Hacker News Reader

Comment by nus07 | Hacker News Reader

One of the things that I noticed that when I lived in India and England, I never felt lonely . It was more walkable and there was less of a comparing salaries and lifestyles and more of hanging out and ‘chilling’. Maybe I was younger . But moving to the US has been bad because how isolating it is - cannot get out of the house and walk to a place or a market or bar except NYC . Most social connections are around an activity like playing board games or running . No one wants to just hang out and talk without discussing jobs and salaries. People from different classes and jobs and lifestyles rarely mix . I do regret moving to the US from a social and friends perspective.

View on HN

I moved to a mid-seized US city 6 months ago for grad school and I wholeheartedly agree with you.

The bit about hanging out in particular surprised me. I live in such a beautiful neighborhood, yet I almost never see any people outside. People are either walking their dogs or going from their door to car. I never saw a group of child randomly running around, teenagers doing teenager things, or bunch of old people just hanging about- sights I'm so used to. It's even more weird because these people are so friendly when you do get to interact with them.

Since you’re in grad school perhaps it’s because you are living in an American college town? Where I spent my pre-college school years we would run around pretty frequently.

How many children live where you live? I think there may be major difference between countries for this, but also, when I lived in an inner ring suburb in the US, there would be kids running all over the neighborhood every day, playing catch across every front lawn on the block, no worries about whose property was what, but then I moved into the city proper I never see them outside of school grounds. But it's pretty easy to deduce why, I have met every person on my block, none has a child older than 3 or younger than 16. I suspect there are lots of interesting patterns emerging if you mapped presence of children house by house in a metro area. Not sure what it would look like, but it feels like it oscillates.

There is a huge decline in birthrates nationwide, so the situation is the same in suburbs. Combined with living much longer than in previous decades, plus a decrease in number of people in each household, it can only mean you see children less frequently relative to non children compared to previous decades.

https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop2.asp

Add on top children staying inside more due to different entertainment options and increase in riskiness of vehicle collisions due to height of vehicles being higher and number of miles driven being much higher, and it all lends to the same phenomenon.

Supposedly, Marshall McLuhan said that North Americans may well be the only people who go outside to be alone and inside to be together. There does seem to be some truth to that, though one should remember that McLuhan was Canadian, and the weather there can limit one's outdoor socializing for much of the year.

I see a fair bit of my neighbors, because I like walking around the neighborhood. Of course, I saw more of them during the pandemic, when I was working from home. It is true that I see less of them in colder weather.

he mentions it in this video https://youtu.be/mq2mcwtyjEA At one minute and 21 seconds, if it gets you any insight like subscribe share and espouse how it’s a wonderful resource for all things to do with McLuhan, thanks

> Most social connections are around an activity like playing board games or running . No one wants to just hang out and talk without discussing jobs and salaries.

Think in major cities like NYC, LA, San Fran, London are like this. In some places in Seattle and Portland in some groups you will find more people like that ones your were hanging out in India. However, this is one of biggest problem of USA. People live to work, where else in Europe (or in India it seems also), people work to live. Think what you find in India is also true in many places in Europe. Especially in smaller cities.

Don't think that's true. I lived in the PNW and people are even colder than the east coast. I remember in college the first time I invited friends over for my bday, people started asking me what we'd be doing. I was like wdym, it's a party, we're going to hang out, talk, drink, etc. anyway...

After living in the US for 35 years (my whole life) I finally live in an area where I can walk for 98% percent of my needs including markets, bars, restaurants, book shops, some good little museums, libraries and even a little indie video game store. For whatever its worth its Sacramento and the only other remotely walkable city I lived in was New Haven.

I didn't find New York, LA or SF very walkable at all. But I was super poor when I lived there.

Writing this I realize that homelessness has been most problematic in the walkble cities I've lived in. Maybe it's obvious but I'm wondering if theres a more complex connection there.

