I’d love it if some of the people downvoting your comment would explain why. For me, it really resonates.

I think a major driver of anti-single-family-home advocacy is simply that the kind of people who become urban planners are the kind of people who personally love the crush of the city and the close proximity of their fellow man. It is also fueled by the interests of developers and, to a lesser extent, social justice advocates.

At least some it has aspects in common with other collective action problems. (See many of the current discussions around remote work.) There's a perception, somewhat warranted, that if they can't persuade other people to adopt their preferences, it's going to be harder for they themselves to live in a world where teams are colocated, cities ban cars, there's more mixed use zoning, or whatever. And the arguments perhaps work better if they're framed in terms of productivity, environmental impact, etc. as opposed to "I like it this way better."

Housing and transportation seems to have two local maxima: car dependent or high density. A walkable high density area with apartments and mass transit. Or free roads, free parking, and sprawl that reinforce each other. If you try to bring a car to a dense area you become frustrated with traffic congestion and expensive parking and insurance. Likewise if you try to maintain an urban lifestyle in most of America you will be braving long waits for a bus and pedestrian hostile layouts.

As usual in this type of threads, I don't quite understand what Americans mean by 'walkability'.

When I was in high-school, I spent 2 weeks in the USA, on Long Island. I could walk for an hour and not walk across a pedestrian. There were often no sidewalk (when there were, I wasn't sure I could use them, as to my foreign eyes, being detached from the road, they where running though properties :-D ), but what's the problem with that? There was almost zero traffic, since the areas are low-density residential; much less than on my country roads. I could reach the ocean, I could reach playgrounds/playfields, I could reach one street with shops, I could reach... the high-school. No transit was needed. But I was alone in the streets/on the roads. I didn't understand why the older kid (16?) of the house was already driving a big car to go to high-school...

When I look at Google Maps, a huge proportion of those suburbs areas seem to be within a mile of a either a shop street or a supermarket, and often some playfield too (we don't have that many over here). The grid pattern makes access easier. So I am puzzled. It seems very 'walkable' to me. Of course accessing those supermarkets by foot or cycle ranges from unpleasant to maddening because access was generally only planned for cars. But that's much more easily fixable than redesigning the whole zones.

Now if you work 15 miles away, that's something else, but does this come into 'walkability' concept? No density is going to fix that: even in a big dense city, your job, or your next job (and even more your partner's!) is almost always going to end up on the other end of the city after some time. Walkability cannot help there, so I reckon jobs location shouldn't weight on the concept much.

I lived abroad in a pretty US-sprawl-like place. A huge majority of detached houses, a few rowhouses, a handful of short flats buildings, with supermarkets in place of the town centre. Basically no small shops, but a few bars between the supermarkets. I was living on one side of the town, and I was walking (winter) or cycling (summer) everyday to my workplace on the other side of the town, 2 rivers and 1.5 miles away. I would shop on the way back home. Easy, simple, practical. No transit is needed. For me it is walkable. But it seems it isn't, for many people I read here, because they would declare similar areas in the US as non-walkable.

I now live in a municipality, where density is 8 inhabitants / km² (20-25 inhabitants / sq mile). But most people live within half-a-mile of the village centre. It has enough small shops for your daily or weekly needs; if you wish, there's a bigger shop/small supermarket in the next village, 2 miles away. There's a guy who is over 80 years old and who lives at the farthest point in the municipality, 1 mile away. He comes shopping almost everyday, by foot, on the road that passes in front of my house. So for him I guess it is walkable. But what if we ask all the 40-something who live 4 times closer, but who prefer to take their car, and drive 2 times 10 miles to go a big supermarket. They'll swear they need their car, for those countrysides are not walkable! Heck, my neighbour works in the centre, that is one quarter miles away (5 mn walk, 1 mn bicycle) and takes her car to go to work.

It's not well-defined. To many people, it has a pretty high bar. For them, it means you can walk to most of the shops you need, restaurants, public transit options, etc. in a comfortable way. And, yes, it often assumes there's a multitude of jobs that can be accessed without a car because the need to own a car--tends to make it more difficult to live in a walkable neighborhood.

> There's a perception, somewhat warranted, that if they can't persuade other people to adopt their preferences, it's going to be harder

Sometimes it is true. Imagine you wish something like the Spanish town model: a very dense centre, and nothing else than the centre, so wherever you are in the town, you just walk/cycle/drive less than a mile and you are in the fields, the hills, or other forms of 'nature'. Density located in a single point would also enable easy and efficient point-to-point public transit between similar towns, by the way.

Anyway, you can't have this if you take the French route and allow suburban sprawl. It will spread 5 miles around in all (free) directions. Then it doesn't matter if you densify the centre (following the mantra "density is good and efficient" which we hear all the time here), people living in the centre (and most of the suburb) will not have access to 'nature' unless they use a car.

(What actually happens in terms of densification in France is generally worse, because densification of the sprawl is not made in the US style with huge buildings in a very dense, punctual, centre, but it is made along some axes or in some areas here and there. You end up with some average density everywhere, while the infrastructure hasn't followed. And cannot follow, because the density itself is spread, instead of being in a single point easily served. The elected from those areas say they want to combat sprawl, but they make it worse for everyone this way.)

