Comment by stetrain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stetrain | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburbs. Yes, I know it seems illogical.

Of course. There are also people who enjoy walkable pedestrian and bike friendly places with lots of small local businesses to patronize.

That doesn't require living in a "big dirty city", it really just means making actual towns with dense downtown centers where people can work, live, shop, and dine.

Based on my experience with real estate prices, where townhomes near such thriving downtown developments can cost easily double of one in a suburban neighborhood a 15 minute drive away, the demand for that kind of living currently exceeds supply in many places.

The answer isn't to remove all suburbia and replace it with dense walkability, the answer is to stop preventing the dense walkable development with strict single-family-detached zoning laws, parking minimums, etc. and let the supply of such places increase to meet demand. Nobody will come take your suburban house away from you, they just want to have as much freedom in choosing what they want as you get to choose what you want.

And those that do prefer to live in big cities are just advocating for making those places better. The US has a lot of places that are definitely "city" but are still also car-dependent or at least not as friendly to walking, cycling, and mass transit as they should be. We can improve those without changing your suburban life one bit.

it's and/and. Suburbanites impose their values on the city (free parking, highways, vote against bikelanes, ...). I don't care if they'd be in their suburbs and just live there. go live in the burbs, be happy, but don't degrade my neighborhood with your cars.

we really can have our cake and eat it, nice cities for the people who prefer them, suburbs for the others, so much room.

Absolutely this. Every time someone suggests dense urban living or asking for people to pay for their car-dependent life, suburbanites come out of the woodwork and scream and holler that their rights are being taken away. As if the majority of the country isn't suburban sprawl catering to car dependent life. We only have a handful of dense, walkable cities with public transit in the entire country. Suburbanites have plenty of places to choose from, literally anywhere else outside of NYC, Chicago, SF, and Boston.

As a New Yorker, I'm totally fine with people choosing a suburban life. Do you, I don't care. But don't kill congestion pricing and think you're entitled to drive into the densest part of the United States and park for free in my neighborhood just because. Don't block funding for public transit for 40 years and then complain you need your car because the train is scary to you the two times a year you use it.

congestion pricing in manhattan is the best example. unreal this got shot down by intervention from the governor.

Do non-residents get to vote in your city elections? If not, how are suburbanites imposing their values on your city?

I recall the state of Indiana was banning dedicated bus lanes. Many of the impositions come from the county and state level.

The political strategy in Ontario was to force amalgamate the cities with the suburbs so that the suburbs could politicaly dominate the cities.

Gross stuff.

You can see at the voting district maps the city of Ottawa for example will 100% vote for a different candidate that all the distant suburbs attached to their municipality and the suburb candidate wins.

My city (Seattle) is part of a large county that includes suburbs. My city is also part of a state with a mix of many types of areas. Legislation and budgets happen at all three levels, and because the city is a primary economic engine of the state, others have an interest in dictating what happens in the city.

When your state or county mandates free parking or any of the other complaints the parent poster had, let me know.

Province of Ontario literally just passed a bill (212) to rip up already-installed bike lanes in City of Toronto at an estimated taxpayer cost of ~$50MCAD, despite opposition from city residents AND city officials, which is unheard of because municipal infrastructure is outside the scope of the province.

Sounds like the city will appeal and win then.

yeah luckily seattle (and other cities like tacoma etc) aren't like that.

seattle is always a poster child for this stuff but it really isn't that bad for the upper middle class (anyone with a software job).

it's probably tougher now. but i started my career in seattle proper 10y ago and 2020 was a giant boon. low interest rates, 3k sqft house outside seattle (but still easily drivable to it thanks to reverse commute) for sub-$600k (went under asking) and sub-3% (-> inflation proof)..what a way to spend that salary the 2010s gave me to save up and enjoy the remote career I'd long established.

preparation meets opportunity isn't gonna stop being true even in a "bad" economy.

There’s drain effect where as the city gets defunded, people with money and an interest in civic engagement move to the suburbs, and start voting accordingly.

Having kids is a pivotal moment. Suddenly that rich urban life looks like danger for your little ones.

I was an urban kid and we stayed in the city when we had kids, so my kids got to go to a school where the janitor had to arrive early and remove the needles and broken beer bottles from the playground.

Yes, city life is objectively worse for families in most regards.

That's not the fault of the suburbs.

Nope, it's not. But urban hellscapes happen somehow.

I grew up in my city when it was smaller, safer, and more economically varied. Now the middle has hollowed out and we're headed toward Manhattan, where hedge fund managers step over the homeless to get to their penthouse.

