> Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons?
Yes that is absolutely something people want. You can get that in cities if you give up on yard and instead share with parks. That said, some of the reasons people want it are uncomfortable.
Some people don’t like change and moved somewhere based on how it looked in <year>, understandable, but change is a part of life especially as our population grows. Streets that are safe for kids are common in many parts of the world, in many different city structures, not just suburbs. So the “family friendly” myth about suburbs isn’t true.
Regarding uncomfortable truths, if you go and listen to some of the town meetings, you’ll walk away with a couple points, of varying degrees of prejudice.
Some people simply want it to be “exclusionary” to keep prices up, and to keep themselves feeling special. Those people in town meetings may suggest paying for affordable housing in another town to keep theirs as is.
Some people will say they don’t want affordable housing because “we all know that those people bring crime”. This can be a varying degree of prejudice, whether it’s low income people or racial minorities, but invariably someone always says it.
I'm sure at town meetings there are plenty of unsavory things said, and people with prejudices show up in disproportionate numbers. It's just not accurate or OK to imply that all property owners seeking to keep their neighborhoods from rapidly changing to higher densities are doing so out of prejudice. Give people the benefit of believing they are primarily motivated by rational self interest rather than some irrational prejudice.
I totally agree parks are an amazing solution and can create really nice places for kids to play safely. We love our parks. That said, even if the end product is objectively better for the current homeowners due to new amenities, etc. there is still a long period of lots of construction they'll have to endure that might be the only years their kids are at an age where they'd normally be wandering the previously quiet neighborhood. None of this is simple, and it's going to be a trade-off between the valid interests of the existing property owners and the valid interests of the larger metro area population that needs a place to live.
I have nothing against parks. Parks are great. But I'm not sure what problem they supposedly solve.
If I were living in an apartment, then a park would be better than nothing.
But I can't grow a vegetable garden in a park. I can't enjoy the park while I have stuff inside my house that I need to check on in 15 minutes. You can't let a 5 year-old go to the park alone but, if your backyard is relatively secured and you can see them out of your window, then you can let them play in the backyard. I can't let my dog out to run to the park in order to "do its business" etc. I don't have the same level of privacy and solitude at a park as I do in my backyard.
While there are certain things I would prioritize over a backyard (like having a garage to set up a "makers shop" in), there's not much I would trade a backyard for ... least of all a park.
Beyond the "yard solution" I also have a very hard time living in even medium-sized cities, let alone large ones. I don't like noise, traffic (street or pedestrian) or crowds. Public transportation is a nightmare for me and grocery delivery services have actually saved my life so I don't need or want a grocery store within walking distance (I find shopping to be one of the most stressful activities in life). Rural living is for me.
It's funny how common things like vegetable gardens are in Internet rhetoric and how comparatively rare they are in the world I actually walk around in.
This is a thread about development policy. If you actually want to raise a vegetable garden, you're in a small minority. Nobody is forcing you to live anywhere, and there is certainly no need to prevent the growth of cities or preserve low-density neighborhoods in the inner region of a major metropolitan area to ensure there will be space for the small fraction of us who want to grow their own tomatoes. In fact the opposite is true: allowing dense development to take place ensures that there will be more unspoilt land available on the outskirts for those of us with a green thumb.
I don't understand your point. I was replying to people who were talking about how parks solve certain problems for those without yards, and I was wondering what problems they solve. The fact that most people don't grow vegetable gardens is cherry-picking one example I gave of something you can do in a backyard but that you can't do in a park. Why did you zero in on that and go off on a rant about how most people don't grow vegetable gardens and those who do can not live in cities? That has literally nothing to do with my comment.
My point is simple: you are not being forced to live in a city.
>Why did you zero in on that
It helped highlight the irrelevance and myopia of your post.
>That has literally nothing to do with my comment.
Your concluding sentence was "Rural living is for me". Do you see the connection now?
This is a thread about how some people make life more expensive for everyone because the world around them is changing and they want to use the government to stop it. This is a thread about development policy. Development policy does not make your backyard disappear. It is a question about whether you should ban other people from living in ways you don't personally enjoy.
>I was wondering what problems they solve. The fact that most people don't grow vegetable gardens is cherry-picking one example I gave of something you can do in a backyard but that you can't do in a park.
