This narrative might feel true, but isn't supported by actual data.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennials-prefer...

My theory as an outside observer has always been that [white] Americans are like salmon. They are born in the suburbs, they move to the city to find mates and build careers, then they move to the suburbs to have children.

As an American-in-training I too would be terrified of having a kid in a place like San Francisco. Ain't nobody got money for that.

That said, when I did live in the suburbs for a while, I found it to be depressing and miserable. But I grew up in a small city, 10min walk from as downtown as it gets, so I'm biased.

It's not just Americans. The dream of having a place in the country that is your own personal property is about as close to a cross-cultural norm as you can find. English country houses, Roman villas, French royal hunting lodges... even the nomenklatura in the Soviet Union had their dachas.

Americans were just the first culture to make it practical for large numbers of people to actually do it.

There's a big difference between having a country dacha as your second home and living in a gross tasteless suburb as your primary residence.

The presence of all the other people ruins the dacha vibe.

> gross tasteless suburb

Wow, what you describe as gross tasteless suburb is I imagine a dream come true for 90% of world population.

Only because they haven't actually lived in it yet. It's one of those things that looks great at first glance, but only after actually living it for a while do you realize what a dystopian hell it is.

"Only because they haven't actually lived in it yet."

There are multiple generations of people who have willingly lived in suburbs.

I repeat: their tastes are not the same as yours.

"living in a gross tasteless suburb as your primary residence"

People buy houses in those "gross, tasteless suburbs" by choice. No one is putting a gun to their head.

Their tastes are not yours.

Actually, many dachas are at McMansion density or higher.

> [white] Americans are like salmon. They are born in the suburbs, they move to the city to find mates and build careers, then they move to the suburbs to have children.

I think the difference is that Americans are forced to do that dance, even the ones that actively don't want this.

Kids are crazy expensive to have and raise. Just child daycare alone starts at around $1,000/month and goes up from there. Housing costs are so high in every single city that if you want to give your kid a bedroom of any kind, you are effectively required to live in the suburbs, unless your extremely wealthy.

If you do have the money to stay, then comes the network. Housing in cities gets hard to find at all (no one wants to live near you, since you bring the screaming infant into the building). And American buildings are all built like shit, so everyone can hear everything. Childcare isn't just expensive -- it's difficult to find at all. (As one example, Seattle daycare waitlists are 2 years long in some cases - http://crosscut.com/2014/09/parents-seek-alternatives-tough-... )

And we haven't even started on the mess that is schooling.

Generally, American society treat parents and children like shit, and then forces families to live elsewhere. It's no surprise that those parents just up-and-leave to form their own little enclaves out in the suburbs, where they can at least try to remove some of that pain.

> That said, when I did live in the suburbs for a while, I found it to be depressing and miserable.

Well yeah. It can be depressing and miserable to be poor or working-class-poor. But at least suburbs are a safe and somewhat-affordable place to live. It's not like there is an alternative -- there are no functional cities willing to house people. And especially no cities willing to house families at all.

I agree. This whole city thing always looks like media generated hype to me.

Media are based in the city, their reporters (and their friends) live in the city and in their worldview, everyone lives in the city?

You are missing the point. I said "educated young people... move to world class cities". These world class cities are also expensive. You pay a lot to live in New York, Los Angeles or London. Unfortunately, this lack of affordable housing pushes out all but the highest paid workers. There is some social housing and other benefits to help the very poor. Everyone in the middle gets squeezed out of the big cities, especially when they marry and/or have kids and need more space. So, a lot more people would like to live in San Francisco for example than can currently afford it. This is why less well educated young people are moving to the newest suburbs. It's what they can afford. These new suburbs often have the fewest and lowest paying employment opportunities so it's a long term drain on the economy and future growth.

There are only three world class cities in America.

America has lots of rad cities with strong economic opportunities: NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Austin, Denver, ...

I live in the Boston area, and the only things that are world-class here are the Ivy League universities and Massachusetts General Hospital. This place doesn't deserve anything remotely like the ego it actually has.

(Take note: I'm originally from New York. There is a rivalry at work here.)

As a person who had the misfortune of taking Public transport from La Guardia to Manhattan, I would not label entire NYC "world-class" unless I get to append it with "mess".

Jamaica LIRR station, right?

That's JFK. Considerably easier, despite being considerably further away.

You should have taken the private express bus, and instead you complain about your poor choice? Eh?

Uh, thanks for the downvotes? My point is that there is no express public transit service from LaGuardia to Manhattan; there's a express private service, and most people know about it. If you look on the Internet it's pretty visible.

This kind of makes the point. A world-class city, but no good public transportation from airport to city center? World-class mess.

So NY would be a better city if they started an express bus service that competes with the existing, popular private bus service? Either way, I take the bus.

If a city wants to be truly world-class it needs to have a good public transportation system.

I found Boston to be super provincial (outside of the university crowd), and way overpriced for what it offers. Moving there from a city like Chicago was really quite a shock for us. A fraction of the culture and food scene for a multiple of the price. We spent a year there and ended up moving to Providence, which is much better value for money and also has better food.

Boston is a fine city, but not world class. First time I flew into Logan I looked around thinking I must've flown into the small secondary airport.

@eli_gottlieb: You're being downvoted for what reasons that should seem fairly obvious, so here's some support from a fellow native New Yorker :)

@sremani: We have really fucked this up. The lack of a direct rail link from any one of our three airports to Manhattan is shameful.

There's a world class non Ivy League university just outside Boston too.

I was including MIT in "Ivy League", even though it doesn't play football with the rest of them.

They do have an excellent reputation for participating in the games under their own rules, tho :-)

OK so how about a city like Albany NY, which is not far outside of NYC and is somewhere between 1/10th to 1/25th the cost of housing as found in the bay area.

There really is only one. The pretenders on the West Coast should really know better than to get into this fight by now.