Americans are rethinking where they want to live | Hacker News Reader

Americans are rethinking where they want to live

economist.com

215 pointssamizdis602 comments

My family and I decided to stay on the north side of Chicago, a very high cost of living location, despite no longer needing to head downtown every day for work. Why not move outside of Chicago where our cost living would be substantially lower?

  * We wanted to keep our kids in the same school, which is walking distance.
  * We like being walking distance to the grocery store, doctor's offices, etc.
  * Our kids can walk to their friends' houses.
  * Proximity to the lake is important to us.
  * We're close to family.

Moving to the suburbs would find us losing much of that freedom that comes with living in a dense neighborhood. The size of a house and a yard is only one factor here for quality of life. I hope the trend that comes from remote work isn't just people optimizing for the size of a house and low cost of living, especially if it comes at the expense of being able to be in a community with other people around.

+1. Walkability is the main thing that keeps me in the city. A very large part of me wants to go back to the suburbs, rent a house, have a yard, garage -- space in general. However, every time I actually visit someone in the suburbs, the long drive there, watching things get more and more spread apart until it's just strip malls, grocery stores, and subdivisions, really saps the excitement out of having more space for me.

There's no reason (besides inertia) that we can't have both. This is how thriving smaller downtowns are, single family homes within walking distance to amenities. It's just that all those areas get really expensive because there are so few of them. But there don't have to be so few places like that.

It is common in Europe for small towns and villages to be quite walkable, have a large relative percentage multi-family housing, and have a decent train or bus connection to a regional hub. Of course, they have the advantage of being around longer than the automobile has existed.

The problem in the US is mostly cultural. Most rural/semi-rural/exurban people think nothing of an hour driving each way. So why would they want what they perceive as a tiny lot, with more expensive housing where they can hear their neighbors when they can get a huge lot and drive a little more?

The non-cultural part of the problem is that the drive-everywhere paradigm is so heavily invested that even in a small walking-oriented European -style village, everyone would need to own a car anyway. If you built a train to a regional hub it wouldn’t solve the problem of the regional hub itself having terrible public transit. Plus, it’s a lot easier to build a road than a train politically.

My wife and I currently live in Providence, RI (by way of NYC). We highly value walkability, but feel like we've aged out of tolerating some other big-city "annoyances." When Americans think of "suburbs" they think of culs-de-sac and arterials, but it doesn't have to be that way. New England is dotted with "small towns" that are basically just suburbs of Providence and/or Boston that are laid out on a grid -- with a main street, walkable amenities, and access to commuter rail. In St. Louis, where I'm from, there are half-a-dozen inner ring suburbs that meet this description (minus the commuter rail), so I assume it's the same in most cities.

There's a kind of exurban suburb that was built in the 1990s that has an outsized influence on our conception of suburban living. But there are lots of older "suburbs" that are actually quite pleasant.

How do those smaller downtowns thrive? The few I know usually have rich populations that do not mind spending more than what Costco/Target/Walmart/big grocery stores sell at.

All it takes is the big box stores to setup camp 10 minutes outside of town and almost everyone with a car will opt to save money and shop there.

Afaict, the primary driver of non-walkable suburbs is neighborhood layout, which is driven by maximizing house:land ratio.

I live in a suburban master planned development now that oriented itself around the residential-commercial interface.

Having previously lived in an urban core, it's not too much of a downgrade. Sure, you inevitably trade local for chain (boo!), because that's who the anchor tenants originally were. But over the decades the smaller spaces have filled out with organic stuff.

> There's no reason (besides inertia)

And the fact that re-building cities is really expensive and hard and we're (somewhat) stuck with what we have.

They aren’t all really that expensive, near Seattle consider Aberdeen or similar small old mill towns that have reasonable small urban areas next to housing. Farther away, Walla Walla or even Spokane. But the areas are economically depressed, the schools aren’t very good, they are unlikely to become WFH tech centers.

Paris is the Walkability by definition city. 20-min ride on a regular bike, and you've crossed half of it.

Lots to dislike, but I love Paris human side ^^

Thats Paris centre however, where about 600k quite rich people live. Ile-de-Paris is a bit larger, and is where most of us reside. We're happy if the RER is only 20m away from our house and work.

If you're willing to get a bike, it can greatly increase your range while allowing for more space. I'm in Baltimore now in a sfh and still within riding distance of everything in the city

For me, the COVID has really opened my eyes to how little I need walkability. My preferences completely flipped from "I want walkscore 75+ and ideally 90+" to "I want walkscore to be <15"

I used to be very pro-transit and walking (didn't even learn to drive till 30), and even as I was not walking as much just before COVID, I reflexively remained so. When most things closed nearby (so we went out less and finally discovered food delivery), I realized I don't really need to walk places - I don't miss them. With spotty reopenings, when some places were indoors and some outdoor-only in bad weather, we drove to go out and turns out it's much better (unless you plan to drink a lot). With more grocery shopping, walking to groceries was out of the question and turns out, even in a dense city, driving for the same amount of time to get groceries is so much more convenient. Etc.

I can see benefits of a park nearby, but that's about it... and then again, in overall less walkable areas parks are less crowded, larger, and also cleaner/nicer.

EDIT: reading other comments I guess I can see benefits for kids, although only with more old-style parenting. I could take a subway by myself when I was 10 or so, and walk around everywhere obviously, so that gives a lot of independence you cannot have in suburbs.

Automobile travel is nice in rural areas but it introduces too many problems for cities with any sort of density.

Traffic, noise pollution, air quality, and auto accidents are all things the unfortunate city dweller is forced to live with because cars are given free reign on streets.

Cities need to convert their freeways to toll roads and limit the registration of vehicles to what the infrastructure can actually handle.

If people prefer driving, that may just cause more people to move away.

I certainly drove more during the pandemic (though this may have been because I stopped using Lyft due to safety concerns), but I never stopped appreciating living in a walkable neighborhood. Certainly openings were a bit spotty here and there, but having a small grocery nearby, as well as a few restaurants with outdoor seating, was a boon to our mental health while otherwise stuck at home most of the time. We got food delivered more than usual, to be sure, but that still felt like a supplement, not the main mode of eating.

But "small places nearby" were also closed... that is what made me realize how little I need them. Having to drive to more distant places, something I previously might not have preferred, turned out to be much more convenient, something I didn't expect... try it ;)

I grew up in the country, used to live in the suburbs, and currently live in Chicago.

Yes, we could afford to have a lot more space that we personally own if we lived in a less dense area. But no, I don't miss it. I don't feel cooped up in a small space where I live right now. Nor did I feel cooped up living in a college dormitory, for that matter.

I do feel cooped up in a small space when I'm staying with friends and family who have palatial homes out in the suburbs for any length of time. My sense of how much space I have at my disposal changes drastically when I'm in an environment where the only space I'm allowed to use freely is space I'm personally owning or renting.

It hits my kids even worse. For them, one backyard, even a big one, is simply not enough room to run.

Sure a small backyard isn't great... But I live in a major city and instead we just walk to the enormous park, which is way bigger than any backyard.

It's a very different mindset that I thought I'd hate but now that I'm here I couldn't imagine it any other way.

The enormous parks here were closed multiple times over the past 2 years. I'll never depend on such amenities again because they can be taken at will.

> Sure a small backyard isn't great... But I live in a major city and instead we just walk to the enormous park, which is way bigger than any backyard.

In the suburbs you typically have both. We have a yard to play in (not huge, but a good yard with a few trees to climb, a treehouse, etc) and we have a large park about 1 minute away on foot. It's not only the major cities that have parks.

> isn't just people optimizing for the size of a house and low cost of living

An important point!

I moved recently to a small village from a large town in the UK mainly so that I could afford a good size of house compared to what I could afford in the town. Despite never considering my self a "city boy", I have found the move very challenging. I initially thought it was isolating because of lockdown but then realised that the pace here is very slow and I find the lack of activity troubling. I just have to get used to driving to everything, something I have never had to do before.

I couldn’t live in a small village - I’ve tried it, I found it suffocating, the gossip mill, the forced friendships with people who you otherwise wouldn’t associate with, the never ending charity drives and village hall events that make you want to crawl under a rock. (Young Farmer’s Association Charity Raffle! Over 55’s only!)

I now live a long way from anyone, in a cabin deep in the forest, about 10km from the nearest village over inhospitable terrain, 2km from the nearest trackway along windy and wild paths I cut along the side of a sheer valley. We don’t get visitors, apart from those that we invite.

It wasn’t the lack of activity that I found troubling - rather, the village people, filling their days with forced smiles and petty vendettas. Every time I sat down it felt like someone would knock on the door and ask me to sign their petition.

Here, it’s just me, my wife, and the wildlife.

The pace here is frantic, as surviving and thriving off-grid is a lot of work. I smile and nod at the villagers when I drive by on the weekly provisioning run, and that’s enough for me.

I think a city almost has more in common with being alone than it does with a small settlement - in a city, the crowds allow anonymity and this creates a virtual space for the individual. In the boonies, there is actual space for the individual. In a village, all is cloying, suffocating togetherness. Great if you like that kind of thing, but it really wasn’t for me.

The driving aspect is the main thing that kills any daydreaming I do about moving to the Scottish Highlands. It doesn't stop the daydreaming, however.

My friend moved to a little village in Scotland. Super cute, walkable, near the Spey, easy drive to a city or two for a flight back to civilization. Great schools, no healthcare costs. The equity he cashed out from selling his place in California bought the nicest place in town for cash. He’s really liking it. I’ve gone to visit a few times. Makes me reconsider spending so much for my shoebox house in SF.

Inverness might be a reasonable middle ground between the remoteness of the Highlands and the walkability of a city.

No offense, but presumably your parents did the same thing when they had you for similar reasons. This is simply what happens when you have kids.

However, there are separate but related trends which the articles points out:

   - The south's quality of living has drastically increased over the last 20~30 years
   - People aren't seeing state localized benefits from high state taxes (IMHO Illinois might the worst tax:benefit ratio in the country)
   - Work from home acceleration has accelerated lower cost of living with high quality of life centers (see -> the south)

P.S.- I grew up in the north shore Chicago. /wave

>People aren't seeing state localized benefits from high state taxes

I always think this, and then I leave Illinois and immediately notice that the infrastructure in neighboring states (Indiana and Missouri, namely) is abhorrent. I think it's just all relative.

Its too bad we can't build new places like this, and make this a more affordable option for people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

It’s funny. Every human could tell you the things that make a place pleasant. (Walkability, cute shops and cafes, green space) And yet we have people who’s whole job is “planning” and we get spaces that are aggressively unpleasant. No sidewalks let alone dedicated waking paths. Strip malls everywhere. It baffles me.

> And yet we have people who’s whole job is “planning” and we get spaces that are aggressively unpleasant.

These things are related. The person who's job is "planning," the one who demands that your store be surrounded by a sprawling parking lot, is neither the person who would build the store, nor shop there.

I enjoy watching a couple of shows about home renovations that take place in the US (some twin brothers and love or list it, or something like that). Two things always strike me as odd as an European:

* People on that show always needs a shit load of space. Especially in the kitchens, for some reason. Sometimes they are a couple without kids or maybe have one kid but they want 2 ovens? And a huge island is a must. Most of the kitchens in those shows are bigger than the average living room in my country.

