The title is somewhat misleading. The suburbs are not dying; in fact they are growing [1][2][3][4] and this article makes no claim to the contrary.
The article is saying that suburbs are becoming more like urban areas.
I like the author's evidence that housing prices are falling:
> In that same city in 2012, a typical McMansion would be valued at $477,000, about 274% more than the area's other homes. Today, a McMansion would be valued at $611,000, or 190% above the rest of the market.
The point of that comparison is separating the value of the lot from the value of the house sitting on that lot. The property value isn't going down, but the value of the home is dropping considerably.
The misleading thing may be that this is just standard depreciation, although I wouldn't be surprised if houses in the 3000-5000 sq.ft. bracket were depreciating faster than smaller houses. (Though it seems likely these numbers they stated were the simplest way they could find to say that they are depreciating at an unusually fast rate.)
I'm not sure I follow that logic. Lot value is difficult to assess and frequently wrong from an assessment standpoint.
The cost to tear down a McMansion that isn't depreciated way is very high, making the lots value questionable. Additionally, since tract housing is often identical in most ways, if your neighbors homes are going to shit and depreciating, that will impact the lot value too.
The entire series has such hyperbolic language. I know that's BI's thing, but to treat the closing of shopping malls as a cultural apocalypse is surreal.
That struck me too. Pretty amusing. I think there is definitely a trend against the mis-happen McMansion, though. I attribute it to times when home building was booming and demand was outstripping supply for homes of that size. The result was that people were willing to accept, or just didn't even know, that the architecture was a little "off". So when space > aesthetics in a buyer's mind "good enough" was, well... good enough.
Sure. Not clickbaity at all. Let's make a new article: Computers as we know them are dying.
Edit: You might want to revise your definition of misleading. Misleading doesn't mean something is factually false. It means it's true but is presented in a way to lead you into believing something else. So you can feed a narrative without lying.
Computers as we know them are, in fact, dying. This is a genuine pain point for some people, while being an opportunity for others.
Click-baity and misleading are not the same thing. Having a title that gets people to look at all is necessary to get traffic. This is true even on HN, in spite of how much people decry the evils of click-bait titles. It is incredibly hard to title things excellently well, such that it gets traffic but won't get labeled as "evil, nefarious click-bait with some dirty agenda" by the HN crowd.
I do freelance writing and I blog and I submit stuff to HN regularly. My view of this is not rooted in stupidity. It is rooted in knowing that click-bait titles work to get views and can get your article flagged to death even if the article per se is an excellent piece of writing, yet trying too hard to not be click-bait can mean you get very few views and no upvotes.
Titling things well is hard. I see nothing nefarious in how this is titled and I have too much firsthand experience with how incredibly critical HN is. The criticisms here are to the point of being neurotic and cranky. It is not merely a case of placing a high value on excellence.
I was not critising click baiting, or the article. I was simply pointing out that the title was in fact misleading and exaggerating by using semantic tricks. I used the term click bait because in that particular case, the author was not trying to lie, but rather simply make their title have more impact.
Telling me that I might want to revise my definition of misleading is essentially calling me stupid. You aren't the OP to whom I replied, the mods changed the title already, AND my first comment was down voted into the negatives. So, this looks like a gratuitous personal attack to me. You doubling down looks even more petty.
It is no wonder dang feels HN has a civility problem and hoped he could cure it by doing a political detox week, which did not work because it wasn't the issue.
I'm sorry if you got downvoted because of me. My cynism is probably the cause.
However, if you think having an argument is calling you stupid and is a personal attack then this is your own problem.
I had upvoted your comments and I liked your reply. It doesn't mean I agree with you, and it doesn't mean Im here to get you neither.
Article titles are and will always be a problem on HN. This won't change, all we can do is try to point out when there is a problem with them and then immediately complain when the mods editorialised them a little bit much.
Arguing and calling someone stupid are not the same thing. I can make the distinction. Telling me it is my problem is another personal attack. I stand by my statement that your remarks here fail to meet a standard of civility.
> "Ideally, there won't be any new highway capacity built because we can't afford to maintain what we have"
It's not a detail that changes the conclusion, but I want to focus on it:
The U.S. definitely can afford to maintain its roads. The country is the richest in the history of the world, richer than it's ever been. U.S. GDP in 1960, when the Interstate Highway system and many suburbs and malls were being built, was ~$3 trillion in real dollars;[0] now it's ~$18 trillion.
The U.S. chooses not to maintain its infrastructure.
[0] According to one unofficial source on the web, which I'm going to trust for this purpose.
Strong Towns has written extensively on this. Their conclusion is that our infrastructure is not affordable because too many roads are built to non-dense areas that do not have the tax base to support them.
Federal highway dollars get dropped in to build, but then no dollars are available to maintain.
Just as the parent poster says, the U.S. chooses not to maintain its infrastructure. The infrastructure is not affordable by many municipalities, but that same infrastructure is affordable by U.S. as a whole.
They could subsidize the infrastructure required to integrate the country and keep the non-dense areas viable even if these areas don't have the local tax base to pay for that infrastructure, just as they did with federal highway dollars when they were built, just as many other countries are doing. It's a choice to do so or not. The rules of who pays for maintenance of which parts of infrastructure are essentially arbitrary and the U.S. can alter them if they choose to.
