West Coast baby
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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I understand what's trying to be said here but I'd pass on that.
I've lived in apartments most my life. Now that I live in a home that has a backyard, a garage, can't hear what my neighbors are saying, don't need to pay for laundry, don't need to go down an elevator to throw away garbage, and don't have to worry about people pissing in the elevator. I'm not going back to an apartment.
All those issues are not intrinsic to apartments. We can have nice apartments too. Sure, cheap ones will cut corners, but it's not required.
Based on what this meme is proposing, I can smell the urine in the elevators from here.
I think the kids are deluded and have no idea what they're missing. Density is hell. Single family homes are expensive because the vast majority of people don't want to spend the rest of their lives living in apartments.
They will figure it out when they get about to mid-30s in age
Maybe 40s-50s for some of them. Maybe never for others, but I think the only way they can idealize apartment living is lack of life experience. City living is hip and fun for young people but it gets old. Maybe we're dealing with extreme extroverts who can't bear the quiet of a green suburb, and having private space in a personal vehicle instead of being crammed on the bus or train with the general public.
Yup, it's impossible that people have different preferences and experiences than you.
Maybe I'd be less vocal about it if there wasn't a loud minority of people - I suspect mostly born after 1990 - who have these opinions largely as a result of lack of other experience. Maybe I'd be less pissed off about it if they stopped moving from huge cities to small ones and fucking up the cost of everything whilst trying to convert everywhere to NYC and Amsterdam.
I'm sick of the Zennial/euro anti-car, ultra pro-urban densification, unopposed bandwagoning online, and I feel compelled to speak up about it.
What leads you to believe that they hold these opinions due to a lack of life experience?
I've lived in a lot more places than most people, with a lot more diversity of experience. I certainly can't guarantee more experience than any random commenter, but it will be more than the vast majority. I've lived in several small towns and cities. Many suburbs. A few large cities. I've walked to work, biked to work, taken public transit to work. I've driven 10m to work and commuted 2.5h to work with a combination of trains and cars - and everything in between. I've regularly been to places where you're within sight of >20 people at all times, and places that haven't seen a human in 10 years. The vast majority of people live within 20 miles of where they were born, and less than half of gen Z adults have a driver's license. I've owned over two dozen cars and have a pilots license. I live thousands of miles from where I grew up. I have degrees, certifications, or substantial work experience in 5 different fields. I have several hobbies more substantive than many peoples careers. I know things about stuff.
And also, because many, when pressed, will admit to living in a big city, maybe in Europe, or someplace with fucked, hellish sprawl like LA that's a victim of a half century of compound growth, or some insane new construction suburb in TX or FL that was designed to enrich a real estate developer at the highest possible profit margin. Either urban hell (from my perspective) or a strawman of hellish sprawl that isn't very similar to older suburbs and the original "American dream" - not having tried much else.
Edit: in one case I was talking with someone who thought the travel distance to a normal suburban grocery store was 500% the straight line distance due to some comical maze of roads. I have to drive/walk/bike 25% further to my suburban grocery store than its straight line distance, and it's been the same in the last 4 suburbs I've lived in, in radically different places. It tells me that a lot of people don't know WTF they're talking about.
So, you've lived in a lot of different places and decided a certain type of suburban living is for you, which is cool. It just seems from your earlier comments that you believe anyone with a wide range of experiences would also prefer living in the same way as you do. Also, it seems you are willing to discount discussion out of hand because of your perception of the person on the other side instead of based on the merits of the argument. Doesn't that all seem a bit silly?
For sure. All of this is pretty silly.
Well, I mean, yes, but I'm basically trying to say that social media in it's various forms is full of armchair experts who have massive blind spots but argue passionately, and the pro-urban, "fuck cars" crowd comes off as particularly cranky in this way.
It's basically people who didn't get a driver's license, or couldn't afford a car, or lived in an urban traffic nightmare like LA trying to invalidate the personal freedom others experienced as a result of car ownership - and I'm certain it's a generational thing because boomers, Gen X and the older millennials grew up at a time when anyone could own a car, gas was cheap, and it was woven into the independence of early adulthood. You'll never convince me that it's not empowering to get 50-100 miles out of your small city and explore an unpopulated place that public transit could not service. It annoys me to no end that people on socal media hate on this without the lived experience to understand it.
Fair point.