* Houses made out of wood and walls that you can punch through. This is a different matter though.

Do Europeans not cook all that much? I imagine most suburban US families cook most of their meals, both for cost reasons and because taking children to a restaurant is viewed as a chore here.

Even without kids, my partner and I try to cook often. We have a decent-sized kitchen by urban US standards (it would probably be considered on the small side if we lived in the suburbs), but could still stand to have more counter space for food prep (and cabinet space for storage). Agree that 2 ovens is a bit much, but a huge island can be incredibly useful.

I personally don’t cook but luckily for me my girlfriend loves it, and even though we have a decent kitchen now that we bought a place, she seemed to do fine in smaller kitchens. And I’ve never met anyone with 2 ovens.

And even though kitchens are way smaller than in the US (or at least the average one in those shows), another difference is that we have the washer in the kitchen (almost no one has a drier though, and after using one in London I wonder why anyone would use one for anything other than sheets and towels, those things destroy clothes) and usually the kitchen was a separate room (due to the smell, I guess?), but nowadays an “open plan” has grown a lot in demand.

I would guess Europeans cook more than Americans, since the average disposable income is less in Europe. Beyond that, I'm unwilling to generalize over Europe. HN people are unlikely to be typical on either continent.

I do know a European with two ovens. It's very unusual, but they really like cooking. Even so, they only use the second oven rarely -- perhaps roasting meat in one, and baking in the other. The additional oven was installed after seeing two ovens in a kitchen on a trip to the USA.

Exactly. Those houses always strike me as simultaneously extravagant and cheap quality. A weird combination.

A kitchen much like a server is designed for peak use, not average use. having the space to prep and cook thanksgiving for the extended family or host a party is valuable even if you need maybe half of it on most days.

Being on the north side of Chicago, you're probably already in one of the "move-to" and not the "move-away" from areas.

It's expensive, but let's be serious it's nothing compared to the coast – with a good quality of life (as the reasons you stated).

By "move-to", not sure if you mean Chicago overall, or the north side in particular, but if the former Chicago is growing slower than the national average. 2% last decade (vs 8% nationally) https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/8/12/22622062/chicago-cens...

I had the impression Chicago was actually losing people, but that info was old, from the previous decade where it lost 7%.

North Chicago, or really any of the nicer parts.

Chicago is a weird place for various political and economic reasons (I’m from Minneapolis, so just a neighbor), and was not growing pre-pandemic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that trend reverse given its relative LCOL - especially with the Denver/Austins of the world no longer being very affordable.

I think the important part is not where you decided to live, but the fact you had the freedom to seriously considering moving.

I think people are social creatures and will always choose to have social interactions. The difference between high and low density living is whether you can choose the absence of these interactions, even temporarily.

I live in a city and it suits me just fine overall, but I also need some of the "I don't want to deal with loads of people and their drama right now" time to remain sane.

I live in the burbs. Here's my metrics relative to yours

* Kid's school is technically walking distance, bike ride more reasonably

* Walking distance from grocery store, doctor's office, dentist

* Kid can walk to friends' house

* Can ride my bike to a conservation area with camping

* Lakes are all around, but not really fair since I live in FL

* Multiple outdoor parks within walking/biking distance

* Neighborhood/community swimming pool

* Walking distance to gym

* Extremely low crime rate

I'm not saying you should move, especially because of the close to family bit. Nor am I suggesting most of suburbia is like where I live. But if you seek out suburban areas that are designed to be in proximity to things, you will find them.

Chicago, and the rest of Illinois, is in the middle of an ongoing fiscal crisis with no clear path to a solution. Will you continue to stay while taxes increase and government services decrease?

At least for me, still way way cheaper than the coasts so no plans on leaving yet.

I found the difference in land price appreciation in other more expensive areas (specifically Western and Southern US) more than made up for the extra up front costs. Although it is not "coast" vs "not coast", as NJ/CT land prices changes were in a similar situation to IL land prices.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Different people value different things. You prioritize your kids school and proximity to important destinations and so that neighborhood makes a lot of sense.

When your kids move away after college, does that change the calculation much for you? Both of my kids are away at college and so I'm looking at where I live and what kind of life I want and am leaning more and more to moving further out of the city (I'm already in the suburbs).

Suburbs are very unfriendly for the elderly compared to cities.

The ideal suburbanite is an upper-middle-class person in their 30s–50s in good health who really likes driving their large car and has hobbies they can do individually from inside their own home (e.g. woodworking, gardening), and doesn’t mind that life is miserable* there for their kids. Everyone else is more or less a second-class citizen.

* Edit: suburbs are unpleasant for kids because anyone who can’t drive is completely dependent on someone else (for kids, usually a parent) for transportation: few destinations are within walking/cycling distance, buses are few and infrequent, in general non-car transportation is discouraged by the urban design. Everything is harder to get to, and there are far fewer resources available for people with particular interests.

Why do you automatically assume that kids are miserable in the suburbs? My kids rather like running around in our backyard, use our pool everyday in the summer, and having tons of friends on the block.

At the same time, I can't imagine that they would enjoy living in 2 bedroom apartment, having no yard to play in, etc.

This disdain for suburbs is quite tacky and out of touch. It's okay to think differently. I'm glad you enjoy living in the city! Luckily, this country is big and there's enough space for all of us!

My kids love the suburbs. There's almost no crime. They can bike into the hills, forests, lakes, downtown, friends houses, the mall. Schools are great. One of my friends raised his kid in SF before finally moving out to suburbia when she was a teenager, stayed in the house most of the time. Now she's got a great circle of friends and is never in the house. Cities are for single adults trying to find a mate.

Evidently it's somewhat odd, but the suburb we bought in has an elementary school and middle school built right in the middle of it. It's very walkable for a large portion of the neighborhood (though, it's the outer Seattle area - so the rain does keep many from walking for a large portion of the year, anyway).

I certainly don't think we put our child's mental health second. I'm not sure how to quantify that for a stranger on the internet, nor do I feel the need to... I am in the 30-50 range, though.

The thought of living in Seattle, personally, is abysmal. It smells of piss, all of the time. The homeless have taken over and there are no decent programs to help them out, nor do there seem to be any effective programs on the horizon. City corruption seems to take care of that. Business is taking a nose dive. There are no grocery stores. Food deserts are a very real thing. Rent is unimaginable. You can buy in the suburbs for a fraction of the cost of renting in downtown, easily. People in the area are not the most outgoing in the first place (the colloquialism is the Seattle Freeze), but add into that the normal distance of city dwelling and you are almost robotic to each other. While public transport is lacking (to say the least), it is there and available from these horrible suburbs you have warned us about.

The dream of city living seems, honestly, to be for the VERY rich or the young and naive, to be honest =/

EDIT: spelling

> Edit: suburbs are unpleasant for kids because anyone who can’t drive is completely dependent on someone else

You're operating on some limited/different definition of suburb.

We stay in the suburb precisely because my kid has multiple friends within walking distance.

Can you fill me in on sth? Where Ive lived in Europe, the onlt car-only areas are burbs. Small towns tend to be walkable too, on account of being small. Now, not every small town has a wide variety of shops of course, but most things are bikeable. The only things that are not where I now live are places I'd need a car anyway (furniture, construction, etc). I thought it'd be the same for small town America, but I guess you're saying it's not?

You're right, it's not like that in small-town America: small towns aren't walkable in the US.

There aren't many walkable or bikeable areas in the US, and those that exist are in a handful of large cities. Many US cities aren't very walkable, e.g. Los Angeles (the second largest US city).

What would you think of a combination of high density and large green space? Lay out a city like a fractal with the interior being dense, but you're always close to woodlands, open fields (farms?), or parks. I know zoning boards are incapable of maintaining such a structure without constantly making exceptions for developers, but what would you think of such an arrangement?

That's not far from London, a pretty dense city as they go, but also one that just about, technically speaking, counts as a forest thanks to the number of trees [1]. I live in one of the densest boroughs of London, on a main road, and I've got ample access to parks and green space.

[1] https://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/did-you-know-tha...

Toronto is very similar. Outside of the very dense core, but still very much in Toronto proper, you can get lost in forests and ravines and have to be on the lookout for coyote!

> I know zoning boards are incapable of maintaining such a structure without constantly making exceptions for developers,

Also not a lot of undeveloped cities either to try it out.

For what its worth, something similar (but less dramatic in scale) was already tried before [1]. People tended to not like it. The park space made it a lot harder to get around. You lose the "its ony three block away" nature of cities when you add lots of dead space, and things like rain cover along sidewalks become a problem.

One of the major things that make city streets "walkable" and enjoyable is stuff happening on the street frontage. The complexity of various shops, eateries and city amenities abutting the sidewalk mean there is reason to be there and things to do. You lose that when you recess a building.

I think a much better approach is just to cede some land to be in-city-grid parks, and take over some minor roads and alleys as green-walks where the road is reduced (eg. curved to force slow traffic) or removed, and theres lots of trees and gardens and walkways. Basically get that green space from incremental reclamation, and protection of existing opens spaces. Leave actual city structure as it is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park

I think the point of this change is you can now make a personal decision based on factors other than your commute.

I want to also note there is a lot in between a dense neighborhood and having no people around.

most people move to hcol areas due to jobs, they don't really have much of a community or family in those areas, so it is an easy decision for many to move away if they could. I myself have lived in dense cities, although i enjoyed the walkability of everything, i also felt myself missing time with nature, to enjoy the peace that life offers etc... and weirdly enough felt more disconnected to humanity living in the midst of a lot of humans.

> Moving to the suburbs would find us losing much of that freedom that comes with living in a dense neighborhood.

This does not make sense. Yes, moving to the suburbs and not using a car would lose much of freedom, but it is not how you live in the suburbs...

When you live the suburbs (with a car or multiple cars), you have way more choices to grocery stores, doctor's offices, friends' houses, public parks, lakes, etc.

I will say, if anybody cares a lot about freedom, would want to live in the suburbs. The whole idea of prioritizing walkability is against freedom.

Walkability means limiting choices, not expanding choices. You are basically shrinking the area of 15 min driving distance (radius of eight miles) to the area of 15 min walking distance (radius of three-quarters of a mile). No matter how dense you set in the area of 15 min walking distance, it will never be comparable to the area of 15 min driving distance (around x100 area space).

In addition, you gain more freedom when you live in the suburbs with a backyard and a garage (or a shed in the backyard). You have lots of things you can do (like home lab, wood workshop, etc.) which aren't available to you if you live in a small house or apartment in the city.

If you chose not to own a car, that's a totally separate topic.

> When you live the suburbs (with a car or multiple cars), you have way more choices to grocery stores, doctor's offices, friends' houses, public parks, lakes, etc. Walkability means limiting choices, not expanding choices.

Walkability doesn't strictly limit choices, especially if you consider walking+biking+transit since they go hand-in-hand. E.g. compared to a car-oriented suburb, personally I certainly have more food options within an X-minute accessible radius, but I don't have as many nature options. It's a tradeoff.

