I've lived in rural, suburban (McMansion-dominated), and urban parts of the US, including NYC. I grew up in a semi-rural place.

NYC was by far the most depressing and soul-crushing for me. It's lonely despite being crowded, it's filthy, it's unreasonably expensive, it's hard to get anywhere, and it's unfortunately full of people with a similarly condescending viewpoint about people/places outside the city.

I now live in a large southern city with lots of sidewalks and love it, and returning to New York makes me incredibly sad for the people who still think it's the only city to live in.

My point is not that I'm correct. It's just how I feel. Rather, I suggest you examine how you talk about your viewpoint to avoid sounding so confident about things you have no actual experience in.

I was actually born in Poland and spent the first half of my childhood on the outskirts of a mid sized town, 2 blocks from a huge forrest, and enjoyed it a ton, as a 10 year old I was able to walk or bike to any corner of the town on my own.

I'm not being condescending about living in suburbs or rural areas, just the design of a large portion of car dominated suburban areas of the US. As an example, I just got back from Pittsburgh, where I was staying in an AirBnB that was only 2 miles north of the city. I was really excited to explore Pittsburgh and was hoping to bike or walk down to the city after work but it would have been a 50min walk down a narrow road that's dominated by F150s and mini vans, something that even as an adult I didn't feel safe doing. I got to see a large portion of the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh and most of it looked like that, as I was driving through it it hit me that there are no kids out even though it's the middle of Summer, the only place we saw any was at shopping malls with their parents.

NYC is not a soul crushing place full of condescending people if step outside of the touristy areas of Manhattan. I grew up in Queens (Ridgewood / Kew Gardens Hills) and lived in Harlem and northern Brooklyn as an adult, all of which are some of the most diverse zip codes of the world with a ton of friendly middle class people. As a teenager I was able to bike or take the train to any basketball court in the city, say hi and play with people from all over the world. These days with all of the bike lanes that they added I can bike to almost anywhere in the city in under 30min and it's my main mode of transportation.

EDIT: Good biking video demonstrating soul crushing new york https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77nmYdbJSJ0

> I'm not being condescending about living in suburbs or rural areas, just the design of a large portion of car dominated suburban areas of the US.

It sounds like your experience in Pitt was bad and I'm sorry you didn't have fun. I'm glad you found a home in NYC that you love.

What's not okay is projecting your suburb in Pitt onto the entire Midwest. There's a large geography to the US with many different cultures. What you wrote felt condescending and classist when framed alongside your projection that doesn't ring true for most of the towns in the Midwest.

To frame this with your example, if I only spoke about the worst parts of NYC and then projected them onto the entire city I doubt you'd have a very high opinion of me. That's why people don't like what you said.

He was talking about the car-mandatory suburban design of the USA, which is pretty much everywhere by law outside of a few grandfathered places that were built before the car was invented and some commercial down towns. They also tend to be very expensive since they are in short supply and high demand. It has nothing to do with the people or culture per say and his experience exists everywhere! Look at pretty much an identical experience in Houston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54 . The channel also has few examples of the same thing in london, ontario, canada.

In Europe, small town life is not necessarily suburban life, there are a lot of of walk-able villages connected via a train line that you could take to commute to your job in city, and they're wayyyyyyyyyy better than the sadness that is US & Canadian suburbia.

The offense people took had nothing to do with cars and more to do with generalizations and common microaggressions by coastal folks from large metros.

Honestly, I am very frustrated that this forum struggles so repeatedly to empathize with voices outside large metros, but I will attempt to break this down shotgun-style for you.

> As a New Yorker driving around middle america is super depressing.

Imagine if I called the place you're from, the place you grew up "depressing". All for a lack of sidewalks? As others shared we have woods, parks, lots of activities, etc. Yeah, it's not the same culture as NYC, but I don't think it requires being insulted. It's also not factual that you can only get around with a car. I survived til I was 16 with just a bike and rode everywhere. Still do, and now I live in San Jose.

> I can't imagine growing up trapped in my own home on a street with no sidewalks, only being able to go where my parents take me and finally growing into driving age so that I can go from parking lot to parking lot.

To most of the midwest and south, this is an extreme exaggeration but conveyed as commonplace.

I don't owe any more mental energy to this thread, so this is my last reply. I do hope that you (and him!) can be aware of the microaggressions in this thread and why they're not okay.

Many of us grew up in "trapped in my own home on a street with no sidewalks, only being able to go where my parents take me and finally growing into driving age so that I can go from parking lot to parking lot." and escaped to cities or loathe the suburbia we live in today.

Just want to add that I actually did grow up in a Midwest suburb, developed in the 1980s, and I didn't like it at all. I totally agree with OP's characterization: I enjoy walking to get around, and the built environment, which doesn't allow for that, depressed me. I relished every opportunity to spend time in the city, which is quite walkable.

Some suburbs in the SF South Bay and Orange County, CA are even worse in this respect, though. The sidewalks are there but there's no walking in places like Yorba Linda or Placentia.

I would take no offense to anyone calling the places where I grew up or have lived depressing.

Microagressions? So damn sensitive jeez.

If this is the Strong Towns YT video talking about how Houston is basically a dystopia, not all of Houston is like this. There are many walkable neighborhoods in this city. Examples: Downtown and Midtown Houston, Downtown Woodlands, Downtown Conroe, some parts of Sugar Land, Downtown Galveston, etc.

There are also (many) more suburbs with housing across all price points that are primarily accessible by car, and the families that live there that are happy with this arrangement.

As someone who lived in NYC and now lives in Houston, I much prefer the latter.

It would be cool if there were more trees or a sweet bar along my walk, but I still try to walk two miles per day.

Public transit was cool (and I was a HUGE fan of the NYC Subways), and I wish we had a commuter rail station somewhere, but I much prefer the privacy and freedom of my own car.

Also, public transit in Manhattan is much more convenient than public transit in South Brooklyn or Forest Hills, where you're usually looking at a 30 minute trip minimum to get _ANYWHERE_. (I owned a car in NYC and all but stopped taking public transit once we got it.)