It sounds a lot like Soviet communist block living to me, yuck
Exactly. My main reasons why I want a home instead of an apartment is the lack of space, the need to have some private space outside (i.e. a courtyard) and privacy. A lower density apartment building that has all these things could be built, but it would probably be a luxury apartment that would cost an obscene amount of money.
I can't hear my neighbors, don't need an elevator, and don't need a garage because I don't need a car. I don't have a back yard but I'm pretty close to a massive city park. This apartment is pretty okay.
Meanwhile the suburbs were just crushing isolation and cultural wasteland. And needing to drive everywhere was awful.
Other than SF. Where do you live in CA that doesn't require you to need a car?
I know you can make due. I lived without one for a long time, but it was a the biggest pain the ass not having one. Unless I only wanted to stay in my little local bubble.
Maybe I didn't read carefully. I live in New York, so I can't speak to California really.
You (or whoever) can opt to live in a cute neighborhood, I would. But you cannot opt to live in a cute neighborhood in the middle of a massive city. I think that's the key piece here.
There is a middle ground between single family housing and high density housing, it's just not less common in the US than either apartments or single family housing.
Medium density housing, duplexes, quadruplexes, and town homes.
And yeah crappy apartments with little to no sound dampening are really common. At my brother's apartment I can hear his neighbor's coffee pot turn on both outside and inside the apartment building. Shit's got tissues for walls I swear.
You could meet all of your apartment complaints with some decently designed medium density projects. I agree though that not everyone needs to live in a towering skyscraper
Good for you since you can afford it. Most people cannot. Which means you would still have your house in the suburbs somewhere, but all of these problems would be solved.
You assume I make a lot of money. I don't.
No, I assume you can afford it. There is a huge difference. Other people can't afford what you have.
You are still paying for laundry. As a homeowner the full cost of replacing and maintaining the machines is on you. You also have to pay for the electricty and the water usage.
So what? This is standard and it's perfectly acceptable for the average homeowner. It sucks a million times worse to have to go to a laundromat, I've been there and done that.
Having to share on-site laundry facilities with other residents is bad enough (especially with the BRAND NEW machines breaking down all the time). If I had to go hang out at a laundromat every couple weeks for hours, I’d be even more depressed…
I used to just put in mine and leave. Nobody stole my clothes that I know of but I'm sure it happens on occasion.
Probably depends how busy it is and the area. But yeah knowing my luck, my clothes would get thrown on the floor or something if I didn’t stay to watch it.
Question from a European: Why does living in an apartment mean you have to go to a laundromat? Do apartments in the US not have washing machines?
It's a mix of some that do and some that don't. Many apartment dwellers have a coin-operated laundry facility on the premises of the complex or nearby that they use if they don't have washing machines in their apt.
YEP. Same here. It's a world of difference, having room to do whatever you want in peace and privacy.
When I lived in apartments back in the 2000s I couldn't even leave anything of value on my porch or doorstep without fear of it being stolen. My girlfriend's bike was stolen from the 2nd floor where it was parked right in front of our apartment door. At my apartment before that a drunk stole a wooden pallet that I had on the porch. They stole fucking wood!
But out here at my rural home, I have land and a garden and we can leave our cars unlocked and bikes or whatever outdoors and nobody messes with it.
So y'all can keep all that urban density and I will stay far away from it most of the time.
I think you're making the common mistake of thinking that advocating for dense, mixed use housing means YOU can't have a single-story home. In reality, rezoning for this kind of thing makes your preferred kind of living much more attainable.
Think of it like this. You take a giant suburb of repeating box homes. Take what is a dozen homes next to the highway, and build a couple of four and five story apartments with bars and restaurants and a few grocery stores and hair salons on the first level. Now you've made a nice little main street. Put a little office space on the second levels, and suddenly there's less congestion coming and going every morning and evening, since folks don't need to take the highway to get to work. Shrink the highway to make room for a bus lane, and add a separated bike lane and nature trail to connect your little main street to the next one a few miles away, and eventually the next major metropolitan area.
The next thing you know, folks like you are still live just fine in your classic American home, but now you have places to shop within walking distance. You've got somewhere for your kids to move out to that won't put them a plane ride away from home. And you've got less competition for land. This means that you can get a bigger backyard for the same price, and if your kids want to come back one day to start a family, there are affordable starter homes and condos.
Keep it up, and next thing you know, you can commute to the office without driving and kids can walk themselves to school. You see what I'm saying? You don't have to live in the apartments to get a lot of benefits.
Shut your trap and get back to your pod!🔫