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Comment by chrismealy | Hacker News Reader

"City leaders had poured money into a high-concept modernistic new culture center at the town’s edge. And the shopping mall had been built. Large grocery chains, called hypermarkets, had also been constructed outside the city, with free parking. It is not that Albi no longer had commerce, or activity. But the essence of the ancient city was being lost."

When you own a car it costs a lot of money whether you drive it or not. When you own a car you want free and convenient parking. When you own a car you want wide roads free of obstacles (that is, people). When you own a car then retailers can offload distribution costs onto you, which means buying in bulk at giant stores with giant parking lots. Widespread car ownership is fundamentally incompatible with dense, walkable towns.

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Then maybe, they should not have done that. Manhattan Kansas gutted itself the same way.

The article's descriptions of Albi remind me of coral bleaching at barrier reefs. It's possible to recover until a certain point.

How much human suffering is acceptable to imprison people in the dense walkable cities no one wants for themselves, but desperately want others to endure for them because it looks quaint? Most ethnic activities die out to the sound of "It sure would be nice if someone else would...".

I would prefer to live in the dense walkable town. I realise I'm a sample of one but don't assume there aren't people who don't prefer that model.

Funny thing. The densest, most walkable city in Massachusetts, Somerville, is now the most sought after city in the Commonwealth, and among the most sought after in the country.

By what measurement?

Home prices. Rents.

I'm a Firefly fan. I was dying to see Serenity when it came out. Just dying. If the studio had limited the box office to 100 tickets I would have acquired one. I would have rolled my grandmother for a ticket. And there were a lot of people just like me, in absolute numbers. A few thousand, at least. Those 100 tickets would have sold for thousands of dollars. By your logic that would have made Serenity the most sought after movie ever.

But there weren't enough people like me to make the movie's release successful by conventional measures. It barely broke even. There were enough die-hard fans to drive up the price of those theoretically limited 100 tickets, but most people aren't Firefly fans at all and didn't bother to buy tickets at the normal price.

It's strange to me to consider traditional walkable cities as a cause of "human suffering" or to view such properties as holding others hostage -- or, of all things, to identify sprawling car-culture as the one that is in danger of dying out. If anything should be compared with endangered traditional culture practices, it wouldn't be the one that seems to have the forces of the Almighty Economy on its side.

Any cursory reading of history will reveal that cities are and always have been where humans go to die.

In the past, this was because of disease caused by pre-sanitation density. Today, it is due to below-replacement fertility rates caused by impossible to afford living costs.

So if you consider extinction a form of human suffering, 'traditional walkable cities' fit the bill.

Not even sure what you're going for here.

Untold millions have lived in big cities since the time of Babylon and earlier.

Hah, there's a good point there. Though I'd think there's a balance to be had: places like Albi, France, which has ~50000 people, may not require the skyrocketing living costs that our modern global megacities demand.

People have always moved to towns/cities for better opportunities. Cities may breed disease - but being a subsistence farmer is a rough life.

> Any cursory reading of history will reveal that cities are and always have been where humans go to die.

I don't know where you get that interpretation, but most historians will say that is exactly the opposite reason why cities were developed. Historically, people moved to cities so that they would NOT die.

Living in a city amongst other people provides one with a greater defense against roving bandits and others who want to kill you and take your property/food. That is how cities came into existence. There is also the benefits of trade. With trade came specialization so that not everyone had to be a farmer to sustain themselves. One could become an artisan, a priest, or a warrior.

> Any cursory reading of history will reveal that cities are and always have been where humans go to die.

(I'm honestly not sure if this is a troll comment or not. I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt though.)

Alternatively one could say any cursory reading of history will reveal that cities are and always have been where humans go to prosper and innovate.

Also, and more importantly, the majority of dense, walkable cities do not have high costs of living - e.g. Berlin, Barcelona, Istanbul, or even much of Chicago. Just because the most expensive major global cities are dense and walkable that does not mean that all dense and walkable cities are expensive.

If you look at the most expensive zip codes in the US [1] you'll see that eight out of ten are in low-density suburban or semi-rural areas. Does that mean that low-density suburban areas are all super expensive?

[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/betsyschiffman/2015/11/10/full-...

> dense walkable cities no one wants

Using property prices as a proxy for demand, it seems the problem is more too many people wanting this.

Yet if you sum the value of property its very unusual for the net worth of a city to exceed the net worth of its metro area suburbs. Lets explore the concept in detail with automobiles.

Most people buy compact commuter cars, lets say. It really doesn't matter what kind of car is the most expensive car, that probably being sports cars. The price of a Ferrari being a large multiple of the price of a Honda Civic means surprisingly very little, or at least it should...

In 2015 about 300K honda civics were sold for lets say $19K each vs 7664 Ferrari sales for $400K each in the USA.

Yes I understand perfectly that the typical Ferrari sells for $400K and a Civic sells for $19K so apparently market clearing prices for Ferrari's dwarfs prices for Civics by a factor of almost exactly 21. Clearly we should socially engineer all our car laws to greatly encourage Ferrari ownership and all our social signalling memes should revolve around the superiority of Ferrari ownership.