I like a lot of things about Houston and Dallas, but one thing I particularly like is that you don't _have to_ live the urban experience if you don't want to. We have something for almost everyone. I personally don't think that urbanization should be foisted on everyone.

Pittsburgh suburbs were just an example, there's plenty of nice walkable spots all over America, what I was talking about are car centric sprawls where you can't really go anywhere unless you get in a car. Having traveled most of North East, East Coast, Rust Belt and West Coast of the US, this is not a rare thing that's only seen in Pitt, even fairly dense parts of Long Island are just isolated homes and strip malls.

The North Hills (suburbs) of Pittsburgh are depressing indeed. I love the work the city proper has done to make walking and cycling a priority though!

Yeah I actually really liked proper Pittsburgh and was impressed by all of the bike lanes and greenery.

You’re still just generalizing your experience in a way that implies that you actually know what most of middle America is like, when you don’t. And having lived in Poland doesn’t somehow prove that you do.

I’ve lived in the US for over 20 years and have been to more than half of the states, including all of the east coast, west coast and large parts of the mid west. The states I haven’t been to are way more rural than the ones that I’ve seen. If I had to guess I’ve probably seen more of the US than 95% of Americans.

I’ve also done road trips through large parts of Europe and can tell you that none of it is littered with strip malls, parking lots and houses on streets without sidewalks.

I also find New York City to be extremely depressing, and radically subpar urbanistically compared with Berlin, where I currently live. You can take an S-Bahn in 30 minutes or so to S-Bahn Schlachtensee and swim clean, chill and easily accessible lake - a journey to the water in New York will take much much longer, involve more walking, and involve dirtier water.

It is easy to find scapegoats for the poor urbanism of the United States, but very difficult to think of a solution without a radical change in the nature of governance.

And in Berlin you can cycle! I'm not a regular cyclist, but on holiday I felt totally comfortable renting a bike and using the bike lanes to get around.

As a resident of Berlin (that likes living there) I feel it's important to also mention NYC has almost 2.5 times as many people and unlike Berlin is part of a large urban agglomeration (the northeast megalopolis - total population ~50m).

It's not quite a fair comparison.

Right, but the original comment was (condescendingly) comparing NYC to middle America, so differing densities and other demographics are precisely the point.

No, my point was about the car centric bend of a large portion of suburban / rural America. I wrote that message at like 1am, see my comment here for what I meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32355777

Compare Pittsburgh suburb (https://goo.gl/maps/bFBWcsJ6EeL1kgVe7) to the suburbs of the town that I was born in (https://goo.gl/maps/ktkWzAUa3tyz37hQ7).

This is an even better example: https://goo.gl/maps/cAECdLXaBVoErtsFA vs https://goo.gl/maps/oBmruFK2Sqaxg6TW7

EDIT: Same goes for the Bay Area, staying by YC offices for the interviews was depressing too. Look at this: https://goo.gl/maps/ERCkS7zrHw8tM2or9

NotJustBikes has some excellent videos on the differences between US and European cities, this one captures many of the issues - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw

> "And in Berlin you can cycle!"

You can certainly cycle in New York. Cycling has increased dramatically in New York City over the past decade or so with the installation of more cycle-friendly infrastructure, including over 100 miles of protected bike lanes, city bike sharing, e-bike rental apps, etc.

Cycling in nyc has changed drastically in the last decade. It's almost good now!

And for all of the cleanliness and convenience you also have to put up with 3/4 of the population blowing their cigarette smoke in your face. Especially indoors in bars, despite it being illegal.

This can't be quite true. In Berlin smoking is prohibited in public buildings, public transportation including nearly 100% of all train stations (the exception being designated smoker areas of ~20m² on open-air platforms), shops, bars and inside restaurants. Many places offer open-air seating (they call it Terrasse but it's the sidewalk); there, being outside smoking is not prohibited. There's an exception for small-ish bars which are clearly marked as being smokers' places and for adults only (>18yrs). So I'd say you've got a good chance of not getting smoke blown into your face.

Also, while you're right in that comparatively many people in Berlin are smokers (although that might be a commonality of cities as opposed to the countryside), they're still a minority of <30% [1], so more like 1/3 than 3/4 (it can feel like every second guy in the street though).

[1] https://www.abnr.de/tabakpraevention/daten-fuer-deutschland/...

Every large club in Berlin is full of people, staff included, smoking in violation of the law.

The rules are not enforced.

What? Smoking indoors is illegal in Germany, yet germans do it outright? This is a blow to the stereotype of the 100%-law-abiding-germans that I grew up with here in only-12%-law-abiding-south-america. I'm actually being serious. I never thought that germans would smoke indoors if it became illegal. I mean, here in Brazil it's illegal (I think it became illegal in the early 2000's) and nobody does it.

Berlin is a special, lawless place. It’s the capital of German halfassery. 50% of the packages I order from Amazon never arrive.

I’ve lived here since 2008 and it is unlike any other major world capital.

Note that if you're the sort of person to be bothered by smoke, one person lighting up in a room with 100 people will be noticed by the other 99 people. It only takes 1% non-law-abiders to make everyone think that Germans smoke in bars.

I'm from Germany and this is pretty unusual. There are very few pubs where smoking is kind-of tolerated and sometimes a drunk person will light a cigarette in a club, but it's really rare and absolutely a non-issue in my experience.

I live in Berlin and u must have not been out here coz many places, especially clubs, allow smoking indoors.

I didn't experience this in Berlin; to be fair, however, I didn't spend much time in Bars there.

In Berlin, the inside smoking laws are pretty much never enforced. Some bars have dedicated smoking rooms, but many don’t. As for clubs, you can mostly expect smoking indoors. A lot of people smoke, so you _will_ encounter smokey environments when out and about, especially during the winter

Hm, I'm suprised too, where I live it doesn't happen. Perhaps Berlin is different.

There are a lot of bars that don't allow smoking, but unfortunately almost all "good" (in my opinion) do.

