“All living spaces near office buildings are getting more and more unaffordable”
FTFY
Pretty much. Gentrification in action. They’re pricing out workers who work these jobs and then the rich people who move in pitch a fit about how there’s long waits and “no service” and how “no one wants to work anymore.” You all did this to yourselves. You chased away the workers. If you have a problem with the environment you created, perhaps you should stop doing that or go work these “great” jobs yourselves?
It’s not “gentrification”, it’s a lack of supply to meet demand. “Gentrification” is a word invented by NIMBYs to shut down conversations about housing densification.
Gentrification: the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process.
It literally is gentrification. And yes they are NIMBYs too. It’s both. It’s the same coin.
I don’t have a WSJ subscription so I couldn’t read the article. One thing I haven’t seen discussed is being house trapped. If you purchased a house before everything got crazy and refinanced with a sub 3 interest rate you are effectively trapped in your house now. You would need to make so much more money to buy your same house now. It would be a stupid financial decision to move for a job. What you end up with a stupid long commutes.
Let’s get lab grown meat going so we can free up all that cattle land in the middle of the country, build some well planned cities with high speed rail connecting them and spread out a bit.
Land is not, and will not for the forseeable future be the point of contention in the US, it’s the rail connections and building ‘well planned cities’ that people actually want to live in that are basically impossible.
Isn’t the US like 70% empty land?
We have a lot of desert. And mountains. And Alaska.
And corn.
Hell no. More sprawl is not the answer.
Cities != Sprawl
The point is that we already have tons of cities that are way too sprawly. Adding more cities is way harder than retrofitting the ones we have.
How would building a modern city in an open plain be harder than retrofitting a century (or more) old city, wrt transit, zoning, ecological concerns, etc?
I’m not saying it’s trivial to build a city. I’m saying a modern city does not jeed to work around the many many layers of complexity and existing city brings
But expanding into agricultural areas instead of making current living spaces denser or better is the definition of sprawl.
No, sprawl would be adding suburban surrounds. Dense urban area is dense.
Modern well built cities networked by robust mass transit would decrease the need to take up natural and agriculture land.
I don’t care how many modern cities you add, suburban infrastructure around existing poorly built cities is worse.
I drive 100 miles a day for my IT job in Austin. I live in Rockdale… So my commute is ~1:30 each way.
But the prices getting closer towards Austin are so bad, I don’t wanna move out of principal since I’d be doing nothing but burning money through rent and not receiving anything in return…
That is 3 hours a day you could be doing something else. No matter how much it pays, it isn’t worth it.
I’ve stopped applying to companies if it is more than half an hour away. Unless I can work like 4/5 at home.
But I’m from Europe, so there is that.
Here in the US, our safety net has the punjis poking through it. That way we don’t overburden the net by falling on it, the spikes will catch us instead. We don’t really have much power to pick employers here, we really gotta pick the best paying job we can find in a really short time. Oh, and can’t be switching jobs too much, since lots of employers can deny you health insurance until you’ve worked with them for 90 days. Isn’t that such a fun system‽
Well that’s not true regarding worth. There’s A number that is sufficient.
Your drive time is just part of your “work”. Is the drive time, plus your work time, plus latent career / project stress less than your total comp received? If so, that drive is just a “boring part” of your work day. If not, as you say, it isn’t worth it.
I may have an opportunity coming up to work in greater Austin. It’s tempting for many reasons, and I like the area, but I don’t think I can make it work for exactly that reason…housing prices are sky high.
For me it would mean trading a lot of financial stability for quality of life, or having a commute similar to yours. Living in or near the city is probably still manageable for those who have been there for many years, but I think most newcomers will find housing prohibitively expensive.
Cities will reckon with their tax greed.