I also don't need to drive, which is probably the freedom OP was talking about, and one that both of us value even if some others like yourself don't. I like that having a no-car option means it's easier to be healthy and active when walking and biking are practical choices for day-to-day errands, that I don't have to think about parking or traffic for popular events, that I'm more likely to bump into friends on the street, and that I don't have to think about designed drivers when alcohol is involved. You may not value any of that, but some people do, and so they prefer living somewhere with that choice.

It's fine if you prefer living with a car, but it's rather silly to say it "does not make sense" to consider it freeing to live in a place that doesn't require one given that many people make that choice.

Did you see my last sentence? If you chose to not using a car, it's a different topic. But not using a car does not give you more freedom.

Also, your thinking reflects a typical young person live alone on this forum. Not much need to be said.

Also in Chicago (northwest side). After our kids were born, we stayed for many of the same reasons.

+1 on school within walking distance. Walking to-and-from each day with my son has been an amazing experience. A big surprise for us has been the sense of community within our neighborhood and school.

You like your Strong Town, what living was like before cars ruined everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o

I grew up in the north suburbs of Milwaukee. Did you consider it? Outside of keeping your kids in the same schools (and the schools north of Milwaukee are great), it hits all the same marks and it’s a LOT cheaper.

I love visiting Milwaukee, and Wisconsin in general for the sheer amount of outdoor activities. Unfortunately it would send us the wrong direction with respect to visiting family. I want to spend less time in a car in general.

Have you considered remote/teleconference family visits? The last two years have shown that it's perfectly possible to lead a normal social life on Zoom, etc. There isn't really any need to get into a car and drive several hours just to see someone.

And some of us in the burbs wouldn’t mind moving down there too for the same reasons.

I sure am. I live in San Jose (which resides in the Bay Area). Here’s why I am leaving.

- $2,700 per month for a 500 sq/ft apartment.

- Homeless people everywhere the moment I step foot out of my apartment.

- Smells like urine on many sidewalks.

- Literally half of the buildings are vacant or abandoned (in downtown).

- Human feces on sidewalks and entrance to buildings.

- Political and ideological homogeny. Keep your head low if you aren’t progressive.

- We’ve reached $4.99 per gallon for gasoline.

- I’ve experienced two car break-ins.

- Trash everywhere.

- High taxes.

- Crummy roads.

I’m paying a lot of money to live here, but for what? My standard of living is low. I’m leaving for Texas or Florida. Hopefully either of these two states provide me something better.

Nothing would be better for California in general and the Bay Area in particular for people to move away for a while. The infrastructure of that region is swamped. Everything is overpriced and congested.

I was born in San Francisco a long time ago and it used to actually be a pretty cheap city to live in California once. A lot of LA based law firms would open up offices in San Francisco because it was cheaper to live there then lots of parts of Los Angeles and lots of people thought the city was charming. That's hard to imagine now. To me the charm was hollowed out by it becoming so expensive. So now SF is a boring like Manhattan and Oakland is the Brooklyn of the region.

The only reason anyone pays $2700 for an 500 sq ft apartment in San Jose is because they have a great job near by. I don't want to say anything bad about San Jose but IMO it has always been pretty far down the list of places you want to live in California. You shouldn't have to suffer that much for a job, and it seems like the way things are going you won't have to.

What areas don't have political and ideology homogeny anymore? There are two Americas. I would enjoy an area with better tolerance to the other side's ideals, but it seems that's in short supply everywhere. There's a real viciousness for the other side at the national level, but I can't understand it at the individual human being level or the community level. Your neighbor may not share your politics, but it also doesn't imply they embody all of your opposition's ideas. We pick sides because we have to in a first-past-the-post system.

I think the divide looks more bridgeable on a personal level - on a recent trip to a rural area of Oregon I got to speak with an anti-vax, huge pickup driving, hunting, Christian man. He seemed like a genuine, kind, thoughtful person, and I sincerely enjoyed talking with him. He acted respectful towards my pro-vax, Prius-driving, suburb-dwelling attitudes. Seemed like there was mutual respect there, and I don't think it's too unusual for people to appreciate learning about each other and to respect differences.

Guess I'm just hoping that controversy appears bigger than it is, and most people still do know how to get along and respect each other.

Every us state has liberal and conservative chunks within it - i feel like best bet is to find one of those in the opposite of whatever your state is. Those places I feel like are better balanced and don’t suffer from the excesses of extremism

> I would enjoy an area with better tolerance to the other side's ideals, but it seems that's in short supply everywhere.

There isn't better tolerance on either side. You're mistaking agreeing with group think for tolerance. What is tolerated is just a different set of behaviors, but intolerance is high regardless for behaviors outside that set. You just don't see the intolerance when you agree with the majority.

Not a California thing. I live in Dallas and am all for coming to Texas, but don't expect miracles. There are homeless people everywhere, vacant buildings, my catalytic converter has been sawed off twice, trash all over the place, major road out of my neighborhood has had a pothole big enough to knock a wheel off for 8 months and the city has done nothing about it.

These are just city problems.

On the other hand, my mortgage, insurance, and property taxes are $2,500 a month for a 3,000 square foot, 4-story townhome with a private rooftop deck with a downtown skyline view, so there's that.

Dallas has definitely worse roads than the Bay Area. There are some roads with crazy amount of pot holes.

In think crime and homeless depends a lot on the area in Dallas. A lot of new apartments and townhomes are in “transitional” neighborhoods.

you don't have to move that far to escape all that. Plenty of areas an hour away from San Jose that are nice and a lot cheaper (still more expensive than Texas or Florida, sure).

Depending on if you need to change jobs and the family situation sometimes it's just as much effort to move states than move a few hours away.

If you have the opportunity it's good to look at the entire country, sometimes even the world (though for tech the US is by far the best option) for the best value.

Even moving 2 miles away will result in better quality of life. Downtown San Jose has the some of the highest crime rates and largest homeless encampments in the city, and the rent in other parts of the city is not a lot higher.

But if I'm moving an hour away, why not move farther? I was born, raised and have lived 31 out of 34 years in California and I just can't fathom why anyone would choose to live here anymore. I bought a house in Southern Oregon 4 years ago and moved up here full time a year ago thanks to the pandemic. I really hope I never have to move back.

No need to drive even an hour. Downtown San Jose is certainly a hellhole (I worked downtown on Santa Clara St. for a while) but just a few minutes away there are very nice suburbs like Campbell, Willow Glen etc.

If you live downtown in SJ you could move a few miles and have a much more pleasant life.

Still expensive, though.

There is flight from major metropolitan cities right now. All the problems are the same across these cities. While I'm in the honeymoon phase of my recent move from the city I love and grew up in. I was tired of many of the things you listed.

> I’m paying a lot of money to live here, but for what?

The weather. The high cost of living in the bay area and California is largely about the weather. People come to California for the dream and stay for the sun.

Actually I found the constant sunny days quite boring after a while.

It's weird how subjective experience can be so different. I live in East San Jose a mile from downtown. I'm very happy with it. I love riding my electric bike around town and my only complaint is that for a supposedly high tech city the traffics lights are not even close to being syncrhonized. I can't related to most of your other complaints.

Your other complaints are complaints you often hear from conservatives about San Francisco. I took my bike on the train to SF not long ago and spotted no feces and smelled no urine as I rode around The City.

Homelessness is a problem in San Jose and SF, but no worse than in many other cities I've been in.

I am in CT and a local road near my house suffers from this light synchronization issue. I think it comes down to a city verse state road in my case.

I have often thought if lights were better optimized, we could save on gas usage in cars.

> for a supposedly high tech city the traffics lights are not even close to being syncrhonized

No, it's worse. Every time I have to drive in Santa Clara County, I get the impression that the traffic engineers they hired are sociopaths.

The traffic lights on El Camino are perfectly timed to force you to stop at every. single. damn. one. That is, unless you drive 20+mph over the speed limit. I initially thought this might be to encourage walking and cycling, but you run into the exact same problem on a bike. The infrastructure isn't very ped-friendly, either.

I just don't get it. The stoplights are timed to make travel excruciating no matter how you do it. The problem with El Camino light timing ends when you cross into San Mateo county, btw.

It's the polar opposite of LA, where you can drive 10's of miles (late at night) on surface streets with the cruise control set right at the speed limit, never touching the gas or breaks. Cycling in the valley or on LA's west side, you can usually hit 3-5 greens before needing to stop (and then only briefly).

Edit: formatting

Florida is pretty terrible. Even if you are totally cool with never doing anything outside, never engaging in culture, and never talking to other people, there is literally no positive side to living in Florida other than the combined lack of winter and access to a beach. Sure, people are more right-wing, but I'd much rather live in Texas than Florida. Even a desert is more interesting than endless strip-malls, and big Texas cities are more cultured, and even more commercially diverse, than any part of Florida. Practically speaking, Florida is also always overpriced, and insurance and hurricanes are annoying (and going to get worse).

What parts of Florida have you lived in?

The two states mentioned are near the bottom of my list but I think your nod to ideological homogeny notes that you are on board. I personally find the policy decisions (and elected leadership) of both to be third world, backward, and dangerous if not outright fraudulent and refuse to entertain offers that would put me there or working for companies there.

Man Jose is an awful choice when it comes to CA/Bay Area options.

What are some better options in CA?

I’m convinced

I'm going to have to recommend against Florida. Remember, the last gubernatorial election there was decided by ~50k votes. And blue-staters have been migrating there en masse since last summer. I sold my house to one of them several months ago (home prices have been going up like a rocket, btw) and left.

This article and similar ones have been written at least a 1000 times for the last decade with a clear political tinge. The poster child is always around how people want to move to Florida and Texas. But somehow it forgets to include Washington and Seattle which has probably seen the biggest tech migration and grown into the second biggest tech hub in the country, far greater than Austin or Miami (hyped up constantly). I guess it doesn’t fit with the narrative ? My working hypothesis is that people in general want to live in California like places, if they can afford it.

> My working hypothesis is that people in general want to live in California like places, if they can afford it.

This is my general thinking as well, and it happens to fit with my current life experience.

I'm unconvinced that there has been, generally speaking, a fundamental change in the preferred environment people wish to live in; instead it seems more likely that traditionally popular American urban areas are just too expensive and offer relatively little (compared to other parts of the world) in terms of services to justify living there... Even for those that might otherwise choose to.

There is a litany of social and governmental problems plaguing California, but I always stayed because it's the climate that feels the most natural to me. What finally drove me out was the seasonal firestorms and rain of ashes.

The San Francisco Chronicle has done some analyses of the Bay Area exodus, and the majority are not moving to Texas but instead to places like San Joaquin and Madera county (counties that border the Bay Area). People want the bigger house, but they also want to be able to visit their friends and family.

I'm typing this from Madera County. People are fleeing the Bay Area to move to the worst air quality in the country? My wife and I are figuring out how to move away (again) because the smog is really messing with her health. The air is so much worse here than when we were growing up. Heck, she wants to move to the cleaner air of Santa Clarita (north of L.A.--where we used to live).

