Sure that create jobs, especially lower-skilled jobs which are important for society. But at the same time they didn't really need to exist. It feels like much like defense spending, it create jobs, but it doesn't create value.
The "value" is for the citizens that prefer suburbs style living.
People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburbs. Yes, I know it seems illogical.
But don't suburbs have the dependency on cars, and those ugly "stroads", and the "parking lot deserts", and "soulless cookie-cutter housing", etc, etc?!? Yes, all of that is true and detractors can keep piling on more derogatory labels but it still doesn't change the fact that many people really like the suburbs. A lot of USA college kids living in dorms in the middle of a "walkable city" have aspirations of buying a nice house out in the suburbs and hope they can land a high-paying job so they can afford that dream. Why do so many of these young people who have actual experience of living in the city want to get away from that and live in the suburbs?
I live in Brussels and every time I welcome new American friends here and show them around, their mind is blown that it’s even possible to live in a city center at an affordable rate within walking distance to groceries, restaurants and activities.
My kids like to play in our yard. I do woodwork as a hobby. My neighbors spend summer by their pool. I like my privacy. I like quiet and space. I like strong community.
I spent 15 years apartment living all over the world, and couldn’t be happier moving to the suburbs.
Or just come visit a bit and be another name on the list of Americans who had their mind blown.
I’m not American (but live here), and have lived in Europe and traveled most of it.
This HN hivemind if believing there is one type of person and one type of lifestyle is absolute lazy nonsense. I’m guessing you already know why I don’t need to drive a large pickup truck too?
Just like in America, living in a proper house in Europe does usually mean moving further away from city center into suburbs. The main difference is that those suburbs do have better public transportation.
It is just apartments are much cheaper and you can often not have a car if you live in an apartment.
Where? Appartements in downtown Munich cost as much as in San Jose but salaries are one third of that.
My ex originally is from there and I used to work there and my colleagues from the Texas office had more purchasing power at local real-estate than their counterparts from the Munich office.
Not everyone who lives in a city is in a highrise downtown, most aren't. Not everyone that lives in a city is in an apartment. You wouldn't know that by reading this thread. The two options seem to be a large house in the suburbs or a highrise downtown.
It would cost double what I pay for me to live with 1/4 of the space in a city.
I made a pretty intentional decision about what I wanted, and actually have far more space than where I grew up. I was actually taught to live on less, but have gone in the far opposite direction.
Now, can suburban homes offer you MORE space? Absolutely! And if I had the kind of hobbies that merited that additional space I'd probably want to live there. However, as someone who grew up in the suburbs, has friends in the suburbs, etc - the number of friends I have who actually use that space for enjoyment and not junk storage is literally just 1 guy who has a sweet CNC and metal working space in his garage and basement. Everyone else has a garage used for cars + storage and a basement rumpus room with maybe a tiny 8x8 workshop somewhere near the mechanicals (HVAC and Water heater)
I do tend to be the one neighbor out in the yard the most by an order of magnitude.
I also have a 60 acre rural property because even a quarter acre in the suburbs doesn’t give me enough space to play.
No, I haven't built a cedar strip canoe (nice flex), but I do have the room in my 2.5 car garage if I wanted to. Partly because we only need one car in the city for a 4-person family (which is also part of the "cost" calculation). I could also use my basement, if I was inclined.
==It would cost double what I pay for me to live with 1/4 of the space in a city.==
This is impossible to say without knowing how much you pay and how much space you have.
I moved from Brooklyn NYC to NJ suburbs and my 15 year mortgage on 4 bed 2 bath decent yard was about the same as a 1 bed 1 bath 3rd floor walk up that was pretty snug once you had two people and two cats.
I have friends who left Brussels city and moved out to avoid the high housing CoL, crime and drunk/homeless/junkies.
I feel like you're overselling it.
Mostly 4-6 story tall buildings clustered around a major transportation hub like a metro or train station (which also hosts shops, restaurants and groceries), with row-homes or single-home detached houses farther away.
You happen to have a source for this? This is definitely not the case in many place I lived.
And living in the suburbs here doesn’t mean you have to use your car to buy milk, unlike the US. Stuff is still walking distance there.
Cost of life is average. Belgium is actually pretty great for that. It’s just the weather that’s shit.
