[goodJobWalrus]

> The US is over 10 times larger than the UK. Guess what, tons of land leads to different expectations.

I'm not sure it's just that, it's also I think, that Americans find it acceptable to live in suburbs. If everyone tried to live in the city centers (like they do in nyc or SF), small places would also be the norm.

[douche]

Why would you want to live in a city center, when you could have 40 acres of good land in the country for the same money, or less?

Suburbs are a compromise, where you get a little of column A (room enough for decent living) and a little column B (urban wages and access to capital), which equals a lot of column C (long, shitty commutes).

[goodJobWalrus]

> Why would you want to live in a city center

Well, one reason would be:

> long, shitty commutes

another is that some people prefer urban life.

I bet you'd be surprised to hear that in some countries people actually prefer to live in apartments to houses.When I ask why, they often state the fact that it is much less work to upkeep an apartment, so I guess that would be another reason. I personally understand why would some kid from the midwestern suburbs want to live in nyc, even if it means a much lower standard of living.

But in reality I think it really is purely cultural, people prefer what people like them around them prefer. People in the US were living in the cities as well before the "white flight", so at some point, urban middle class families were also the norm.

[Turing_Machine]

"I bet you'd be surprised to hear that in some countries people actually prefer to live in apartments to houses."

One sniff test for the credibility of this is to look at what rich people do.

No matter where you go, the wealthy tend to have large country estates. Sure, they may have a luxury apartment in town as well, but where do they spend their leisure time? Bingo.

[goodJobWalrus]

I wasn't referring to rich people. They have a whole different set of requirements. Also, they typically don't have to clean their own mansion, of take care of the pesky chores around the house.

[goodJobWalrus]

> Someone who is forced to live in a tiny apartment because they can't afford anything better isn't really making a free choice, even if they rationalize it by claiming that it is.

Of course, but I wasn't referring to those people. I was talking about the people who prefer to live in apartments, like, for example, my parents who moved from a house (that was actually in a great location) to an apartment by choice (in a worse location, and some years after that in another apt in a better location). Now they live in a house again (not by choice), but keep their city apartment. And my mom keeps telling me how she hates the house, and can't wait to move back to the city apartment :)

and she even has a housekeeper so it's not like she has to do the whole work around the house by herself. This is why I say it's really deeply culturally embedded. You are not able to step out of your cultural conditioning and imagine that there are people who really truly prefer to live in apartment.

[Turing_Machine]

You're talking about specific people (your parents). I'm talking about society as a whole. Are there people who prefer living in an apartment? Sure, but most people, regardless of "cultural conditioning", will choose a large country dwelling over a small city apartment if they have the resources to do so. This is true everywhere, in every society and culture, and across all of known history.

[nilkn]

He's using rich people as an example because in order to draw any inferences here you have to have a large sample set of people who could conceivably live in either a large house or an apartment, with no financial difficulties either way. Rich people are the simplest sample set to look at which trivially satisfies these criteria.

His basic point is that if your sample set consists of people who don't actually have the choice of buying a large home, then that's a major confounding variable whose influence you cannot reliably determine on the results. Beyond that, the sample set also must be large enough for it to not be anecdata. A single couple doesn't imply much about societal trends at large, but the behavior of an entire class of people -- the wealthy -- does, to at least some degree.

[Turing_Machine]

Well, they're the ones who are free to choose anything.

Someone who is forced to live in a tiny apartment because they can't afford anything better isn't really making a free choice, even if they rationalize it by claiming that it is.

[douche]

I think it is illuminating that you refer to "pesky chores around the house." I'll acknowledge that I'm a weirdo, in that I consider my current living situation inferior due to its lack of opportunity for meaningful manual labor.

If I won Powerball tomorrow, I'd tell my boss I could either work 99% remote, or he could try to find someone else to take over. Then I would go home, and be a somewhat more comfortable version of the subsistence farmers my great-grandparents were. Sawing and splitting firewood would be an excellent break from debugging ASP.NET applications, and hilling potatoes would be a great distraction from fighting with upgraded Windows installer tooling. I would never have to bag up another dog turd. I'd have free, non-chlorinated, decent-tasting water. I could plink at tin cans in my back yard without violating any town ordinances, scaring the neighbors, or having the police called on me. I could see the stars at night without the baleful day-glo glare of halogen streetlights polluting the sky.

I am hopeful that this utopia might be achievable within a foreseeable timescale, sans massive lottery-related cash infusion. Much more hopeful than I am about the possibility of an urban environment that could possibly meet my requirements for livability.

[serge2k]

> it's also I think, that Americans find it acceptable to live in suburbs

Guess what, tons of land leads to different expectations