There's some odd dynamic going on then. What happened here in Norway was that the indoors smoking ban was at first immensely unpopular (it didn't help that the health minister at the time, who pushed it, was a Christian Democrat who fit nicely into moral busybody stereotypes). But as soon as the ban was implemented, attitudes changed overnight. Even the smokers agreed that things were a lot more comfortable. And I've heard similar stories from other places with public smoking bans.

I bet that even if a place managed to hide it from the public health authorities (they DO regularly do unannounced inspections anywhere food is served or made, after all), it would just be a colossal competitive disadvantage in most places. How strange that Berlin is different!

>> a journey to the water in New York will take much much longer, involve more walking, and involve dirtier water

It's not hard, not far to reach.

People use new york because it's the best america has. When you have the whole world, there are better places.

NYC has serious and complicated problems and it's perhaps not the best idea to hold it up as the pinnacle of a "walkable town". There are better choices to use for that example.

As you sort-of implicitly suggest, it doesn't have to be a choice between a soulless suburb with no sidewalks and a piss-soaked urban hellscape-- with NOTHING in-between.

What we do need, however, is more urban centers with walkable, complete streets, human amenities and a broad mix of different housing types for a wide spectrum income levels and NOT separate isolated enclaves for the wealthy and the poor. Especially important are appropriate and truly useable "third-places" rather just bauble shops for the wealthy, dollar stores for the poor, and distant megamalls for the middle-class surrounded an ocean of asphalt.

Where are you going in NYC? I live in a tree lined neighborhood with pleasant little cafes and restaurants. I bike a lot of places and I'm equally close to two large parks. There's some mix of incomes as the adjacent neighborhoods blend together. I hear the schools are pretty good, and there's good train access.

Some people think New Yorkers live in Times Square or the Empire State Building.

woah... I am not "against" NYC. I think it's awesome as a whole and I go there frequently. But yeah, it does have deep problems, the cost-of-living is borderline insane and it REALLY DOES smell like pee in far too many places.

I am just saying that NYC is not the best example of where we want urban centers to aspire to. For one thing, nothing in the USA is as big and or has the financial resources of NYC.

Towns in the US that want to improve their housing situation need to look towards what OTHER SIMILAR towns are doing and are successful at. NYC is such a weird case on the basis of scale and density.

Yeah, cost of living is a serious issue. We've been under-building housing for nearly 30 years.

I think that's all basically fair. I'm interested in how some places in Utah are trying to tackle housing, but haven't spent much time reading about it yet.

This is the kind of comment you write when your only experience with NYC is as a tourist in the densest parts of Manhattan.

NYC is not midtown manhattan. Please go check out Queens or Brooklyn next time you visit, I promise you it's safe and full of walkable and bikeable streets.

It's the cars for me. I hate driving. I hate how everyone having a car makes it necessary to drive everywhere. Very few cities in the us let you get away without owning a car.

NYC isn't perfect, its just better than everywhere else ive lived.

> I now live in a large southern city with lots of sidewalks

So you pretty much agree with the person that you're implying is an elitist, and live in exactly the same neighborhood they would choose if they found a good job in your city. You're not defending McMansion-dominated neighborhoods very well.

I don't understand the aggression.

It's not that that person was wrong. They were right -- about their own preferences.

They feel sorry for people who are different from them and want different things. Some people love being able to drive places (my disabled sister is one of them).

I feel sorry for people who don't know they're in a bubble. Maybe they truly want to live in a cookie-cutter McMansion suburb and just won't allow themselves to consider it for cultural reasons. That specifically is unlikely, but some version of it is probably happening, and they're missing out as a result.

I think it has to do with what stage you are at in life. If I was an eight year old kid NYC would be terrible: no pool, no pet dog, no backyard, rough schools, dirty public transits, restaurants don't have kids menus, etc etc. If I was a 23 year old college grad - NYC is the place to be: high paying stressful work, awesome happy hours, awesome C level mentors, easy to find roommates, killer Manhattan apartments, etc etc. If I was a 43 year old family man, NYC would again be horrible: terrible schools, long commutes, high crime, expensive beer, no car parking for kids, insane mortgages or rent, parks covered in homeless, old run down apartments.

Sound like urban living is not your cup of tea. Which is entirely fine and something YIMBYs strongly support.

YIMBYism is about options: those who do prefer to live in an area should not face artificial restrictions like bans on new homes in desirable areas near well paying jobs.

I love urban living and currently live in a dense part of a large city.

Condescension toward people who don't fall into that category is what isn't my cup of tea.

Gotcha.

Growing up in Middle America was nowhere near as depressing as you’re describing it. We had bikes to get around, woods and empty lots and big backyards and parks to explore. Not to mention friends on the same block. Of course NYC would be much more exciting once you’re allowed to ride the train on your own.

I for one had a very isolated childhood because I couldn’t go anywhere on my own, and pretty much nobody in my development ever talked to each other, so I basically didn’t know anyone local. That said I didn’t know any better so I thought that was just normal and didn’t experience it negatively.

Man, it just depends. In my youngest years, it was exactly as you describe. But then we moved to a new state. It was a little bit more suburban (not quite rural, but closer), and houses were a bit more spread out. Populated streets were more spread out, connected by roads I wouldn't feel safe cycling on as an adult, let alone allowing a child to do so. I couldn't wait to get my license to drive so I could actually do something outside the house without requiring permission.

And now those woods are a new suburb, the empty lots a new target.

Maybe on the popular coasts, but most of inner USA is little pockets of development spread out among large wilderness

Hell even the California countryside is like this, once you get far enough away from the big cities

Agreed. I think people on the coasts (or at least the east coast) fail to appreciate the vastness of the rest of the country that they so often look down on.

> once you get far enough away from the big cities

This is the key statement.

Build more SFH suburbs, gonna take you longer and longer to get far away from those cities.

Yes, but it really isn't that far. As soon as you leave the edge of suburba-mega-town you're in wilderness again. Where I live it's much less than a half-hour of driving, from the most interior parts of the city, in most conditions.

Let the haters hate. It gives more outdoors to us.

If you let those people who prefer density have their density, there's more sparsity left over for the rest.