This is accurate in my anecdotal experience. I'm from the Bay Area (5th generation or so) and so I have a lot of cousins, aunts, and uncles here and the general trend for friends/family has been to move to cheaper areas in the exurbs: Stockton, Tracey, Antioch, Fairfield, Vacaville, Modesto, etc. This is where the working class are getting pushed out to as they can no longer afford to live in the inner Bay Area.

It looks like FL and TX each had ~130k net migrants per the last reported data. [1] Washington had ~40k in the same year. There's a reason journalists talk more about migration to FL/TX, and it's because there are way more people moving there.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Texas has 4x the population of Washington state, has more urban centers and a much larger state. As a % of population, looks like WA has more migration compared to Texas given your numbers

I used to live in Florida and you couldn't pay me to move back. The weather is hot, sticky and humid, the politics are right wing, the religion is old timey and in your face and the (mostly) latent racism is unpleasant when you encounter it.

I moved to a larger city in the midwest and it's great. Yes, winter is a drag but that's about the only negative that bothers me. Tech salaries go a long way, public schools are high quality and plentiful, politics are generally more balanced (than Florida or Texas), religion isn't a constant presence, crime is low and people are mostly friendly.

It literally cites Ross Perot jr., it's like asking Gavin Newsome for his opinion on the competitive advantages of California.

People move to Seattle mostly because it is great. But if you are a certain political bent Texas and Florida offer a safe haven to be so. I have a (gladly) ex-worker that is on his way to FL or Montana but all that does is add 2 seemingly nice folks to the pile of racists already there.

For the most part that migration ended about 10 years ago. People are now moving away from there. Right now the hot spots are Idaho, Montana, Florida, Texas.

All of which are experiencing house prices in the last 5 years to shoot through the roof from what those people originally had. That said, Texas is huge so I'm really talking about Austin and 2 hour surrounding cities.

> But somehow it forgets to include Washington and Seattle

I prefer they keep “forgetting”.

> My working hypothesis is that people in general want to live in California like places, if they can afford it.

Of course prices (and price movements) will always be the objective measure of desirability across a large population.

I grew up in a rural town around 4 hours from St. Lois.

I was MISERABLE. I HATED IT AS A KID!

A short list of things I disliked:

- Completely car dependent as a kid. If my parents didn't give me a ride I wasn't doing anything. Bicycling is not an option because people drive like maniacs and are not expecting bikes, so it is extremely dangerous. People love to haul ass on country roads.

- Conservative values. My parents are solidly blue voters, but growing up in that environment surrounded by racism, you learn a lot of bad stuff that you have to unlearn, or else sink deeper and deeper into the bad stuff.

- Our house became worthless. The community is dying, and the house my family owned is reasonable and has been sitting in the market for years. Nobody wants to move or live there.

- Lack of culture. My parents, up until this year, had never eaten Indian food, real ramen, or a huge number of other commonplace things you get in a city. There weren't any "garage bands" or other artists or coders to collaborate with as a kid. They are getting older now and they are realizing how empty and boring the place they have chosen to live is. My dad is getting really into video poker. There is NOTHING ELSE FOR THEM THERE.

- Bad schools. I had the same teachers as my parents, who graduated 20 years before I did. We had HUGE behavioral problems. Students who fell behind were sent to another school 45 minutes away... until that school filled up and could no longer take the overflow. It was constant triage and if you were a little clever you were BORED. A lot of students their senior year just sat in study hall for 6 hours a day because they didn't have the rooms and the teachers to teach higher level classes. I didn't even know what AP classes were until I got to college.

- Bad hospitals. We had to close ours down because we couldn't play doctors enough to move to our town.

- Total lack of community. You think "less people == people are closer". No. There is nowhere to gather, the only land you can use is the land you own. There are not enough people to support hobbies or meetups. Most of the people get a degree or a trade job and get as far away as possible as quickly as possible.

Every time I see an article about an exodus to rural America I am reminded of the rural America I grew up in, and frankly it's terrible compared to living in or near a city. For all the reasons you cite and so many more.

Of course cost of living is cheap in rural America, demand is low and supply is high for land far from modern conveniences.

This rings true to my experience as well. Growing up in a conservative Christian county where I was the only queer kid drove me to attempt suicide twice in my teens before I promptly ran as fast as possible to a large university and never go back except for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

It’s swear it’s so much worse because of the boredom. School got out around 3pm and most days I had to stay inside with a sympathetic teacher until my parents got off work because a group of kids would just hang around waiting for me to walk home.

Thank god for the internet, not sure I would have made it out without it.

I've heard this brought up as a kind of second round of white flight. The middle- and upper-class (primarily) white population is once again moving out of urban centers because telecommuting is something that these high-salary jobs afford them.

I think it will rebound a bit (but not much), as moving from urban to suburban is a very difficult transition, but its even harder going the other way once you've adjusted.

I miss living in NYC, but I'm actually looking to retire in the next few years, and pick up some remote land that I can settle with Starlink, and live off a VERY modest retirement (WELL under a million saved/invested) for the next 40 years. My retirement will look vastly different from my parents, as I will still work (building web apps, games, furniture, whatever tickles my fancy), just not for anyone but myself.

> and live off a VERY modest retirement (WELL under a million saved/invested) for the next 40 years

Do you mind sharing how much?

I'm curious why most people seem to think $1M is somehow not enough money to retire modestly on. If previous trends continue, you could easily live on >$4K after taxes per month indefinitely. That's almost 50% higher than median wage (after taxes). Median wage = ~$41,000. Even with $0 state tax, just after federal tax, you're at ~$30,000. At this income, you likely can't deduct more than the standard deduction...

It's just obvious that you CAN live on 50% more than median wage. Yet at the same time, so many people seem to think this is some absurd proposition.

Even at $500k - you can draw down the same amount for ~10 years, and then rely on SS (which would be much more modest - although, obviously still completely doable considering almost half the senior population does it).

Also - a lot of people still do something that makes money in retirement...

>I'm curious why most people seem to think $1M is somehow not enough money to retire modestly on

>It's just obvious that you CAN live on 50% more than median wage. Yet at the same time, so many people seem to think this is some absurd proposition.

It is because they have a different definition of modest than you. I know I can live on even less than median wage. I grew up with far less. But my family did not have access to healthcare and good schools or being able to help out family members if they needed support. We were always 1 legal or health problem away from being ruined.

Is living 1 legal or health problem away from being ruined modest? That is a personal opinion. I aim to cover the legal and health risks for me and my family members, so $1M is nothing where I live. I also predict that I need quite a big buffer the way the population pyramid is shaping up, because labor is going to get more and more expensive, along with devaluation of the dollar.

I also think either me or at least my kids (years 2050 to 2100) is going to have to contend with problems due to climate change and access to clean water and air that have yet to materialize, so need buffer for that too.

The "4% rule" [1] would recommend pulling out $40,000 each year if you had $1 million. This is the amount you can draw down each year without ever depleting the $1 million. The theory is that after you draw down your $40k, the remaining $960k will grow enough to get you back to $1 million by next year's draw down.

You can still live on $3,333/month, (especially since this person plans to keep working and there is likely some social security after age 67) but wanted to add some context.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-4-rule-is-being-debate...

Many retirement calculators assume post-retirement montly outflow of ~70% of pre-retirement amount. I don't know if this holds true for very high income families, but whenever I run various scenarios, I leave it.

I also assume many people won't have paid-off homes, so they're stuck paying rent or mortgage. Cars aren't cheap to keep running. Medical expenses are insane in the US.

If you also have to look after parents who never saved, you'll need to calculate out a fair bit. One example I saw on reddit was about 40% more than you need for yourself. Then there's teh part that if you don't own a home, you'll be paying that off in retirement.

The person who accumulated $1M (above real estate equity) likely did so by having a larger than median income over their working life (and likely has an associated higher expense profile).

For me, I think a 4% safe-withdraw-rate feels about right. Some argue for 3.5%. Others for 5 or 6%. Each of those has an impact on the cashflow in retirement, but $1M is probably not going to provide a replacement income for the typical folks who accumulated $1M. (Median household income in my state is $87K/yr before taxes.)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/233170/median-household-...

> Do you mind sharing how much?

The current (November 31) valuation of my assets is almost $200k. That isn't counting debts (which are small, but still exist), and that isn't counting the assets or value of my consulting company (which unaudited is around $50k).

I'm hoping to stash away another $150-200k over the next couple of years to really make my retirement last.

But either way, it isn't THAT hard to have a working retirement on < $500k. You aren't rich, but you are financially secure enough to chose what you want to do.

Are you factoring medical insurance into consideration? Can be c. $3K / month for a family.

Many like you are buying up lake-front properties in rural places.

I recommend it, playing farmer-cowboy-houseboateer in Kentucky/Tennessee is a magnitude cheaper than out west, even if you fail, you are out less money than simply living elsewhere.

I'm currently in the process of buying my wife's grandpa's house in rural Louisiana. It isn't on a lot of land (only 1.5 acres), but he's selling it to us "at cost" and that was how much it cost him to build it 20 years ago. We haven't decided if we want to live there full time and give up all the niceties we currently enjoy (a target within 10 minutes vs 2.5 hours, every type of ethnic food you can imagine, etc)., but it is always there for when we retire. Starlink gets over 60mbps in the area, and my wife's telemedicine practice only needs 10mbps for SD video, which is what most of her clients run at anyway since they use their phones and iPads for their sessions.

Just learn the accent before you move there, and don't tell your neighbors where you're from.

How do you manage medical care?

Of all the things I have planned, this is the only variable I don’t have an answer for because Medicare kicks in at 65.

The market-based plans are either useless (few hundred dollars a month); or expensive (a couple of thousand per month).

Currently, it is by paying $850/mo for health insurance for my wife and I. In the future I hope that my CoL expenses drop enough that the cost is fine while I continue to work for a lot less income, or if not, that my wife and I would qualify for subsidies on the marketplace.

I've entertained the same idea from time to time, but just don't see how it can work out financially. What is your contingency plan for medical expenses? Kids?

Btw, big fan of your blog posts.

So in rural America you definitely give up access to top-notch medical care, but I'm relatively healthy currently, and if we drop our household income, we start to qualify for subsidies. My wife only just started her career, 17 years into our relationship, so she's going to start ramping up income over the next few years, and that will hopefully cover any unforeseen issues.

I actually tried retiring this year. I paid to go to university in the UK in a very cheap place to live, but we had a few people in our family pass, and we decided while everyone is aging, we should stick around.

>big fan of your blog posts.

That is so kind of you to say. I'm a big fan of writing them... once or twice a year when I finally remember a story worthy of writing.

I live just west of Minneapolis with my wife in a house that's been in my family for generations.

I don't want to leave but the continuous stream of car jackings, home invasions, petty theft and seemingly random acts of violence have me rethinking this.

Calls to defund the police sound pretty tone deaf when your elderly neighbor is assaulted in their own home and robbed.

Police budgets are at their highest levels in history, and yet crime is up. The correlation just isn't there. Wasting money on police isn't solving this problem, which is why you are seeing the calls to move our funds elsewhere.

Also worth noting that MPD engaged in a work stoppage last summer, which may have had an impact on crime. https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/10/20/mpd-cop-says-office...

