It’s because people are no longer content with living where they are from. We all prefer to live in the very best city until it isn’t the very best city anymore because everybody moved there.
And I think when they are moving, they're similarly not moving to as "new" or "small" destinations - e.g. tons of sunbelt towns saw very rapid growth from young adults moving there in the 60s-90s. But many of those towns are still the ones seeing a lot of growth; anecdotally, my parents moved to Dallas after college. Where's the "new Dallas"? The cheaper towns with jobs that are being promoted are still the same ones as fifty years ago, and they're not nearly as cheap as they were then anymore. Combine that with rising population from immigration + the kids who grew up there and didn't move away, and you see a lot of cost inflation.
I should have thought through my comment a bit more. Today I did some genealogy research and was amazed at how often my relatives moved in the 1700s and 1800s. It wasn’t uncommon for them to move cities three or four times during their life in a time when you couldn’t just rent a uhaul and head down the road.
Or is it that now that the prices are up in so many places, the behaviors will revert back?
Is it gonna be places like Boise post-Covid? Will anyone do that same level of massive development? Would they be allowed to?
A few possible reasons that spring to mind are population growth, high quality information quickly traveling around the world rapidly removing arbitrage opportunities, automation and outsourcing obviating certain businesses in certain areas, technology and automation allowing economies of scale such that big only get bigger and suck the air out of the room for small players.
Except that you only needed one person to find a better job back then. The problem with now is that you need two people two find better jobs simultaneously.
This was blocking people from moving when better opportunities pop up. I suspect this is more responsible for the Great Resignation than anything else. Once one person of a couple loses their job and has to start a job search, there's no longer anything slowing down the other from taking a better offer even if you have to move.
Something else was going on with the unattached 20-something millenials that crowded to existing cities instead of striking out on their own, though. Maybe when Elon gets to Mars, Gen Z+1 will have somewhere new to go. ;)
I think we should call this generation the ampersands.
There's always work in California. And you can eat the grapes right from the vine. Got a handbill here that says so.
Is it possible you only see it this way because your home town is a desirable place to live? If you had a home town nobody wanted to move to- would you want to move back there either?
Wat. Cities are not parties that get diluted with lame people.
London and Paris grew large and rich in comparison to their respective countries.
To the extent there is an equilibrium at play, it is a power law. There is no rotating most popular city, not withstanding what people think about San Francisco. Density wins, and the winners keep on winning absent some sort of disaster.
I'm sorry, but this seems like a classic example of pulling out some Hobbesian cynicism as a calling card for classy sober thinking...but in this case it's dead wrong.
If you fill a party past it’s optimal capacity, is the same kind of party? Are you still likely to enjoy being there?
Why is a city any different?
There are absolutely problems that only emerge with scale, and scale non-linearly with population and density.
> London and Paris grew large and rich in comparison to their respective countries.
“Large and rich” aren’t the values that most/many people want their communities to optimize for.
Maybe. But for the high growth job generating urban centers in todays US that’s certainly the case.
Cities to do not have fixed capacity.
> There are absolutely problems that only emerge with scale, and scale non-linearly with population and density.
The biggest thing that doesn't scale is private car usage. But private car usage is terrible. I have not heard of extant cities hitting fundamental scaling constraints in and other way.
> “Large and rich” aren’t the values that most/many people want their communities to optimize for.
Then why aren't rents lower?
That doesn’t mean they don’t have optimal capacities.
The metrics you’re optimizing for are not necessarily high density and high population — like a dinner party, which would be impossible to scale and would ruin the experience if you tried.
> I have not heard of extant cities hitting fundamental scaling constraints in and other way.
You’re ignoring all other negatives to living in a city and high population density.
Crime. No need for community involvement; everything is provided by paid municipal services. Not knowing your neighbors. Not having space to breath, or to have a woodshop, or to garden.
The list is endless. You might not care about optimizing for those properties, but lots of other people do.
> Then why aren't rents lower?
They are in plenty of places, you just don’t want to live there.
> The metrics you’re optimizing for are not necessarily high density and high population — like a dinner party, which would be impossible to scale and would ruin the experience if you tried.
You continue to crudely reason by analogy without mentioning what these scaling limits might be.
> You’re ignoring all other negatives to living in a city and high population density.
> Crime.
What about cities are intrinsically more crime ridden?
> No need for community involvement;
What?
> everything is provided by paid municipal services.
False, even if I wish it were :P
> Not knowing your neighbors.
Again not intrinsic at all
> Not having space to breath, or to have a woodshop, or to garden.
You are confusing floor area per capita vs land area pre capita. Even gardens can be in boxes on balconies, see New Orleans.
> The list is endless. You might not care about optimizing for those properties, but lots of other people do.
> > Then why aren't rents lower?
> They are in plenty of places, you just don’t want to live there.
Hey buddy, if "weird city apologists" like me are not representative, then we can't bid up the the rent.
Clearly a lot of people are trying to live in the major cities or they wouldn't be as high.
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This is one of the worst comments I've ever responded to on HN. All vague NIMBY vibes, no actual reasoning whatsoever. Get that shit out of here.
Don’t know, but the stats are quite clear. Crime per capita correlates strongly with population density.
>> No need for community involvement;
> What?
Community involvement. I understand this is likely a totally foreign concept to you, but where I live, we rely almost entirely on volunteerism and community support to take care of each other.
That includes everything from municipal services like our volunteer fire department, to basic day-to-day support for others in our community.
It’s a rewarding and engaging way to live, and nothing comparable exists in a dense city; I spent 20 years living in SF and NYC before I lived here.
>> Not knowing your neighbors.
> Again not intrinsic at all
Of course it is. With 20k+ people per square mile, you can’t know your neighbors.
> You are confusing floor area per capita vs land area pre capita. Even gardens can be in boxes on balconies, see New Orleans.
Don’t piss on me and call it rain. That’s not the same and you know it very well.
> Hey buddy, if "weird city apologists" like me are not representative, then we can't bid up the the rent.
A lot of people packing themselves into a sardine can might only see the can and think that’s the limit of the universe.
That doesn’t make it true, or make you representative of the rest of us out here.
> This is one of the worst comments I've ever responded to on HN. All vague NIMBY vibes, no actual reasoning whatsoever. Get that shit out of here.
Given that you took things in this direction, allow me to respond in kind.
Grow up, learn about the world outside your tiny immature bubble, and don’t come back until you actually have something useful to share with the rest of us.
Citation needed that high floor area per land area without low floor area per capita has environmental issues.
At most, you could say that the preference of living in the city vs. its suburbs flipped compared to 20 years ago, which had previously flipped when cars made suburbs commutable.
Well, it was the best city until just after I moved there, then it became untenable and people should stop moving there.
And I'm not sure we'd want it to anyways? When prices get too high for later folks to move, then that's a great signal to actually go elsewhere.
I'm not sure why we'd want a system where everyone just migrated to one or two cities in the entire US. I've seen those cities in Asia that have populations of 15M or 20M and yeah, seems super inefficient once you get to a certain size.