[qwerta]

I have City associated mostly with high cost of living and lower life standard. In City I would probably spend 60+ hours/week in office and on commute just to break even.

Outside of City a can have big house for my family, spend 3+ hours/day on my hobbies. And even make enough savings for 1 year runway for my startup :-)

[dominotw]

What about the environment? What about thousands of people getting killed by our government to acquire energy sources to fuel your house in the burbs?

[qwerta]

You are barking at wrong person. I live in Ireland and drive 15 years old car. Also I doubt that large cities are powered by sunshine and rainbow.

[dominotw]

I am 'barking' at the person who chooses to live in the burbs. I dont care where you live or what car you drive. Has nothing to do with you.

[qwerta]

I still do not get how is large house at suburb related to environment.

[dagw]

Living in a large house in the suburbs has a far greater environmental impact than living in an apartment in a city by basically any metric you care to measure.

[rsl7]

except that cities are incredible, giant islands of heat.

[dominotw]

Sorry, I thought this was common knowledge.

Doesnt large house take more energy to heat? Don't people in the burbs drive more? Just google for 'suburbs environmental impact' you'll get thousands of hits/studies

http://www.nbwctp.org/resources/the_environmental_impact_of_... " if you want to be good to the environment, stay away from it. Move to high-rise apartments surrounded by plenty of concrete. Americans who settle in leafy, low-density suburbs will leave a significantly deeper carbon footprint, it turns out, than Americans who live cheek by jowl in urban towers."

[qwerta]

I still do not think it is true. Money saved on housing and energies would be spend different way (new cars, holidays..).

Prague is like that, most people live at concrete apartments. But they also drive to summer house every weekend and go to holiday four times a year.

[HarryHirsch]

I don't see why this is being downvoted. The lack of urban development policy in the US is a problem. It's not natural that most city centers are hollowed-out, crime infested and surrounded by outer-ring suburbs without sidewalks and with gigantic setbacks to the road.

Phoenix, AZ is an abomination. Don't even get me started about golfing ranges in the Western desert while Lakes Mead and Havasu are running dry.

[KevinEldon]

This made me smile. Why stop with the the man made golf courses; why not raise questions about allowing cities to expand to require monstrous man made dams blocking rivers to create lakes like Mead and Havasu (if you're not familiar w/ the environmental loss that is the Hetch Hetchy reservoir it's worth looking into). I get the economic benefits of damming up rivers for power, predictable water supplies, and flood control... it fuels economies which helps people earn more (I benefited from TVA and have read about what it was like in the Tennessee valley before TVA; I'm glad TVA exists even w/ all of its flaws)... but I still found it amusing that you picked one specific sign of the success of these programs to complain about.

[cm2012]

Just curious - do you ever fly? The environmental cost of flights tends to dwarf living costs in most calculators.

[dominotw]

why the downvotes?

[bane]

because your comments are off-topic, ignorant, demeaning and churlish

[dominotw]

Ignorant how?

[saosebastiao]

Because all you know about him is that he has a house big enough for his family and that he lives in the suburbs. Just because the suburbs vs city has a trend for energy use doesnt mean that he uses more energy than you or even the average city dweller. For all you know, his abode could be 100% solar power and his commute is to his back yard shop where he is pioneering new cellulosic ethanol production methods.

[qwerta]

The funny part is that I do not even live at suborbs, I wrote outside of city. I live in small town (4000 people) on west coast of Ireland. The closest city is Dublin 120 miles away. I work from home (zero commute) and I hope my startup will reduce power used by data-centres by a few percents.