Nationwide, crime has been on a downward trend for decades. Yes, there are spots where it flares up. And COVID appears to have caused a marked increase in some crimes. But, overall, the US hasn't suddenly degenerated into a state of lawlessness.

https://www.bbc.com/news/57581270

FBI crime stats for Minneapolis proper don't look that much higher than the last 20 years, and considering that the metro population has almost doubled since 1990 you have to discount them per-capita. Are you sure it's not just that you are reading too much Nextdoor?

Crime stats are often on a delay.

I occasionally see people in Portland cite 2019’s crime stats as proof that things are fine and that you’re just bigoted against homeless people or whatever.

Portland didn’t get the 2020 numbers from the FBI until late September 2021, which at that point showed an 80% increase.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-2021-homicid...

Now we’re at nearly 80 homicides (if we haven’t crossed that, it will likely be this weekend) so far in 2021, breaking the 90s record.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-2021-homicid...

For a while the narrative as that crime was much less serious than is being portrayed in the news. In major American cities, that trend has reversed.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/07/27/violent-crime-surge...

https://www.axios.com/local/twin-cities/2021/12/09/st-paul-h...

Counterpoint: we live in Edina, a nicer suburb just south of Minneapolis proper. No real crime except for a single hit-and-run by an out-of-towner in the last two years.

Walking distance to two grocery stores, several restaurants, and two malls. Affordable utilities and rent.

There was a carjacking at the lunds in Edina two days ago.

https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/edina-carjacking-v...

Hi, neighbor!

Oversimplified, inflammatory statements like "defund the police" and "ACAB" gain a lot more traction composted to more measured statements like, "We believe in maintaining a secure society for everyone and not just certain preferred communities, which isn't possible with the current policing and social care system. We need massive, decisive, and prompt reform that doesn't involve funneling more and more of the city budget directly to the police dept, and if we can't have that then we'd rather re-start from the ground up and police ourselves than sit by while the situation worsens."

Doesn't have the same ring, you know?

Those oversimplified phrases gain traction by provoking an emotional response, but that cuts both ways.

"Defund the police" was very easy to interpret as "abolish the police." It was a gift to the other side of the argument, and to that side's candidates in the 2020 election. Overall it looks like it backfired as a slogan politically, and no major police departments have actually been reformed.

If all your slogan achieves is making your own side feel better, while it alienates moderates and gives easy talking points to your opponents, it's a bad slogan and you shouldn't be proud of it.

How exactly is a community going to police itself?

Look at the marches(if you can, they're rarely shown on any kind of media) every time a 5 year old is murdered from a stray drive by shooting bullet in chicago...thousands of people in the community come out against it, and...nothing happens.

Pay them more to keep failing to provide protection? The cops extort you (the tax payer) by playing with your safety for the sake of inflating the budget.

Police in the US are under no obligation to protect the citizenry. SCOTUS has reaffirmed that over and over again.

The point of the calls to defund the police is that the assault and robbery is a symptom of a wider systemic problem. Arresting and jailing the people who committed that particular assault and robbery is like taking a painkiller when you've got a gut wound. Sure, it'll let you ignore the pain for a while longer, but you're not addressing the real core of the problem.

Seem being the key word. The messaging is poor, the idea has quite a bit of merit.

I moved the the suburbs way earlier than I had planned due to the pandemic and my job being much more WFH. I love it. I’m still accessible the city (14-28 minutes by train depending on schedule), I have way more space, and I’m near some really wonderful nature areas. I love having a garage and a yard and a grill. Im still near restaurants and stuff, and I kinda outgrew the bar scene a few years ago — now I’m more likely to hit a brewery or 2, which are dense in the suburbs too.

That sounds great, but I am very skeptical. 14 minutes by train - what's the actual door to door commute time? I'm not aware of any city in the US with commute times that short where the place you live wouldn't be more urban than suburban e.g. Hoboken/Harrison, NJ, Quincy, MA, etc...

The 14 minute train is from Route 128 in Westwood, MA to Back Bay, in Boston’s downtown. I give myself ~15 minutes (for traffic buffer) to drive and park, take the 14 minute train, then it’s a 5 minute walk to work. I’ve done it in 30 minutes seat to seat.

I think a lot of people are seeing what they want to see in this. Once a company figures out how to leverage a developer in the Midwest as effectively as one in the Bay Area what stops them from hiring in the Dominican, or Mexico or South America? I've worked with fantastic developers from those areas who can effectively work on the same timezones, communicate well and write high quality code.

I know personally, I've seen a lot of hiring shifting to Latin America in the last 2 years. I don't think this is going to be the midwestern/southern renascence that people think it's going to be.

This isn’t an article about developers, tech, or remote work.

It’s about a general trend of existing US residents across many industries relocating to the affordable, low tax, business friendly suburbs of cities where people do things besides converting funding into JSON.

"They" could always make it harder to transfer money from inside the US system to the "outside" world. This is what an exit-tax is, basically making it harder for established people to move away from the system. Or AML for international wires. Or Minimum Corporate Tax.

Unluckily for First-World countries, the politicians seems to be focused on the symptoms rather than the disease itself. This will not change course of what will happen, of course.

Crypto seems to introduce another headache to this.

I've been thinking about what gives big cities their edge. Why some even become global hubs for particular industries. Two reasons are clearer to me now than they were in the past:

  - Lifestyle advantages of living amongst specialists: people can outsource various chores/tasks/jobs/errands to local specialists who can complete them much more efficiently. For instance imagine if your village doesn't have a plumber and you have to spend much of your own time fixing pipes, rather than focussing on activities where you have comparative advantage.
  - Poaching. Modern companies struggle to maintain a competitive advantage since their employees can leave and join their competitors. But key employees will usually have roots in a particular place, so competitors can only hope to lure them away if they co-locate their offices in the same city. So almost all of them do.

That said, the internet has introduced some counter-effects, for instance externalizing specialist knowledge on public websites, and enabling remote working.

I think your specialist comment here rings very true. Talk to anyone who grew up on a farm in a small town. Those people are often their own plumber, electrician, construction worker, mechanic, etc on top of their normal jobs!

There was a discussion societally around millennials (men in particular) not being as "handy" as their parents, but specialization of those parents is largely the reason. Sure, my dad might have learned how to use a table saw as a teenager in shop class or how to change his car oil from my grandpa, but I only had an art elective available (no shop class option) and my parents were too busy to justify changing oil at home for our econobox cars when the jiffy lube down the street would do it for $40.

Now is that a problem for society? That has yet to be proven, especially when you factor in the rise of online teaching through mediums like YouTube. My dad might not have taught me anything handy, but my internet "dads" on YT have taught me many things beyond even what my own father knows. It's a trade off and I don't see us reverting as a society anytime soon.

There's channels that will even let you call them dad, e.g. the "dad, how do I..." with 3m+ subscribers

https://youtube.com/channel/UCNepEAWZH0TBu7dkxIbluDw

Depending on specialists for everything is fragile. What happens when there are no plumbers available at any price? I see it as just sad and pathetic when city dwellers can't even do basic home maintenance like replacing a faucet cartridge or toilet seal.

How far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go? Will you teach yourself how to butcher your own meat so you don't have to rely on a butcher? Teach yourself surgery so you don't have to go to a doctor?

Our society thrives because of specialization. It's what allows a person to focus on what they're best at to have the greatest chance at innovation.

> I see it as just sad and pathetic when city dwellers can't even do basic home maintenance like replacing a faucet cartridge or toilet seal.

That seems rather harsh. A big reason why "city dwellers" can't do home maintenance is because cities have more renters then owners. When you rent a property, you're strongly encouraged to offload all home maintenance onto your landlord. Not only is the landlord obligated to cover maintenance costs, but they can withhold a deposit (or even outright fine) for any damages done if maintenance is done incorrectly.

It bodes poorly for the environment if people are increasingly moving from denser cities to sprawling suburbs. This is in many ways a self-inflicted problem of high-cost cities, but it should be a national priority to reverse this trend.

It's always crazy to hear that suburbs are cheaper. Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation, so it should be considerably cheaper. It's only through the subsidisation of suburbia and the low supply/high demand of high density urban areas that this is the case.

Car centric suburbs aren't just terrible for the environment, terrible for safety and terrible for transportation; they're also incredibly costly.

This is a bit simplistic. There are a lot of other reasons housing is more expensive in dense urban areas:

Low supply due to underbuilding.

High costs due to difficulty in getting housing approved and forced BMR units.

More expensive land price.

Not needing to own a car saves you money.

And, most importantly, proximity to jobs and services. Living in a dense urban area saves you the time of driving and commuting, and has more amenities, restaurants, and things to do within a given X minutes. Buying time is expensive and a luxury good. This is where a lot of the demand comes from.

The problem is not just subsidization. Urban (especially “ultra-urban” in dense areas like Manhattan, non-suburban SF, central Boston or DC, Brickell, etc) residences have low supply and high demand.

> Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation

Not really. Firstly, it costs a lot more per square foot to build a high rise than a single family home. Secondly, it costs a lot more to maintain it (elevators need constant maintenance, you can't just run to Home Depot to get replacement drain parts, etc.).

And the infrastructure costs more to maintain -- running power to a high rise requires a lot of specialized commercial electric equipment that can handle the high loads and variability. Same with water -- you need special pumps and extra big boilers. Sure you can gain some efficiency by sharing those resources, but at the end of the day the costs per person are roughly the same.

The main impact comes from needing less transport of goods and people, which is an environmental plus, but not something priced into the cost of living.

Suburbs are "cheaper" because it's a ponzi scheme. When older suburbs eventually have to face the bills of renewing their ultra expensive infrastructure costs hollow out and decline, developers simply build a new suburb and people move.

That new suburb is of course in no way economically sustainable.

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

> It's only through the subsidisation of suburbia and the low supply/high demand of high density urban areas that this is the case.

This is a myth espoused by cityfolk. Oregon trail settlers didn't need subways. Those in Alaska and that live in the woods do just fine without your "help".

Many people have ranches, like to hunt, and enjoy nature.

Some city thinkers like to prescribe ways for others to live, but these people should look inwardly first. City air is toxic and is killing your pulmonary system. Zoning is NIMBY and school funding shows even the most liberal prefer to protect their own.

Live your life and stop telling others they are wrong in their lifestyle. It's like nails on a chalkboard. Elitist, and will contribute to a Republican win in 2022 and 2024.

(I'm a social liberal, fwiw. I think most of us are doing this wrong and are increasing polarization.)

The structure of the US economy changed faster in the past 50 years than infrastructure could adapt to.

With globalization and automation, the US pretty quickly turned into a mostly-service economy and shed tons of manufacturing and agriculture jobs. Service and other white-collar jobs mean working either for or with others, so they concentrate in cities. Manufacturing and ag jobs are where the raw materials, shipping, or farmland is, so tend to be more spread out.

The result is that jobs in small towns and cities evaporated and most opportunity became concentrated in large metro areas. People go where the jobs are, but the cities couldn't grow fast enough to keep up.

So, yes, even though cities are more economically efficient, they are still more expensive simply because the demand grew much faster than the supply.