Not from the US, but I lived there shortly and was asked to move there and had to decline. To me it's pretty clear that your single biggest problem is your suburbs and car culture. Everything from anti-social behavior, social anxiety snd isolation, depression, obesity, diabetis, divorce, as well as partisan politics stems from it. Subsidizing that mess should be the last thing you should do.
Other countries subsidize rural areas primarily for 3 reasons:
1. Certain political parties have their base in rural areas and want to subsidize their life style.
2. Strategie for making the country more food-independant through farming.
3. Military strategie for having people in remote areas.
Nobody in the world subsidizes non-productive suburban sprawl.
I think you captured it with "1. Certain political parties have their base in rural areas and want to subsidize their life style."
The suburbs are politically very important in the U.S. because a lot of people live there. The question of most national elections is whether the suburbs will ally with the urban core or the rural areas, and the answer is usually the rural areas.
That's true in some sense, but it's also true that we've built our infrastructure in a way that's very expensive. Car dominance and low-density sprawl don't come cheap.
It's like saying a poor person CAN afford a new iPhone if they just only start eating only rice and beans, and therefore iPhones are affordable for the poor. It's not just about whether the cost can fit the budget, but about what you're getting for that cost.
That argument is bunk, because the high density areas are the ones struggling. That is literally an argument for suburbia. State and federal funds do a great job outside of cities.
In my state (New York), US and state designated highways are maintained by the state if it isn't located in an incorporated city. So my city (Albany) can barely afford trucks to plow the snow, but you literally cross the city line and an army of DOT trucks are plowing. Long Island is a great example of this, as "towns" with 300k people aren't incorporated, so they get "free" services.
Even sewers are the same story. It's way more expensive to maintain buried infrastructure in the city and very cheap in the burbs. Fewer connections == fewer excavations == less labor.
In other words, high-density areas are effectively subsidizing low-density areas while not having their own needs met.
If the State pays for services in unincorporated areas, it should still pay for those services in incorporated areas. The only difference should be in management - that the State manages the budget for unincorporated areas, but the municipalities manage the budget for incorporated areas.
If municipalities are expected though to raise their own taxes to pay for these services, then the tax base can't afford it, because they're already paying to maintain the rural infrastructure through the higher State taxes.
First up, you seem to be conflating the source of infrastructures funding (state vs city) in an area with whether the population of that area could without external funding pay for their infrastructure.
And secondly, while maintaining buried infrastructure in the city is likely more expensive, your argument presents no claim that it is more expensive _per capita_.
Sustainability of infrastructure is all about the funding stream. I'm an IT Director guy with a healthy six figure salary. It's sustainable for me to spend too weeks on the beach every year. If I made $50k and had a $2000/mo mortgage, that would not be sustainable.
In my city, a tax/ratepayer base of 100,000 people bear the burden of supporting hundreds of miles of streets and other infrastructure. Guess what? They cannot afford it.
1 mile away, most of those costs are supported by 20 million state taxpayers.
This is precisely the same as the problem with schools. My City School District is struggling to get funding to cover basic services because they have to deal with a larger, poorer and sicker student body. That district one mile away is debating whether or not they should have a full size Olympic swimming pool or not. No poor folk, fewer disabled kids who need expensive intervention and a larger tax base.
I'm not sure what your argument is. The original point was that rural and suburban infrastructure maintenance is more expensive per capita than urban infra maintenance. The fact that urban centers are paying for maintenance of suburban and rural infrastructure on top of their own maintenance only further makes that same point.
Aside from the fact that this isn't really true, you have to also account for many externalities that car dominance creates:
- Land use. While every transportation mode uses land, cars use way more, and in dense urban areas that land is very valuable; users of the land who are driving are getting it 'for free', when it could go to a more productive purpose.
- Pollution
- Noise
- Danger
All of these are 'costs' that just looking at how much money you spend on roads won't account for.
I prefer a 0.5-1.0 acre lot to a lot slightly bigger than the footprint of the house it contains.
I prefer to have the privacy that's afforded by having my house set 40' back from the street, with plenty of space between my and my neighbors' homes, rather than living in a house that abuts, or is 6 feet away, from my neighbors'.
I prefer a spacious driveway and an attached, heated, two car garage, to parking on the street a block from my house, and having to dig my car out after a snowstorm.
I prefer to own a home that was built during or since the 1950s, when Romex wiring was original equipment, rather than own something that still has knob and tube wiring with decaying fabric insulation.
I prefer a home built with drywall or rock lathe and plaster, over one built with wood lath and plaster.
I've found that most pre-1910 homes I've examined do not have foundations or basements to my liking.
I prefer to live in an area where I can leave my doors unlocked and my windows open at night without giving it a second thought. Or where, if I leave the house and realize I left the front door unlocked, I don't feel compelled to go back and lock it.
I prefer to live in an environment where junkies and bums are virtually nowhere to be seen, rather than an environment where I have to be careful not to step in human feces when I walk between two parked cars.
When I can get all that affordably in the city, I'll consider moving back.
