Most Americans would rather live in a big house in a car-based community than a small house in a walking-based community.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/19/majority-of-americans-prefer-spread-out-communities-with-big-houses/Open linkView original on lemmy.zip406
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I think that it is because many Americans have no experience with the other as a lifestyle.
I’ve had it both ways, and I was never happier than when I was living in Brooklyn, with access to excellent public transit and lots of walking-distance community support.
And, believe it, or not, my cost of living was half the price to living in Orlando, with a car. Also, I made more when living in Brooklyn. also, Orlando sucks.
Have been to Orlando once. Can confirm. It sucks. The residents suck. The commercialism sucks. Plus there are tiny lizards everywhere, and you don't want to step on them, but you're like "c'mon little guys, I just want to walk on the sidewalk. I don't want to crush you....but you DO crush them if you walk on the sidewalk. It's inevitable. And then you feel bad.
Anoles. They're everywhere. But don't feel bad, they often drop their tails to evade predators, and also they don't live long enough to really understand what's going on with these giants walking on their basking rocks lol.
I have lived in Tampa for my whole life without ever stepping on a lizard. Yes they are all over, but they aren't running underfoot. I don't like Orlando, so haven't spent much time there but the lizards can't be that different.
I once (before cell phones put a video recorder in our pockets) saw an epic battle between a lizard and a palmetto bug. They were wrestling, same size as each other, thankfully the lizard eventually won. It was like a miniature version of a Godzilla fight.
Must’ve been a small palmetto bug
This is nuts. I lived in Orlando for half a year, and have visited dozens of times (grew up in Tampa Bay) and never once stepped on a lizard there. Genuinely don't know what you're talking about. Lizards are all over but they're not suicidal
I've had it both ways, and there's nothing that compares to having your own house and land with privacy away from noisy neighbors.
When I lived in a city there were more things to do, and I could bike to work, but the crowding feels like a social prison. Also I saw some people get shot, and thieves stole things from my porch repeatedly.
I grew up in exactly that kind of environment; really, the land (and the wildlife that comes with it) is the bit I miss the most. I'd take a very modest house on a decent plot of land in the middle of the woods to living in a city.
I want to live in a modest house within walking distance of downtown and unspoiled wilderness. How do I make this happen?
Some remote towns in Canada give land away for free or for a very low price.
You just have to move to a town with a one street down town. Small town life is a mixed bag
Look for an older town, built out before cars.
I have a lot of that where I live
Any small town in New England
Such as? I feel like New England is like 90% sprawling suburbs like the rest of the country.
Also by downtown I do mean a real downtown with actual amenities.
A lot of bigger cities do have car-dependent sprawl around an unaffordable city center like Portland, Hartford, Burlington etc but a lot of the smaller towns are much more walkable and community-oriented, where you can probably afford a quarter acre lot within walking distance of a downtown. Brattleboro is a good example but getting pricey, Bennington maybe, Hanover NH, Montpelier, Farmington ME etc.
You're not going to find Boston-level amenities in i.e. Brattleboro but you'll get a minimum of a coffee shop or two, a brewery, a few good restaurants, shops, etc. plus small-town community and an affordable home
@LibertyLizard @btsax Look at the MBTA commuter rail map (or NJ Transit, SEPTA around Philadelphia, or Metra around Chicago). A lot of the regional rail stops are in or near historic downtowns that provide some downtown amenities plus rail access to the bigger city. Houses near those downtowns are generally more expensive than sprawlier suburbs but cheaper than the central city.
Yeah that's probably the closest that exists honestly.
But really what I want does not exist.
NYC, next to central park?
Oh sure let me just ask my parents for a small loan of a million dollars so I can afford rent.
Also Central Park is not exactly unspoiled wilderness. It is nice but not quite what I want.
Agreed. I live in a walkable city and would love to live somewhere with no neighbors who think blasting "She thinks my tractor's sexy" on repeat eight hours a day is perfectly fine.
Might I suggest buying an audio spotlight, pointing it at the offending house, and then blasting Baby Shark at them on repeat?