It's clear that, because people view housing as an investment, supply and demand increases the value of city housing (often to levels that seem ridiculous).

Can you elaborate on the subsidisation of suburbia? Are there tax provisions that advantage them?

With remote work becoming the norm, it is significantly less terrible. I remote 100% and the only time I drive is to visit family and friends. I put around 1500 miles a year on the car.

How about comfort of living?

Maintaining your own home ain't trivial, cheap, quick thing

maybe. There are very few city centres compared to city-not-centres by definition, but even so there is not much stopping us making a suburb the density of Chinatown. I wonder why we don't?

Suburbs aren't always or necessarily cheaper. Compared to where I live, some suburbs outside the city are cheaper, some are more expensive.

A lot of the prices in the suburbs near me seem to depend on how good the schools are supposed to be, what types are jobs are nearby, and, maybe ironically given the discussion, how easy it is to access the city.

Building a high-rise condominium downtown will always be more costly and expensive than a plot of single-family homes in the 'burbs. Car travel is only getting cheaper in the suburbs with solar and EVs, while subways and trolleys are getting more and more expensive to build in big cities.

It depends on whether or not the move to a less dense area corresponds with increased travel and car use. My wife and I can go days without leaving our house. We have a single car. When we lived in a city, we went out multiple times per day, but it was almost exclusively on foot. We probably had the same number of car trips per week to visit friends, since most of them lived in the suburbs, plus wanting to get out into nature, which we value.

When we lived in the suburbs, in an in-between space, we probably had the highest car use, and life required two vehicles.

So, it's not either-or. There's a spectrum. You can't expect to maintain the same habits and lifestyle in a rural location as you do in a dense urban environment, etc.

Expanding rural access to electric vehicle infrastructure, and re-investing in regional rail would be transformational for these communities, though.

Except that this is not what's happening according to the OP. It's mostly a move from the largest, most expensive cities and suburbs towards smaller, but still high-density cities. Which implies less urban sprawl in general.

I'm not so sure it's mostly about high-cost. The people who have new freedom due to increased remote work opportunities can probably afford the city. I think it's more likely that they are moving for quality of life reasons. I know that's true for me. Also, we've just been through (and might still be in) a pandemic. I'm very glad I didn't need to use public transportation for the past couple of years.

I don't think the city is fixable for people who don't want to live in a city.

It's probably economically unsustainable. Even governments have bottom line they must manage.

Who cares. Fuck the city. Never again.

Silicon Valley / SF have had a stranglehold on the digital economy for the last 20-30 years -- nearly anything that touches electrics or software had a "tax" where some portion of that innovation flowed back as cash.

With covid / the great reset, I've seen so many leave the bay area now that they can work remote. It's occured to me that SV / SF will need to reinvent itself and be in a rough patch for a couple years. The benefit to the rest of the americans is that all those high paying jobs and new ways of doing business are being dispersed throughout the rest of the USA which is better for all of us in the end.

There’s a fine line with this though — the advantage of hiring Americans in the Midwest versus hiring in Europe and Asia needs to be solidified somehow.

I think the companies there will also need to reinvent themselves. I'm currently interviewing and both Apple and Facebook required in-person or based around a satellite office. I'm in Los Angeles so it shouldn't be a crazy ask. They lost out on a candidate and my labor will go to a business who lets me continue living my life.

Given thoughts like Individuals Matter [1], my speculation is that these companies are currently losing a lot of valuable individuals who can command more flexibility. There are plenty of remote first companies paying competitive salaries.

1. https://danluu.com/people-matter/

There is a downside to some places as well. You have people moving into areas with high paying jobs and expectations of high cost in housing. The locals who have lived there for years are priced out of their own community with the influx. This has happened around Austin TX, and from what I understand in Colorado.

They actually aren’t dispersed at all. You have more remote workers than you had before, that’s pretty much it. It really remains to be seen what happens when those remotes go to switch jobs.

I have no concrete plans to move anywhere, but just knowing that I _could_ easily pick up and go anywhere I want without commute or general work location being a deciding factor has been so freeing.

And part of it is what public schools are doing to our kids. My 6 year old is required to sit outdoors to eat her lunch in 40ish degree (F) weather, and is not allowed to socialized. My 5 year old has to wear a mask 7 hours a day against an illness that doesn't kill kids. I'm at my wit's end with these school administrators. Hoping to be in Wyoming in 6 months' time.

This is an interesting thread. The meta-issue here is that communities differ in their risk tolerance too. You just discovered that you are an outlier in your community.

People can agree 100% on the “science” and still disagree on the risk-reward tradeoff:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier

PS: the risk tolerance varies by issue. E.g. blue cities seem to have a lot of risk appetite when it comes to lenient treatment of crime. Or gun-use in other parts of the country.

> that doesn't kill kids

While the numbers are low, it is not 0. This is, sadly, categorically untrue.

Your child doesn't wear a mask to protect your child, they wear a mask to protect others. While they may not feel very strong effects from the virus, they can pass it on to other who will.

FWIW our district is considering removing the mask mandate at school as soon as we reach 80% vax rate among the students, so hopefully your nightmare of making your child wear a piece of cloth will end soon.

You might not have heard, but the illness does (albeit very infrequently) kill kids, but more likely, kids can bring it home and infect their older, more vulnerable family members. Which is what recently happened in my kid's school district, when some nitwit parent also "at their wit's end with these school administrators" sent their COVID infected kid to school.

> My 5 year old has to wear a mask 7 hours a day against an illness that doesn't kill kids

This is misinformation: https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19...

My family moved out of NYC during the pandemic. We have a young kid and a dog - so finding a spot which had more space was imperative (given that both our gigs were remote).

The few factors for us :

* Is the neighborhood family / kid-friendly ? * Is it comfortable ? * Does it have space ? * Does it have some of the conveniences of a city (not a cut-off remote suburb)

We moved to TX to be closer to family and it checked all of these boxes. That being said, I don't think we have it in us to do another relocation unless forced. It was painful to execute and I can only imagine it gets harder when you have deeper ties in the neighborhood/city with kids/family

Does "kid friendly" for you include a means for your child to operate independently of you in the time between "go play outside" age and driving age? I ask because I grew up in a suburb where I had the equivalent of a small urban park's playground in my back yard, but the time between that playground being useful and when I could drive were terrible for me and for my parents (who had to drive me to almost anything I wanted to do) and would have been worse if I weren't able and interested in walking/biking 3 miles to the library or train station.

I was so very jealous of my friends who lived in more urban areas who could walk home from school and do things independently of their parents at 12 rather than 16+.

This is something a lot of parents don't think of! As I keep my eye out for new houses, one thing I noticed is that no one emphasizes walkability in the suburbs anymore. It exists if you know where to look. Where I live now we can walk to some stuff. When my kids are older they will be able to walk or bike to the park, to school, to the shopping center to hang out, and I want to make sure it stays that way.

I certainly don't want to be on the hook to drive them everywhere like my parents were!

For us it meant having enough established services such as good schooling, daycare, recreational activities within a reasonable distance.

One of the big stressors in hyper-growth cities has been that the infrastructure doesn't scale quickly enough and the waitlists for somethings can run months, if not years

E.g. daycare signups in parts of Austin

> First, people have been leaving large, dense, expensive urban cores for smaller, less-dense cities and suburbs. Second, people and companies have been moving to warm, low-tax states in the South and Southwest.

Seems like there could be a convergence of the demographic trend of millennial family formation with pandemic related increase in people's perception of the value of square footage that is pushing people toward that classic Single Family Home housing product.

Problem being of course is that they're not distributed in the right places.

Of course the era of normal people without incredible levels of wealth owning a detached home in cities like SF, Seattle, etc is long over. There will only ever be less and less SFHs as these cities urbanize further.

The market urbanist solution to this issue has been to build more housing, and more apartments, townhomes and duplexes with larger footprints that are suitable for a family, so that one wouldn't need a detached home for a larger family to affordably live in one of these big cities.

That we're seeing people abandon certain urban places may be a sign of the failure of those governments to actually get any of that product sufficiently built, but it also could be a sign that, despite similar square footage, people don't see townhouses/apt housing product as the same sort of value as a detached house, and they are willing to make remarkable life changes to own a fee simple house proper.

> That we're seeing people abandon certain urban places

I suspect that "abandon" is way overstating the case. Where I live, in the Twin Cities, the most growth in the state is in the cities themselves, while rural areas are continuing their decades-long decrease[1]. The enormous cities (SF, NYC) may be seeing a bit of a decrease in population, but I don't think it generalizes beyond those specific ones to urban areas across the country.

[1] https://www.fox9.com/news/twin-cities-fuel-minnesotas-popula...

As a millenial forming a family, it's the former part of your last paragraph that's keeping our family out of the city. We live near Seattle, and we'd much rather be in Seattle, but we can't afford anywhere near the same square footage, owning or renting. We'd absolutely be happy renting in the city if it was remotely affordable.

I think your last paragraph is interesting and the crux of the question. I think all else equal that people will prefer detached homes. But I also think that all else is not equal; there is a trade-off between that and access to amenities without driving. I think a smaller but still large set of people place high value on that. Large townhomes with nearby amenities (restaurants, libraries, coffee shops, work spaces, schools, parks, rec centers, etc.) could be a sweet spot for a large number of people.

> also could be a sign that, despite similar square footage, people don't see townhouses/apt housing product as the same sort of value as a detached house, and they are willing to make remarkable life changes to own a fee simple house proper.

That seems unlikely since townhouses and the like have been quite popular in places outside the U.S. where they're reasonably common. Detached single homes are incompatible with dense urban living, and this will always limit their popularity.

I really think it’s mostly lack of supply. If the problem were solely due to lower value of MFH vs SFH we wouldn’t see 1bed market rate condos in SF going for $700k.

Of course, all things (including location and sq footage) being equal, it seems logical most people would prefer SFH. No shared walls, nobody living above you, no/less-influential HOA, potentially large upside of land appreciation. However that is a false dichotomy because prices are higher (because land prices are likely to be high anywhere a SFH is near large condos). So what really matters is the demand curve for SFH vs MFH - MFH may be an “inferior good” in the economic sense but it is not so inferior that, for example, rich techies are buying $500k SFH in Richmond, CA rather than $800k condos in SF.

The whole narrative of a mass exodus is pretty suspect in general anyway. There is not a huge amount of vacant housing in most cities - the carrying and opportunity costs are too high, though IMO they should be higher. For every person leaving an urban area, on average, someone is replacing them.

If the demand for large townhouses is naturally lower than detached homes and you can fit more of them in a given unit area then maybe just maybe they actually have some hope of addressing the housing shortage in expensive metros.

So far, though, evidence is that people will still pay a pretty high price to live in denser housing in SF, Seattle, etc.

I suspect what you have will quickly built flats (apartments) that are targeted as investments

With a remote workforce what is stopping people to move to South America, etc?

Cost of living is rising dramatically with YoY housing prices hitting 20-30% (even in middle of nowhere) it just doesn't make sense financially if you arent established to stay.

Cultural differences, distance from family, language barriers, laws against foreign land/home ownership, crime, corrupt governments, etc.