I can’t tell if you intend to agree with the parent or if you are trying to rebut his argument, but this is the parent’s point. Moreover, the US is still not very dense, and there is plenty of sparsity for everyone. People should leave their metropolises a couple of times in their lives and experience the vast expanses. suburbs aren’t threatening nature in most parts of the country (agriculture OTOH…), and I say this as someone who personally dislikes the stereotypical American suburb for many other reasons.

I wasn't trying to rebut the parent's argument (assuming the parent wasn't trying to be ironic or so).

Denser cities make it easier to leave them for a short stint, too, because there's less sprawl.

Yes, it's probably a good idea to live outside a city for a while in your life. Though that's up to individual preferences.

I'm not quite sure whether it makes much sense one way or another to say that the US is 'still not very dense'.

In some literal sense, that is obviously true. In another sense, just because eg Russia has huge empty lands in Siberia bringing down the average density on a federal level, doesn't really make a difference to someone living in the suburbs of Moscow.

Similarly, if Russia lost Siberia tomorrow, the person in the Moscow suburb wouldn't experience density any different either.

I only chose Russia as an extreme case example. You can replace Siberia with Alaska or the flyover states, and Moscow and its suburbs with eg San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

After spending years in quite a few different places around the globe, I'm quite happy to live in Singapore these days, one of the premier global cities.

In the US it is sad that because of building restrictions so many people are excluded from its most productive cities; unnecessarily setting back the economy and thus the prosperity of the people. Including even of those people who wouldn't want to live in those most productive places.

>> there is plenty of sparsity for everyone

This will be my koan for the day.

Fun fact. We could fit the entire world population in a mega city the size of Texas.

Not sure what numbers you used. For comparison, here's a worked example:

Singapore has a size of 728.6 km2, and a population of 5.7 million people. For a density of 8,400 people per km2. (That includes water reservoirs, military bases, an international airport, areas for heavy industry, nature reserves, garbage dumps, power stations, 1.5% of the world's crude oil refining capacity, a few semiconductor fabs, etc.)

There are 7.96 billion people on the planet. That means if you scale up Singapore at the same density, you'd need 952,000 km2 to fit everyone.

Texas has a size of 696,000 km2. So our mega-Singapore would need about 1.37 Texases of area.

That's pretty close to your number.

Wikipedia gives New York City's population density as 11,313.68/km2, but the borders for that calculation will by necessity be drawn a bit arbitrarily. And I assume that doesn't include as much of the support infrastructure as Singapore does.

Human-scale housing means more wilderness for everyone.

I have no idea what “human scale housing” means, but single family housing is not a threat to wilderness in the US. There is a ton of wilderness in the US, and it is far more constrained by agriculture.

It's a geometry problem. SFH takes up too much space.

You're absolutely correct that there's heaps of wilderness in the USA, but the more SFH there is, the more sprawl that is required, which means that that wilderness is further and further away.

I'd rather get to the wilderness faster and not have to drive through hours and hours of sprawling SFH suburbs.

Geometry has a solution! If you want to be closer to nature, move closer to nature. That seems a lot more reasonable than insisting that everyone around you uproot and reorganize. I'm strongly biased toward letting people live how they want so long as they aren't harming people (and I don't think "living between urbanites and nature" constitutes harm).

> I'm strongly biased toward letting people live how they want

Then people shouldn't be allowed to ban their neighbours from building whatever housing they want.

Mixed use development where you can walk or bike to nearly all daily needs (work, grocery, kids school) within 20 or so mins.

Work is usually the kicker, many suburbs are actually quite bikable if you're willing to bike on the street.

What people really want is their work, stores, school of choice within walking/biking distance, which is harder to accomplish.

had.

By the time I graduated college all of the empty fields and forests where I had roamed as a teenager were now developments.

Where? In the midwest fields and forests still dominate, and the west is still vast expanses of wilderness. I don’t think your experience generalizes well (although perhaps it is more common on this forum considering it’s atypical demographics).

Sure, but odds are he lived in some outer suburb that is no longer the outer suburb. That woods might have hung on for a while, but it was always doomed just be the fact that it was near a large growing city where most people live and thus remember. Get out a little farther from the city and the wilderness is going to do just fine, but that isn't what people will remember as a kid just by virtual that they never lived near it.

I don't doubt it's true for him. I'm expressing a doubt that it's indicative of the American landscape broadly, a claim which seems to be implied by his opening "had.".

As a current Seattleite who grew up in middle America biking around as a kid anywhere I wanted, I have the opposite feeling. I thought it was great! Maybe it’s more about the person than it is the location.

A lot of people can't imagine how nice it is to be able to go out casually into the woods or wilderness With Friends on the weekend or even a school night

Arent most single family homes in suburbs or similar places where there are no woods and often no sidewalks? Then everywhere you go, there are just more of single family houses and going to nearest wood requires a car.

I guess it depends on what is meant by middle America in the parent post. In my experience, if neighborhoods don't have sidewalks, they are more rural than suburban.

Indeed, you typically see fewer sidewalks near houses that are closer to woods/etc.

I also wonder what sorts of distances people think of as "far" in this thread. I've lived in both suburbs and in NYC. It's easy to walk a mile in the city without realizing it, whereas that is sometimes unthinkable to suburban folks. But if I walk a mile from my house I hit: woods, trails, the downtown area, the train station (to NYC), a school, fields, and etc.

At least in the U.S. - think it matters quite a bit where you are. Lots of areas in South and West were developed entirely around car use whereas suburbs in the Northeast can be quite tightly packed.

It doesn't help that suburbs aren't designed for walkability or ease of navigation. Even if something might only be 500 metres from your house getting there requires a twisty stupid path to one of the handful or perhaps only entrance to the subdivision. So that 500m can easily turn into 2KM.

That's a fair point. My town (outside of NYC) is very much like that. With that in mind, the 1-mile walk I mentioned in my original response is based on the paths available to me (twists, intersections, etc.) rather than straight lines.

In my mind, this is another the under-rated aspects of parts of NYC - grids. Simplify the process of walking, judging distance, knowing where you are.