However... 300K Honda Civics at 19K is roughly $5.7B in sales. And Ferrari sales of 7664 cars at $400K is almost exactly $3B. Clearly the marketplace has spoken and Ferraris and Civics are roughly equal in the marketplace and should be equal in the world of memes and social signalling.

But wait, there's 300K civic owners and 7664 ferrari owners. Clearly the socially engineered car laws should favor civics, not ferraris.

The world of property is somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd examples. The first example is simply irrelevant.

Cities have some expensive properties and proportionately no one lives there. I'm well aware that culturally its a huge social mistake to pretend anything or anyone matters other than the big cities, regardless how few live there. Most people want the suburb life that we must be convinced to socially engineer laws to destroy.

I don't see how the analogy fits. Are people being forced to buy Ferraris?

Most people would want the Ferrari, or a similarly expensive car in a different style (Rolls Royce, Tesla, whatever). In fact, both. But they can afford neither.

Most people would also like a home in the city centre, or one in a village in the countryside, mountains or on the coast. Or both. Who would choose suburbia? It's a compromise, and in every respect the city centre or the village is better.

Yes I know that last line is the only socially acceptable thing to say. But when the money meets the real estate contract, most people won't live that way unless laws are passed to force them to live that way, to prevent suburbia, to destroy existing suburban areas.

We both agree there is only one politically correct opinion for the only "correct" lifestyle. Pointing out that most people don't like it, don't live it, and will not tolerate laws to annihilate their current lifestyle, is useful in that there's no real point in talking about legally working to destroy the suburbs when so many people like it there as opposed to the very small number in the city.

No matter how many people post on HN about how they love the city and the burbs must be destroyed by any means necessary legal or otherwise, meanwhile ten real estate contracts were signed by people upgrading to the burbs. Obviously whatever strategy is being used for urban boosterism is socially popular yet in a practical business sense is a complete economic failure.

You are confusing being unable to pay with desire.

They are very different things.

> most people don't like it, don't live it, and will not tolerate [urban density]

Some don't and won't. But others do. I live in a small apartment in the centre of Manhattan. I measure my commute in minutes, and that only because I choose to detour to the many coffee, tea, bagel, juice and breakfast-ramen-in-a-cup shops nearby. My laundry gets picked and dropped off for free, maintenance is someone else's worry and I have an abundance of city services available to me (for which I pay out the nose for through taxes). Going home to my parents' suburbia is relaxing but not how I'd like to live.

These perks I enjoy--diverse people, foods and cultural experiences nearby--are a function of density. Give us city folk more space and you reduce the number of customers within walking distance of each store, reducing their carrying capacities, thereby changing the fundamental dynamic that gives cosmopolitan life its colour.

This isn't for everyone. But lots of people willingly--aspirationally, even--move to cities. Note that chateau life is costly--many Americans don't see why their taxes should subsidise it. (Particularly when it appears to be low-income Americans paying for richer Americans' suburbs [1].) Democratic debate is how we'll find a balance.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

What are these laws forcing people to live in cities or somehow aimed at destroying suburbia?

In reality, the laws that do exist tend to be aimed at trying to force people to live in suburbia and _not_ a dense city. Lots of municipalities ban density - either out-right or through absurd minimum parking requirements and other design specifications that severely limit what people can build on their land. Plus decades of transportation planning, and current funding decisions, have been aimed at undermining urban neighborhoods in favor of suburban sprawl.

In general, people who advocate for legal reform to facilitate more urban living are saying there should be _less_ regulation and government intervention into how people live and what they do with their land.

Of course some people want to live in suburbia. That's great. No one is trying to stop them. The tens of millions of people who want to live in dense walkable neighborhoods are sick of people trying to stop them.

If you think I'm distorting what I write to appear socially acceptable, the discussion is pointless.

> Who would choose suburbia? It's a compromise, and in every respect the city centre or the village is better.

Sure, having the only big house with a big yard in a city center would be awesome, but there's a surface area issue where it isn't physically possible to have as many homes in the city centre. So it isn't merely a compromise around cost, it's that there couldn't possibly be enough homes (of the type people enjoy living in in the suburbs) in the city center.

City center living is just as much a compromise: a nice private yard would be great, but I'm giving it up for a more walkable neighborhood. More storage space would be great, but I'm giving it up for a shorter commute. Etc. And if I lived in a city with better traffic, I wouldn't prioritize the commute time as much, so I'd be much more likely to intentionally choose suburbs.

Suburb vs village is a separate question where I would choose suburb 9 times out of 10. You're likely to be in easy distance of far more cultural, entertainment, and dining options.

What do you mean 'no one wants for themselves' ? Here (Paris) a lot of people love to be able to walk everywhere, and there are huge pressures to get cars out of the city : roads closing, lot of money invested in transports, etc...