I'm all for traveling and experiencing different cultures but there's a lot more than money that comes into play when you're considering a move to a developing country.

1. They don’t speak Spanish 2. They don’t know anyone there 3. Their company doesn’t allow it

Not much and I think we'll see more of this for the reasons you mention. You can just "rent" a place somewhere or buy a trailer and claim that as your official home and then just live in another country. Latin America is ideal for this for Americans because of the timezones as well.

Though of course it depends on the country, your goals and ideas, etc.

For me, schools are a huge part of this. Zoom schooling has demonstrated how little learning actually happens during a day. Simultaneously, online alternatives have popped up/become popularized, and people are realizing how much more a student can learn through good/personalized remote learning.

Parents who pay tens of thousands of dollars in property tax — largely for access to 'great schools' — are now able to move anywhere they want and access online options that are in many ways better than their tony suburban schools. Many of these parents are allowed to WFH now, which makes moving to rural areas possible, for the first time ever.

I imagine there will be some people who move away, realize the grass isn't always greener, and then move back. But overall I think WFH and remote schooling will unlock regions to a huge pool of families who never previously thought of living away from urban/suburban centers.

What are some of the online alternatives?

As an European, I love the American culture. But if you had the European standards on healthcare (The Spaniard one it's great), America would enter in a 2nd golden age.

As an European with extensive knowledge about government budgeting and costs, I find the naivety of most people regarding European healthcare systems incredible. There is not enough money in the world to deliver the promise of the European hc systems and there is no serious reporting on the results to make people aware of the gap. Most people believe healthcare is readily available, free and unlimited, none of these being completely true and the overall picture being completely not true.

You get good healthcare but only if you work for the right companies, meaning companies with good plans.

My recent experience had me paying zero USD and dealing with almost zero paperwork. For a physical and the resulting outpatient surgery.

we do, it's called kaiser and it's amazing. it's unlikely they will replace the more rapacious alternatives, however.

I'm also sure a small percentage of people from the USA may even rethink living there.

My company has gone to work-from-anywhere-as-long-as-it's-in-the-USA, there's some sort of complicated tax thing that comes if you live in another country but work in the US, and they don't want to deal with that.

If only it didn't require an incredibly privileged position to be be a reasonable thing to do, I might.

What are the other options? After seeing how Europe and other western nations have responded to COVID in the last 2 years I'm less likely to consider moving there. It was actually something I'd considered before all of this.

> First, people have been leaving large, dense, expensive urban cores for smaller, less-dense cities and suburbs.

This trend is going to make reducing CO2 emissions even harder.

Maybe maybe not. A lot depends on what happens next. The assumption here is that people are moving out of urban areas and then not commuting back in. If that really is the case, unlike in the commuting form of suburbanization, then service businesses will follow those people, if they are allowed to. This would be a great outcome, but it depends on a lot of assumptions.

I lived in a walkable city for 7 years and since moving to a 1950s style neighborhood do not really miss it. You can only have so many trips to the bakery, the coffee shop or the local bookstore until eventually its just your normal life and no more exciting than driving 5 min to the same thing. Plus a lot of the local places closed because of high rents and only chains or overpriced places tend to stick around.

This year I moved from New Jersey to Michigan (since my job is now 100% remote).

Homes in NJ are around $400k. In Michigan I bought a duplex for $160k. I could rent out the other side of the house, but instead we had our friends move in. We are 4 blocks from main street in a tiny town and enjoy the peace and quiet without obscene NJ traffic.

This is an easier decision since I have a life partner and am not trying to meet new people or see new things. It's especially easier since we do not intend to have kids.

I am baffled that some of my friends choose to live in Seattle where, if they buy a house, they would spend most of their working lives paying it off. While they would miss out on some big-city amenities if they moved out, they instead could have the ability to retire a few decades early.

"A countervailing political force is that some of the people who are moving into Texan, Floridian and Arizonan suburbs from California and the Northeast consider themselves political refugees, fleeing badly-run state and local governments. They may cast votes against Democratic candidates in an attempt to ensure their new locations will not resemble the places they left."

I can't help but wonder whether the people with the means to flee California were partially responsible for its poor state of political affairs, consistently voting for more progressive candidates and policies. They left a mess of their own creation. Just as Mike Tyson famously said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."

Spending from two to four hours each day in the car comuting means a few years from your life you will lose. I'd rather live in an apartment building and do more meaningful things in my life than having a big yard and drive a few hours every day.

My Big Ten university town is offering cash incentives for workers to relocate there. It makes sense. These towns have benefits of a small town—low COL, access to nature, minimal commute—with big city amenities—transport, walkability, entertainment.

Hello all, it appears that a large portion of this article is based on this study:

https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publication...

There is a lot of data and a lot of charts.

This study has a data table that just makes me confused about the Economist article:

> V. Change in Gross and Net Flows for Metro Areas with Populations Greater Than 500,000

I moved to somewhat of an expat bubble in rural Portugal, lots of advantages, the few disadvantages for me though are having to drive everywhere and lack of options for schools. Granted these are not specific to Portugal, but more for the "moving to rural / suburbs areas". Some people don't mind the driving, but for me, realizing I will be a taxi driver until kids get a driving license is a little depressing. Especially the driving to school part...

However, the advantages still offset the disadvantages for me.

This makes sense; as generations come of age in this country there has always been a shift in where people live based on the advancements in technology. From the early days of trains allowing living outside city centers, to the invention of the automobile and subsequent suburban sprawl with the interstate system, it would follow that the internet and remote work would change how we live. As demographics change, so does the politics based on who stays and who goes in each city.

The automobile, refrigeration, radio, and the telephone all blossomed in the 1940s and early 50s. They were also factors in urban sprawl.

Moved out of the city (Tampa) to rural Alaska. Currently working remotely with the help of a local ISP that does wireless internet (on the waiting list for Starlink).

I'd go South if the politics start to blue-up. I figure if this trend holds as the article says, by the time I'm ready to retire there will have been two censuses. I care about social justice, local produce, and warm weather. The south has 2 out of 3.

I find it ironic that where you want to go needs to be "more blue" because where you're currently living isn't that great (but is blue).

Do you care about being around social justice or bringing about social justice? If the former, sure, move to a blue area. If the latter, wouldn't moving to a purple area be more impactful?

Southern CA has all of that, why not just move there?

If everything goes as planned with global warming, we may have 3/3 here in the north as well (at least some of us). Where I live it’s noticeably warmer, winters milder and summers longer just in the ten years I’ve been here.

> I'd go South if the politics start to blue-up

move and accelerate the process

The answer is Miami

What's the climate change outlook in 20 years though?

I have a home in Nashville, Tennessee but chose to move to Seattle, Washington for work (software engineering), but stay here for the access to everyday life improvements- restaurant variety, activities, etc. Nashville has grown a lot, but you are still car dependent and the Conservative values run deep there, though those folks are being displaced as the housing market continues to boom which makes them more hostile to outsiders than they already were.

Huh, interesting. I’m visiting Nashville from Seattle. There’s definitely not as much Asian/Fusion food or Indian food in Nashville, but overall there are tons more restaurants - just not Pho or chicken tikka masala everywhere.

I’ve spent some time in Nashville and visited Brentwood, Franklin, Nolensville, and further east towards Murfreesboro and Smyrna. In a week, I felt like there’s a restaurant metric you’d measure in some metric like restaurants per square mile. There’s just food everywhere, and even on a Monday night, restaurants are packed.

No disagreement at all obviously on the politics. IMO, Seattle is too liberal for me (you committed a crime? It’s okay. You’re actually the victim) while in TN they’re maybe an extreme on the other end. I will say though that politics aside, people in and around the Nashville are are waaayyyy more friendly. It’s not even a comparison.

I do see tons and tons of new construction in Nashville and surrounding areas. On the other hand, the liberal, equal rights and affordable housing/healthcare/childcare crowd is drowning in NIMBYism.

The Economist used to be somewhat boring, but at least it had honest reporting about parts of the world you don't read much about. Good for you, in other words.

In the new world of the web, they seem to be trying too hard to amplify conventional opinions. Chasing clicks, in other words. Long after a trend has started up and enough people have heard of it (moving out of expensive areas, in this case), they jump on it.

> In the new world of the web, they seem to be trying too hard to amplify conventional opinions.

They've always been, fairly overtly, about amplifying a narrow range or neoliberal viewpoints. At the height of the UK/US neoliberal consensus of the late 1980s and 1990s, that may have been less obvious since that narrow range basically spanned the entire Overton Window.

I used to occasionally daydream about moving someplace rural or semi-rural where land and housing are cheap.

When I got my first vaccine dose, it was difficult to impossible to get an appointment in the Chicago area. I managed to find one in Urbana. I drove down on a Sunday to get my shot. Along the way, I stopped at a McDonald's to use the bathroom. Coming out, I had someone berate me for wearing a mask and declare mask wearing to be selfishness (I would later discover from reading a blog post that he was mirroring language he'd heard on Fox News).

I do not wish to live somewhere that my neighbors would be brainwashed by Fox News and engage in behaviors/have attitudes that would kill me. It may cost more to live in an urban liberal environment, but it's worth every penny.

There's a bit of racial cheating going on here by assuming the reasons that black/hispanic people are leaving cities are identical to the reasons wealthy whites are leaving cities, and that the trend started at the same time, follows the same lines, or ends up in the same suburbs. It's all glossed over by calling suburbs diverse by citing demographic percentages of all people who live in any suburb.

Black/Hispanic people have generally been priced out of cities by gentrification, and have been forced to move to places that are even farther from jobs and services than the previously neglected urban areas that they came from, and this started when millennials moved into the cities from the suburbs. Black people in particular have had a Southern migration because Northern black people are often only two or three generations from the South anyway, so they have family who can help with shared housing, childcare, and leads on employment.

This could be easily shown by showing rates of outmigration by group over time. Chicago's black population was dropping while its white population was rising. It would also be shown by individual attention to the suburbs that are being moved to, not only would you find that they were very segregated, but you might notice that plenty of them are hellish and poverty-ridden compared to the cities that people moved from.

I might as well quote the entire discussion of ethnicity, which occupied the body of a paragraph with nearly unrelated first, second, and final sentences. Maybe the word "urbanizing suburbs" in the context of an increase in amenities worked as a subconscious trigger to discuss black people moving to suburbs.

"The allure of suburbs has been a trend more than a half-century in the making, but covid-19 offered an additional boost. “Urbanising suburbs”, as Mr Clark them, are gaining amenities but keeping their characteristic sprawl. Contrary to the stereotype of identical white homes with white occupants, today’s suburbs are ethnically diverse. Wendell Cox of Demographia, a consultancy, estimates that 86% of the population of major metro areas live in the suburbs or exurbs. That includes 90% of whites, 83% of Latinos, 81% of Asians and 76% of African-Americans. Latinos, in particular, have been relocating to suburbs at greater rates in the past two decades: since 2000 their number has risen more than 50%, compared with a 20% rise for African-Americans and Asians and just 1.3% for whites. Ross Perot, Jr., a real-estate developer, says he’s “never seen as many people moving into Dallas. It’s shocking.” But far more people are going to the suburbs surrounding the city."