The problem isn't your preferences, but rather that so many people like you (I won't guess at your exact situation) express the same preferences only because so many of the significant downsides have been hidden by government funding models. That, and so many municipalities refuse to do the accrual accounting that would demonstrate just how quickly the suburban model bankrupts them.
Suburbs receive a level of service from public entities that is far in excess of that justified by the private investment there. They receive bus funding from State government that doesn't count against their school budgets. The roads and pipes reliably cost more than the houses they service.
There's nothing wrong with living in a rural house. But as long as money gets funneled disproportionately into these places, you should expect to have that decision second guessed. Plus, when all the suburbs finally have to face facts, delivering services to the suffering poor people left behind there will be an absolute disaster.
Of course, our laws regarding financing and building anything that increases density in suburban areas are hopelessly awful too. We have a sort of donut hole, if you will: cheap financing for suburban houses, and for large apartment blocks. But the logical increment of a 2-3 story building with first floor commercial is left out. Ask for a loan on that, and you'll be laughed out the door for your silly request for a non-conforming mortgage.
City people use, and work at, the malls and airports and office parks and industrial parks and colleges and universities that exist in their suburbs. So the bus lines serve them as well. And it's to the city's benefit that suburban people can easily get into the city to spend their money at city businesses. So, while they may have some merit, I don't think your points are as cut and dried as you think they are.
If suburbs weren't subsidized, these people and businesses would reside closer to the city centre. This wouldn't impair city's functions in any way, but would save lots of money for the taxpayers.
I think a lot of that would happen. The would also be a lot of people who would reconfigure themselves as spokes about the hub of a rail or Transit stop. And my experience with places like that suggests to me that the net effect for everyone in the city is that it would be easier to get out into the countryside, despite there being less road capacity and more people.
Anyone who's spent time in DC can probably attest to what a pilgrimage it can seem just to escape.
I'm in the same boat as OP, and I think it's reasonable that our preferences should come with the appropriate price tag, such that there are no hidden subsidies.
I'm not sure how more concentration of people in cities is such a good thing when so many already can't afford it. It seems like what you suggest would make a significant portion people go from living comfortably I'm the suburbs to being homeless in the city. Being homeless has a cost too.
From the way you describe it, it seems to me that the suburbs are/were an effective social program to reduce homelessness.
And that's perfectly fine. The only question is who should pay for the externalities of your lifestyle? Now that point is contentious, how much exactly does that amount to? Regulation distorts competition towards your lifestyle, by mandating large amounts of parking, for instance, or by letting cities bear the cost of what suburban dwellers simply do not want to see in their backyard, or by subsidizing your mortgage.
As for 'human feces', it's not a problem of cities so much as lack of safety net. It's not because of cities that people are homeless, it's because we removed the infrastructure that prevented them to go homeless in the first place (social support networks, mental health support...). They are more tolerated in cities and cities typically invest in basic services for them, so that's where they congregate. Your ability to not step in human feces in your suburb is directly dependent on cities' willingness to provide services for this population (or they'll simply die).
>Your ability to not step in human feces in your suburb is directly dependent on cities' willingness to provide services for this population (or they'll simply die)
So is this an argument not to provide services for the homeless? If the result of providing support in the city is human shit everywhere, then maybe the homeless services should be moved outside the center of the city.
Basic support to prevent people to go homeless is not only more moral and more humane, it's also cheaper. In California, I'd start by rebuilding mental health support. The State should do it.
I live in a dense little pre-zoing code neighborhood full of tiny lots and no setbacks. I don't have a problem with people like you preferring big lots and setbacks. I have a huge problem with the fact that people like you have made neighborhoods like mine illegal.
If someone wants a house that doesn't have one of those things - one with a smaller lot, or less setback, or a smaller driveway, or no garage, etc. - and starts to build one, do you think they should be arrested and hauled off to jail? If so, why? If not, then please join us in voting for land use reform in local elections, since that's how things currently are in 99.9% of the US.
I don't know what you mean by "land use reform", but I'm a reluctant supporter of zoning laws. One of their redeeming features is that they tend to be enacted at the most local level. So the people affected by them are in a better position to change them if they don't like them, or they don't have to move far if they can't tolerate them and absolutely have to get out from under them.
Unfortunately, that is often not the case, because people who work in a place don't get a vote, even if they far outnumber the residents. The most extreme case I know of is Vernon, California, where just 112 people lived in the city (all new housing construction having been banned), while 46,000 people worked there. The city government, running unopposed, voted to pay itself luxurious salaries and benefits, with one person having an annual salary of over $1 million.
The solution I can see for this is to reform the tax code.
Tax income tax based on where someone's office is; given them the right to vote there accordingly.
Tax someone's property where they live/own/rent it (property tax should be built in to the rent, but as this will be passed on to renters, they too deserve to vote on local issues).
> So the people affected by them are in a better position to change them if they don't like them
This is an oversimplification. If you look at the bay area for example and its housing crisis, the people who are most impacted are the people who haven't moved there yet but might do so in the future (and will pay higher future rents if housing supply does not increase). But potential residents obviously don't get to vote.
