Hacker News Reader

Comment by 8f2ab37a-ed6c | Hacker News Reader

Agreed, suburban US lifestyle really aggravates that sense of isolation.

You go from your two car garage to Costco and back on an SUV with nothing in between but roads, gas stations and the occasional McDonald's drive-through.

A college campus and smaller European towns are the polar opposite of that, with mixed zoning, everything being walkable/bikeable, and everybody intermingling in the same space.

View on HN

Here's a random musing: I recently thought about joining a fraternal organization just to have a ready-made friends group. Granted, they all seem WAY more extrovert than me, and the group is one of the ones with a mystos, so I don't think it's going to be a solution for EVERYBODY.

Maybe we need something like "Tech Masons" where you have a built-in social group, continuing ed and everyone promises not to disrespect each others' tech stack decisions. "Oh. So you're going with COBOL? I'm sure there are aspects of the project I don't understand that make COBOL the ideal language for that project. Let us grab a beer and talk about inverting trees, brother (and/or sister.)"

Those roads have plenty between the gas stations and McDonald's - other people's McMansions. The reason everything is so spread out is so that everyone can get their 4-bedroom house with the car garage and a generous yard, possibly a pool. Which is what kills density. It's a tragedy of the Commons, in part, because it's a problem because everyone was sold that same dream.

I haven't been to any small European towns, so I'd love to go one day to see what that lifestyle is like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com