
The end of sprawl - jseliger
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-end-of-sprawl/2016/07/29/2039a2b8-4d20-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html?postshare=2171469867195892&tid=ss_tw
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greggman
I'm curious how certain things fit into city living.

Examples: Rockband the Game. You can't play that game in an apartment in the
city without being a total dick to your neighbors. You can play it in a house
in suburbia. Arguably the same is true for the home version of Dance Dance
Revolution

Another is room scale VR which pretty seems to demand owning a large enough
place to have your VR room. Maybe some people can move stuff to the side one
in a while but if you have to spend a bunch of time prepping the room every
time I can imagine room scale VR to ever get that popular.

Yes I know the world doesn't revolve around video games but they seem like an
example of activities that are designed around sprawl. There's plenty of
others, many non-game activities as well that, for lack of a better way to
describe it, would compel me to still prefer a suburbian house over a city
apartment.

I guess what I'm wondering is how much cultural inertia there is for one or
the other

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danking00
I wonder what type of cities you've lived in.

I've lived in various parts of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville and we've
previously had rock band and currently have room scale VR (it is, in fact, in
use as I write this).

Neither had dedicated rooms but the setup and tear down is manageable.
Neighbors never complains about the noise, but we also don't set the bass to
room-shaking levels.

Perhaps the most significant difference between my home style in my last ten
years and the decade previous (when I was a child/teen in suburbia) is that I
share much more space. By pooling four incomes (two six figure tech salaries
and two low five figure academia/architecture) we can afford places with
enough living space to be comfortable.

It makes sense. When I was a child we at least had four people in our suburban
house, but even then, it wasn't anywhere near capacity. With four adults in a
four bedroom apartment we get much closer to capacity usage. We also make use
of parks, coffee shops, and public libraries (CPL's main branch is beautiful)
for more flexible space when necessary.

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Symbiote
> By pooling four incomes (two six figure tech salaries and two low five
> figure academia/architecture) we can afford places with enough living space
> to be comfortable.

I'm surprised people with six-figure salaries are sharing. Is that common?

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tomkinstinch
In Boston/Cambridge/Somerville it is depressingly common. I wish it were
within my means to live alone, but even on six figures it doesn't make sense
(I refuse to spend 40-50% of my net income on housing). Having roommates (who
aren't romantic partners or family) is the worst. I need sanctuary away from
people, and for example, it's frustrating when you want to cook and your
cooking equipment is left dirty, when the kitchen is already in use, or when
roommates have parties while you're trying to sleep. It's not an issue of
having bad roommates, but of having people going about their lives
independently in far too close proximity. I used to sleep without earplugs,
but since moving to Boston I need to use them every night or I wouldn't ever
get a full night of sleep.

Having roommates in one's thirties extends childhood much too far.

For me, density is the enemy, and being near nature is the goal.
Unfortunately, jobs are in the city and not in the woods.

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eropple
The solution should be obvious: get out of Cambridge/Somerville! I recently
moved to Malden and was able to comfortably afford a two-bedroom condo on a
senior-level tech salary (I pay under 25% of my take-home in housing). It's
super quiet and just on the edge of suburbia, but with a supermarket, the gym,
the T, and about a dozen restaurants within easy walking distance. I'm a
little over ten minutes from an Orange Line T stop (Malden Center) that gets
downtown in 28 minutes and the same T stop has a thirty-minute bus to Central.
I live super near three different parks, and the one I go to most often is
lightly used enough that I can often sit somewhere, surrounded by trees, and
not see another person for an hour or so.

I could Uber to Cambridge, round-trip, twice weekly to go out with friends and
still be racking up significantly less expenses than I did when I lived in
Davis.

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p4wnc6
The main thing I am looking for is privacy. I find that if I have access to
private property big enough to take a short walk in nature, maybe a 10-20
minute walk, then my physical and cognitive health improves by huge amounts.

When I lived in urban Boston, and I would go for long runs on the street and
through parks, or I would use a rental car to go out to the Middlesex Fells
for geocaching, it was like a poor bastardization of what I needed. There were
always people around. I could not get into a meditative mood and access any of
the cognitively rejuvenating effects that the activities were for.

It saddens me very much that human culture is moving to agglomerative cities,
because I believe I am personally extremely maladapted to be able to handle
that, so I constantly feel like I'm being squeezed and stressed, even just by
my ambient environment, even on a pleasant sunny day when I just take a walk
to relax.

It's a very maddening way to live, but I have not found any solution that
would let me live with a better compromise that allows me to have private
access to nature on my own property and still successfully interface with the
industries I work in.

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eru
Wouldn't it be great for you if everyone else moved to dense cities, so
there'd be more nature left for you?

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p4wnc6
Ah, but then you can't have a job that lets you live near nature. Even most
remote jobs (which have lots of other downsides, like stalling out career
progress) require decent proximity to a major city or airport, and high-speed
internet.