And that's how you get into a situation where people can't afford to settle down in their hometown area, even when they have good jobs.
The other thing you're missing is that you can easily end up with a tragedy of the commons type situation when local government is sufficiently fragmented. Again, this happens in the bay area: if the bay area was one city with one government, people would probably be fine voting for more housing supply across the whole area, but since it's split into dozens of cities, each one tends to suppress housing supply to boost local property values, instead arguing that some other city should be the one that provides more homes.
This is a win-win situation. The more other people live in denser urban areas, the cheaper you can get what you want, and the closer your lot can be to a city.
This post got a lot of upvotes, and a lot of downvotes. I know because I watched it fluctuate up and down. Everything I wrote was merely my personal preferences. I wonder why so many people were upset by it enough to downvote it.
I think you have some good points, but it seems you're against a straw-man version of city life that doesn't match what most city folks experience every day:
* "a home that was built during or since the 1950s"... is supposed to be preferable? A home built in the 80s will be considered old-fashioned in places like Seoul. (Besides, what's that got to do with city-versus-rural difference?)
* "I prefer to live in an area where I can leave my doors unlocked..." Some cities have crime problem. Others don't. Also, I have the impression it's always the (Americal) rural dwellers who say "You urbanite liberals have no idea why guns are necessary!" So I'm taking your argument with a grain of salt.
* "...rather than an environment where I have to be careful not to step in human feces when I walk between two parked cars." Well... then don't live in SF, I guess?
>I think you have some good points, but it seems you're against a straw-man version of city life that doesn't match what most city folks experience every day:
> "a home that was built during or since the 1950s"... is supposed to be preferable? A home built in the 80s will be considered old-fashioned in places like Seoul. (Besides, what's that got to do with city-versus-rural difference?)
First, a little background. In a previous life I was a carpenter who did some new home construction, but mostly remodeling, in both cities and suburbs. So, given just about any wall in any home, I have a pretty good idea what you'll find under the paint if you take a sledgehammer to it.
In the northeastern US city I'm using as my reference point, the housing stock is on average much older than the suburbs. And to me, an old house is like a a really old car. It breaks down a lot and requires a lot of maintenance. The walls are less likely to be square and plumb. The wiring is more likely to be obsolete and insufficient for all the computers/gadgets/appliances we rely on today. I just don't care to deal with it.
Different people have different value systems. I really don't care whether or not there is excellent Thai Fusion cuisine available within walking distance, but I like a home that is reasonably up to date and low maintenance. The so-called charm of century old city houses is of no value to me. In some wealthier areas of my local city, most of the houses have been gutted and refurbished down to the last piece of trim by their cardiac surgeon owners, but those houses sell for around 4X what I paid for mine and cars are still more likely to get stolen from their driveway than from mine.
So, to sum up, my preferences are based on my own set of values, which are markedly different from people who prefer to live in cities.
And one thing I've noticed, is that when I say things like this openly, for example at a dinner party attended mostly by white professional city dwellers, it invariably bothers some of them, visibly, that I have the preferences I do and I'm not embarrassed to admit them. (I'm well aware of how fashionable suburb-bashing is among fashionable people.) I always find that part amusing. They try to convince me that it's so awesome living as they do in a row house in some "up and coming" neighborhood, but it really sounds like they're trying to convince themselves.
Nobody is trying to convince you of anything. Some people value time more than money. Living in the burbs requires a car, sitting in traffic, etc. That's not worth it for a lot of people. I can walk outside my door and have access to 10 times the things the average suburbian does. That makes it worth it.
> Living in the burbs requires a car, sitting in traffic, etc.
FWIW, this isn't always true. I live in the suburbs about 30 miles from work, and it takes about as much time for me to drive there as it does for my friends who live 3x closer, but in the city. They get all the traffic; I can literally just set cruise control at speed limit, and coast 20 miles out of those 30 on a wide open freeway.
Then you'd probably not consider most of what is cities a city.
I live in >500k fully walkable european city with okay-ish public transit. During peak times, it's ~30 minutes to get to downtown by both public transit and car. But most of offices are located outside of downtown(=oldtown) area. One office area is 30min+ by public transit (and requires a transfer or long walk) or 10min by car, even during peak times. Office park on another side of the city would be well over 1h by public transit, but 30min by car. There're locations that take 3x longer by public transit and/or require elaborate transfer plan than driving. Difference gets even bigger if you can start a wee earlier/later.
That's a no true scotsman argument. What the OP described matches almost every metro area of the US (except maybe Manhattan). So by your definition there are basically no cities in the US, which is pointless for this discussion.
Really? I lived in Seattle and didn't need a car for daily use. I also highly suspect you don't need one in Chicago, Washington DC, maybe Philly and Pittsburgh. And you definitely don't need one in most parts of NYC, not just Manhattan (I know plenty of people who live in Queens and commute by train).
I didn't say that you need a car to live in Seattle. I said that commute times are not necessarily shorter.
Besides, where did you work when you lived in Seattle? Plenty of people live in the city, but work across the lake in one of the offices in Eastside (Microsoft in Bellevue, Redmond or Samammish, Google in Kirkland etc).