This is actually part of the secret to making walkable neighborhoods - make them hell for cars (one entrance, have to snake around) but have paths that go directly through walls/hedges. I've seen some very nice housing developments that are literally 100 ft from a shopping center, but you'd never know it because it's hidden behind a gate.

Love it, agree, I wonder how many suburban towns are able retrofit their neighborhoods like this. My guess is not many based on ownership and configuration, but it would really cool to see pathways snaking through neighborhoods like that.

If you find older ones, you often find unofficial "secret" paths in convenient areas (the poor areas will have actual holes in fences, etc).

The main downside is often the houses are packed in such a way that there's no path without going through someone's yard.

In a lot of suburbs of Atlanta* (and even within Atlanta itself!) you will find residential neighborhoods with no sidewalks. And these are definitely not rural.

* The choice of city is due to personal experience, but I doubt it's unusual - e.g. I'm pretty sure it's exactly the same in/around Miami.

Most subrubs don't need sidewalks. there is zero traffic, so kids can play in the streets just fine. Stop the game when a car is coming. The car can even go slow (though it probably won't if there are no kids) as there is noplace to go on that street and so it doesn't have far to go.

Growing up in a midwest suburb during the 1980s, not only were we not trapped in our own homes, we were almost never in them at all.

Everybody just biked from place to place and spent like 18 hours a day outside of the house, playing basketball, duplicating cassette tapes and making music in various garages.

I feel it's interesting to see how many here touts bikes as the savior and best way to get around.

The US suburbs are now generally so bike-unfriendly. Big and dangerous cars dominate. Speeds in residential areas are high, so dangerous to play in the streets. The suburbs you grew up in are no longer the same.

What happened? Why did you all stop biking around and got a car instead?

Not sure you've spent time in too many suburbs but traffic tends to be minimal and the ubiquitous nature of kids means most drivers take some reasonable care.

No different than when I was growing up. Don't play in the street unless it's a quiet part (cul-de-sac's are great), or block it off with stuff you can move when cars come by.

I had great memories of living in the suburbs. I would rarely be indoors and had half a dozen friends within a minute or two bike ride. We'd hang out in parks, in front of people's houses, spend our quarters at the store buying snacks, doing kid stuff.

> Big and dangerous cars dominate.

Just how many cars do you think are zipping around in a suburban neighborhood at any given time? The roads in a neighborhood are empty most of the time. I find it rich that people talking up the benefits of riding a bike in a big city would seem concerned about the safety of using a bike in a low density neighborhood.

> Speeds in residential areas are high

What? No they’re not. In any given neighborhood the speed limit usually tops out at 25mph.

The speed limit is of no concern to the parent in a big SUV driving their kids to practice. After all, their own kids are safe inside the car.

And my point is that at some point, kids stopped biking everywhere. But it's the same people that used to bike around as kids now driving them everywhere. Hence my question: What happened?

> What happened?

The rise of structured activities. Now kids don't have free time, they go from school to soccer practice to a math tutor. Gotta have extracurriculars if you want to get into a good school.

> Hence my question: What happened?

What happened to a lot of activities kids used to do? They got replaced by ubiquitous internet-connected devices that allow them to watch any video or play any game at any time. They’d rather do that than play outside, and childhood obesity rates track well with these developments.

To put it another way, the neighborhood I grew up in 30+ years ago still exists, and the roads are the same size, the sidewalks are just as non-existent as they used to be, and there’s no more traffic than there used to be. But as you point out, sure there’s less kids out and about in the neighborhood when I was a kid.

But I would note two things about that. One, when I was a kid, there was much less inside that could occupy my time than there is today. And two, I’d argue that if you’re an adult who has to work all day during the summer, you may not be noticing how many kids are actually playing outside during the day.

I think the devices thing is a bit of a chicken and egg in many ways. I have a 10yo nephew that I see a few times a year, and he uses the iPad and loves playing video games to a very large degree. But if you give him the opportunity to go outside and play with him or other kids, the device play time is pretty much ignored most of the time, and it's definitely not because of rules or structure the parents are setting, the parents have problems putting many restrictions on him due to various issues. He also love sports.

If there were always 30 kids outside in your neighborhood to play with and you didn't need permission or help from the adults in your life, I really bet a lot more kids would be having a lot less screen time.

Kids use the devices because there is not much else they are allowed to do, and playing by yourself or a sibling you are sick of in your back yard gets boring quick for most.

Adults need to create an environment where there is something better, and that is the sad truth for most children.

>> there’s less kids out and about in the neighborhood when I was a kid

I would have to agree with this.

I live in the same neighborhood I skateboarded in 35 years ago. Packs of us roamed the streets. We were all over and we got into all sorts of trouble.

Not only can't I remember the last time I saw a kid skateboarding around here, I can't remember the last time a saw a kid in the neighborhood doing anything outside without an adult present. I know there are still kids around because I get the property tax bill every year that's supposedly paying for schools, but kids don't roam the streets around here no more.

That world is gone. Which is good, because if there was a bunch of kids on skateboards fucking up the handrail on my front steps I would have to go try to run them off like the oldsters tried to do to us circa 1988.

We also now call CAS on parents if their eight year old goes biking on their own. Two generations ago it was okay for a kid of that age to roam several miles on their bike. Now they need parental accompaniment at all times.

They’re not likely to blow stop signs or jump curbs, thus regulating their speed.

US suburbs are more bike friendly than ever. In 1950 the car was the future and they quit building sidewalks in the suburbs. Today in new suburbs people want to see sidewalks so they build them. The roads are no wider today than the 1950s, and the lots are smaller. (in the 1950s people remembered the depression and still demanded large enough a lot for a large garden)

The above is of course a generalization and thus there are exceptions all over. It is still fairly true though.

Vehicles are taller, have worse visibility, and are more numerous than the 1950s.

This is paranoid nonsense. I grew up in the suburbs and played in the streets and biked all over the place every day.

Yes, but what about the kids growing up there now? Is it like it was?

And paranoid, really?

