this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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As I always say in posts about this topic: Living in a walkable city is nice. I can just walk outside and get groceries. No traffic. No fuel costs. No insurance. No maintenance. No parking. I just walk down the street and get stuff. If there's a lot of stuff I need, I bring a cart, but I almost never need to do that.
This is so true! I was telling my family about that a few years ago when I was living in a semi-walkable place, and then they started grilling me about how long it takes me to do things. I had to concede that it does take longer to walk in some cases than drive, BUT the travel to and from is actually nice, and I look forward to the walk as time for looking around and enjoying my time. They didn't understand, but they also will get in their car to drive a mile, so...
It's also a lot easier to stop and do something fun when you're walking. Pop in a new shop, take a detour through a park, whatever. Usually when you're driving you're going too fast to really take in what's around, and stopping is often a whole ordeal of finding parking.
"Death and Life of Great American Cities" talked about this. It's old, but still an interesting read.
or to “damn i forgot something” and just… walk on back to get it without it being a big deal
Most of the places that I've looked at that are walkable are a lot more expensive to live. Unfortunately, I think this is a luxury that a lot of people do not have the means to access.
This is probably true for a lot of places. I've mostly lived in the NYC area so I don't know what the costs and expenses are elsewhere very well.
You can get a 1BR apartment in Brooklyn for $2k/mo. That's more expensive than some of my friends that live elsewhere pay, but cars are expensive so the actual cost is offset.
Personally I think the government should be subsidizing urban living. Suburbanization was a mistake. It's so isolating. We should have more public housing.
Suburbia hell checking in. We have a family of four and our 3 bed 1.75 bath (shower stall vs full bath) with mortgage, taxes, and insurance is less than $1,250/mo on a 30 year mortgage. It is modest in terms of square footage, but is well maintained and has a full basement and a green space for the kids to run. We tend to buy 2-3 year old cars and then drive them into the ground. The nice thing with the house is that our monthly payment is basically fixed until it's paid off since tax increases are capped at 2% per year. The downside to a house is being on the hook for all the maintenance.
We're considering moving and I'm very curious to try to game out what the actual financials of moving somewhere like NYC or Philly would be. Salaries would likely go up some, rent would likely go up significantly, no cars, and the tradeoffs between owning and renting. Anything else you would point at?
I was always jealous of the kids that grew up in the city. They could do stuff. Where I lived, it wasn't really safe to travel on foot because there were no sidewalks, and everything was far away. They'd tell me about how they went ice skating , or to a board game cafe, or to the beach, and I'd be like cool i was stuck inside alone. I don't know if you can put a price tag on this exactly, but for me this would have been priceless.
One of my former coworkers was in NJ, and he spent a lot of time driving his kid places. He missed out on social +/or work events and his kid missed out on autonomy. Also doesn't have a clear price tag, but I think it's valuable.
It is also possible to buy a home in the city. Some people I know bought their apartment. They seemed happy with it, but we never discussed financial details.
I spent 15 years living in central NJ and there really isn't much to do there, especially during the winter when you can't do outdoors things.
We're currently living in SE MI and the Detroit Metro has so much more to do. Yeah, it's not the absolute best but we have a great art museum, a zoo, tons of outdoor parks, and a number of medium sized museums. Relatively cheap land and taxes means there are plenty of commercial places to take the kids to for indoor play. Between these and the museums we keep the kids busy during the winter. Every "town" in the Metro has an annual event, so when it's warm out theres basically one every weekend. Tons of art and music festivals, along with car shows.
NYC and Philly have nicer museums, and more cultural attractions, but I suspect they don't have as many indoor play type things. I also have no idea about the school situation. Thankfully, our public schools are pretty good here.
I didn't realize you could own apartments, but I guess that makes sense. I doubt it would be cheap, but it's good to know it's an option.
It's definitely true. There are so few places that are really walkable in the US and the demand is quite high... once you live that way, it's hard to go back.
We really need to build more walkable areas, but it's difficult for a lot of (mostly-nonsensical) reasons.
The only thing to keep in mind, however, is that the math changes significantly when you remove cars from the equation. Our rent is higher than somewhere less walkable, but it's also roughly equivalent to the full price of owning two cars. So comparatively, we save a bunch of money despite higher rent.