Why don’t Americans embrace urban living?

[Anonymous]

This thread should be moved to politics.

[Anonymous]

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I would never live in a dangerous neighborhood if I lived in the city so this is irrelevant.

It's very relevant because the average American can only afford housing in the dangerous areas of major cities. Sure, Cleveland Park is beautiful and walkable and relatively safe, but you need to be able to afford a house that is $2.5M+ and pay $50k a year/kid for private school because the public schools stink. The average American cannot do that, which is a very big reason that they don't live in urban areas.

Or (shocker!) you could live in an apartment like we do. Sure, we're still technically rich (HHI 250k) but we can't buy a home in CP, but we love it here so we rent. It's right near so much nature, very safe, it's a tradeoff well worth it to us. Plus, my kids have some best friends in our building and it's a lovely community.

The thing is that everybody should really evaluate whether you really need 2000sq ft per person in your home. The cost of insisting on that arbitrary need for space is just so high: economically, socially, environmentally. Sure, some of you will need it, but it's like this "given" in our culture and it's just so incredibly untrue.

In our 4,000 sf suburban house, we have only 800 sf per person.

Please tell me, lady who has no home equity, how this is costing us economically, socially, and environmentally?

If you don't understand the basic facts of how suburban sprawl is detrimental to the environment, PP sure won't be able to educate you.

Not PP but there the suburbs are not detrimental at all to the enviornment. Better for people to live outside a city.

depends on the density and access to transit, but most sunbelt suburbs (with their attendant sprawl) are horrible for the environment.

Cities are horrible for the environment too.

Prove it.

Pollution from all of the cars/buses/high rises. The buildings take so much electricity and gas to run. They’re wasteful. All of the poor homeless people on the street littering everywhere. All of the cabs and Ubers polluting the earth. All of the light pollution. The strain on the infrastructure that causes harm to the environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:80+% of Americans live in cities...

This is not correct.

About 80% of Americans live in “urban areas” defined as Metropolitan Statistical Areas or MSAs, which include suburbs and exurbs. The DC area MSA is about 5 million people and includes Jefferson County, WV, Spotsyvania County, VA and Charles County, MD.

When you break out these “urban areas” in MSAs into cities versus suburbs, it is about 27% city and 56% suburb.

The vast majority of Americans live in suburbs.

[Anonymous]

I live in a close-in suburb that is dense and walkable. We have one car but I never use it. I love urban living. But we only have one child and I'm a very confident city bicyclist who lives in a bikeable area. The DC transit system needs a LOT of work, there are people regularly getting killed on bikes and our infrastructure is not built for anything but cars. Plus, having a baby/toddler makes stuff like ridesharing a pain (car seats, etc.)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I mean, more people live in cities so I'm not sure this is a fair assessment, but I see your point. I have friends who live (what to me is a nightmarish) suburban lifestyle and I think for them a lot of it is not valuing community in the same way I do and taking comfort in material things. I personally don't get it.

It’s odd you think cities have more community feel, I find the opposite

Really? Well, different experiences I guess. I grew up in Fairfax and my parents never talked to any of the neighbors. None of the neighbors seemed to talk to each other either. It was a very "each man for himself" kind of place. I played at a friend's house in the summer until I was 9 and that was it. There were no block parties, clothing swaps, school events, babysitting swaps, dinner parties, pizza parties, neighborhood holiday events like I have now living in NW DC. We are all looking out for each other. We keep each other abreast of things in the hood, at school, and fun things to do. We watch each others' kids and invite people over all the time. I know shop owners and neighbors and the librarians by name. I know many more community people by sight. Hell, I know my local politicians! I help clean up parks and flag issues for the community to deal with. I regularly see friends just walking down the street and decide to have impromptu fun. We had zero of that in Fairfax.

I spent part of my life in DC and later in Rockville.

We had all of that on our street growing up and we have that now where I live in Darnestown. I can’t speak for every street and neighborhood in the suburbs.