It pains me to think that this is inevitable. I don't begrudge anyone moving out of the city. I personally cannot stand the thought of getting in a car to do absolutely anything, but I know lots of people who live that way and are happy.

my city has consolidated with the burbs. so anything that benefits the core areas gets no traction because it doesn't immediately benefit the burbs. vice versa, other cities haven't consolidated, and they do have better city amenities.

Those people are your fellow city dwellers then, and deserve to be heard just as much as people in the urban core.

they're not my fellow city dwellers. they've turned their back on city life, live 15-30miles away, rarely if ever visit. it's just an administrative, historical quirk that they have a claim on the city and local politics. other cities have different administrative boundaries, that hug the city proper much closer. Those cities have much better urban amenities (traffic calming, light rail, bikelanes, ...) than mine, because they don't have people who loathe city life have a voice in city matters.

Suburbs efficiently filter out poor people. To live in suburbs, you have to sustain a particular burn rate. You (or your parents) also have to have had enough money to get and keep paying the mortgage.

College kids hope to make it big, or at least big enough to afford a pampered expensive living among other such people. It's not an unreasonable hope to have. Some of course dream to live in a penthouse on top of a skyscraper, but that's much less realistic.

(Of course there are poor suburban areas with rundown houses and clunker cars, but it's not where the college kids aspire to go.)

Dense walkable cities are few in the US; they predate the advent of the car, and accepted a lot of immigrants when Ellis Island was still open for "the wretched refuse" [1]. After WWII, a lot of better-off families moved to suburbs, but the worse-off had to stay.

It does not help that some cities, in a misguided attempt to not trample on the rights of the destitute, or maybe out of incompetence, don't keep their streets clean, and even don't enforce the law. The authorities of San Francisco are, of course, way ahead of the pack; what they have done to their once-beautiful city tarnishes the reputation of cities as the form of living.

(Disclaimer: I live in NYC, take subway and/or buses every day, walk for my grocery shopping, don't own a car, etc, and love it. Politically not left-wing though.)

[1]: https://www.statueofliberty.org/new-colossus/

The people advocating to replace suburban homes in the Bay Area with multiplexes, low rises, etc., do seem to want to ‘come take your suburban house away’?

It’s been mentioned many times on HN in regards to Palo Alto, Atherton, Cupertino, etc… and often times not for altruistic motives either.

If zoning allows a multiplex to be built on your lot, and you decide to sell it because the market values redeveloping it more than you value staying, then I think that's your decision.

In the big picture, if you want single-family suburbs to continue to exist and be affordable it makes sense to allow at least some places to become dense. The more people who want density and can choose it, the less competition there will be for farther-out suburban houses.

Homeowners in the Bay Area can predict the second and third order consequences of a zoning change?

And predict the actual ulterior motives of anyone advocating for such a change before it occurs?

They’re not automatons that can be fooled so easily.

If redevelopment is the assumed outcome of the zoning change, then that means the single-family suburb is existing in spite of market demands, held back only by such zoning laws preventing denser development.

I don't know the specific situation there, and I'm not saying that shouldn't ever exist, but it's worth considering why we are using zoning to preserve artificial anti-density in a place that has grown to demand higher housing density, and what the effects are of doing so on a widespread basis.

The immediate first order consequence would be higher housing prices, which seems to be the case across the US, with the cost of housing increasing much more rapidly than overall inflation or wages.

How does this relate to the fact that there are people want to ‘come take your suburban house away’? Who do indeed have such motives?

Could you be a bit clearer about what you're talking about here? This is like a vague hint, and I can't tell what you're actually trying to say.

I think it’s very clear and spelled out?

So I absolutely deplore the "what's your point?" attempt to try to pretend that somebody you disagree with didn't actually have a point. In fact, I downvote it when I see it - if the point was clear, and someone asks "what's your point?", I downvote.

I'm not doing that. I really can't tell. Who are these people who want to ‘come take your suburban house away’, and how do they attempt to do so?

You seem to be referring to specific people in the Bay Area. I'm not in the Bay Area, and I don't really know the politics there as it relates to real estate. So, who specifically wants this, and what are they doing?

How does your opinion on what is to be ‘deplored’, or not, outweigh my opinion?

So this seems like a non sequitor…?

If you believe I, or anyone else, is making false pretenses one way or the other, on any subject, then list out the arguments for the case directly.

I am not accusing you of false pretenses. I am asking for the specifics of what you are talking about. You won't answer (or at least, so far you haven't).

I will ask one more time: What, specifically, are you talking about?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com