Current market price or grandfathered contract?
Even in the very heart of the city centre you have full sized German discount supermarkets like Aldi/Lidl, or Asian/E.European foodmarekts. A far cry from the food deserts and bodega pricing endemic in American cities.
Even in the midst of a generational defining housing crisis, in what most people in Ireland would deem unfathomable HCOL, you can buy a 2 bed apartment around 70-80m2 in the CBD for less than €500,000.
https://www.daft.ie/property-for-sale/ireland/apartments?loc...
This is in the middle of the Silicon Docks for example, @ 90m2 with dedicated parking space underground, and a concierge service open 7 days a week. 10 minutes walk to Meta/Google/AirBnB/LinkedIn HQ.
https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/apartment-13-hill-of-down-spenc...
Americans like space. They like big houses. They like not hearing their neighbors. They like to live on a street that is quiet.
Even the ones that don’t like driving are willing to do it as a trade off for all those things.
Most of the young people I knew in SF who lived there in their 20’s - about 90% moved to the suburbs when they got older. Being close to bars or restaurants doesn’t matter much for most older people. What matters is low crime, space and good schools. They can drive to the city if they need to.
> Look at the most expensive places to live in the Bay Area - it’s not the urban centers, it’s the suburbs.
Sure the mansions in Pacific Heights are more, but they are mansions.
Compare like for like.
> A small plot of land in a desirable location is $4M in Palo Alto.
Also, my comparison spoke of price per sq.m. Is there a better way to compare housing costs in different locations?
Are you talking about land only? Or land and house?
If you look at the most expensive sales in SF or the Peninsula, they aren't all that different - just shy of $50M.
Regardless, my comment was more directed to middle to upper-middle class housing, not the $20M mansions in SF or 1,000 acres estates in the Peninsula.
Compare a large single family home in SF to a large, single family home in Peninsula.
Family homes in city centers (in the US) are either very expensive or bad neighborhoods
You pay taxes were you work instead of were you live? That is very unusual, typically you pay income taxes where you live. I don't see how paying taxes were you work could even work, what pays for your school or roads if all the money goes to another area?
Some bigger US cities have a city income tax which is applied regardless of where you live.
I had family living in NJ and working in NYC. They paid NYC income taxes, NY income taxes, NJ income taxes, and federal income taxes.
The vast majority do not.
> Some bigger US cities have a city income tax
> If you are a New York State nonresident you must file Form IT-203, Nonresident and Part-Year Resident Income Tax Return, if you meet any of the following conditions:
> . You are a nonresident with New York source income and your New York adjusted gross income Federal amount column (Form IT-203, line 31) exceeds your New York standard deduction.
IANAL, this isn't tax advice, I'm going by what I'm reading and what I was told by people who lived and worked there, but looking at this if you have an income made from working a job in the state of NY and ended up with more than $21k of income you need to file for NY state income taxes.
There are a number of cities with income taxes. Detroit, Baltimore, Columbus, Cleveland, Louisville, Toledo, and many more. Of those I bothered looking in to, they apply if you work in that city regardless of wherever you live.
I am going off of the study described here [0]. I'm happy to view anything you have to provide which proves it is a lie.
[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizin...
Suburbs aren't for standard of living, but affordability. You take the most available labour, the most available construction, and connect it with the most available transportation and you get suburbs. All without the need for much effective planning, organization or innovation.
But eventually someone else does those things. And then suburbs are expensive in comparison.
I want more space, both in my home and in my yard, than I can get in the city. I want a 2+ car garage where I can build and drive a go-kart with my kids, fix my own car and have a little workshop to do woodworking.
I want a garden that isn't blanketed by city air, and room for some fruit trees. I want room for a fire pit, and enough trees that I don't have line of sight into my neighbors windows.
I don't want a farm. I don't need country living. Somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5 acres is about right for what I want to do, and that means the suburbs.
I live in a Cologne, Germany right now. I have lived in Sao Paulo in the past. Big cities with lots to offer. I know big cities and their conveniences, and they're fine. But for the life I want to live, suburbs offer a better standard of living.
I don't want to rant to much, but most people don't like woodworking. They even less like doing woodworking on their own. It is something they conclude they should do because they can and don't have many alternatives. I'm sure it is covered somewhere online.
