Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by bigDinosaur | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

bigDinosaur

You hate:

- walking

- people being close to you

- going to smaller stores

- going to stores at all if there's an online option

I genuinely think this is an antisocial and unhealthy state to be in, yes. Personally I wouldn't mind if there were a few non-dense suburbs for people like you to live in, the issue is that in many cities that's all there is because all of the city was restructured/bulldozed to meet this preference. Yet the way you frame it is as if it's like you're a minority. Your perspective completely and utterly dominated 20th century Anglosphere urban planning. It won so effectively that entire generations have grown up agreeing with you because literally the density of the pre-car era was eradicated and they know nothing different.

View on HN

>entire generations have grown up agreeing with you because literally the density of the pre-car era was eradicated and they know nothing different.

But a lot of people have experienced high-density living and deliberately reject it and choose the suburbs. Consider a common life timeline:

- early 20s (single no kids) : going to college in a big city or starting a career at a downtown firm so they enjoy the dense city living like Manhattan, Chicago, etc. Walking to restaurants and bars, museums, cultural things

- mid-life with kids: they enjoyed cities in their younger years but they want to raise a family so they move out to the suburbs. Multiple reasons could be the better schools, less crime, less noise, more square footage, a back yard, garage and extra space for hobbies, etc.

- senior/retired and kids are grown leaving an "empty nest": some (not all) senior citizens might sell the suburb house and move to a city condo and walk to museums again. But some also stay in the suburbs and just move to a smaller house or single-level townhouse.

Yes "walkable cities" have advantages but the suburbs also have particular advantages that can have higher priority. It's not about ignorance. It's about prioritizing which advantage is most important.

This is a uniquely North American perspective, and is tightly coupled to the North American pattern of development. This "common life timeline" is uncommon outside of the U.S. and Canada, and the fact that car dependency and onerous zoning codes dominate these two countries is the reason.

Edit: The U.S. mythology of suburbs being a "great place to raise kids" is also sorely misguided, and is a major reason why there are so many adolescents who spend most of their free time at home on social media/video games. Being completely dependent on parents to shuttle you around is no way to live.

So what's the norm in Europe, in contrast?

The norm outside of the U.S. is that you don't have a massive discontinuity between "dense inner city" and "car dependent wasteland of highway, strip malls, and detached single-family homes surrounded by giant lawns" - if you start at the city center and travel outward you have dense high-rise apartments, which slowly morph into low-rise apartment complexes, which slowly morph into duplexes and triplexes, which slowly morph into somewhat tightly packed SFHs. So, until you get all the way out into farmland, you're always in a place that can be efficiently served by cycling infrastructure and public transportation, which makes them great places to live for children, the elderly and anyone really, and where it's always legal to just open a corner shop to serve the locals.

In East Asia for example, going back millennia, you had Confucian filial piety whereby adults were expected to take care of their aging parents. In pretty much everywhere except white-collar communities in North America and Europe, multi-generational households are pretty standard fare. In a city that has not been bulldozed and hacked up for cars, both kids and the elderly can enjoy a high degree of independence and safety; by contrast in American suburbia, you are essentially trapped in a home, forced to drive a car to travel anywhere. It's no wonder I spent my childhood and teenage years on an Xbox.

There are some advantages to suburbs but again, the model of development that literally bulldozed neighbourhoods was that any alternative was bad. It was quite literally seen as the way of the future to have low density suburbs connected by gigantic highways.

Either way car-centric suburbs are unnecessary, you could still have American suburbs with big houses that people could walk and cycle and use PT in. Again, I was responding to someone who literally had it out for walking.

It's interesting that for a country so obsessed with the freedom to live where and how you want that Americans are so car dependent...

The main reasons people leave cities for the suburbs are schools, crime, and cost.

All three are certainly addressable by policy, and the crime element is already nothing like it was during the mass migration of the 60s-80s.

>All three are certainly addressable by policy,

Sure. But it's very much a "pick two" situation.

There are multiple options between dense housing (high-rise apartment buildings) and a suburban sprawl of single family houses:

- Small (2-5 story) apartment buildings in an area where zoning doesn't prevent building of shops and other amenities

- 2 family houses

- Terrace housing (which is popular in the UK) - 2-3 story building side by side in a row, each has a separate entrance on one side and a small backyard on the opposite. Its my favorite - almost all advantages of living in a personal house but density is much higher than for US-style suburbs - shops are usually in a walking distance. If wish this option where considered in the US too.

You are not wrong, but the person I was replying to implied that anything like apartments or even duplexes would be high density (i.e. reachable by extending one's arms).

In reality the truth is that if someone has it out for walking they are basically not worth engaging with. Ever. It's just the opposite of what people need which is to be as physically active as their body allows. It's not opinion that walking is good for you, and like a lot of exercise that applies even if you dislike the activity. Not everything in life that's good for us is easy unfortunately.

A small corrective, many people can't walk (i couldn't due to an illness a few weeks ago and used a wheelchair). I will say walkable cities generally are better for disabled folks. Almost all the difficulty i had moving around on a wheelchair was due ultimately car centric city planning that pervades the US.

Yes, although many people cannot drive either, so at best it's equal and at worst many more people cannot drive (all children, many elderly, anyone with severe vision or mobility impairments, PTSD from previous accidents, etc.)