That's a war crime
Perhaps. However, we have to acknowledge that there's a price to be paid for this - particularly an environmental price - and it's not the householder who pays that price. If where we lived didn't have consequences for other people then it wouldn't be an issue. But when these decisions lock in urban sprawl, car dependency and excess emissions, they become everybody's business
More needs to happen than just infrastructure changes. It's a a giant educational issue. Individualism is pushed as being the most important thing in the west. This leads to the majority being wildly inconsiderate. Individualism is central to consumerism/capitalism. It always comes back to capitalism.
Or are so unfit that walking places sounds like an insurmountable challenge.
It's almost certainly not insurmountable unless you have something like COPD. I'm 70, went for almost two years after having covid where I could barely walk around the block, and now I can walk or cycle for hours over any terrain. It's hilly here, so that's saying something. I also lost almost 50 pounds that I'd gained during my period of enforced inactivity. There's no secret. Just start slow and keep doing it, and lay off the junk food.
I live in one of my state's few walkable neighborhoods adjacent to a downtown core, when I try to explain to others in the area what it's like, well, they've never had any reason to use sidewalks besides the yearly trick-or-treat around the cul-de-sac. Vaguely know their neighbors as they wave in passing.
For me the best part was getting a job downtown, by a park, so I can exist almost feeling like a much larger city proper. Main library, tons of restaurants, shops. Historic homes. Neighbors who care for each other and feel like extended family. This is what 'urban' can and should feel like - community.
Yeah, this feels more like "people haven't experienced being in a walkable community with good transit". My buddy is having to move back to the States after a year in Germany, and he's so upset that he and his wife are gonna have to get a car again and not just walk/bike everywhere.
plenty of American vloggers on YT saying exactly that. Most people are bereft of imagination or prescience.
It’s even the basic things, like sidewalks. If you never use a sidewalk, why waste money on them? I have neighbors who never clear their snow because “no one uses the sidewalks) (despite all the footprints from people who do). There are too many places without sidewalks and no one cares.
Then of course, the effing cars. In the last few years of more frequent walking places
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I believe walking is such an alien concept that they’re just not aware of issues like these
They want to live a socially miserable life.
Like capitalism, they’re told that it is the best and only option.
"best we can do is a small house in a car-based community"
"best we can do is a
small house1 bedroom apartment shared with 6 other people in a car-based community"Don't forget to tip your landlord
Unsurprisingly, a large amount of people prefer the lifestyle they already have than one that is unknown to them.
Ok that's misleading a bit. The poll asked if you'd rather live in a larger house that's further from other people but stuff like restaurants are miles away, or smaller and closer together but stuff like restaurants are within walking distance. I'm paraphrasing but only slightly here.
You're extrapolating the car based and walking based part, but these people could also want more public transportation and bike routes. Maybe these people already live in cramped apartment buildings and just dream of having a big house. There's other factors than just "me dum American me want car"
Seriously, I just don't want to be bothered by people or live in an apartment where I get to hear my neighbors or constantly encounter them.
Why?
Why don't I want to be bothered by or hear all my neighbors? Is this an honest question? Do you like hearing everyone around you? Do you hate peace and quiet?
Because I prefer the peace and quiet. I also do not want to engage in small talk or feel obligated to acknowledge people out of courteousy and maintaining peace with them when I just want to go about my day.
I don't want to hear people fucking, or fighting, or their kids running around the apartment or any other bullshit that comes with apartment life. Apartments suck ass and I never want to live in one again.
Okay, maybe I don't know the quality of the apartments you live in because when I want quiet time for me, I just stay in my flat. A simple brick wall is enough to shield from almost anything. Or maybe the society you live in is very different from the society I live in. I actually enjoy seeing and talking to the people that live around me.
And well, the thread is about people preferring single family houses in the US. Those houses on their oversized properties are often completely excluded from any form of community. I feel like this type of lifestyle makes us more and more sociophobic.
In the details, for walkable cities and for the environment, I'm pretty sure there's a very comfortable middle ground for everyone. We don't need the density of cities like Paris or Jakarta. But we also don't need eight football fields of land for a single person, or do we?
US apartments are almost always wood and drywall on the interior. Luxury apts may be an exception. No sound isolation at all. You also can get the heat from the neighbors if they like it hot because the walls don't stop that either. Any heavy footfalls, people talking, music playing, someone coughing, most of it resonates through the walls/floors/ceilings. The only apartmentI lived in that was an exception to this was in the middle east.