We had a neighbor who is a multimillion (he just donated upon death $20M to his hometown to build a community center) who never moved because of the community feel on our street. We were not rich it was not Potomac.

My mom is 94 and lives in an over 55 community and our neighbors still do lunch monthly. My brothers still do golf/fishing trips with neighbors.

My h sometimes is like can we not eat on the deck because it might turn into a party.

We have block parties on Halloween and the 4th. We have other events during the year, we use to do Easter egg hunt for example.

My brothers neighbor does a haunted forest in the fall.

I’m sure there are good and bad neighbors/ neighborhoods everywhere. My friend moved from our type of neighborhood to one with tons of land and moved back because they missed capture the flag night, and the neighborhood feel.

This is a good post. I think we need to remind ourselves that places are not community. Community is people and you have have a strong community in any number of different places. I have personally lived in many large apartment buildings where I could only recognize by sight a third of the people on my floor, only knew the name of one of my direct neighbors and never interacted with them aside from a pained smile passing in the hallway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread should be moved to politics.

Yes. Belongs in a different forum.

Ultimately, different people have different circumstances and will make different choices, urban/suburban/rural, and the US is all about freedom to choose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread should be moved to politics.

Yes. Belongs in a different forum.

Ultimately, different people have different circumstances and will make different choices, urban/suburban/rural, and the US is all about freedom to choose.

Disagree. It’s about real estate. It belongs here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I would never live in a dangerous neighborhood if I lived in the city so this is irrelevant.

It's very relevant because the average American can only afford housing in the dangerous areas of major cities. Sure, Cleveland Park is beautiful and walkable and relatively safe, but you need to be able to afford a house that is $2.5M+ and pay $50k a year/kid for private school because the public schools stink. The average American cannot do that, which is a very big reason that they don't live in urban areas.

Or (shocker!) you could live in an apartment like we do. Sure, we're still technically rich (HHI 250k) but we can't buy a home in CP, but we love it here so we rent. It's right near so much nature, very safe, it's a tradeoff well worth it to us. Plus, my kids have some best friends in our building and it's a lovely community.

The thing is that everybody should really evaluate whether you really need 2000sq ft per person in your home. The cost of insisting on that arbitrary need for space is just so high: economically, socially, environmentally. Sure, some of you will need it, but it's like this "given" in our culture and it's just so incredibly untrue.

In our 4,000 sf suburban house, we have only 800 sf per person.

Please tell me, lady who has no home equity, how this is costing us economically, socially, and environmentally?

If you don't understand the basic facts of how suburban sprawl is detrimental to the environment, PP sure won't be able to educate you.

Not PP but there the suburbs are not detrimental at all to the enviornment. Better for people to live outside a city.

depends on the density and access to transit, but most sunbelt suburbs (with their attendant sprawl) are horrible for the environment.

Cities are horrible for the environment too.

Prove it.

Pollution from all of the cars/buses/high rises. The buildings take so much electricity and gas to run. They’re wasteful. All of the poor homeless people on the street littering everywhere. All of the cabs and Ubers polluting the earth. All of the light pollution. The strain on the infrastructure that causes harm to the environment.

You're describing the effects of people, not the effects of how those people are distributed in space. Cities have fewer residential buildings per person, and more of them share walls, which reduces heating and cooling energy losses. Cars in cities are disproportionately people who are commuting from suburbs; if those folks were a city environment, the distances they travel would be shorter and transit usage would be higher, reducing emissions. Buses are much better than cars on a per capita basis because they have more people in them and can often run on lower emissions technology. More people in a dense area means more undeveloped space and therefore less light pollution. More people in a dense areas also means fewer resources spent and less pollution from maintaining infrastructure (the roads and pipes and wires are all shorter because people are closer together). I could go on.

