Just, Devil’s Advocate.

But the whole reason we’re even having the discussion is because of the evidence that more people are remote working. So I’m assuming we’re talking about people who might have to go to their office at max two or three days a week in the extreme cases? Not sure how that will create enough of a market drain to make NYC, Boston, or San Fran living affordable?

I think the suggestion to reclaim business districts is the only rational way forward with any kind of chance of lowering prices. There just don’t seem to be enough people willing to live outside the city to bring down prices. If anything, everything points to market demand increasing pricewise.

2-3 days/week isn't daily but still qualifies as pretty frequent. From first-hand experience, I still don't want more than an hour commute. Of course, I don't need to live right in the city for that but, especially in the absence of a good commuter rail system (which those specific cities have to at least some degree), you can't move that far out.

Depends what "in a city" means. Some people might say I live in the 'burbs, but my postal address still has the city's name in it.

What city? It is probably not very dense.

I don't know if it's the city he's talking about, but by landmass, about half of San Francisco is the burbs.

I'm sincerely curious, and not disagreeing with you: what definition of suburban are you using, and which parts of San Francisco?

Areas with lots of single family homes where you're more likely to drive to go somewhere than not. Much of sunset, much of richmond, twin peaks, bayview/hunters point, lots of the places around 280 between 101 and 1.

Oh how I wish the suburbs I grew up in could have been as diverse and interesting as those SF "suburbs".

Thus my point about how ambiguous "in the city" is.

Not the person you were asking, but to me, "suburban" is not defined by density, but by how walkable an area is. Even relatively low density neighborhoods can be urban under this definition as long as residential isn't zoned far away from commercial districts and everything is within a few minutes of walking or an easy bus ride. Suburban is when having a car provides an enormous QoL boost, but isn't strictly necessary. And rural is when a car is absolutely required to survive.

These are fairly car centric definitions. But considering the car enabled the suburb in the first place, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to use it as the metric.

> But considering the car enabled the suburb in the first place, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to use it as the metric.

The first suburbs were a result of trains.

But I think the modern suburbs (in the USA) were more of a "white flight" phenomenon, enabled by cheaper construction methods and perhaps a confluence of a few other post-war trends/policies.

White flight swelled the population of suburbs but they were already substantial. I think it would be a misleading picture if you just choose one point in a continuous process and start from there.

We don't need to create the universe to bake an apple pie from scratch. I agree that a history of the suburbs might begin before WWII, but the general concept of needing to start at the beginning is a slippery slope. I'd say nearly all histories must pick an arbitrary start, mid-stream.

In that case I recommend the commuter train, which created inner-ring suburbs which still exist. Not exactly ancient history anyway.

Interesting, TIL. I still think modern suburbs are defined by their relationship to cars, not trains.

I think there is still, even now, a difference between these older, inner-ring suburbs with many people commuting to work by train (and generally smaller plots and the like) and newer outer-ring suburbs or exurbs (or just rings around newer cities) which are more car-focused from the start.

Technical "car" is short for "carriage" and trains have carriages.

Suburban is where it’s unreasonable to walk to school, the doctor or a convenience store.

Only in the US.

Wait, are you saying:

    Suburban is where it’s _reasonable_ to walk to school, the doctor or a convenience store.

If yes, then where?

Or are you scoffing at US suburbs?

Depends which part of the city.

When talking about "living in the city" one generally didn't talk about the postal address, but rather the density.

Oh. Well in that case the vast majority of Americans live in a metro area so I guess they do like the city.