Your second point is invalid, as you're arguing against his assumptions. It's only possible to argue againt someone's logic, arguing someones assuptions is the same as calling names. I like woodwork and have alternatives.
I'm not arguing against their assumption. I said most, that isn't them. This is exactly why I didn't want to elaborate, so I won't.
I've lived in both and prefer the suburb. Inner city has all sorts of issues, from very little space, smokers puffing away as you try to enter/exit buildings, endless harmful noise & smells.
Actually I prefer rural over either of these..So many of the things people love about cities are the things I want to get away from, and would sacrifice a huge amount of income to do so.
The suburbs offer people a little taste of that magic and it's no suprise people want that.
When housing units are close together (town-homes, multi-unit buildings) the cost of infrastructure (sewer, water, roads, sidewalks, etc.) are shared by more units, and thus by more taxpayers. If the houses are farther apart, the cost per unit goes up.
So its fine if you want to live in the suburbs, be we should have an honest accounting of the costs so suburban households are paying the full price of their spacious lifestyle.
See this StrongTowns post about this issue: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizin...
The simple answer relates to raising kids - both in terms of safety/enrichment and in terms of basic things like school catchment areas, distance to young peoples amenities, and distance to the average friends house based on school catchment.
With regard to the United States, you’re not even close. 80% of the US population live in cities. [0]
[0] https://pac.org/impact/rural-americans-vs-urban-americans#:~....
For purposes of this discussion thread, we're just using "living in the cities" as shorthand for "high-density living with convenient mass-transit and walkable amenities". E.g. downtowns or multi-family housing near the city center where people can walk to the grocery store.
The majority of USA citizens do not live in that arrangement. Instead, most Americans live in areas that depend on cars.
The web page you're citing is using "cities" as shorthand for "downtowns + suburbs i.e. metroplexes" - vs - "rural farms".
Sounds like the suburbs are counted as urban wrt the census.
Of course. There are also people who enjoy walkable pedestrian and bike friendly places with lots of small local businesses to patronize.
That doesn't require living in a "big dirty city", it really just means making actual towns with dense downtown centers where people can work, live, shop, and dine.
Based on my experience with real estate prices, where townhomes near such thriving downtown developments can cost easily double of one in a suburban neighborhood a 15 minute drive away, the demand for that kind of living currently exceeds supply in many places.
The answer isn't to remove all suburbia and replace it with dense walkability, the answer is to stop preventing the dense walkable development with strict single-family-detached zoning laws, parking minimums, etc. and let the supply of such places increase to meet demand. Nobody will come take your suburban house away from you, they just want to have as much freedom in choosing what they want as you get to choose what you want.
And those that do prefer to live in big cities are just advocating for making those places better. The US has a lot of places that are definitely "city" but are still also car-dependent or at least not as friendly to walking, cycling, and mass transit as they should be. We can improve those without changing your suburban life one bit.
we really can have our cake and eat it, nice cities for the people who prefer them, suburbs for the others, so much room.
As a New Yorker, I'm totally fine with people choosing a suburban life. Do you, I don't care. But don't kill congestion pricing and think you're entitled to drive into the densest part of the United States and park for free in my neighborhood just because. Don't block funding for public transit for 40 years and then complain you need your car because the train is scary to you the two times a year you use it.
Having kids is a pivotal moment. Suddenly that rich urban life looks like danger for your little ones.
I was an urban kid and we stayed in the city when we had kids, so my kids got to go to a school where the janitor had to arrive early and remove the needles and broken beer bottles from the playground.
That's not the fault of the suburbs.
I grew up in my city when it was smaller, safer, and more economically varied. Now the middle has hollowed out and we're headed toward Manhattan, where hedge fund managers step over the homeless to get to their penthouse.
It pains me to think that this is inevitable. I don't begrudge anyone moving out of the city. I personally cannot stand the thought of getting in a car to do absolutely anything, but I know lots of people who live that way and are happy.
seattle is always a poster child for this stuff but it really isn't that bad for the upper middle class (anyone with a software job).
it's probably tougher now. but i started my career in seattle proper 10y ago and 2020 was a giant boon. low interest rates, 3k sqft house outside seattle (but still easily drivable to it thanks to reverse commute) for sub-$600k (went under asking) and sub-3% (-> inflation proof)..what a way to spend that salary the 2010s gave me to save up and enjoy the remote career I'd long established.
preparation meets opportunity isn't gonna stop being true even in a "bad" economy.
