alt Hacker News> People routinely leave their community for their job all the time here.
Sure, where the compensation is sufficient to cover your travel costs you would reasonably consider it. But then transportation costs aren't an issue, making the unaffordability idea that started this moot. But, if we want to move beyond the topic of cost, that just brings us right back to the point that travel time ends up being the same living in the city and living in the country, so what have you gained by living in the city?
What one normally thinks you would gain is having other amenities, like bars, restaurants, healthcare, shopping, and just an all round vibrant community right there to enjoy when you get home from work. But the particular city homes we are talking about don't even have that. They are just houses upon houses upon houses all jammed up against each other with nothing in-between.
And it is that way because people want it to be that way. They don't want the restaurants, shopping, healthcare, etc. to be anywhere nearby. Even though they cry that they afford to the transportation to get to them, funnily enough. But why? What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them?
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> so what have you gained by living in the city?
Jobs, hopefully paying a good bit more than minimum wage. If not for the city they wouldn't have any kind of income. They don't move to the city because they want some Parisian lifestyle, they move to the city because there are practically no jobs in the actually rural areas.
> They don't want the restaurants, shopping, healthcare, etc. to be anywhere nearby
Correct. They see these things as unsafe for their families to be around. They don't want to live within walking distance of a nightclub.
> Even though they cry that they afford to the transportation to get to them, funnily enough.
Most of the people arguing for better walkability and better transit access are absolutely not the same people actively choosing to live in places like Forney and Princeton and what not. They're generally fine having that commute and are fine driving to the Walmart when they need something that isn't just delivered to their home. Why even bother getting in the car to go to a restaurant, Uber Eats will bring the restaurant to them, and they don't have to deal with the crowds. Which, the few places with actual stores in these areas are massively crowded, because it's just oceans of houses around a few dots of shopping areas with giant parking areas surrounding them.
> What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them?
That they were willing to settle for the hour commute and not a two-hour commute, and that was the biggest single-family home they could afford in that hour commute radius and had a decent school district.
You're looking at it in pretty much the opposite direction from how they're looking at it. You're looking at a community you want to live in and then decide the home you can afford. They're looking for the house they want to live in, and then find the community they can afford to buy in. People didn't choose to live in Princeton or Forney or Melissa or Anna (or dozens of other "cities" around DFW) because of city amenities, outside of maybe a school district. They live there because they could buy a big single house cheap.
When I talk to friends about "if you could just move tomorrow, where would you want to live in DFW", their choices are rarely based in closeness to amenities. It is often about wanting more land, more space, more rooms. A family of four with a four-bedroom house with a dining room and two living rooms, too cramped. Need to move further out and get a bigger house. Definitely down to trade close access to the bike trails, walking distance to a large shopping area, walkable to the transit system to go all over the city, public parks with public swimming pools within walking distance, the elementary school around the corner and the middle school down the street for another few hundred square feet of land.
> What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them?
Children, among other things. Let's make this concrete.
I live ~40 minutes from Washington DC and ~30 minutes from Baltimore. I have three children.
I'd need, at minimum, a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property in the city. It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons.
The 30y mortgage on my six-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home in the suburbs is ~$3,500/month.
Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less?
(For reference: my property value at the time of purchase was $575,000.)