You don't need a car in a sense that you can take a bus, or the private connector shuttle if your employer provides one. But they sit in the same traffic jams on the roads, so it's not really saving you any time (although you do get the benefit of reading or doing something else while waiting).
Anyone who has ever done any significant renovations on an old house knows the problems with aging housing stock.
I would go even further and say 1950s is still a pain in the neck.
It's really nice to work on a house built after 1985, for the simple fact you can sand door and window trim down to a nice smooth finish without having to worry about unleashing the lead kraken.
Next time I buy an old house I'm going to do a full gut renovation. Take it down to the frame and build anew. It's the only way to go in my opinion.
Drywall is very easy to repair. Old walls covered in decrepit wallpaper with who knows what underneath, not so much.
It is difficult to get insurance for a house with knob and tube wiring, and this is just the start.
Anything built in the 50's has the potential to contain asbestos as well.
In regards to density, I have found that .15-.25 acre single family lots with some three story apartment complexes sprinkled in make a very nice compromise that gives most of the benefits of suburbia while allowing for a nice walkable to bikeable town.
It seems to depend on stock. The best buildings I've lived in, at least in terms of apparent solidity, were built in the early 1800's. The worst in the mid-oughties. However, it might be that only the well made stuff has lasted two hundred years.
My main complaint with suburbs is the likelihood of myself or my kid getting struck and killed by a car while cycling. I can't do that in the suburbs, or at least the ones I've lived in. The drivers go 50 mph+, turn right on reds without _ever_ checking for people walking or cycling, and will blame a dead kid for cycling if they were killed while riding a bike.
It's much narrower than that. It's really the culture of the particular area. I've been in some towns in California where you will get angry people if you drive like that and others where that's the norm.
There's a certain sense of naivete or smug entitlement with your last point: "When I can get all that affordably in the city, I'll consider moving back."
Obviously you'll never get all those things in the city, especially the ones involving lots of land. What makes a city a city is having people close together. That's what a city is.
The only way you can get density that low in a city is when zoning regulations require some area to stay that way, and its regulations like that that enforce low densities that have caused tons of problems in the US.
You shared a valid point of view and the only way to learn is by discussing things. People shouldn't down vote a view that they do not support as it only creates an echo chamber. The best way to change someone's mind is to listen to the supporting arguments for their opinions/beliefs.
>Lots of people consider use upvote to signal agreement and a downvote to signal disagreement.
That's true, but unfortunate, because a lot of non-inflammatory posts made in good faith get downvoted to where they get marked [dead] simply because they express unpopular opinions.
I tend to try to counter that phenomenon through upvotes. I won't hesitate to upvote something I disagree with if it appears to be getting unfairly downvoted.
I've always been a fan of Slashdot's system where you place a vote and then specify a reason. It's probably too complicated for something like Facebook or Reddit, but HN should be okay with it.
Sure, but you are just one data point, not changing the fact many young people prefer the trade offs offered by city living.
I mean, your argument is pretty disingenuous, given your requirement of not being physically close to your neighbors. That pretty much violates the definition of the word "city".
Jed Kolko, former chief economist at Trulia, thinks stories like this are either exaggerated or wrong. His basic claim is that urban revival is limited to childless professionals in their peak earning years. See [1], or any of his posts at [2] for the data and analysis.
Anecdotally, when I lived in an urban condo, half the building was empty-nesters -- couples who raised their kids in the suburbs then moved back to walkable smaller city apartments after the kids left the nest.
The problem demographic is couples with kids. Our urban schools are bad, so they leave the city to find good schools. But people with no kids -- either before children or after they leave for college -- are living in cities.
>>The problem demographic is couples with kids. Our urban schools are bad, so they leave the city to find good schools.
Good urban schools exist, but there aren't enough of them, hence there is intense competition to get into good urban schools. To your point, this then ends up driving more families away from dense urban centers.
> Good urban schools exist, but there aren't enough of them
It's not just that — due to desegregation (itself a good thing!) one can't ensure that one's kids will go to either a good school or one nearby. Parents want the best for their kids, and will do their best to ensure their kids' success (note that Mr. Obama's kids went to Sidwell Friends, not to a public DC school).
It's not just schools. Public transportation (at least in the US) becomes miserable with several small children. Walking 1 mile single or as a couple is fine, but with toddlers it's an exhausting adventure just to get to the grocery store.
High housing costs get even worse when you are paying for 5 people instead of 1 or 2. This multiplication factor also carries over to many other costs so a city block with artisanal restaurants and locally-grown grocery stores just doesn't cut it for family budgets.
But right. A particular demographic of young professionals (which happens to align with both a lot of writers in these sorts of publications and tech workers) are moving to a handful of mostly coastal dense urban centers.
I'm not sure how much of an outlier his interpretation of the data is or if you just don't hear a lot from his perspective because it doesn't support the urbanization narrative.
This somewhat anecdotal, but the biggest issue I had when living in the suburbs was traffic. I'm someone who has driven hundreds of thousands miles and never been in an accident, but the extreme levels of fear and stress I got from going even short distances in the suburbs was just aweful.
