Well, yes. See above about the urbanism death spiral. Large cities suck the life away from smaller cities.
This is the direct consequence of allowing dense housing, and it's made _worse_ by allowing abominations like SROs or "microapartments". And then bunk beds (already happening in Singapore).
The correct action here is to STOP doing this. Prohibit building dense housing and, more importantly, dense office space. Provide tax incentives for remote work and for offices outside of city cores. Ideally, start un-densifying cities by creating more park spaces in place of dense housing.
How the fuck would de-densifying cities help with housing costs? The denser housing is, the cheaper it is per unit.
Also, remote work doesn't work like that. You, yes YOU, rely on actual real people to do stuff for your community to make your life worth living.
That means construction, food service, sanitation, etc. Already, this type of work is not very viable in suburban or rural areas because they're too inefficient. Many rural areas are essentially subsidized by the cities around them - they couldn't afford to have roads or electricity otherwise.
If everyone is spread out everywhere, how do you provide them with the stuff they need in an economically viable way? That's the entire reason urbanism exists!
> How the fuck would de-densifying cities help with housing costs?
That's the reality. The _only_ way to make housing less expensive is to reduce the dense population. Examples abound: Austin, Denver, etc.
> The denser housing is, the cheaper it is per unit.
Nope. The denser the housing, the MORE EXPENSIVE it gets. Even on a per-unit basis. That's why we have this drive to allow SROs. It'll push prices of all housing even higher.
> Also, remote work doesn't work like that. You, yes YOU, rely on actual real people to do stuff for your community to make your life worth living.
_Most_ of the modern post-industrial work is divided into two areas:
1. Office work. Can just as well be WFH.
2. In-person services (restaurants, childcare, hospitals, etc.). They work _better_ in suburban areas. That food truck owner in Manhattan can't afford to live there, so they likely spend hours every day to commute. In a suburban area, they can afford to buy/rent a house nearby.
There are some areas that will require specialized communities around them, like universities or large hospital centers. But they for sure don't need 4 million people monstrosities like NYC.
> Many rural areas are essentially subsidized by the cities around them - they couldn't afford to have roads or electricity otherwise.
It's vice versa. Most of the economic value in the US is created by people living in suburbia. This is easy to see if you look at personal income tax stats.
Cities receive the majority of _corporate_ taxes because corporation HQs are located in cities (duh).
> That means construction, food service, sanitation, etc.
Construction, food service, sanitation and so on are _cheaper_ to do in suburban areas. Why? Because of the planning overhead. Materials cost less than planning.
If you want to change a sewer main in Manhattan, you'll spend several years getting all the permits, creating temporary infrastructure to pump the sewage while you're working, then spending several months carefully digging through the streets to avoid severing unmarked pipes carrying who-knows-what.
In a suburban area, you just ask nearby houses to temporarily live in a hotel for a week, do the dig, and you're done. Even if you need more raw material, you end up spending less.
This is not a theory, btw. There's a study that shows that the city efficiency peaks at around 300k people.
> Construction, food service, sanitation and so on are _cheaper_ to do in suburban areas. Why? Because of the planning overhead. Materials cost less than planning.
> They work _better_ in suburban areas. That food truck owner in Manhattan can't afford to live there, so they likely spend hours every day to commute. In a suburban area, they can afford to buy/rent a house nearby.
> This is not a theory, btw
You're right, it's not a theory, it's literally just wrong. Like, obviously so.
The idea that people in the suburbs commute less is patently insane. It's just so obviously not true that I legitimately cannot believe someone could think this. Have you lived anywhere, ever, for any period of time?
The more rural the area you are in, the longer your commute will be, because where you live has no economic activity. So you have to drive somewhere that does.
Consider sanitation: why don't we have this in the suburbs? Because turning 1 sanitation facility into 100 distributed sanitation facilities across 100x more land, all while servicing the SAME AMOUNT OF PEOPLE, is insane. So we don't do that. So then you drive.
It is indisputable that density brings efficiency. From computer chips, to transit, to cities.
> If you want to change a sewer main in Manhattan, you'll spend several years getting all the permits, creating temporary infrastructure to pump the sewage while you're working, then spending several months carefully digging through the streets to avoid severing unmarked pipes carrying who-knows-what.
Okay, this is a perfect demonstration.
If you change 1 mile of sewer in Manhattan, you've serviced 100,000 people. If you change 1 mile of sewer in the suburbs, you've serviced 100 people. Are you seeing the problem?
Yes, there is obviously more friction to getting stuff done, but the amount of stuff you need to get done to impact the same people is orders of magnitude less. The cost ends up being much, much, much lower. This only works if you're comparing like and like though.
A lot of people will compare dense areas to the suburbs and they won't compare the same amount of people. Yeah, that's cheating. NYC has about as many people as north Texas. When you put it that way, then it seems clear that the efficiency of NYC is orders of magnitude higher than your average suburban hellscape.
> You're right, it's not a theory, it's literally just wrong. Like, obviously so.
OK. You're throwing around words like "obviously" without obviously bothering to check them. The commute time for large cities is longer.
The average commute time is less for small cities and suburbs.
Moreover, the average US commute for small cities (22 minutes according to the ACS) is faster than in ANY large US or European city. In particular, commute time in NYC is 37 minutes.
> Consider sanitation: why don't we have this in the suburbs?
Just sigh.
> Yes, there is obviously more friction to getting stuff done, but the amount of stuff you need to get done to impact the same people is orders of magnitude less. The cost ends up being much, much, much lower. This only works if you're comparing like and like though.
Have you ever deigned to actually verify your claims? Just to give you a hint, building a mile of subway in NYC now costs more than 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway.
You clearly have never actually looked into the subject in question, and you're just repeating whatever sounds right.