Note: a 20 year trend for non-whites, and a statistically insignificant blip for whites. Yet the article paints everyone as young upper middle class urban professionals trying to dodge taxes and city government.

"Housing costs are one indicator of where people are going. Kalispell, Montana, has seen the largest increase in property values in the country—with the average home up nearly 50% year-over-year. Second is Austin, Texas, followed by Boise, Idaho. Towns that people might never have considered living in full-time have become contenders. Traditional vacation destinations—including Bend, Oregon and California’s Lake Tahoe—have seen a surge of interest."

If you look at the demographics of these cities, it's obvious whose POV is being used to characterize this migration. In the case of Austin, in particular, the story has been about the shrinking of the black population while the city was growing, and the bleaching of neighborhoods that black people have lived in for a couple hundred years.

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/african-americans-are...

Visit Texas or Florida first. I've lived in Texas and visited Florida many times. I've also visited San Jose. TX and FL are hell compared to CA. I don't care for CA either, but that's because of cultural (coastal) differences. The NorthEast is heaven on Earth.

Please don't take HN threads into regional flamewar. You can make your substantive points without name-calling and swipes.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29541695.

Both Florida and especially Texas are too large for such a blanket statement.

Weather-wise, Central East Texas is perfect if you survive August and September.

Austin (suburban outskirts) and Dallas (Plano & Frisco) are nice. Houston is way too humid.

North East US is way too cold, I like a 70F winter.

As a recent transplant from SF Bay to Greater Boston... I'm inclined to agree. It's actually cheaper in my neighborhood than it was in East Oakland, and I can walk to almost anything I care about, incl. work, friends, pub, gym, grocery. Massive quality-of-life upgrade, assuming you're OK with freezing temps in the winter, and humidity and bugs in the summer.

Can you elaborate why you like the Northeast? I'm thinking of spending a few years in Boston.

Can you provide some details on why it is hell?

This is manufacturing consent right here.

It’s easily Googled; ~30 million people move each year.

The CEO of Upwork is engaging in SEO.

An academic in Canada is calling normal behavior a “great unmooring.” Then bail on any other discussion they had with said academic.

Suburban developers with data from Mar 2020-2021 ignoring easily Googled fall 2021 data showing a reverse in the urban exodus.

This article is SEO spam, ostensibly about a big deal, but their data is normal movement of the population, and outdated sampling, wrapped in grand language.

People have always been on the move. The Dust Bowl led to the big recent migration to the west. Although the migration post covid from the Bay area is negligible in absolute terms compared to the total population versus the Twitter accounts of some famous tech and VC folk like Keith Rabois.

If people on HN really want the urban life style to make any sense in America they need to start tackling the mental health / homeless problem.

They talk about "the environment" but no one wants to talk about how my wife has to dodge human feces getting on and off public transportation.

"It's just part of living in a vibrant city".... Give me a break.

Seattle just elected more moderate candidates willing to tackle the homeless problem seriously [0]. We've never made it to the levels of bad described here, but we were headed there. Possibly stories from our CA neighbors spooked us (many transfer up here.)

It's unhealthy to escape to be where "your tribe" is. I love my city and I did feel represented with moderate voices winning this election cycle.

[0] https://compassionseattle.org/

It's part of living in a broken city.

Your city (and country) does not need to have a massive homeless problem. This is something the city and state government can fix. Housing, mental health support, drug treatment support and better community policing are all possible, and proven to work.

How to get the city and state (and national) governments to fix this problem is another issue.

This is just not true. Everyone is talking about the homeless problem all the time. NOBODY is happy about the homeless situation in our major cities.

I don't know a single city, liberal, moderate, or conservative, that has solved it.

I am just a single citizen, I pay out the ass for taxes, and nothing is being done to help these people.

At this point is appears there is no political will to do anything. Instead everyone walks in circles while funneling the money into porkbarrel spending, the police force, and roads.

That's not Chicago, maybe West Coast or Austin, but Chicago got super aggressive about homeless in the 90s when gentrification started. Then, the homeless use to die under the freeways every winter and Wacker Drive (the "lower drive" as seen in The Dark Knight) was a giant homeless camp.

I’m looking to buy an investment property in the US. Any ideas on how to pick an up-and-coming location where people are going to want to move to?

A lot of US cities publish their urban development plans. Pick a state and look up their major cities' 2040 plans and see if they are planning extensive developments in the area your interested in buying. Sometimes the plans are overoptimistic or pessimistic but usually they generally give you an idea if the city itself thinks it will grow quickly or slowly.

Future expectations are largely considered in current prices. Some of this will depend on your time horizon. Let’s consider 5+ decades.

1. Look for areas that have a long history of growth. You don’t want to invest in a fad.

2. Look for areas that aren’t too rural. Many of the most rural areas are actually losing population as people leave services like grocery stories and doctors leave and thus drive out more people. Look at rural Kansas as an example of this, places 100 miles away from a city had a population peak with the baby boomers.

3. Look for a diverse local economy. Oil/Factory/Company towns exist and they tend to disappear when fortunes change for the host. You need more than remote workers to run a local economy.

4. Consider climate change. Almost everywhere in the US will be effected for the worst, but Miami is probably more risky than Nashville.

5. Do your homework and invest in what you know. I’ve picked the locations of my property very carefully. I usually can find deals when the market undervalues one particular property short term for various things reasons. Maybe I’m the first solid offer to a motivated seller (this may become more common again soon). Maybe it’s a home that needs some renovations. Maybe it’s in a neighborhood whose gentrification isn’t widely recognized yet.

My niche is residential realestate in a single mid-sized metropolitan area. About 50% of my investment portfolio is real estate. I actively manage these properties, while working full time as an engineer.

I’ve been rethinking this as well. I think I came to conclusions that too much diversity isn’t a good thing. I myself isn’t American and rethinking hard if I should obtain my American citizenship (currently PR)

I want to move back to Asia where there are less diversity and society is less complex. I value harmony more than diversity.

I was giving it some due until I saw this --

> It’s the fact that they can live their daily life and send kids to school with minimal restrictions.

I completely disagree with this. This is the number one reason why I will not move away from a science believing/respecting area. I don't want the headache of people with lack of basic common sense on top of everything life throws at you. If the pandemic has taught us anything trusting science is amazing and that many people are willing to blatantly abuse it.

If the pandemic has taught me anything it's that the word science doesn't mean the same thing to all people.

The science shows driving your kids to upper class resume boosting events is more dangerous to kids than covid

This seems to work well for both sides then.

I wonder if there is a downside to people self-segregating based on belief systems so vehemently because of intolerance?

COL/SOL in California is appalling. SOL continues to degrade here to the point where certain parts of Bay Are (Oakland, Hayward) look more like Syria than first world nation. Trash is everywhere, even in nicer neighborhoods. Not a single park here in East Bay without encountering a homeless person. And, then I meet people here that continue to defend 1) Food is amazing 2) SF sucks! Oakland is the best place ever 3) Well, we are kind here so we tolerate homelessness 4) All those NIMBYs, otherwise this place would be perfect 5) Our government cares about people more than infrastructure 6) We should tolerate crime because we are kind unlike other cities/states 7) California houses out of state homeless (this is false, despite of being repeated ad-nauseum on HN. Let me know and I’ll dig up sources).

These reasons are not convincing anymore. It’s a self perpetuating degradation of living standards.

I am currently looking for a job in Colorado, Texas, NC, etc.

Okay, but you have to understand, when you say things like "Oakland == Syria" it's incredibly hard to take you (and the people who make complaints like this) seriously.

I can walk four blocks and buy, like, 19 different lattes. I can walk two blocks and get on a train that takes me to downtown SF in 18 minutes. In a 10-minute drive I can get to literally any cuisine the world has to offer, and it's fucking delicious. These are not amenities available in third-world countries (or, I might add, in many cities in the U.S., at least not at this density and quality).

Do I see homeless people on the way? Yeah. I live in the Bay Area, an area going through a horrifyingly serious homelessness crisis. Parks are bad. The encampments under and along the highways are massively depressing.

But there's not rubble in the streets. Families are not starving to death in their homes. People are not being gunned down against walls.

Shit is bad right now, and I am afraid it's going to get worse before it gets better. But let's not pretend it's a third-world country. That helps neither your cause nor mine.

Lived in Mission Bay for 3 years after visiting the Bay Area double digit times over the years. It’s the type of place you love to hate and hate to love. I don’t regret leaving, moved to Washington but I do miss it and hate it for all the reasons you mentioned.

SOL = Standard of Living ?

That is an uncommon acronym.

I personally am happy that many people are eager to leave California and many more are actively discouraged from moving here. We've got plenty, thank you, and all are welcome to believe that this is a terrible state covered in syringes and human feces. I'm almost willing to believe it is deliberate propaganda by people who love California and have no intention of ever leaving.

That said I have no idea why people cannot separate the Bay Area from a state larger than many countries. So be it. I'd rather live in Fresno with its easy access to the Sierras than anywhere in the South.

Yes, SOL of living has been going downhill in the Bay Area in the last 10 years. I grew up here and I can see everything just getting old and uncared for.

Moving to Portland in 2022.

These are the reasons I chose to leave the East Bay. It's a dump (almost literally). Californian exceptionalism is rampant too, like many people have never visited a place where you aren't afraid to park your car on the street or don't step over human feces. For the low low price of $2,500/month (and that's not particularly expensive).

What bothers me most is that when I talk about this with people there the reaction is somewhere between "good riddance" or reducing my complaints down to cost of living. But I distinctly remember talking to a mayoral candidate in Berkeley canvassing for the election last year and discussing things like solar mandates. He seemed baffled that I asked why the city couldn't keep my street clean or do something about the number of brush fires and assaults at the nearby homeless encampment.

The Easy Bay could be great, but they're lacking basic municipal function and acting like the weather, mountains, and liberalism make up for it.

Could you dig up sources on that? Not challenging you, but as an Angeleno I've always believed this to be true myself. Curious what may actually be happening.

> look more like Syria than first world nation

Serious question, have you actually been to Syria? Can you cite some sources that can prove this comparison?

What does SOL stand for?

Hmm, interesting. I live in the East Bay (Walnut Creek) and spent a weekend in Healdsburg. Eating at Single Thread, drinking at Marin Layer, and staying at H2 hotel at the plaza. Seemed to be like SOL has gone up 10x over the last 10 years

Oh goody, another Californian who is fed up with the trash heap they've created and is moving to Colorado. Can't wait for another local business to be replaced by a car wash or a Pollo Loco.

Don't bother with CO. Our front range is well on the way to becoming SF 2.0. There's already a staggering amount of homelessness and the COL is through the roof.

In my city (Seattle), you never know if a mob is going to set up a month-long occupation outside your building, whether unregistered sex offenders have set up camp in your doorway (can't roust them), every road puts cars first, and the school is removing gifted programs for being racist. I'd love to live in a safe, well-managed, urban city. I don't believe any exist in North America.

Join us in Issaquah or Kirkland.

New York? Denver? Jersey City?

Montreal!

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