I'm raising my kids in a subdivision that has a pool, a playground, and several parks close by, this is very standard for the subdivisions around here. My subdivision is full of kids unsupervised riding bikes, playing on the playground, riding scooters. All the subdivision roads have a low speed limit and its very easy to go miles on dedicated bike lanes that aren't just painted lines on a busy road but instead are separate paved areas off the roads. It helps that I live in one of the safest states in the union and that until relatively recently this was a very affordable place to buy a house and have a family.

This exists in a lot of the newer larger metros, places that have seen lots of growth in the last 10-15 years.

My hometown is much more bike friendly now. It wasn't an issue 30 years ago when I was a kid, but now there are major bike/jogging paths cutting through town in a few different directions, bike lanes are wider and clearly marked, sometimes with barriers.

I grew up in various Midwestern suburbs in the 2000s-2010s and it's almost exactly how you and the OP describe.

I'm not a parent, and you're missing the point to instead throw insults. Good on you for being so much better than everyone else, though.

It's still like that in poorer suburbs. Those kinds of parents aren't driving their kids everywhere.

As many of the other posts point out, helicopter parenting happened. Instead of forming a bicycle gang with other kids in the neighborhood and rarely even encountering adults, now kids are dragged to structured activities by their parents. They have to be dragged by their parents because if they were sent on their own, most would find something more fun to do on the way and skip their training lessons. This is orthogonal to whether people live in cities or suburbs.

> Speeds in residential areas are high, so dangerous to play in the streets.

Speeds on trunk roads are ridiculous, but the streets with the actual houses on them are not the nightmare you describe.

That stopped happening in the 90s, where you would get reported to child protective services for letting your under 12yo children play outside by themselves unsupervised if it was outside of your property.

Other parents hear it and it creates a huge chilling effect. As a result, there are no other kids outside to play with, so for the few parents willing to buck the trend, it doesn't matter anyway and helicopter soccer mom has to play chauefer and sign them up for a million structured activities and play dates so the kids don't go nuts inside their houses with not being allowed to do anything.

I had to ride a bike everywhere until I was old enough to inherit the family beater car and hop in the back with my girlfriend.

Sucked, it did. Tragic really. Almost child abuse, if you think about it.

I had to wait until adulthood to see a pile of festering trash taller than me sitting on the curb. Robbed!

I feel bad for people who live like ants crammed in small depressing apartments. I’m not in a rural area by any means but I have so much nature and wildlife around me I could never live in a concrete jungle.

People are different. I have friends that live in Miami and NYC, both absolutely love it there but whenever I visit I always want to ask why in the hell they are paying so much rent for so little. Likewise my friends visit me in Colorado and wonder why I'm so obsessed with going outside.

Honestly, I found this a bit insulting.

I grew up in a dense urban core and can’t imagine putting kids through it.

Little to no green space, no riding your bikes down random streets until it’s get dark. No exposure to nature. Cramped in tiny $1M apartments immersed in the rat race.

There are plenty of very livable US college towns with medium-density downtowns, condos for far less than $1M, plenty of green space, and streets I'd feel comfortable letting my kids (if I had any) ride their bikes around. Bloomington, Indiana, Madison, Wisconsin, and Davis, California (granted, that last one isn't as affordable as the others) come to mind among places I've been to. I imagine places like Ann Arbor, Michigan and Champaign, Illinois rank up there too.

Those aren’t suburbs to you? Sure the main commercial street (maybe a few blocks total) isn’t, but Ann Arbor is 90% suburban single family homes.

It’s like San Mateo. The Main Street is more dense but very few choose to live there. It’s mostly endless single family homes.

Hell, I’d call a good part of SF “practically” suburban. Sunset is mostly block upon block of single family homes with maybe 1 corner store within a 10-15 min walk. Transit is easy on a narrow strip, otherwise you’re screwed without a car.

I personally don’t see much difference between that and what people rail against as suburbs.

You mean American, crappily designed urban cores. Plenty of cities around the world that are safe, have plenty of green space, and are much more affordable than those in the US.

Yeah, no.

I spent time in Singapore. Incredible transit system, carefully designed "Garden City" with plenty of outdoor areas, modern, efficient, affordable public housing.

And what did people aspire to? Single family homes, with their own yard and a car. What HN sees as "people are forced to live in the suburbs", is in reality, people just choosing what they like best.

Same in all the other countries I've lived in. Sure, 20-somethings love living in "hip" cities with "trendy" restaurants and "fun" bars to go and are willing to trade all that for tiny apartments. I don't deny that.

But a very substantial part of the population don't want that. They want space, quiet neighborhoods and are willing to have to drive to get that.

I'm very confused. Singapore doesn't have the space for single family housing. The vast majority of homes there are flats/apartments.

https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/househ...

I think what he means is that, given the choice, people there would opt for a good class bungalow (essentially your 'detached home', but most will never be able to afford it).

That is an obvious statement, but the analogy breaks down a bit as in Singapore, whether you live in a GCB or in HDB (social housing), everything is relatively close by regardless. Hence, there isn't really much of a trade-off at all - living in a GCB just affords more space and privacy (at an exponentially inflated cost).

Good class bungalows are not your typical single family home. They are on huge lots even for a US single family home.

There are townhomes (shophouses), duplexes, single family homes as options as well.

“To qualify as a GCB, the property must have at least 1,400 square metres (approx. 15,070 sq. ft.) of land area, and the bungalow itself is limited to a maximum of two storeys in height”

People in HDBs want to live in condo, condos want to live in shophouses, shophouses want to live in detached freehold homes.

Everybody wants more space. And despite the great transit system, parts of Singapore can be more remote to the point a car being almost a requirement. And that’s what many people strive for.

Yes, but the most valuable are the freehold GCBs.

Sure. Everyone also aspires to fly private.

The point being we need to figure out how to not destroy nature while allowing people to live meaningful lives and the suburbs ain’t that.

That may be true in some countries, but it's not true in the US or Canada. In fact your comment is just bizarre when you look at the numbers.

The US has enough land to give every single person (man, woman, child - not household) almost 7 acres of land.