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eru
The denser the city, the closer we could have real nature close to the
economic centre of the city.

Think of taking all the Bay Area, putting all the economic activity and people
who want city living into a small area with 40 story towers, and the rest will
be much more pleasant---with relatively easy commuting into the small core for
the voluntary country bumpkins.

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Houshalter
I think sprawl will increase when self driving cars become a thing. Long
commutes will be a lot more tolerable, parking a non issue, and the cost of
owning a car could be reduced with self driving taxis or busses.

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hiphipjorge
I don't think the move from the suburbs to the city is a technology issue.
There are certainly trade-offs to both of them.

The reason a lot of people (especially young people) have been flocking to
walkable cities has a lot more to do with self-identity and lifestyle choices
than with just merely commuting time. No self-driving card will change that.

Keep in mind that the opposite is also true. Self-driving cars make city-
living (where owning a car is unaffordable and unpractical) much easier, since
it increases the access to cars.

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Houshalter
People flock to cities now for the same reason they've always flocked to
cities - jobs. If you don't need to live in a city to work there, that may
make many people move.

And yes young people might prefer to live in denser cities. But when they grow
older and have a family, they prefer to move out into a town or suburb.

And beyond that, it's just economics. Cities are expensive. They are
inefficient economically. Rent is high, they have higher taxes, and the cost
of goods is higher. If you could live outside the city, and conveniently
travel there whenever you need to, you could save a huge amount of money.

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eru
Cities are crazy efficient economically. Provision of infrastructure and goods
is much cheaper in cities. Commuting sucks (and is one of the few clear drags
on happiness that persist, unlike becoming a quadriplegic).

Cities are also more productive.

But: cities are financed wrong in most countries. They could easily finance
themselves from land value taxes.

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Houshalter
Cities are more efficient in theory. In practice, for whatever reason, they
tend to have higher costs of living, taxes, and more congested
infrastructure/traffic. Until that changes people may be better off
economically living away from them.

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TheCoelacanth
In practice, money is siphoned away from cities to subsidize suburbs making
the cities more expensive.

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gumby
"Walkable" is on the increase because of demographics: there's a slight bulge
in under 30s who are more likely to like urban living; once they start having
kids the suburbs start to look more enticing.

Self-driving vehicles are likely to _increase_ sprawl by reducing the travel
burden :-(

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mjevans
I support ending sprawl, but there are factors that drive people to it.
(Perceived or real)

* Quality of education for their children.

* Privacy (space/sound insulation)

* Nature (if you move far enough out, then wonder why wildlife 'invades')

* Investment (housing shouldn't be, but it is; also rent is too high)

~~~
alkonaut
The "let's move where schools are good" is just a self sustaining effect of
some sprawling cities. In most countries "inner city kids" or "inner city
schools" means the best schools with the richest kids.

If the inner city is attractive then schools will be too.

Not sure if you referred to nature as a net positive or negative? I have a
forest an beach nearby (with the commute to suit my very reasonable price
point). I think most wildlife is a positive.

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vostok
I mean, that's true in the US too if you look at schools like Stuyvesant or
Trinity.

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mc32
Sprawl will continue as countries become urbanized. Africa, South Asia, etc.
Sprawl will ebb once pop stabilizes in those countries.

As the US pop has stabilized (except addition by immigrants) we don't expect
more sprawl.

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matt_morgan
Where does the idea that you should spend 30% of your money on rent come from?
I see it everywhere. Not that I'm questioning it in general, but does it ever
change?

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ArkyBeagle
Ten to fifteen percent is vastly better. It's doable but it's not that easy.
You need a middling-good job in flyover country. That's the part that's not
that easy - it's harder to justify a gig in flyover country by sheer ability.
Companies on the downward slide towards Schumpeterian irrelevance just don't
care and so don't bother them with the facts...

IMO, this was what my ( Silent Generation ) parents used as a heuristic. But
people saw rising home prices and began the "stretch", and then "stretching"
became the standard.

Because of this, I've become somewhat of the Geotaxer fan - if the rent is too
damn high, then tax land rents, not income per se. Geotaxes have the aspect
that they cannot be passed on to the renter by the rentier.

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auxym
FWIW, my (half of) rent (split with SO) in Montreal is less than 15% of my net
income. And I'm not even in software. People see the low engineer salaries
around here and are generally reluctant to come, but I find the quality of
life to be high and rent to be low.

Of course, there are other aspects to cost-of-living than rent, and quality of
life is somewhat subjective.

EDIT: For anyone curious, here is a nifty heat map of rents in the city:

[http://ici.radio-canada.ca/special/cartes/15-06_annonces-
log...](http://ici.radio-canada.ca/special/cartes/15-06_annonces-logements-
kijiji.html)

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I had a shot at moving to Montreal in the early '00s. It would have been
interesting. Those winters, however..

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intrasight
I don't think that technology will have any significant impact on sprawl. But
demographic trends certainly will.