So yes, you're correct, and absolutely cars still have a place to play for those who cannot walk (or indeed for anything where the car perfectly fills the niche, which it does for quite a few things). It's a useful tool, it just became far too dominant.

'Active transport' definitely gets attacked for not being inclusive enough of those who can't do x (where x is walk, cycle) etc. but it's usually unfair. A bit like criticising animal rights activists for not having a solution to the starvation that might occur if we immediately banned all animal products from being sold. It's just not what anyone is really wanting.

I believe the American term for terrace house is row house, and it’s certainly not uncommon, it’s a fixture of our older city residential neighborhoods. Though it’s correct to say that it’s almost illegal to build now in most parts of the US.

But row houses are definitely a thing here too.

Sunset District, San Francisco, CA, has a lot of terraced housing similar to the UK, but with much wider roads.

> I genuinely think this is an antisocial and unhealthy state to be in, yes

I don't think so - I find neighbors in the burbs are much more likely to actually try to connect with each other and strike up a conversation with each other casually than I've ever experienced in urban areas.

Granted it's a bit of a monoculture (mostly centered on raising families), and the lack of walkable areas absolutely sucks - I wish suburbs were planned so that commercial areas were interspersed in some way that I could walk to get a coffee and it didn't require a 2 mile drive.

I'm currently in an urban area, and I do love the mobility aspect, but I don't really even have neighbors to connect with (one side is a rental, the other is an airbnb). The last house I owned in a suburbs I knew both my neighbors very well. I miss the BBQ's we used to have.

> I'm currently in an urban area, and I do love the mobility aspect, but I don't really even have neighbors to connect with

Consider moving to an urban residential neighborhood with young families, and you can have the best of both worlds. BBQs a plenty, block parties, neighborhood swap sales, lemonade stands. All usually within walking distance.

Where I live is an urban residential neighborhood, but there's no block parties or BBQ's -- most families can't afford to live here because a 2BR is about half a million dollars.

Maybe you could organize a social event? These things start the old fashioned way, by bringing a pie or cookies over to a neighbor and introducing yourself. I get that it can be weird if everyone is preset to be skeptical of each other though.

I understand the airbnb not allowing for much connection, but how does someone renting their domicile prevent you from connecting with them?

I guess it doesn't necessarily, it just makes the opportunity for connection less likely - their tenancy is temporary and they just aren't invested in things like lawncare or house maintenance or who just moved into the neighborhood.

I genuinely think this is an antisocial and unhealthy state to be in, yes.

That's a pretty interesting take. I lived in a super dense city in Asia. Almost no one lives in a detached home, most live in 30+ story towers. Transit is great and it's pretty walkable - you can easily live without a car. Lots of small stores, not a lot of big box stores. Apparently the pinnacle of the human experience from what you describe.

After living there for a while, it was pretty clear a very large percent of the population wants: 1) to live in a detached single family home with a yard, 2) own a car and 3) love shopping at big box stores and buying online.

What you seem to think is an unhealthy state to be in is actually what a lot of people like. Sure, some people don't want those things - young single people are more than willing to give up a nice home to be close to cool bars, but it's not a very big part of the population.

Unsure what city you are referring to, but I've lived in Seoul which matches a lot of what you describe. Excellent transit (IMHO, still the best subway system I've experienced in the world), vast majority living in superdense highrise towers.

It's one of the few cities I felt I actually wanted to use public transportation instead of grudgingly being forced to (like NYC).

Yet most people living there still want a car. Maybe things have changed in the past few years, but last time I was there a few years back, and based on what I see today in K-dramas and shows, it seems most young people still aspire to have a car.

What you seem to think is an unhealthy state to be in is actually what a lot of people like. Sure, some people don't want those things - young single people are more than willing to give up a nice home to be close to cool bars, but it's not a very big part of the population.

It's just a rhetorical trick.

"Everyone who doesn't like what I like is unhealthy" is just a milder form of the age old "everyone who doesn't think like me has some mental condition that I will use as a pretext for denying their agency and ignoring their opinion" reply. It steers the conversation away from the legitimacy of his opinion and makes people on the other side waste effort proving "no I'm not insane".

>in many cities that's all there is because all of the city was restructured/bulldozed to meet this preference.

This is just not true. Stop projecting west coast and southeast urban planning onto the entire country. In vast swaths of the midwest and northeast the overwhelming majority of the 20th century suburb development was purely additive.

people in high density urban areas are far more antisocial in my personal experience. small stores were largely killed by the repeal of fair trade laws and decades of policy that explicitly favored market consolidation, that has nothing to do with density.

> I genuinely think this is an antisocial and unhealthy state to be in

I think wanting to live crammed in with thousands of other people that you never interact with is unhealthy, but whatever. You know what they say about opinions.

Cities don't really have any redeeming features.

No redeeming features? Are you serious?

depending on your lifestyle, cities may not offer many benefits especially compared with the costs. when i go into the city i often find myself at a loss for what to actually do there because it seems like they largely facilitate consumption and nothing else. they are good for skateboarding but that is hardly an intended feature.

Name one.

Not having to live near you. I'm all for people who don't like cities not living in them. I hope you've acted on your opinion.

Call me antisocial then. L’enfer c’est les autres.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com