Some people with cars are complaining, but it is overall viewed as a good decision, as cars take up lot of space for walkable/bikable areas, parcs, etc... and they pollute really badly

I do want a dense city with no car and more transport/the ability to walk to most places

A dense city "works" if it has sufficient population, and Albi (<50k) apparently does not.

This is what I seem to be seeing anywhere - urbanization as all or nothing, either megapolis or countryside, since the smaller towns seemingly can't sustain many things, everything (except real estate) is more expensive and with less options available; and it's even more so with education and jobs, with many professions simply not having any companies needing them in smaller towns.

That's a fair point, walkable city definitely have to reach a certain density/population to be succesful.

However, I would argue that the number is not necessarily very high : for example Niort (110k inhabitants) is also pushing pretty heavily to get rid of cars in the city center [1], making tranports free [2], and having experiments to push people to get rid of their cars [3]. All those have a pretty positive feedback from the local population

Albi might be to small for it, but not necessarily by much, and I think it is also important to have support from the municipality

Sorry about the links in French, but it's pretty hard to find infos on Niort in English :)

[1] : https://www.vivre-a-niort.com/cadre-de-vie/quartiers/centre-... [2] : https://www.vivre-a-niort.com/fr/actualites/dernieres-infos/... [3] : https://www.vivre-a-niort.com/fr/actualites/dernieres-infos/...

I pay a premium to live in the centre of a European city, along with many others -- there are families, couples, single, working and retired people. The quaint building that stood on this site was demolished in the 1950s, but about half the street still qualifies.

Possibly this is the first time any part of my behaviour has been described as "ethnic".

>in the dense walkable cities no one wants for themselves

Well, that's like, your opinion, man.

Millions living in NY and other "dense" cities would like to disagree.

What's the total population of people living in such dense cities vs elsewhere?

According to older statistics I was able to find, it's 58% living in cities of over 200k people in the USA, but that's way more inclusive of a measurement than what would reflect cities that are dense to the point where, for instance, walking becomes more desirable than car ownership.

For instance, the Phoenix metro area has over 5 million people, but it has no really "dense" areas in the walkable sense. It's sprawling desert that was able to be built up recently and spaciously.

In the USA, there's likely a couple dozen million people max living in the too-dense-for-cars cities, and there's hundreds of millions in the population at large. We have the most mobile population on the planet, thus we can "vote" where to live far easier, and the vast majority lives outside those areas. Sure, most are still urban and suburban, but certainly not living in NYC/SF style density.

>We have the most mobile population on the planet, thus we can "vote" where to live far easier, and the vast majority lives outside those areas.

Well, sort of. Don't most people move to whereever their next job is? I would love to live somewhere like Montana or Idaho where population density is low, but I don't know how I'd pay the bills when I got there.

Most people in the US don't live in walkable areas, but just how many walkable areas are there in the US? Look up New World Economics on really narrow streets and 19th-century hypertrophism: the answer might be as low as three or four. No wonder it's so expensive to live in them!

Well, by this logic one could say that nobody wants interplanetary travel. I mean, heck, only a few people have ever been to outer space - the vast majority have spent their entire lives here on Earth - so, therefore nobody must be interested.

You're forgetting that it's illegal to build dense walkable cities in much of the country. And, like others have pointed out, few people are actually free to move to exactly the kind of place where they would ideally like to live.

Past and current behavior is not always a good indicator of underlying desires.

With cities in the US (apart from a select few like NY, Chicago, New Orleans, etc) being what they are, I wouldn't put forward the US as any kind of model for urban planning or the desirability of cities in general.

Have you ever lived in a dense, walkable city, especially one with decent mass transit and possibly bike sharing? If you live in downtown Boston (North End, South End, Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Cambridge) and have to move away, you'll miss it for the rest of your life. And Boston is nothing special compared to Europe...

I've lived in Amsterdam, which definitely satisfies the 'dense, walkable city' bit and I don't miss it one bit.

Cities have advantages and disadvantages, just like everything else and just like not everything is great in the countryside so not everything is great in the city.

What did you dislike about it? (My first guesses would be too many drugs, too much of the legacy of Calvinism, and possibly aggressive bicyclists...)

- noise

- too little green

- dogshit all over the place

- traffic

- price of accomodation

- impossible to get in or out of the city at certain times of the day

- measurably increasing street violence / drug trade while I lived there (28 years give or take)

- not knowing your neighbors even after years of living next to each other

My 'sweet spot' is just outside a major city. That way I get all the advantages without the disadvantages.

I'm not sure how to respond, but thanks for posting. I can't complain about moving away to avoid violence, nor moving away to avoid dog dung -- although I've always liked not knowing my neighbors. (If I wanted lifestyle police breathing down my neck, I'd move to Saudi Arabia where at least they're regulated!)

Dutch suburbs are the best surburbs in the world, I can't blame you. You can still ride your bike everywhere and kids can play in the street. I bet your even less than an hour from the Rijksmuseum.

> I bet your even less than an hour from the Rijksmuseum.

35 minutes :)

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