Why did you cherry-pick one example the poster gave about what he enjoys about living in a city and go off on a rant about all of the things you can do in a backyard but not in a park?
> My point is simple: you are not being forced to live in a city.
But that has nothing to do with anything. I never once said or even implied that I, or anyone else, was.
> It helped highlight the irrelevance and myopia of your post.
I re-read the thread and come away with a different conclusion. My post was neither myopic or off-topic IMO.
> Your concluding sentence was "Rural living is for me". Do you see the connection now?
You misunderstood my point and concluded that i was implying that everyone is being forced to live in cities. You are being argumentative, I was making conversation.
> Why did you cherry-pick one example the poster gave about what he enjoys about living in a city and go off on a rant about all of the things you can do in a backyard but not in a park?
>I re-read the thread and come away with a different conclusion. My post was neither myopic or off-topic IMO.
The thread is about policy. Every post before yours in the tree you responded to discusses the motivations of people, particularly people in large CA metropolitan areas, for supporting particular policies, or discusses the impacts of the policies themselves. I attempted to respond to your post as though you were trying to say something relevant to policy, and in so doing, tried to explain that your personal preferences are not necessarily a good guide to policy, particularly in the areas in question.
You have pulled the less important sentences out of my posts and chosen to repeatedly attack me personally:
>You are being argumentative
>Re-read the parent, troll.
In fairness, it was not the post you responded to that mentioned parks as an amenity of cities, but the one before that. I regret that my attempt at a humorous illustration seems to have been missed.
It doesn't seem like further exposition on my part is likely to help you see what you missed. Please understand that there are many people like you who interject these sort of unhelpful anti-city anecdotes in discussions about local land use regulations, so I showed a little annoyance.
I agree with all of this, while also noting I have had several friends and colleagues who grow herbs and vegetables in apartments, on balconies, in sun rooms and so on. Anything short of a tree appears completely viable even without an expansive back yard.
In the US it is an arrestable offense for your kids to go play in the park on their own, so I pretty much see it as a waste to fund children's playgrounds. Average parent is worked to death just keeping the household afloat with no time to have to accompany their kid the whole time. Rather have a private one where the police at least need a warrant to enter the secured curtilage.
> In the US it is an arrestable offense for your kids to go play in the park on their own
No, that is definitely just an urban legend. First, the law would depend on the state, and second, most states don’t have restrictions for kids once they are 7-8 years old, which I consider way too young to be by themselves but I wouldn’t get arrested over it.
It does depend on your state, but whenever it happens, it’s a news story simply because it doesn’t happen often. Nuance is important:
> Phillips, Debra Harrell’s attorney, confirmed there is no age at which a child can be left on his or her own specified in South Carolina law. The challenge for the prosecutor will be to prove that this child’s needs and care were not adequately arranged before she was left at the park, he said.
There is no law against it (in South Carolina at least). The law they are using for the charge is reckless endangerment. And usually at the end of it, prosecutors drop all charges due to lack of evidence.
Have you ever been subject of a criminal complaint? Not long ago I was detained on some absurd hearsay. I was cuffed, I was fingerprinted, I was strip searched. Tossed in a cell. Made to perform bodily functions in front of officers. You don't know who is going to take care of your pets, your child(ren). You don't know if you'll be fired from your job. You don't know when you'll be released. In the case of something involving a child, it will be used as prejudicial information in the DCS case and the followup investigation. You quite likely will be put on a civil list of child abusers, which makes it difficult to work with children or adopt.
All these things make public playgrounds just extremely inconvenient. It's such a treacherous hazard I can't in good conscious consider it as anything close to a substitute.
Again that’s not how it works. First, whenever this happens it is broadcast widely in the news. Second, there is some debate, a mention that no state law (and definitely no federal law, as the original comment suggested) actually exists prohibiting kids from being at the playground alone, a vague weak law is used and then the prosecutor goes WTF were the police thinking.
I'm very adaptive and can do both(to a degree), and a lot of people are like you, me and city dwelling socialites(that pay $5000 for a shoebox apartment in the middle of Manhattan).