I didn't always feel this way, but I think the use of cellphones has created and environment where even slow moving drivers are unpredictable. I now walk to work and frequently see people on their phones while driving, if a line of ten cars are stopped at a light at least three people are on their phones. The result isn't an extreme increase in accidents but a constricting deficit of attention which incrementally lengthens every encounter on the road. More short stopping, more people missing green lights or just driving super conservatively and not merging holding up traffic.
Also I never use my phone while driving, but the fact that I can't even look at it when I know someone is trying to contact me is incredibly frustrating and impacts my enjoyment of driving.
if a line of ten cars are stopped at a light at least three people are on their phones.
As a cyclist, I often check who is on their phone when I pull up to a light. My guess would be even higher - 50-75% of drivers are on their phones when stopped at a light.
I would be very interested to know how much of this is caused by a change in housing preference v/s a change in the nature of employment/wages for millennials. When you had reasonable expectation that your job would last for several years, you are more willing to invest in building up equity in a suburban home/community.
Also, the no.1 reason why people seem to want to move to suburbs is children (IMO, anecdotal etc.)... perhaps the falling fertility is making married/live-in couples more willing to live in a dense, urban communities?
I know many people who have been in that position when they had children. They like the city but they have a kid and the combination of $/sq ft, schools, and general environment made them, however reluctantly, move out. (The few I know who remained in Manhattan or wherever were very well off and used private schools.)
>>(The few I know who remained in Manhattan or wherever were very well off and used private schools.)
... or managed to survive the seemingly insane NYC Department of Education admissions process to enter your child[ren] into public Pre-K, Kindergarten or Middle School. There are good schools in the city, but most are difficult to get into for a variety of reasons.
I think that's the case. Americans tend to move out of the city and buy a house in the suburbs when they have children. The perception (true or not) is suburbs are safer and offer better schools.
Also, I suspect you can almost buy a house in the 'burbs for the difference in rent between a one and two bedroom apartment in SF.
You're suspicion on the cost of living downtown vs the suburbs is correct for DC.
My son lives in a new 500sqft flat in a nice downtown neighborhood. His rent in $2200/month and that seems fairly typical for that area. You can spend less for an older unit or one in a less desirable area.
That $2200 is definitely enough to pay a mortgage in many parts of Fairfax County (assuming a moderate downpayment).
the no.1 reason why people seem to want to move to suburbs is children (IMO, anecdotal etc.)
I don't think it's anecdotal.
In nearly every city in the US the urban schools are bad and there are much better suburban schools. It's not just a funding difference as many urban schools do get decent funding. It appears to be a complex issue of parent engagement, varying leadership quality in different urban schools, and peer role models and family life.
Whatever causes suburban schools to be better, I believe the gap is narrowing. Today's high school population reflects parents' housing choices ten years ago. Urban elementary schools are already far better than they were a decade ago.
I have a one bedroom apartment next to work in a fairly urban location. This fits my wife, my MIL, and our newborn. It doesn't feel small at all (helps that this is more space than we had in China, but still...)
If you/your wife/MIL grew up in an urban community, this might be easier. For instance, I grew up in rather dense urban communities in India, and for the longest time, my family did not even have a car (my dad had a 2 wheeler). So I don't find it that weird to live in an apartment with the whole family.
For Americans that grew up in Suburbia though...this might be different.
Or maybe it's just the market's way of telling employees and employers that it's a big beautiful country that doesn't begin and end with a small peninsula on the West Coast.
It's amazing that most companies, including tech companies, operate technology with a diaspora of people across the globe. Yet the bigshots need to be in SFO for reasons.
I'd say "Why work for a tech company that pushes the externalities of high housing costs onto you by not allowing remote work" but I assume it'd be drowned out by the same sound as the rush of folks to grab shovels and pick axes during the gold rush era.
Housing in the Bay Area is like roads; build more and capacity will simply be soaked up. Either move elsewhere or accept the SV tax. No property owner in their right mind would vote for more building (depressing the value of, most likely, the largest asset they own).
TL;DR Vote with your feet, prefer remote first companies.
I think you're conflating discussion of what individuals should do with what the city should do.
Should workers vote with their feet for remote first companies? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean SF shouldn't also build more housing.
Saying you shouldn't build housing because people will just buy it all up it is like saying you shouldn't grow food in a famine because people will just eat it. The problem is that demand and supply are massively out of step, and that means you need to build a lot before it starts to even out.
And sure, there are political reasons it doesn't happen, but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea.
This is a really interesting contrarian perspective... I think the only thing that prevents it from being true is that you can very easily build a lot of housing stock - just build up! SF's restrictive zoning/NIMBY is the only thing in the way. The "housing congestion" is artificial - not "induced demand" like with the typical road problem.
Appreciate it. Everyone says "build baby build!"; Facebook, Google, etc have deep enough pockets they'll simply fill that new housing stock with tech workers and you'll be back to where you started (outrageously expensive housing).
Well demand is a good thing in this case. It implies good economic development. My point was more that market mechanisms don't make sense for public good infrastructure/monopolies.
Building as much (and sustainably) as possible + a land tax to discourage speculation and people not actually living in housing might be a better solution.