The idea that we need pack ourselves in to <1% of the land mass in dense urban cores or else, as you put it we can't live "meaningful lives" (do you decide what's meaningful?) or "destroying nature" is just wrong.

And the best part? We can afford it! We don't need the federal government backing "jumbo" leans for $1M apartments in San Francisco - instead they can back mortgages for 5 homes in the mid-West.

And this is a big shocker - a lot of it's already developed because we need places to grow food!

How do you economically electrify all those those evenly-spaced 7-acre plots of land? How do you build roads to all of them? How do you deliver mail to all of them? How do you get water and sewer lines to all of them (wells don't work everywhere, and septic tanks pollute and just generally suck)? Hell, what company is going to lay down fiber or even coax to all of them? How do you build grocery stores such that people don't have to drive 90 minutes to get one, but there aren't so few customers per store that most of the produce spoils before it can be bought?

I know you're exaggerating for effect, but every degree that you spread people out means greater and greater investments in infrastructure and utilities you need to build and maintain, and some things we take for granted today just become infeasible.

And I agree that it's ridiculous to pay $1,000 per square foot (or more!) for housing in San Francisco. But that's not because of some sort of natural consequence of things, it's actually because it's not dense enough, and the political will to force more building just isn't there. Housing is so expensive here because, despite all the bad things about the city, despite the alleged COVID exodus, we still have far far more people who want to live here than the available housing can support.

Wow you really hate nature huh?

Like sure the space exists (ignoring the fact that most of that land is inhospitable and/or already used for agriculture), but maybe we should leave something for the other species?

But hey, maybe your 7 acres is at the top of the Sierra and you can get some good fire insurance.

Who pays for the infrastructure to connect all of these places?

Usually the developers of the subdivision? Hence the buyers of the property?

I take you’ve never asked utilities the costs for hook ups? They are happy to give you a quote.

It’s sure not the taxpayers the next town over paying $50,000 for a sewer hookup.

Why, the taxpayer does.

For what it’s worth I have 0 aspiration to fly private and also 0 aspiration for a suburban McMansion.

Even well planned Urban cities provide very different opportunities to the rural situation. You can't go casually hiking or mountain biking or camping in the afternoon after school

Dense cities can offer this too when there's not much in the way of suburban sprawl.

One thing I miss since moving to San Francisco from the UK is now I need a car to access nature. There was something very pleasant about taking a train to the edge of the city to go on a hike and ending up at a pub for a few beers before taking the train home again.

In Oslo in the winter you'd see people with cross country skis on the metro since the forest trails at the edge of town were easily accessible.

You absolutely can. Especially hiking (even living in Paris of all cities, you have two dozen trails you can get to by train). Mountain biking idk because I'm more of a sea guy, but i was doing a lot of river kayak after work in my previous city, and now I'm windsurfing a lot.

I live in very central Berlin, and regularly go 'mountain' biking after work. You can ride from the city to endless forests in like 30 minutes in relative safety. There's also a huge amount of green space in the city itself.

I'm glad you put "mountain" in quotes, because we sure as hell don't have anything which counts as a mountain in this town - and no, that tiny hill in Humbolthain where the nazis built anti-air guns doesn't count.

I can take a train from where I live in Tokyo and be doing any of those things within an hour.

Define "Urban city"?

I live in the center of a 1M+ city and went for a 1.5 hour bush hike 15 minutes drive from my house.

A 12–year–old can’t drive 15 minutes out of the city after school in order to go hiking. In a rural area the fields, farms, woods, streams, ponds, and other such attractions are all right within a few minutes walking distance. Indeed, that kid probably has to bike right past all of those things in order to get to his friend’s house to play Contra. Even in a suburban area some of those things might still be reasonably close by.

When people talk about how wonderful it is to live in a dense, walkable city, they are thinking about all the nightclubs they can go to, the bars, the restaurants, art galleries, libraries, etc all within a few minute’s walk. But that’s not everyone’s vision of an ideal living environment.

Folks who move to a suburb want more stability, less noise, fewer people, more open space, nice lawns, a pool in the back yard, a deck to sit on in the summer while you watch the kids swim, etc. They don’t want a nightclub on every block. Even a convenience store would not be very well regarded (especially if it’s really a gas station that also sells candy bars; Japanese–style stores that are part of the owner’s house would actually fit much better).

I don’t know much about what folks living in very rural areas like, but some of my relatives who live in a quasi–rural area value the fact that nobody in the area mows their lawns. Instead the local farmers bring their tractors over once or twice a year to harvest the grass out of everyone’s back yards to make hay.

> When people talk about how wonderful it is to live in a dense, walkable city, they are thinking about all the nightclubs they can go to, the bars, the restaurants, art galleries, libraries, etc all within a few minute’s walk.

Sort of, but that's not all of it. I like that there's a corner store a half block away, and a small but well-stocked grocery two blocks away. There's a hardware store four blocks away. There's a park four blocks away, and another six blocks away. I can go for a six mile run without having to drive myself to a gym (and my partner can walk to her gym). My partner walks a couple blocks to get her nails done or hair cut. If I need to see my doctor, I walk 20 minutes to get there. Sure, I have to drive sometimes, but it's rare.

I wish there was a way to get the best of both worlds. I do have to drive to go on a hike or find a forest to wander around in. I don't feel safe cycling in many parts of my city. As I get older, I go to bars less and less, and nightclubs pretty much never. I cook at home more often. I get annoyed rather than smile knowingly if I hear a pair of happy-drunk people walking home from a bar at 2am on a Friday night when my windows are open and I'm trying to sleep. But damn, I love being able to walk everywhere to get normal everyday things done. I hate driving for simple things; it just adds so much overhead to everything.

Not trying to say dense urban living is objectively better, just trying to point out that "I like walkability" doesn't merely mean "I like bars and restaurants and clubs". I agree that my particular city might not be a great place for kids to grow up, though, frankly, I don't see many kids out and about on the occasion that I need to drive into a residential area of a suburb, so I feel like in general it's just not the same as when I was a kid in the suburbs.