Anyway, there are actual statistics on this for at least one important dimension of environmental impact (carbon emissions), and the numbers clearly show that cities are substantially more environmentally friendly:

https://coolclimate.org/maps

I'm sympathetic to the "let everyone have their preferences" crowd, but we have to acknowledge the ground truth that suburban living is extremely environmentally costly. If we're going to have a planet with over 8 billion people on it, it's not so clear that we can pull it off while also spreading ourselves out per the 20th century suburban paradigm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why the obsession with huge houses 3 miles away from everything. Why not access to parks, trails, restaurants, schools, grocery stores, socializing in coffee shops, biking etc?

The American obsession with SFH is unsustainable environmental, financially (impossible to maintain long exburban roads) and mentally

Ok, suburbanite here. Within 2 miles (in some cases just blocks away) there a highly rated walkable public elementary, coffee and bagel place, parks and playgrounds, bike and walking paths, a major hospital, 50+ places to eat, drink, shop, and socialize. Walk. Bike. Bus. Cars in my garage. All options on the table. I won't go into all the downsides of urban living. The news and social media public safety feeds offer and endless supply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why the obsession with huge houses 3 miles away from everything. Why not access to parks, trails, restaurants, schools, grocery stores, socializing in coffee shops, biking etc?

The American obsession with SFH is unsustainable environmental, financially (impossible to maintain long exburban roads) and mentally

I moved out of the city because I was sick of being choked by crime, poor air quality, noise, and smelly garbage.

I love my suburban life and actually ride my bike on the WOD trail at least 4xs a week. On weekends I often get up, bike into Leesburg, eat breakfast, have coffee and bike back home. I have a great group of friends with similar interests who are the same age at the same stage in life.

I now complain if I have to go further east than Reston, unless it’s for a beach vacation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why the obsession with huge houses 3 miles away from everything. Why not access to parks, trails, restaurants, schools, grocery stores, socializing in coffee shops, biking etc?

The American obsession with SFH is unsustainable environmental, financially (impossible to maintain long exburban roads) and mentally

Ok, suburbanite here. Within 2 miles (in some cases just blocks away) there a highly rated walkable public elementary, coffee and bagel place, parks and playgrounds, bike and walking paths, a major hospital, 50+ places to eat, drink, shop, and socialize. Walk. Bike. Bus. Cars in my garage. All options on the table. I won't go into all the downsides of urban living. The news and social media public safety feeds offer and endless supply.

+1

I’m in Brambleton (Ashburn) and everything you mentioned is within steps of my house. I literally went weeks without stepping foot in my car. These city people are laughable thinking that EVERYTHING we need in the burbs is like a 10 mile drive to anywhere.

Why are city people so focused on us anyway? We don’t care how you live in the city. As someone who lived in NOMA a few years ago, I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing much out here in the burbs. The only thing I miss is not being able to go to a NBA/NHL game as easy anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, more people live in cities so I'm not sure this is a fair assessment, but I see your point. I have friends who live (what to me is a nightmarish) suburban lifestyle and I think for them a lot of it is not valuing community in the same way I do and taking comfort in material things. I personally don't get it.

It’s odd you think cities have more community feel, I find the opposite

Really? Well, different experiences I guess. I grew up in Fairfax and my parents never talked to any of the neighbors. None of the neighbors seemed to talk to each other either. It was a very "each man for himself" kind of place. I played at a friend's house in the summer until I was 9 and that was it. There were no block parties, clothing swaps, school events, babysitting swaps, dinner parties, pizza parties, neighborhood holiday events like I have now living in NW DC. We are all looking out for each other. We keep each other abreast of things in the hood, at school, and fun things to do. We watch each others' kids and invite people over all the time. I know shop owners and neighbors and the librarians by name. I know many more community people by sight. Hell, I know my local politicians! I help clean up parks and flag issues for the community to deal with. I regularly see friends just walking down the street and decide to have impromptu fun. We had zero of that in Fairfax.

I spent part of my life in DC and later in Rockville.

We had all of that on our street growing up and we have that now where I live in Darnestown. I can’t speak for every street and neighborhood in the suburbs.

We had a neighbor who is a multimillion (he just donated upon death $20M to his hometown to build a community center) who never moved because of the community feel on our street. We were not rich it was not Potomac.