I keep being surprised that major employers keep paying the SV surtax to employ engineers in the Bay area rather than in cheaper places. I understand these organizations need to keep people in the Bay area, sure. It's the center of the industry; it's where a lot of new things happen. But do they need so many people within a half-hour of HQ?
I get that companies want to have an SV presence but you can do that and limit your headcount there. I also get that some people really value the ability to hop jobs to other geographically close employers but options (which is effectively what we're talking about here) have some upper value.
I expect it will all self-correct. There is new housing coming on line. There is some upper limit to the premium companies will pay and some lower limit to the squalor software engineers will tolerate to live in SF. Market corrections can certainly happen.
If only the market was working as you think it does. If you remove regulations getting in the way of building faster and denser, I bet you that San Francisco would see a construction boom and prices go down significantly over time. Prices are way up precisely because housing is no free market and we created a lot of barriers to new supply. The fact that so many people want to live here despite such crazy prices is a strong indication that there's a lot of demand to live in the city.
In Atlanta, I find this wholly untrue, and the "doesn't cook at home" is something I find most easily defines between gen-x/early millennials / millenials with older siblings and late millennials.
Of my friends and people I've in mid twenties to late thirties, most define eating at home as microwaving or heating a frozen meal; otherwise fast food and eating out are what they spend their budgets on.
There's a great documentary on this called The End of Suburbia,[1][2] though the causes for such a collapse are very different in the documentary vs this article.
Yabbut if you're taking out a 30 year mortgage, you're not just going to look at current oil prices. The media are full of stories about the end of oil and looming price increases.
The media is also full of stories about new billion-barrel fields being discovered. Based on what Americans are buying to drive, they don't seem too concerned about the price of oil.
I don't know what it is now, but back when I bought my first house the average length of time people stayed in a house was 4 1/2 years.
We consider it acceptable for a car to be mostly depreciated after five years of ownership. We do not want our houses to have lost value in five years, especially as many of us will still owe 75% of its value.
A house is still a longer term investment than a car, even if you sell it.
I'm curious if others are seeing tear down fest in semi-urban neighborhoods?
So I live in Metrowest Boston Area. I own a multi family. My wife, infant son and I live in modest square footage despite having fairly generous annual incomes (e.g. well above AMT tax rate).
My parents used to live nearby in affluent town (Wellesley) before just recently selling their house to a developer... who of course knocked it down to build a gigantic pimped out house. The same developers was buying 4 other houses at the time. In short Metrowest Massachusetts has become tear down central.
The problem is other than foreign investors (a lot of Newston, Weston, Wellesley, and Needham is getting bought out by foreign investors) nobody from my age group.. the age group that is looking to buy houses wants a super mansion... even if its decked out (That is these houses aren't McMansions. They are real mansions).
From my general experience of talking to other educated thirty somethings is people want authentic and charming not McMansion and yet there all these new houses replacing old New England house.
Yet these new houses are priced ridiculously high. And again talking to other peers it seems gone are the days where people buy 4-6 times their salary. People are buying sometimes as low as just twice their salary and completely fine. And if people want convenient they are going for condo and not McMansion style.
Historically New England has been fairly bubble proof. I fear that time is coming to an end.
When it does happen I might buy some of these big boys and convert them to multi-families ... BTW this is exactly what happened to parts of New England in the late 19th and early 20th century [1] where giant houses were converted to multi families aka Somerville and Waltham (where I live).
Even a good part of SF proper (maybe 1/3 or so) feels pretty suburban to me. Two-story single-family homes, each with a private garage as the most prominent feature of the ground floor frontage. Granted, they're more "old-style" suburban homes. On smaller lots and with smaller yards, on a grid street plan, more like what '40s-'60s style suburbs looked like. Not the style popular since the '80s with big houses on huge lots on a cul-de-sac. But not exactly urban, either.
Yes, but people want to go there for the jobs, not because they think it has a great urban form. A lot of people would love to see more compact, walkable neighborhoods in the bay area, but old-timer residents often fight zoning changes tooth and nail, because they want their neighborhoods to stay frozen in time.
Yes. There are a few areas in SF, San Jose, and the east bay that are built up enough to feel truly urban, but the rest is low-rise and therefore quintessentially suburban.
* 1 Good schools for kids
* 2 Privacy (isolation of noise/smell/etc from others)
* 3 Space (more of it)
* 4 Lower costs (rent, parking, prices in stores)
* 5 Safety (a perception that being more isolated makes you safer)
* 6 Community (this is often a fallacy)
1, 5, and 6 are all factors related to not having good social organizations at a building / block / school district level because incentives aren't aligned correctly. This could be fixed*.
2 is mostly down to building things in stupid, cheep, short-sighted ways, and building codes that allow that.
3 Too many studio units, not enough 3-4-5 bedroom combo units
4, 3, 2, 1, 5, 6 All due to not enough competition to keep prices down.
I have a kid, and I like the idea of living in a suburb, just not a typical American one where you can't walk anywhere. Being forced to drive everywhere sucks.
I'd love to see more 'streetcar suburbs' with local amenities within walking distance, where parents and kids can safely bike around, where transit to the city proper isn't a cruel joke, etc.
