Cities are great but the skyhigh cost of living isn't.

It's not just the high cost that's bad about it, it's the utterly demoralizing nature of handing over thousands of dollars a month in rent and not getting anything out of it in the long run. Is it any wonder people would want to move somewhere much cheaper and turn those thousands of dollars into equity, eventually growing enough to own their own home?

Tbh, i gave up on home ownership a long time ago.

Cities are great IF you can maintain good public infrastructure and more importantly the discipline required to maintain and prevent trouble makers.

I would love to leave the city, or move to a smaller, less expensive city, but I stay here because I grew up in a small town, and I want my children to have the opportunities that I didn't. Even with the Internet, I don't think they can truly get as many opportunities if they can't surround themselves with peers with similar interests, and I think the best place to do that is in large cities.

Opportunities to grow up and live similarly strained lives in polluted cities, scraping by to rent a tiny apartment despite having a “good” jobs?

That's a pretty bad faith reading of what I said. If my children want to move to the country after they leave home, I'm all for it. Like I said, I've experienced both, I see the values in both.

My partner and I choose cities over suburban or rural areas largely because:

- diversity (you name it, you can find it, also really important if you're at all queer)

- lots more culture (museums, subcultures, music shows, food, etc.)

- way less car dependent

- lots more opportunity and choice (employers, schools, partners, friends, etc.)

- way, way less religiosity

There are some things I envy about living in a less urban area, mainly around stuff like sustainable living. We could have a big garden, we could get a lot of energy from solar panels or drill a well, stuff like that. And yeah, pollution from cars in urban areas is pretty bad. Even so, the tradeoff isn't really close for us.

I will also say something about space. I've lived in both McMansions and shoebox Manhattan apartments (our current place in Amsterdam is ~480 sq. ft.) I don't personally miss the space at all. There are some specific things I miss, wouldn't mind a little space outside to hose things off is the big one but also it can be nice to have a place big enough you can get away from everyone, but especially in the US people think they need way, way more space than they really do.

Most things about smaller spaces are a lot better, but in particular they're a lot more sustainable. There are huge energy savings to be had by just not having as big a space to heat/cool/condition.

Your experience may differ, but I find large cities to basically resemble a collection of small cities (neighborhoods) stuck together.

I don't find myself leaving my own neighborhood often because it's a pain to do so and my neighborhood has everything I need already.

So unless you spend a lot of time doing cross city transit (which normally isn't quick and easy), the benefit of a large city over a small one is marginal imo.

I love living in the City. Only problem is high rents.

I've been thinking of moving to Vienna that has a lot of socialized housing and other housing programs to keep prices affordable.

Cities with good public infrastructure are pretty nice for young-middle aged people I would say. It's just not something that exists in America. I've been to NYC, it was not at all a city I would put on my top list of cities I'd like to live in.

I think it's better to think of what cities can be when you think of Europe, cities in Spain, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, etc. these are extremely comfortable places to live in.

New York would be good too if the government would just tax the rentier-parasites and build some social housing.

Rent controls and more section 8 housing will make it a better place?

We've tried that enough already, no?

Sure. enough to know that it works.

We need a better kind of rent control like LVT (which doesn't control rent, but disincentivizes parasitic landlords) and a better kind of public housing (like Singapore's HDB, which is self supporting).

The US does both of these really poorly and then acts surprised when they don't work.

House prices are a good proxy for where people want to live. And turns out they want to live in New York, Seattle, San Francisco. If they want more space they move to cities like Austin or Phoenix.

I moved to the boonies for my kiddo to be near his remaining family.

I miss the city very very much. Really, it's the food.

I mean, if all you like is hamburgers and bar food, yeah, the boonies are great.