I would also like to see suburbs become more walkable and abandon the strip mall concepts. I would like to see more, smaller grocery stores and other commercial intermixed amid residential areas.

But I personally feel trapped in a dense urban environment. Going out to restaurants and bars and shows are neat experiences, but they aren’t fulfilling for me never mind the enormous expense of it all. I would rather live where I have access to nature and visit the city for its attractions on a weekend when the mood strikes. I want a house that my wife and I own and can do projects in without worrying about the condo association rules or disrupting my neighbors. I want at least a little bit of yard so my elderly dog can lay in the grass off-leash. I want less crime, a saner politics, and a local government that isn’t so dysfunctional. I really think a little bit of space is good for the soul, but I also think the American model of suburbs can be improved to get more of the benefits of urban life.

i live in a rural one-stoplight town and all of those things are the same distance if not closer. even if i lived in an outlying suburb none would be more than 15 min away or maybe 30-45 min on a bike. 'nature' is about a 90 seconds walk from my doorstep. there certainly isn't much of a nightlife though.

it feels like the whole NIMBY/YIMBY dichotomy loses sight of the fact there are other development models besides midtown manhattan or the exurbs of tuscon.

My city had more dog parks than kid parks. As the lone parent raising a kid in the city when I can make it to the city planning meetings I’m usually drowned out by the dog park “lobby”.

Living in the city is great; access to museums, art, culture, food, and transit is tops.

Like most cities, yours has pushed out parents and the concerns of kids.

Suburbs are more welcoming to kids in general because here we have more parks for kids than dogs. Here we don't have museums - but we don't miss them because we know from experience our kids can only stand being in one for about 10 minutes before they start doing that will get us kicked out if we don't leave first. A good portion of your art not kid friendly. Culture is everywhere, we don't get the "high culture" of the cities, but we have our own culture that works for us. We do a lot more cooking at home as we can't afford eating out as much, but I will grant when we do go out there is a lack of choices. All you really have that we would even use is much better transit.

It doesn't have to be that way. I'm told NYC is still welcoming to kids. Most cities though are not places where they have things for family.

> Here we don't have museums - but we don't miss them because we know from experience our kids can only stand being in one for about 10 minutes before they start doing that will get us kicked out if we don't leave first. A good portion of your art not kid friendly.

As a kid, I loved going to the natural history museum and the science museum. There's plenty of museums that caters to kids and that are really great with kids (not sure in the US to be honest but at least that's true in Europe). Museums doesn't mean art only.

Likewise for theater plays, that's the kind of things that are only available in bigger cities but can be tons of fun with kids.

We have kids museums in the US too. As a new parent I just discovered 2 nearby that have been here for decades. They have old donated vehicles like a police car, city bus, ambulances, or science stations, things like that. Things like plays exist, but it rural places they tend to be limited productions, either school or a traveling group. It may not make financial sense to have a play offered 6 nights/week all year in a small town, but a couple weekends throughout the year is common.

Tiny $1MM apartments aren't the alternative to SFZ.

Be careful though. Until we fill all the demand of people who can afford to pay for those $1MM apartments nobody will be building cheaper stuff. That there is demand for tiny apartments says we have a problem with supply.

I totally relate to this. I once had to stay in suburbia with far apart houses (Dallas). Nowhere to go without driving. It was very very lonely (I was single, to boot).

I went on a business trip to NY, and I immediately felt alive. The 'energy' of people even though you don't know any of them, seeing so many faces, late night hustle & bustle - all very invigorating.

Oh plenty of us figured out how to get out and have fun/cause trouble.

> only being able to go where my parents take me and finally growing into driving age so that I can go from parking lot to parking lot.

Part of this is because we hover over kids and let them do less. I'm from middle America, and when my dad was a kid, he and his friends would bike 100 miles round trip and it was fine.

Yeah it's isolating, though the internet was an incredible improvement in access to new information and interesting/smart people to learn from. There are major benefits to being in or at least close to a more populated hub.

this describes my childhood. I was growing up in a bigger city, and then moved to the suburbs when I was a teenager, it was horrible. Growing up with the autonomy of a big city kid, I couldn't handle the dependencies, only relieved when I had my own car. Now I frantically hold on to my big city life, even we live in a very dense place with ridiculous rent.

Plenty of middle America is not like that at all. We also have these things called bikes that work really well in small towns.

This is an American problem because they built suburbia around the car.

Village life you see in Europe is a world apart.

God forbid that kids have yards and empty lots to play in, ponds to go fishing in, and the woods to go hunting in. I could tolerate New York as an adult. I'd rather jump off one of those skyscrapers than live in one as a kid.

Consider that your current beliefs and preferences exist specifically because of your experience as a kid, when your brain was developing and assimilating its environment as its worldview.

I know plenty of people who grew up in NYC and have happy memories of childhood (and as an adult, I know several people raising kids in NYC, and they seem fine). I grew up in the suburbs and have happy memories of a lot of the things people are praising here. But my mom also took my sister and me on the 45-minute bus ride to the city a few times a year, and that was a different kind of adventure. Ditto for tagging along on my dad's business trips to Baltimore and DC.

Neither is better, neither is right or wrong. They're just different, and we establish many of our preferences and attitudes toward things based on our experiences as kids. That doesn't make those preferences correct or incorrect. It just makes them preferences.

The parent is sharing his preference in response to the grandparent’s preference. Surely turnabout is fair play?

If all you know is living in a cage, and you're told that being out of the cage is a bad thing, then you're going to make a value decision that being caged is actually okay. Just look at all the people on HN who can't believe that there are people who don't want to be stacked on top of other people in tiny, expensive caves. Making trips to the city isn't the same as living in one.

The growing up part was good. As a late teen, not being able to get to anyplace that mattered was maximally soul crushing, yes. The sole source of my suffering for several years.

Weird, that's the same feeling most people have had watching you guys handle COVID.

Ah yes, let's compare the 98% case with the 2% case as if they're the same thing.

You think living in New York under COVID lockdown is like normal living in the midwest?