| > that suburbanites choose to live in suburban areas because they want the isolation. I don't think most of them want isolation, I strongly suspect that most people moving to suburbs are doing so for their career, as most well-paid jobs are in metropolitan areas. In a metropolitan area your options are mostly:
1) city
2) suburb w/ very little mixed-use zoning Cities tend to be more expensive for less space. There are going to be many people who would want to live in a city with their family but simply can't afford the rent, so they live on the outskirts of the city (suburbs). Alternatively they may want the space, yard, etc. that a house provides, but this doesn't mean they want isolation. They may very well prefer suburbs with good mixed-use zoning and public transit, those are just very rare in the US. > It seems that if you took suburbs away from these people I'm not proposing taking suburbs away from people, nor are the vast majority of urbanists. We're proposing more ability to build denser suburbs (i.e. some multifamily housing in suburban areas), mixed-use zoning (so you can walk to stores), and better public transit in suburbs. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing. Suburbs that have these features tend to be in high-demand, they're just rare today because they're illegal to build in many places (I think there's some commentary on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0). > they'd most likely try to move into more rural areas Unlikely IMO because again I suspect that many/most have moved to suburbs for their careers. There aren't nearly as many jobs in rural areas. > 15-minute city Anyone claiming this is bad is just being disingenuous IMO. ~Nobody promoting 15 minute cities wants to force people to live in cities, they want cities where you can meet most of your needs by walking or cycling or taking public transit. If you don't want to live in a city or want to live in a city and spend 10s of thousands of dollars on a car you still can. I don't think we can extrapolate much about what the average American wants based on those who believe that conspiracy theory, because the people who believe it are either woefully uninformed about what it actually is or are just being malicious reactionaries. |
Doubtful. Moving somewhere for a career is fairly abnormal. There is good reason why job search places always lead with: "Location". The vast majority of the population choose where the want to live first – in fact, the majority of the population still live within a small radius of where they were born! – and then figure out what they want to do for work.
Yeah, there is a small segment of the population who will chase work at the cost of where they live. Let's say this is who ends up in the suburbs. Perhaps that's the problem? As in they end up being comprised of people focused on their career, and thus don't prioritize community? Perhaps want isolation is too strong, but how about doesn't care about isolation?
> We're proposing more ability to build denser suburbs (i.e. some multifamily housing in suburban areas), mixed-use zoning (so you can walk to stores), and better public transit in suburbs.
Does that actually appeal to the people of the suburbs, or are you projecting? Presumably these people are constituents of a democratic government, and therefore can already have anything their collective hearts desire. Why isn’t this already the reality?
> Anyone claiming this is bad is just being disingenuous IMO.
Are you unfamiliar with what a conspiracy theory is...? Regardless, it resonates precisely because a lot of people don't want to live in cities. If the listener was all "Hell, ya! Get me out of this hellhole into the dense city!" it wouldn't garner any attention at all, but that's not the reality.