social. And some of my co-workers have been anti-social or just not socialised. Some offices were oppressive: just clicks and headphones.

> just clicks and headphones.

As a SW engineer, I'm just going to say that when I read things like this, it explains so much about the anti-socialness of all my colleagues. This is such an easy problem to fix. If your office is not social enough, you stand up, go to your neighbor's desk / cubicle and say 'Good morning, how are you doing today? What are you working on?'.

People love to talk if you let them

This comment is being undeservedly downvoted.

In-office work has always been an important way to bootstrap your social graph, as are other in-person group activities such as schooling and college. Of course, some people may not like the commute and prefer in-person work, but any choice has tradeoffs, and the tradeoff in this case is that you usually end up knowing very few people other than your spouse and children which leads to loneliness in mid-life.

Relying on school and college friends doesn’t work as they would have also moved on due to other responsibilities and relocated elsewhere, and due to the lack of shared context that is required to rejuvenate said friendships.

There are other ways to do this.

I would much rather spend the commute time engaging in local social activities where I live than being forced into a car or public transport for multiple hours a week, just to spend 40 hours in a grey box which is a worse working environment than the one I have at home.

This way you can build stronger local ties, rather than remote ties which are likely to evaporate next time you move job, or even department.

FYI the downvotes are most likely in reaction to the assertion that COVID lockdowns were a huge mistake.

Whether they have damaged the fabric of society (and I would certainly dispute that), the idea that they were a mistake in totality is at the very least somewhat contentious.

Yeah I figured it would. WFH makes sense for established workers. For those new graduates... It's toxic and a huge set back.

I was a hiring manager during COVID... We just stopped hiring new grads. How would we on board them? How would I provide the guidance they needed? Even if my new hires would be in another office, I'd still be able to get someone there to help them in person.

Remote? Good luck. Established engineers have enough issues with that.

I think the downvotes are purely from the snipe at COVID restrictions, since it is sadly still a hot button topic. My initial urge was to downvote but I undid it and will keep my input neutral there because it’s just not on topic.

I personally think that the sudden need to accept remote work, delivery services, and isolating at home opened up a mode of living that until now has been inaccessible to those of us who actually like that sort of thing. Before, socializing with strangers simply couldn’t be avoided, because there was no other realistic way to live, besides going off into the wilderness and setting the entirety of civilization aside. We now have more options and that’s great! People who like the old way can still commute into the office, go to their pub, dine out in person, and so on, but now, the option has opened up for people who don’t want to do that, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. One size doesn’t fit all.

I now have the option to stay in my house for a month+ and not see another human being if I want, and still earn a living, enjoy modern life, conveniences, shopping, dining… not really possible as recently as 2019. It’s not for everyone but to me it’s better than the old way.

> who actually like that sort of thing.

The idea of living in a society (a democracy, even!) in which most people kind of dislike their neighbor is horrifying.

i am in that exact situation right now. i am trying to hire locals in a somewhat remote work location. most candidates want to work remote. even for a senior it took us a few hours of working face to face before i felt comfortable letting them work remotely. for a junior i can't imagine remote work until they are fully onboarded and able to work independently which may take a few weeks to a few months of time.

> Most Americans have very little family and social ties

citation needed. like, speak for yourself, mon ami.

They lack the variety and self-expression of early Levittown?

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