Gross stuff.
You can see at the voting district maps the city of Ottawa for example will 100% vote for a different candidate that all the distant suburbs attached to their municipality and the suburb candidate wins.
It’s been mentioned many times on HN in regards to Palo Alto, Atherton, Cupertino, etc… and often times not for altruistic motives either.
In the big picture, if you want single-family suburbs to continue to exist and be affordable it makes sense to allow at least some places to become dense. The more people who want density and can choose it, the less competition there will be for farther-out suburban houses.
And predict the actual ulterior motives of anyone advocating for such a change before it occurs?
They’re not automatons that can be fooled so easily.
I don't know the specific situation there, and I'm not saying that shouldn't ever exist, but it's worth considering why we are using zoning to preserve artificial anti-density in a place that has grown to demand higher housing density, and what the effects are of doing so on a widespread basis.
The immediate first order consequence would be higher housing prices, which seems to be the case across the US, with the cost of housing increasing much more rapidly than overall inflation or wages.
I'm not doing that. I really can't tell. Who are these people who want to ‘come take your suburban house away’, and how do they attempt to do so?
You seem to be referring to specific people in the Bay Area. I'm not in the Bay Area, and I don't really know the politics there as it relates to real estate. So, who specifically wants this, and what are they doing?
So this seems like a non sequitor…?
If you believe I, or anyone else, is making false pretenses one way or the other, on any subject, then list out the arguments for the case directly.
I will ask one more time: What, specifically, are you talking about?
College kids hope to make it big, or at least big enough to afford a pampered expensive living among other such people. It's not an unreasonable hope to have. Some of course dream to live in a penthouse on top of a skyscraper, but that's much less realistic.
(Of course there are poor suburban areas with rundown houses and clunker cars, but it's not where the college kids aspire to go.)
Dense walkable cities are few in the US; they predate the advent of the car, and accepted a lot of immigrants when Ellis Island was still open for "the wretched refuse" [1]. After WWII, a lot of better-off families moved to suburbs, but the worse-off had to stay.
It does not help that some cities, in a misguided attempt to not trample on the rights of the destitute, or maybe out of incompetence, don't keep their streets clean, and even don't enforce the law. The authorities of San Francisco are, of course, way ahead of the pack; what they have done to their once-beautiful city tarnishes the reputation of cities as the form of living.
(Disclaimer: I live in NYC, take subway and/or buses every day, walk for my grocery shopping, don't own a car, etc, and love it. Politically not left-wing though.)
That’s because American cities do their best to make themselves as car-dependent and unpleasant in downtown areas as possible. Of course American college kids want to move out to the suburbs, because American downtowns are not nice places to live. Offer people the choice to live in nice central walkable neighbourhoods like in Europe and they tend to take it.
Everybody rushed to join NATO and decided since the US was there as a backstop, they no longer needed to invest in their own defense.
It's a little bit like what happened in 2008 with the too big too fail banks and the bailout. If someone else is always there to pick up the slack, then what is the point of changing the status quo.
The EU countries were happy about this because they are broke. The US was happy to keep it's status as the global cop of the world making sure everybody stays in line. This line of thinking worked since the fall of the USSR but the rise of China, India and the global south is changing the world order as we speak.
that isn't really the issue
the issue is that, at least for a long time, they where too naive believing Russia never would go as far as attacking NATO member or economical partners
was that dump, yes, but that was a _very_ wide spread believe
and while I have seen that mindset a lot I haven't really seen any one not worrying because there are other countries in between. I mean maybe such people do exist, further west then I live.
Like in general until recently, even after the annexation of the Crimea, there commonly was the consensus that the time of offensive wars between European countries (including eastern EU and Russia) is over because it makes so little sense (economically, power wise) that none one would be dump enough to do that. But no one calculated in a autocrat with Napoleonic complex, or should be say soviet union complex. And if told the pleasant truth, with facts, people did what they always do with unpleasant truths: Try to ignore them.
