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Comment by woah | Hacker News Reader

This is obviously a larger issue than what type of car etc, but there's no good reason for Americans to live in suburbs and exurbs and drive hours every day. The entire lifestyle is stupid, but you're right that just offering small electric vehicles won't change that.

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Honestly, suburban lifestyle is relaxed, enjoyable, and affordable. It's pretty easy to see the appeal in it.

Most people living in suburban areas do not drive for hours every day. In the time it takes me to cross Boston on public transit, I can drive between two suburban metropolitan areas and have access to a huge variety of people, places, and activites.

Great that you like it, but most people don't. The much higher housing prices in cities demonstrate that people will live there if they can afford it. American suburbs are an artifact first of all of racism in the earlier part of the 20th century, and now they are driven by profiteering by city homeowners who won't allow enough housing to be built in cities.

This forces people to live in bulldozed wildlands because it is cheaper, due to the fact that there isn't anyone to show up to zoning board meetings to block new construction there.

Suburban and rural areas have become hot real estate markets in the past five months; thanks to the remote work policies.

Having lived in a huge city for most of my life, moving out to the suburbs several years earlier was a nice change. I can never see myself moving back.

Sure, people congregate into large cities but that’s because of work and for the bustle.

The lifestyle is attractive for many reasons, not helpful to dismiss something you don't like as "stupid".

What if it is in fact stupid, though?

Value judgement need to be made against an agreed upon standard. I think you'd need to argue that that the the suburban lifestyle is a poor way to the achieve the values that that those who currently like a suburban lifestyle actually have. That might be possible, at least on a margin. I suspect many in the suburbs would actually prefer something more like a "small town."

The closest hackerspace is 30km away from me. I'm not complaining but a world without single family homes would also mean that people can't have personal workshops and therefore there must be public workshops nearby to compensate. Each city would require multiple maker/hackerspaces.

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