People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

I moved to the suburbs many years ago after years and years of extreme environmentalism. I feel horrible about some of it...big houses use so much energy and you use way more water (you become obsessive about cleaning) and throw more garbage out. Also use way more chemical crap in and out of the house.

On the other hand I am closer to nature. You eat less take-out and cook more because you have the space. I also thing that principles are important, when you take care of your house or garden or local park it is a good discipline and there are psychological intangibles to having more nature in your life.

Also young children learn to appreciate nature at parks or in their backyards, very dense urban areas are not always the best place to teach kids respect for the ecosystem.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/05/why-you-pay-more-walkable-neighborhoods/2122/

http://persquaremile.com/2012/05/24/income-inequality-seen-from-space/

BTW iatee, I have been kind of wanting to kick up another argument with you about the renting/owning thing, because one of the big downsides of majority renting is the kind of instability created by overheated rental markets like the current one (in NYC especially but nationally to a lesser extent) -- i.e. people wind up having to move every couple of years, which is extraordinarily disruptive to family and community life. I mean owning is the only way out of the milennia-old problem of being at the mercy of the landlord class.

― click here if you want to load them all (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 10 July 2012 20:54 (2 minutes ago) Permalink

imho there should be fewer laws

it is my understanding that ownership is generally positive and would solve a lot of problems, but not everyone can/should own and something should probably be done to improve rental markets and conditions in rented units regardless

^ CONTROVERSIAL THOUGHTZ

idk what was iatee saying before? was he promoting renting as a more desirable alternative to owning?

yes

yeah he was basically saying he just didn't think most people should own iirc

owning is cool if you want to own a house i guess

u get to buy whatever refrigerator you want

one that makes ice or w/e

more like you get to buy whatever lawnmower you want, LUCKY.

ooooh he is talking about homeownership subsidies... that is sorta different. mortgage interest tax deduction is def problematic

err, maybe not JUST subsidies, but often times "home ownership" in political discussions means "subsidize middle to upper class homeownership"

I feel like being a dad changed my tune on this a lot. Like suddenly I no longer feel like "ok w/e, I'll just move to the next neighborhood." I mean it's still not so bad with a 5-month old, but what if my daughter were in preschool or public school and we suddenly had to move to a different neighborhood because rent went up 20%? That's pretty much what happens to renter families all the time. It makes it very hard to have any kind of support network, for your child to have any consistency in their life, etc.

it's also bad for the economy because it traps people and people who own houses are less likely to start businesses or move to a better job. and it's not a particularly good investment for most people.

imho there should be fewer laws

imho there should be fewer laws for me

i believe in unregulated free market lamps

thanks for nothing oh-BOMB-ah

it's also bad for the economy because it traps people and people who own houses are less likely to start businesses or move to a better job. and it's not a particularly good investment for most people.

this is true in broad strokes, but home ownership subsidies for low income populations in hot markets seems like a win-win

people who own houses are less likely to start businesses

I don't think I agree with this assessment in the least. Two of my friends have started their own businesses in the past couple years and a fair reason why they were able to get loans to do so was having a house to list as an asset and the resultant good credit from their mortgages. I can't say for certain that renting would have definitely stopped them from getting the loans, but it would have been harder for sure.

I do agree with the packing up and moving for jobs part though, so much harder to do when you own.

defeated by anecdata again

I wasn't trying to defeat him on anything, come on. I said that I personally don't really agree with that and offered evidence to back it up. But, I always forget, we aren't allowed to disagree with iatee itt.

I mean, hey, if anyone can bring in stats that definitively prove it one way or the other, great.

Our cross-sectional regressions that only control for individual observable attributes and geographical factors identify a positive link between homeownership and various measures of selfemployment. However, once we use fixed-effects to control for time-invariant unobservables – such as innate entrepreneurial spirit, risk tolerance or persistent wealth – we find that becoming a homeowner significantly reduces the propensity of becoming an entrepreneur. Moreover, we show that this negative link is much stronger and more precisely estimated when focussing on homeowners with mortgages, and that it looses its significance once we include the mortgage loan-to-value (LTV) ratio as an explanatory variable in our regressions. This implies that leverage considerations may exacerbate portfolio distortions due to undiversified risk of investment in housing, and may sharpen the trade-off between becoming a homeowner and starting a business.