On the other hand, I agree that cities, or urbanism in general, shouldn't be designed for what I call the 14-28, like it is often asked on this site. Or at least it should be the only goal and it shouldn't be the goal everywhere. What I mean by 14-28 is people who are in a great demand of interactions, who want to meet people, a lot of people (of course it depends on individuals, I just arbitrarily peeked those figures). It has always been like that, teens and young adults have always wanted to leave and discover the world, to multiply experiences, good and bad ones, and are attracted by the city lights. That's something we must acknowledge, and we'd better provide an environment for that.

BUT that must not be the end of all things. When people get a bit older and become parents, most of them tone down and wish to be in less hectic areas, that's just a fact we can observe, even if it doesn't match our own ideal. And that's like it until their death, you can find a few people who will move to a city for their retirement but most who move will move the other way. Same for kids: until a certain age, they are satisfied with the presence of their parents, schools, and a handful of neighbouring kids, they have no need or desire of a large and dense city.

So most of their life, people don't care for having a big concentration of people where they live, and on the contrary favour a bit more space and a bit more quietness. Urbanism shouldn't blindly optimise for the former (density).

Upvoting this comment while it's still visible... which it won't be for long. I too am a little saddened by what feels to me like a classist anti-suburb attitude here on HN. Maybe I'm just oversensitive. But I grew up not rich and not safe. Am very, very happy that I can own a few acres 2 miles away from a Costco and 13 miles from the (currently dormant) opera.

Didn't downvote, but I'm guessing the casual dismissal of environmental concerns.

I didn't make a value judgement on those reasons, or at least that wasn't my intention, though I can see why someone might take it that way.

I think the environmental concerns that feed into it are often quite valid, spreading endless suburbs across places like the UK is not a great idea. But I don't think criticising those who aspire to have more space is a good outcome.

I upvoted you

The tone of the comment is very whiny. There’s this sense of the poster feeling threatened by other people’s preferences. An article discussing how a lot of young people prefer cities is somehow “berating” them. It’s a small-minded and insecure attitude. I know we are not supposed to discuss downvotes on this forum, but that is why people are downvoting it.

I'm not threatened by anyone's preferences, if you want to live in a city that's great - I live in the centre of a small city (300k people?) right now. I wasn't specifically talking about the linked article either, I have seen a lot of articles in recent years in the UK taking an anti-suburban line.

What I'm drawing attention to is that the bien pensant class in the UK seem to have started to tell us it's wrong to want the life that people have aspired to before. And that this is something we saw some decades before with brutalism, pushing people into spaces that designers and architects wanted them, not places they wanted to be themselves. There seems to be a desire amongst some architects and planners to push people towards their ideals of higher density housing, in particular, trading out much in the way of private space to much more social living.

Not everyone wants that. It's not wrong to want to live in smaller urban spaces with that trade-off, but it's not wrong not to buy into it either.

It's also an under-discussed part of the YIMBY movement. Wanting a boring detached house and a garden somewhere quiet is generally categorized as NIMBY in these discussions in my town. I grew up somewhere quiet and residential with trees and sky and space, and I liked that. It has a ton of jobs nearby, so it's gotten crazy expensive. But if you don't want to bulldoze the single-family homes and build high-density, you're the problem. Doubly so if you are lucky enough to afford said home.

I sincerely hope remote work takes off so the geographic network effects of all the jobs being in the same place are less important. It would make low density much more viable for those of us who want to see the sky and maybe a tree every once in a while.

People preferring detached houses is fine. Just take off the subsidies and let the market choose the mix between suburban houses and high density housing.

It is literally illegal to build apartments in many areas of the United States. That's because of local zoning laws limiting how many residential units are allowed per acre, minimum parking requirements, height restrictions, setback requirements, etc. The US government intervened in the mortgage market to make low interest 30 year loans broadly available (if a homeowner defaults and the foreclosure sale is not enough to cover the loan balance Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac are the investors holding the bag). Toll-free highways make commutes from suburbs to downtown possible.

> People preferring detached houses is fine. Just take off the subsidies and let the market choose the mix between suburban houses and high density housing.

Exactly. If someone wishes to own a detached single-unit residence, fine. I'd prefer they didn't but that's not my decision to make for an individual.

The problem comes when people want to control what's built within a quarter or half or full mile of the residence they own. (And, no, before someone comes at me with this specious reasoning, there's a huge difference between "build a nuclear power plant next to a daycare" and "different types of housing near each other.")

As a matter of public policy, I will always advocate that we do the environmental and financially efficient thing of building closer-in and closer-together. (We gotta add in some standards for noise transmission, too.) But preserving a specific type of housing in a specific location in amber forever is not reasonable and should not be continued.

I wouldn't be surprised if what contributed to this message is the same emergent corporatist message that individualism /career progression is what really matters in life. Not that there is some conspiracy, but that media always tends to push whatever narrative requires people to give away the most money (or stay in debt working as wage labor).

The Enlightened Liberals Who Will Save Us From Ourselves cannot tolerate the unwashed masses living independently without big government and high taxes. This is why rural dwellers are cast in the media as knuckle dragging racists

Interesting take. You realize that suburban living is subsidized by urban living[1]? The suburbs don't generate enough economic activity to be self-sustaining.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment...

Unironically this. If I stay in my big city my projected outcome is nothing but poverty in old age. Once a man stops caring about partying and getting laid the freedom to own something substantial and build on it is the new sirens call.