But why? Why should we never be able to build houses more densely than 1 house/acre? Aesthetics? And is that worth it given how insanely wasteful that'd be?
To know just how wasteful that'd be, I measure where I live, Seattle. In the area I measured, there's approximately 783000 people in an area of ~77000 acres. By my math, we'd have to bulldoze the entire city and replace it with 77000 homes, 1 per acre, and then cram 11 people into each of those houses. If we don't cram folks into those houses and instead just convert more and more land to this regime and displace everyone further and further away, we'd soon have the vast majority of just the folks who used to live within 6 miles of the downtown instead living 25+ miles from downtown and commuting 40 minutes each way.
That makes life for everyone slower, more expensive, more ecologically intensive, more isolating, and less social. I would not want to do that even if it did mean I had a bigger yard. I think many folks feel the same.
It was mostly a snarky response to an ill-justified argument, don't take it too seriously. Sorry about that.
I would personally never want to live on less than an acre, but it's none of my business what other people choose of course. I do however get annoyed by the high-density fans who always present everything other than urban living as a scourge on the world that has to go.
Suburbs -> city -> rural is a common life path for folks these days. I suspect a lot of those that make it out to the country are in for a surprise regarding amenities, socialization, and distractions/entertainment. Rural living filters out a lot of friends and family who see a one-way 30-minute drive as too long for a visit. I see that as a good thing :-)
I think Starlink and amazon delivery reach will have a bigger impact reshaping rural America than affordable housing. Granted, affordable housing is a big draw. There's so much entertainment and work available online that a solid Internet connection can make up a lot for the isolation of rural living. In fact, that isolation probably will come as a welcome relief to many people who make their living on the Internet.
My wife and I bought 20 acres in the mountains of SE Oklahoma (really just hills) at the height of the pandemic. It's a nice place to escape to for my boys and we're working on building out a cabin. We have power/water and with starlink have pretty much everything we need. My 2024 taxes on the land were literally $9.00 :)
My wife and I tried that, but we did not find that there was any amount of anything available online which could make up for the boredom and loneliness of rural life. We left our affordable house in the sticks behind and moved back to expensive ol' Seattle, where we have friends, things to do, places you can go without having to drive there, and a much better life overall. We'll never go back.
I did enjoy building an elaborate treehouse while we were out there. We still fantasize about building (or maybe just buying) a cabin in the woods, or out on one of the islands. But it's one thing to have a place you can escape to when you feel like it, and quite another to be stuck there all the time.
No question about it; we did all of those things! We took up new indoor hobbies, too; I learned to bake bread, and my wife made tile mosaics. The life was not without its charms. No matter how busy we kept ourselves, though, it was lonely, and the feeling that I was perpetually just killing time, waiting for something to happen, grew hard to bear.
yeah my wife really wants to move there but i grew up in the country/sticks and understand the implications. We're considering it a retirement backup plan. like if our finances fall apart or something at least we can go there and huddle together in the cabin heh.
It amazed me how people would say we could not afford $3000 a head to run optic fiber to rural homes ($5 a month for the 50 year lifespan of the fiber) but instead we're supposed to dogpile in coastal cities where it costs upwards of $500k to build a modes housing unit.
I don't think that this level of isolation is good for most people though obviously I will not speak for you. I am a part of several in person communities that cannot be replaced by fast internet.
Late to your comment but, yes, it will. I love telling people about it because it’s so crazy to me. I keep the bill on my desk when I need a smile haha.
One interesting thing about SE Oklahoma is the way people make deals with each other that don’t involve money. Idk if it comes from the majority of the state being Native American but there are handshake/barter deals all over the place. People seem reluctant to bring money to the deal, it’s always “I’ll do this for you if you can do that for me” type setups.
> she said. “I’ve had 27 years of it, so I can’t really complain, but it has become very precious to me now.”
This is exactly it, people want what she wanted and she has to share the community and her builder husband shares in the success. Making productive use of under-utilized land is exactly how civilization works.
Does anywhere in America subsidize the cost of tearing down low density housing for the sake of building high density. It feels like property developers are more incentivesed to expand outward rather then upward
i think it depends on the area. I live in an area just South of downtown Dallas TX called Oakcliff. There's a really popular neighborhood about a mile from me called Bishop Arts. Over the last 5 years or so many blocks of 20 or so homes have been bought, demolished, and replaced with really gigantic apartment complexes. i guess that's good for density, sucks to be the people/community that already lived there though.