In Denmark for many people it goes the other way. Suburbs are nice when you're a couple, because you've got a big yard, lots of space, etc. But once you have kids, they can become more of a hassle. Now you have to drive the kids everywhere. Many people prefer to live in the city (or one of the inner suburbs) once they have kids of a certain age, because then the kids can get around on their own, on bike or transit, rather than the parents having to drive them to/from every single thing. Kids also tend to prefer this, because it gives them more mobility/independence.
Same here. Age 20 - hate the suburbs. Age 40 - love them. I'm guessing when I'm ready to retire I'll either go rural or urban. Probably rural where I can afford to have a nice sized workshop.
In my 40s with two teenagers, love living in a city (Pittsburgh). They can both walk to school (2 blocks to elementary school, high school is farther, though, about half hour).
I love that in the summer they can hang out with friends at the local pool, or play ping pong with friends at the local rec center during the winter. Point being they have a lot of activities with in walking distance where they can meet with friends and we don't have to drive them. My son in high school has discovered he can hang out in one of the many many restaurants around his high school with his friends.
I don't think they would have the same freedoms or independence living in a cul de sac somewhere, at least not before getting a driver' license.
I grew up (and now live) in what are called exurbs today. I do appreciate the access to the city. And appreciate the pros (and cons) or urban living, which was never a good match for my employment options. I've never been a big fan of classic suburbia although the one time I lived in such it gave me a 5 minute commute to work. So there was that.
There are a lot of people who work in the city but feel they need a house to raise a family. Unless you're making $400k+ a year, that leaves suburbia as the only option in my city.
I grew up in the suburbs, and wish I still lived there. I live in a city now, having moved for work, and regret it. The city is hard to get around in, and it's crowded and expensive.
Depends on the city, and whether or not you are too lazy to walk a few blocks.
When I lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn, most things were walking distance, and buses trains and cabs super convenient.
I live in Pittsburgh now, and can walk (half hour) or bike (10 minutes) to work. Shopping requires a car, but not much traffic and plenty of parking compared to NYC, so still convenient.
I know other US cities, though, have bad public transportation and bad traffic, and those might be worse than living in the suburbs.
I live in the Milwaukee suburbs, and I think it's a great deal. I can grow my own organic food in my garden, I can have fires at night, I'm 2 miles from the Ultimate Frisbee fields, 2 miles from wooded mountain biking trails, and 4 miles from a good coffee shop. Cost for 4 bed/2 bath house? $112k (~5 years ago).
Little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky...
You know, it's funny. Some cities are trying to quickly build out higher-density apartment buildings in/near the downtown areas, and from what I've seen the same concept applies. I'd love to see some of those fancy mini-arcologies spring up, but really the boxes are just a bit bigger (or smaller, depending on how you look at it.)
I do hope that malls become very cheap real estate before long; I think it's already happening in some places. I would just love to buy what is essentially a cheap, empty, commercially-zoned warehouse and stuff it full of things like laser tag, arcades and e-sports, a couple of lounge areas and coffee shops/bars depending on the time of day...but I doubt you could make something like that work without very cheap square footage and a lot of people within a 30-45 minute drive.
So, I have to wonder: if this trend actually continues (and I hope it does), could this be a factor that helps curtail climate change to some degree? I realize that we will most likely inevitably suffer major damages at this point no matter what, but I'm wondering if trends like this (along with the rise of better battery technology and electric cars) will at least mitigate the damage to some extent.
I mean, currently NYC has a ridiculously low carbon foot-print for its population size. So if more places become dense population centers with public transportation like NYC, it can only be a positive thing in terms of mitigating climate change.
Not to a huge degree, probably, because this is really just America moving towards something a bit more like what's already the dominant urban form in other developed countries. It's not a global trend; while other countries have suburbs, the extent of America's obsession with them and the extreme car-dependence of the American ones is almost unique.
The idea of suburban areas being less about owning is horrible. Of course if I don't buy my living space and instead rent it, someone ELSE has to buy it first. They become not less about owning, but more about being owned by big companies instead of individual owners.
And the reason people don't own as much as years before is because we realize that we can't afford to. If you give me a mansion for $10 (without any zeros behind it) I'll gladly prefer it over my apartment.
What will be the next article in the series? Children in Jemen prefer to eat less food than their bodies require?
> In one example, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the extra money that buyers were expected to be willing to pay to own a McMansion fell by 84% from 2012 to 2016. In that same city in 2012, a typical McMansion would be valued at $477,000, about 274% more than the area's other homes. Today, a McMansion would be valued at $611,000, or 190% above the rest of the market.
I love how they think it is only a matter of willingness. Do they realize the cost cited prices out around two-thirds of the population?
The article is saying that suburbs are becoming more like urban areas.
I like the author's evidence that housing prices are falling:
> In that same city in 2012, a typical McMansion would be valued at $477,000, about 274% more than the area's other homes. Today, a McMansion would be valued at $611,000, or 190% above the rest of the market.
Up 28% in price - must be dying!
[1] http://time.com/107808/census-suburbs-grow-city-growth-slows...
[2] http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/03/2015-us-population-wi...
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/americans-moving-to-suburbs-r...
[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/26/americas-...