/it's also bad for the economy because it traps people and people who own houses are less likely to start businesses or move to a better job. and it's not a particularly good investment for most people./

this is true in broad strokes, but home ownership subsidies for low income populations in hot markets seems like a win-win
--akadarbarijava (psychgawsple)

trying to figure out if this is a joke

xp So that took...about 5 seconds to do.

But, I always forget, we aren't allowed to disagree with iatee itt.

wait who made up that rule

i can't help but think of all the food cart owners in pdx who rent housing and how neither being an entrepreneur nor renting a home is really doing them any economic favors

the zoning board xp

entrepreneurship is def way overrated and is often just of people who just dont have any other options

Thanks for that psychgawspie, I was googling but hadn't come up with anything definitive yet. Source?

And Laural, I get that you hate me for whatver reason, you don't need to pile on me again and again to prove it anymore. Ok?

I mean, obviously psychgawsple knew where to find that, its not exactly something three seconds of googling would lead you immediately to.

it's also bad for the economy because it traps people and people who own houses are less likely to start businesses or move to a better job. and it's not a particularly good investment for most people.

― iatee, Tuesday, July 10, 2012 5:26 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

First of all, the vast majority of small businesses fail completely with a couple years, so putting "it prevents people from starting businesses" in the same paragraph with "it's not a good investment for most people" is plain lulsy. Yes, in normal times, home price appreciation isn't that impressive beyond inflation, but it's also a lot less risky in normal times than other investments, and it's a kind of forced savings. Plus you are GETTING something for that money beyond "investment" i.e. a place to live where your costs of living are relatively fixed compared to renting, and where you have a stake in your community on account of owning there.

FWIW I don't believe that having everyone move whereever for the best job they can possibly get all the time is an optimal outcome. That's exactly the kind of free market argument I think is bunk.

I mean starting a business is a TERRIBLE investment and also just not something most people should do regardless.

xps it's not a joke! i think it's more about choice than either of the two options being better, and if you wanna sit it out and make money when your neighborhood is increasing in value then by all means

and i found that in the article linked to upthread by iatee http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/textonly/SERC/publications/download/sercdp0103.pdf

if more ppl could work from home, the moving issue would be moot

Thanks!

(xpost)

I def support home ownership if that means we can all do our work from our workstations in second life

I'm not saying I've read that whole 45-page study but it appears to be about homeownership and entrepreneurship in the UK, not exactly what people are talking about in this thread, right?

lol, the author of this (admittedly not very well-thought out or academically sound) book about artisan entrepreneurship spoke to one of my classes recently and was SUPER disillusioned for some reason and more or less kept saying "this might be your only option in the future, we're sort of all fucked unless you have a bulletproof one hundred percent amazing invention or insane business savvy, get used to it"

xps it's not a joke! i think it's more about choice than either of the two options being better, and if you wanna sit it out and make money when your neighborhood is increasing in value then by all means

yes. what could go wrong.

Sorry, jon, it's just...you never learn not to try to rebut people with your personal feelings/anecdotes from your life? But then I really don't understand why anyone wants to pick fights with iatee, chinavis, or a couple of other people on this topic, except to shit-stir on bad days. Whether you like them or not, whether you like the conclusions or not, as far as I've been able to tell they have been repeatedly proven right w studies, stats, etc. Plus they're knowledgeable on this specific topic, unlike the posters who repeatedly disagree with them based on feelings or personal bias or w/e. That swipe I made could have been applied to any of them tbh.

xp so it's ok for them to be forced to leave? they shouldn't have options? i guess i have no idea what you're saying here... the best way to combat gentrification is for everyone to rent?

I wasn't trying to take swipes at iatee, I genuinely disagreed with one of his points based on my personal experience so I tossed it out there. I wasn't out to prove him wrong though, and someone was able to steer me right wrt what I thought. I think it can sometimes be helpful to incorporate some real life eveidence though, lest the argument be nothing more than waving papers in each others faces for post after post.

(xpost)

papers are collections of real life evidence that tend to be more comprehensive that what we can gather in our personal lives

haven't read the revive at all here but consider this your obligatory "iatee you're wrong" post

Just because a block quote is from a scholarly publication doesn't mean it settles the question though.

I don't really have an opinion on this and I'm willing to believe psychgospel is more knowledgeable than me, but I glanced at that LSE study long enough to see it was about the UK specifically, would their conclusions transfer to the US necessarily?

I wasn't saying they should replace research or anything, I just think its okay to bring it down from a macro level now and then.