You're right and your post sounds like you know the area. I went to HS in Collinsville (class of 1995) which is about 15-20 minutes west of Celina/Gunter and hasn't seen anywhere near the level of growth of other towns. I understand how long term residents are probably experiencing culture shock as the rate of growth is just unreal in some of those areas. A neighborhood at any density popping up in Celina would be a shock to anyone who grew up there. Another even more extreme example is Prosper TX which is south of Celina about 15 miles or so. When we played them in basketball Prosper still had the confederate flag painted in the middle of the gym floor.
> That's true. But I bet even more people are cooking, eating tofu, or masala.
On the other hand, that rural grocery store is probably chock full of specialty items that are hard to get where those heavy tofu-eaters live, like cheese.
Different places have different cuisines, which means their grocery stores stock different stuff.
True. But people don't like downgrading their standard of living and they really don't like being gaslit into being told what's worse is actually "better" or merely "different"
They're still an hour from Dallas, I wouldn't mind doing one trip every weekend to stock on all the other random stuff you need. It would be kind of fun, tbh.
same. i live very rural and my urbanite co-workers are literally mystified when they hear i don't have doordash or uber eats delivery (we get some credits for team lunch). like "how do you eat?" level of questioning.
So long as population is growing, we'll trade farmland for housing. It's not popular to say that we have multiples of the necessary population to ensure humanity's continuation.
Shrinking birthrates aside, we have undeveloped land near population centers - but it tends to be dominated by counterdevelopment mindsets (NIMBY, onerous zoning).
shrinking population means no continually growing economy and explodes our pension/ social security systems, so it's necessarily unpopular. you'd need some revamps to the economy first.
of course having a lot of kids is also not that popular in the West, so.
having kids is not popular anywhere rich and modern enough.
the only OECD country with fertility rate above 2.1 is Israel and that's mostly because they have a highly fertile minority that eschews much of modern life.
>> shrinking population means no continually growing economy
"The U.S. Census Bureau today released July 1, 2024, population estimates for the nation and states. The U.S. population reached 340.1 million, up 0.98% from 336.8 million on July 1, 2023 — the highest year-over-year increase since a jump of 0.99% between 2000 and 2001."
> of course having a lot of kids is also not that popular in the West, so.
A twenty-fold increase in parenting time (from my parents' generation) + our modern 4 income economy = no clear path for typical_income couples to start families.
“Howdy young fellas, please work hard to support the pensions of my NIMBY generation! Maybe if you work hard you also get to have a house once you reach the retirement age :-)”
I'm not sure pensions/social security systems would be infeasible without a growing population. When they operate by having the payments into the system from current workers pay for the benefits of retired workers then yes, you may need a continually growing workforce to keep them going.
But if the payments in by workers were put into a fund that invested conservatively with the goal of just keeping up with inflation, that could be sufficient to grow enough to pay for their benefits when they retire.
I recently calculated if such a system would have worked with my US Social Security (SS) taxes. At ssa.gov you can download a record of all your reported earnings by year.
They also have tables for converting amounts from past years to current dollars. I believe the conversion is based on income percentiles rather than inflation, but from what I've been able to tell those are reasonable close to each other.
For example I see that in 1986 I earned exactly $42 000. In today's wages that would be $161 537. From another table at ssa.gov I see that in 1986 they would have withheld 5.7% of my pay for SS, and my employer would have also paid 5.7%, so that is $4 788 contributed to SS, which in today's dollars $18 415.
If all of that was just put in an account somewhere that earned just enough to just keep up with inflation it would have enough that if I retired next year it could pay my monthly SS benefit for 16 years. The life expectancy of a US male at the age I will be next year is 18 years, so that's pretty close.
I did another calculation where I assumed that my monthly SS contributions went into a fund that each month earned interest at a rate that matched the current T-bill rate. That turned out to not earn as much, but still earned enough to pay my monthly SS benefit for around 14 years.
If we assume that some of the fund especially when the worker is far from retirement is invested in something that aims for better growth than merely keeping up with inflation, but still is reasonably safe, there should be no trouble growing it to enough that when the worker retires the fund has enough to cover their benefits until death.
I did a similar calculation with my Medicare contributions. My total contributions for that, in today's dollars, are such that if I start Medicare next year would be enough that if paid monthly over my life expectancy and put toward the premiums from a health insurance plan from my state's ACA marketplace the amount the amount extra I'd have to pay monthly is pretty close to the current Medicare premium.
As with SS, if the contributions were managed for more growth than just keeping up with inflation, but still conservatively, it would be enough for an ACA marketplace plan.
I wonder if there are any pension/social security systems that actually work like that?
* It's bad for the environment. A lot of these people are moving to where they can afford housing and continuing to drive in to jobs.
* Big commutes are stressful, and probably lead to people having fewer opportunities, lowering productivity. As well as simply being more miserable.
* Paving over a bunch of farmland isn't great, if people could live closer in.