And weirdly I've had kind of a hard time adapting to having no meditative reflection time during long commutes. Not that I would ever go back to that insanity.

Places that are habitable when you don't have a car tend to absorb the people who don't have cars.

Car dependence is a much more palatable strategy than police violence for keeping things “nice.”

What a strange irony. I spent my teen years in the suburbs of Sacramento, and hated that place for its car-focused sprawl. It is a quarter-century later but I still feel some revulsion. I suppose you are living in Midtown? It didn't really exist until recently, but I must confess I enjoyed cruising around on jump-bikes and not really driving much when I visited last. I can see how one could have a good life there, now.

Things have changed so much in the past 25 years. The music industry use to drive a vibrant social scene revolving around art, music, dance, theater. All of that is just a shell of what it was two decades ago.

Every city use to have a Village Voice free paper knock off that would list all kinds of social events going on. In my city, they don't bother with the paper anymore. Now it is all online with no social events and just political ranting opinion pieces.

Anything left was killed by Covid. If I was young, I would find a new country.

People are basically content at this point at the average to leave their home as little as possible.

> No one wants to just hang out and talk without discussing jobs and salaries. People from different classes and jobs and lifestyles rarely mix . I do regret moving to the US from a social and friends perspective.

Interesting. I just ask my friends to hang out and they say yes, with no specific activity in mind. They're also all I vastly different jobs and classes. Maybe it's just a case of YMMV.

I can't stand how USA is built, with the exception of few cities (nyc, boston, philly, dc....) rest is horribly desolated place where to do anything you sit in isolated in cars and only human contact is around commercial areas.

Take for example a middle-east or european town/city. Lot of housing/buildings built side by side or so close only a person can walk through, within these narrow streets you have also got all sorts of shops (small grocery store, pharmacy, printing shop, laundry, accountant, cafe, ice-cream shop....) and then there are "car" streets, where you park and drive the car through to the "road".

Kids play in these streets without worrying about cars ever coming in, you can walk to most shops in less than 3 mins, people can sit outside of their house and talk to neighbors, go to cafe at the corner to eat with friends, and more.

I once had to go to suburbs for the job, and everything you do, even buying a gallon of milk required 8+ mile drive to walmart. No parks, no pavements, no sense of community, no shops, just drive drive drive... Literally felt like i was stuck in some sort of weird space ship waiting for the landing to destination and had to endure sitting in my seat for meanwhile.

The sad thing is, city design and housing like this affects, mental health, economical mobility, social life, and everything else..

To contrast what I said

How usually the cities are: https://earth.google.com/web/@41.39383041,2.16478558,31.9819...

How most of USA is: https://www.google.com/maps/@27.9718179,-82.4868834,3a,75y,1...

But on the flip side, i can walk to a bubbling stream that's right in my back yard. I have never gotten mugged, never had to worry about shitty neighbors yelling loud enough to hear through the walls of my house, never needed to thread my way through panhandlers or beggars, never had shit stolen from me, and can see deer and wildlife sometimes even walk through the streets at night.

People seem to think a lack of privacy, quiet, and safety is this massive benefit.

you have safety, privacy and quiet in those areas as well. And instead of backyard you have open parks with soccer, tennis and basketball courts in walking distance.

That's a cultural difference that makes it hard for me to like certain areas of the US (L.A. and Silicon Valley specifically, can't say if the whole US is like that). Lot's of the people I talk there feel very shallow, measuring each other by what they did and who they know (Silicon Valley people love name dropping so much!). In contrast in most of Latin America or Europe I feel there is a more deep interaction between people. Conversations seem more real and people seem much more interesting. My guess is that in these cities people (generally) feel the need to create and cultivate a fictitious persona and hide their idiosyncrasies to meet the cookie-cuter expectations of a successful human being (which must be very tiring).

I think it may be better in the middle of the country among blue collar folks. That probably has its own set of problems though. On the coasts I definitely feel that people constantly size you up and try to find out how successful you are. It makes socializing way less fun.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com