My mom is 94 and lives in an over 55 community and our neighbors still do lunch monthly. My brothers still do golf/fishing trips with neighbors.

My h sometimes is like can we not eat on the deck because it might turn into a party.

We have block parties on Halloween and the 4th. We have other events during the year, we use to do Easter egg hunt for example.

My brothers neighbor does a haunted forest in the fall.

I’m sure there are good and bad neighbors/ neighborhoods everywhere. My friend moved from our type of neighborhood to one with tons of land and moved back because they missed capture the flag night, and the neighborhood feel.

This is a good post. I think we need to remind ourselves that places are not community. Community is people and you have have a strong community in any number of different places. I have personally lived in many large apartment buildings where I could only recognize by sight a third of the people on my floor, only knew the name of one of my direct neighbors and never interacted with them aside from a pained smile passing in the hallway.

This.

I posted above and was so happy to move out of the city. If I won the lottery tonight I still wouldn’t move from my house. My community is so great they are like family. We rally around each other when someone needs help and there’s an ongoing babysitting co-op. When my kids were little we never had to hire a sitter and I still volunteer my time when. I need some sweet baby snuggles while mom and dad have a night out. We do Friendgiving each year where 40 of us will cram into someone home and it’s my favorite holiday of the year. People don’t move out of our community. I never had that feeling when we lived in DC. I hardly knew anyone and my social life centered around restaurants and bars and occasional concerts/shows. Friends came and gone and it was all very transient.

For me social connections and belonging to community is much more important than wall ability to chipotle and Starbucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread should be moved to politics.

Yes. Belongs in a different forum.

Ultimately, different people have different circumstances and will make different choices, urban/suburban/rural, and the US is all about freedom to choose.

Disagree. It’s about real estate. It belongs here.

What’s the point being made about real estate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why the obsession with huge houses 3 miles away from everything. Why not access to parks, trails, restaurants, schools, grocery stores, socializing in coffee shops, biking etc?

The American obsession with SFH is unsustainable environmental, financially (impossible to maintain long exburban roads) and mentally

Ok, suburbanite here. Within 2 miles (in some cases just blocks away) there a highly rated walkable public elementary, coffee and bagel place, parks and playgrounds, bike and walking paths, a major hospital, 50+ places to eat, drink, shop, and socialize. Walk. Bike. Bus. Cars in my garage. All options on the table. I won't go into all the downsides of urban living. The news and social media public safety feeds offer and endless supply.

+1

I’m in Brambleton (Ashburn) and everything you mentioned is within steps of my house. I literally went weeks without stepping foot in my car. These city people are laughable thinking that EVERYTHING we need in the burbs is like a 10 mile drive to anywhere.

Why are city people so focused on us anyway? We don’t care how you live in the city. As someone who lived in NOMA a few years ago, I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing much out here in the burbs. The only thing I miss is not being able to go to a NBA/NHL game as easy anymore.

It is weird isn’t it how much city people are fixated on the suburbs and how little suburban people think about cities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why the obsession with huge houses 3 miles away from everything. Why not access to parks, trails, restaurants, schools, grocery stores, socializing in coffee shops, biking etc?

The American obsession with SFH is unsustainable environmental, financially (impossible to maintain long exburban roads) and mentally

One still has easy access to all that plus a safe neighborhood (from crime or bad traffics) for raising a family 18+ years. Plus good schools hopefully.

3 miles is peanuts. How did you even pick that figure. We drive 1-3 miles per kid per weekend game all the time. Or 10-20 miles in a freeway to a complex. I’d say live in a nice suburb inside that beltway where you can hop on the beltway for kid errands or get in a commuter route to several job centers (Arlington, Tyson’s, Bethesda, downtown DC).

Zipping around for errands
Take 10 mins tips to get everywhere you want, maybe longer for work.
Space for kids to play or work, two home offices, a yard or pool.
Garages space for bikes, mower, extra fridge, gear.
Room for guests.
Bus routes are everywhere, so are park/ride subway stops if need be.