Being by design means they weren't really "caught" with their pants down (in the classical "caught exactly at the wrong time") as much as they chose to always wear just underwear expecting the US to punch anyone who laughs in the face. The EU chose to "purchase" protection from the US, paid via various means. Mainly providing credibility for whatever US needs done, and make the difference between "righteous" and "callous".
What they discover now is that either the US can be said was caught with the pants down unable to properly project power and provide that purchased security, or maybe the EU was caught with the pants down because they were unable to pay (less likely). Regardless, this is like realizing your service provider is no longer reliable, you'll look inside or elsewhere. At the very least you no longer look at that provider as trustworthy, and stop building anything relying on their services.
The cost of this will be spread all around but effectively it gave China, who has no issues thrusting ahead even without someone to clean up their image, an even bigger boost. It even gave Russia a boost, if you could have believed anything in the world can still do that. But a couple of decades of weak leadership on both sides of the Atlantic conspired to achieve just that... a US desperately scrambling to stumble China after realizing that the go-to for all their problems (the "war for freedom") is hard to pull off this time, and an EU that realized that outsourcing critical safety and security aspects is a bad idea long term.
My pessimistic 2c are that the next rounds of leaders will make it worse, on one side by not understanding that the "war for freedom" is hard to pull off this time, on the other side by thinking that outsourcing to someone else will definitely make it better.
Corrupt politicians going against the interests of their own nation to appease USA?
Can you be clearer?
Furthermore, your assertion that the defense industry doesn’t provide value is questionable. Until you can convince the various state governments of the world to unite in a global superstate, defense spending is a necessary deterrent to invasion and exploitation by other states, so it is, in fact, valuable.
And while I agree that suburbs aren’t the ideal form of urban organization, they aren’t actually the cause of all the social ills that you imagine them to be. Depression and addiction are driven by loneliness, and loneliness is almost as high in urban societies as suburban ones. Obesity may be slightly aggravated by car dependence, but it is still historically high and a major problem in the walking/public transport countries of Europe.
So no, the demon of suburban car dependence does not provide the explanation for all ills.
I’d like to learn more about this. That hasn’t been my personal experience at all. Looking at the national level is challenging, as urban and suburban and income levels must be a strong factor.
Detached houses are not the main means of living for most people in Europe, but if you want one you can still get one, it just costs more than an apartment (especially in colder countries).
This is the safest period in human history by a huge margin. It may not feel that way given the ultra connected, headline consuming nature of most people these days. But it is true.
Global trade has lifted more people out of poverty than anything else, and that was first enabled by maritime trade which was implicitly secured by the US Navy post WW2. The Internet is the second coming of that, the invention of which was a result of US military spending.
You may think that US defense spending is too high, or take other faults with the US military industrial complex. But to say that it provides no value is uninformed.
There has been almost ten times more victims of conflict in 2023 as in 2005. [1]
And, as you said, we are now a bit more aware of those deaths (although I suspect a large amount occurred in conflicts that don't make western news headlines.)
The number of victims might pale against WWII, of course - but we're slowly arriving at time where WWII is not only "last century", but a "century ago".
I don't think anyone compared the figures of the Vietnam War of the 1960s to the US civil war of 1860s. Or did they ?
Anyway, in the average life span of an average human being with a normal memory, this is more likely to be one of the _worst_ period.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-armed-conflicts...
You're talking about an 18 year period...do you know how long human history is?
> average life span of an average human being with a normal memory
I think you entirely missed the point of my comment, which is this: it feels more dangerous. But it isn't.
You're absolutely right that 18-20 years is a small period compared to human history, and that the average person has a lower risk of dying in a conflict than, say a century ago.
However, I argue that 20 years is _huge_ in terms of human _life_. Consider that the median age of the world population is 30 years old ! To most of the people, the way the world was 50 years ago or 100 years ago is as much "abstract" as what the world was 1000 years ago.
However, they remember the 2000s or 2010s. They were there ! And they saw more people fleeing wars or coming back in bodybags recently when they did in their youth. You might consider that only a "feeling" ; but I would think twice before dismissing it as irrelevant, because "it's only a feeling".
I argue that "local" inflexions in the long stream of history still matter. They can ripple in the long run.