Comment by rjf72 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rjf72 | Hacker News Reader

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Do you know what happened during the housing boom in the US? The 1950 to 1960 was one of the biggest housing explosions in the US. As well as one of the biggest population explosions with the population growing some 20% in those 10 years. This [1] is the population of the largest cities in the US in 1950. This [2] is their population in 1960. You might notice something quite interesting. The population of nearly all major cities declined!

The housing boom was not people building up residential areas inside of well developed cities. It was people accepting some sacrifice and moving outside of cities into areas where previously there was nothing. This is a big part of the reason why housing was so cheap. It also helped keep city housing prices low since it had a [quite extreme] depressing effect on demand.

The reason I mention this is because when you build houses in the middle of nowhere you don't often have to go far to find more nowhere. Everywhere you look is just row and row of cookie cutter houses, then a 2 mile bike trip and you're in the 'wild lands'. Lots of children got to grow up in these exact sort of areas. I had the fortune of getting to spend some brief part of my childhood in an area like this, and then most of the rest in an ultra urban area apartment in the middle of the city. Suffice to say, I won't be raising my kids in the middle of a city!

[1] - https://www.biggestuscities.com/1950

[2] - https://www.biggestuscities.com/1960

> It was people accepting some sacrifice and moving outside of cities into areas where previously there was nothing.

The word for it is “white flight", it was publicly subsidized (largely by the GI Bill) deliberate racial segregation acheived through restrictive covenants, and discriminatory lending and real estate sales practices.

"It was people accepting some sacrifice and moving outside of cities into areas where previously there was nothing."

that sacrifice is getting bigger over time. when my neighbor moved into his house in the 70s people thought it's nuts that he was moving that far out and commuted from there. Now this is perfectly normal and maybe a double commute would be viewed as long.

I'm currently in the process of moving my family (including 6 kids) from a 1/3 acre lot in Utah (there really isn't much land here because it's a desert) to a 15-acre farm in Tennessee for these reasons exactly.

I went from a 1/4 lot in a city to a 12 acre lot in the country when I was around 8. My dad gave my brother and I a compass, taught us how to use it and encouraged us to roam the woods as a form of play/exploration. If we got lost, we ended up at the neighbors house a good 25 acres away and they would just call our parents to pick us up.

It was a bit of culture shock when I went to college and found out how restrictive other peers youth were.

Helicopter parenting requires one to sacrifice a lot. It is not lack of sacrifice that leads to it. A lot of it is people unable to tell no to further personal sacrifice (whether for subjective or objective reasons).

We actually moved into downtown for that sort of experience - we live close to the river valley so there will be a ton of area for our kids to explore. The edge of the urban sprawl is utterly soulless - nothing but row upon row of houses, but once you leave that you're in a field, nothing to explore or see, and it's killing our infrastructure as the city grows outwards and outwards and considerations need to be made for transit and road maintenance and utilities.

It depends. In Washington, DC, or its suburbs, probably most locations are within a couple of miles of a stream valley park, or simply a wooded ravine that is public land.

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