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Comment by lwansbrough | Hacker News Reader

This is like, a post-hoc rationalization.

Most jobs, not all, can take place inside a city. If you build your cities densely, people can live and work within the city and have all their needs met without the need for a car (see: the great cities of the world)

If you design economic hubs properly, businesses can be located within reach of homes without the need for cars.

If you instead prioritize the need for, I don’t know, a monoculture lawn and separation from lower class people, then you’re choosing to build suburbs. Once a city has built enough suburbs, businesses become out of reach without the use of a car.

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What if I want my own garden and not monoculture lawn? What if I want my children to be able to walk in nature near their home? Neither is possible in a densely built city where there are only apartments.

Then there are all the social problems, bad neighbours that become more common in densely built areas. I don't want to deal with that. Suburbs are popular because they provide a superior quality of life for many people.

Of course in an ideal world everyone would be allowed to do fully remote work if possible, and people like me could move to countryside.

Since I've moved to my current home, I've had jobs in about 6 different towns and cities. I think for all of them I had colleagues that cycled to work and colleagues that drove for an hour or more.

All these jobs had homes and shops within walking distance. But they are not within walking distance of each other.

> Most jobs, not all, can take place inside a city. If you build your cities densely, people can live and work within the city and have all their needs met without the need for a car (see: the great cities of the world)

Most people do not want to live in dense cities in high rises.

The number of jobs which cannot be moved into dense city high rises is much higher than you’re thinking. It might seem that way if your world is office jobs and email jobs, but there’s much more to the world of work than that.

Dense cities also have very high turnover as people grow up and want families.

It’s not about having lawns and staying away from “lower class people”. This feels like a poor attempt to cast moral shade on people who choose not to live in a high rise.

Most people who live in dense cities don’t live in high rises…

It is very clear you have never lived in a well functioning city before, and just have no idea what you are talking about. Take the L and admit you just don’t have experience with it. North Americans often don’t because North American cities are extremely bad in this regard.

I'm sure there are plenty of people, who, regardless of how well functioning a city is, don't want to live in one. Myself included.

Absolutely. It’s just the very anti city people never ever seem to use excuses that are actually valid.

Like if “the things that brings me most joy in life require owning lots of land” or “I don’t like people and every day I have to be near them drains me”, those are really valid reasons and there are many more.

What that tells me is either they have a caricature of cities in their head, or (more likely) being anti city is an identity and not based on anything actually about cities per-say.

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