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by eropple 856 days ago
How far do you have to drive to go to a supermarket from that development? To a library? (Silly me, expecting people to go to a library in 2024, right?)

If Dallas or Houston or Austin had decent mass transit out to those areas that'd be one thing, but they wouldn't be very "mass", and therein lies one of the problems. Car culture increases isolation and generally shits up the world ever further; somewhere like a YOLO development in the suburbs to exurbs is deleterious to human flourishing and saying "well just buy something where you need a car for everything", as opposed to like the one-off Home Depot run or something, is just trading problems.
3 comments
jf22 856 days ago
Yes, but the houses farther out are affordable because they lack those amenities.

The same narrative plays out over and over again. "I can't afford a house with an easy drive to a supermarket and library, and I want to be carless."

Well yeah, so does everybody else, which is why that type of housing is expensive.

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eropple 856 days ago
Yes, of course! And it's reasonable to think that living in both modest precarity and isolation is worse than living in somewhat more severe precarity; "affordable" places to live are inferior goods!

The problem, fundamentally, is that we, collectively and as a country, need to create more good places, rather than to exile people to the bad but affordable ones. We need a concerted effort to have strong towns and to put cars at the edge and not the center of those towns in order to have a healthy community future, and just sneering that you can buy a house in the hinterlands is both non-responsive and cruel to boot.

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jf22 856 days ago
I agree with you. However, the discussion about housing is normally around how it's worse now than it was in the past, and these types of dynamics have existed for a long time.
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eropple 856 days ago
It absolutely is worse than it has been in the "good places", though. Because we have more people, but not more good places.
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mlrtime 856 days ago
Just looked it up because I was curious. Mortgage + Real Estate tax is right at 1800/month. 4 Bed / 2 Bath, new construction. Kroger is 3 miles away with a "cash and go" type place even closer, so about 8 min by car, 20 min by bike.

Point remains, that there is plenty of affordable housing in the US. It's just not where people want to live, thus supply/demand.

No amount of "fuckcars" ideology will matter here, some people actually prefer driving. I know I do, I don't want to be stuck in a subway or bus.

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giantg2 856 days ago
"How far do you have to drive to go to a supermarket from that development?"

That's the system - resource scarcity and preference. If you live in a densely populated area, prices tend to be higher because real estate is constrained. Zoning won't fix all of that because many people have a preference for SFH, larger sizes, etc. You end up with options and amenities, but it will cost more due to the consolidation. Or you end up with space, needing to drive to amenities, and cheaper prices largely due to less competition.

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mlrtime 856 days ago
8 minutes by car, 19 minutes by bike for a full size grocery store.

Worse than some places with public transportation, but better than a lot.

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