The issue arises, is when people with your mindset also want to be close to big social life. Then they may, and NIMBYs do, stifle natural city growth. << That is the problem here
I'm 100% sure that there is a way to negotiate better outcomes for everyone.
> It's just not accurate or OK to imply that all property owners seeking to keep their neighborhoods from rapidly changing to higher densities are doing so out of prejudice
Very few people here are implying this. It’s true that some people are doing it out of prejudice, and that some of American culture has been conditioned to like the suburbs, out of historic prejudices.
> there is still a long period of lots of construction they'll have to endure that might be the only years their kids are at an age where they'd normally be wandering the previously quiet neighborhood.
Those people will still have the yards they had yesterday though? They’ll still have everything they had the day before zoning changed. Nothing is lost for homeowners. The whole neighborhood isn’t going to be under scaffolding overnight and quiet neighborhoods are far more dangerous for kids to play outside than a more developed area.
And just as development isn’t instantaneous, neither is childhood growth - the people that move into new houses that are built will likely be pre-child families looking to move somewhere (still quite) quiet to raise a kid.
> trade-off between the valid interests of the existing property owners and the valid interests of the larger metro area population that needs a place to live.
Completely false dichotomy. This isn’t about metro vs suburbs. It’s those homeowners vs all of society, or more precisely current town residents vs future town residents.
The suburbs need more housing, and the cities. All of American society has too few houses for the population, and people have to live somewhere. Some want to live in a big city, but some want to live outside a big city. This population should not be looked at as “city overflow” and more than the current residents should be considered city dwellers. Plenty of people would rather live in a 5% more dense Hillsboro than a 5% more dense San Francisco. And both towns may need to be 5% more dense to support housing needs.
> I'm sure at town meetings there are plenty of unsavory things said, and people with prejudices show up in disproportionate numbers. It's just not accurate or OK to imply that all property owners seeking to keep their neighborhoods from rapidly changing to higher densities are doing so out of prejudice.
Perhaps not, but it's the people who attend town meetings and complain (more often than not for prejudiced reasons, IME) who influence housing policy. City planning leadership reacts to and votes on the opinions of those people primarily, not the people who don't show up.
And additionally, the only people who would show up already live there, when a large part of this issue is about a non-present constituency: those who have either been forced to leave, or those who would like to move there, but cannot afford to currently.
Yes, exactly this. Additionally we have seen how many once beautiful cities and parks have turned into unsafe homeless camps because of government policy. If I buy a house with a nice backyard I can guarantee that it will be nice as long as I maintain it. I cannot guarantee that the local park will not turn into a needle strewn homeless camp sometime in the future when some politician changes something.
And people will be homeless in large numbers until enough housing is built for them, and the government is allowed to spend the $x to house them rather than the $(x * y) required to deal with all the effects them being homeless.
Build subsidized housing for people who need it. Time and time again experience has shown that to be the cheapest solution. But many Americans who never grew past toddlerhood find that unacceptable because it means someone else is getting something they aren't.
Lol. Yeah, and just keep building MORE free housing next year to give away as the Greyhounds keep rolling in. Of course, it's criminal to even suggest building it somewhere less expensive. Only the finest and most convenient locations will do! So, to afford the land and materials, and the armies of social workers, uhh, just raise payroll and property taxes?
My brother bought a house in Fremont next to an apartment building. Had nothing but trouble with the neighbors; loud noise, trash around, tons of traffic in front of his house. He eventually had to move.
Yes that is absolutely something people want. You can get that in cities if you give up on yard and instead share with parks. That said, some of the reasons people want it are uncomfortable.
Some people don’t like change and moved somewhere based on how it looked in <year>, understandable, but change is a part of life especially as our population grows. Streets that are safe for kids are common in many parts of the world, in many different city structures, not just suburbs. So the “family friendly” myth about suburbs isn’t true.
Regarding uncomfortable truths, if you go and listen to some of the town meetings, you’ll walk away with a couple points, of varying degrees of prejudice.
Some people simply want it to be “exclusionary” to keep prices up, and to keep themselves feeling special. Those people in town meetings may suggest paying for affordable housing in another town to keep theirs as is.
Some people will say they don’t want affordable housing because “we all know that those people bring crime”. This can be a varying degree of prejudice, whether it’s low income people or racial minorities, but invariably someone always says it.