Undoubtedly. Each time I've been in apartments, there are a bunch of cunts mixed in with a few nice people.
I am introverted. I don't enjoy much socialization. And I really detest small talk. I can only endure so much "hurr durr weather hurr durr sportsball huurrr muh grind", bullshit before I forcibly evict myself from a conversation. I can do it all and most people will find me pleasant for IRL encounters. But I really don't like it.
People made me sociophobic. Sociophobic is a strong word for it in my case, but my time interacting with people made me not want to be around people. Has nothing to do with the kind of property I lived in, if anything apartment life made it worse. I see your point, but I'm not sure I agree.
The unfortunate thing with people is there is no one size fits all solution. I do think we could benefit from more quality multi-tenant housing options. But I also think havingnthe choice to not be in it is valid as well. The US is too far to the sprawl side and dense urban areas are too far to the sardine side. But there are people that enjoy both ends of the spectrum. I'd (personally) prefer more mixed zoning options where a neighborhood can have activity centers and small shops mixed in with the housing and have everything car and bike centric within those sub communities with the cars relegated to non intersecting areas.
Even one football field would be hyperbolic here. Some rich fucks might get that much land, or some people way outside of town. Average people get much much less. To your point though I think that there is a middle ground. But also the freedom of choice should be available. It's difficult to reduce car usage in sprawl, but better public services would alleviate a ton of that. I would be more than happy to ride a metro, but my state doesn't have anything like that.
@JigglySackles @Beeen132 The leaf blowers of suburbia are a hell of a lot louder and more annoying than the vast majority of noises people in an apartment can make.
I've lived in both. I definitely don't agree with your perspective. I barely hear any leaf blowers etc year round.
Yeah sorry, neighbors are usually assholes who stick their noses in other peoples business. I'll live as far from other people as I can.
If I could choose my friends as neighbors it'd be different.
Yeah it's unclear how much fantasy was allowed with these questions. Like if commute and money and pollution were no object I'd prefer to live on 1000 acres in the mountains with a cabin-mansion and hobby farm.
But realistically for cost and commute I just want a big yard for gardening, and peace and quiet.
Hyperindividualism and apparent institutionalized agoraphobia.
My agoraphobia comes from a lifetime of being bullied by people so I don’t like people. I like my small house and small suburban backyard that I grow vegetables and have chickens in.
Dunno about your story, but I have worse online experiences having to put up with others too full of themselves compared with the simple neighbors I have.
with a little AFFLUENZA mixed into it.
In many places in the us, apartments are built in such a way where they come with all the negatives, but also without many of the upsides that apartments should have.
I know several people who live in apartments, but there still isn't anywhere to walk to anyways!
Sure you might be able to, but if it requires crossing 80m of asphalt just to cross a street no one is going to do it.
Most Americans drive to their corner stores, I was so disappointed in my roommates once when I went to the (<5 minute walk) store and they decided to go too and passed me in the car halfway there.
Yeah that's kind of ridiculous.
But if we're being honest, most Americans don't even have access to a corner store.
My newest grocery store is a 2 mile bike ride away. It's not awful, but it's also not that great. And my friends in apartments I've visited are even worse. I am at least lucky that the main road I have has a multi-use path that makes it tolerable.
Even when we have a corner store it may be useless. I was excited when my neighborhood got one and I tried to develop a habit of using it. But this “inconvenience “ store was useless. They’re really only interested in selling cigarettes and lottery tickets. Good riddance
In the NE, it is very cold, icy and dangerous to try to walk half a mile to a corner store during Winter.
And we should have infrastructure that would mitigate problems like that.
Even when walkable, it's pulling teeth to get people out of carbrain.
That's why I slither like a lizard in the blizzard.
Yes, there are garden apartments near shopping plazas but in order to access a grocery store, one needs to play Frogger across a 5 lane highway or 6 lane intersection. A lot of people get hit whether on bikes or on foot. You don't want to trust your life to some Zoomer or Boomer looking at their cell phone while careening down the road in their SUV or Pick-up.
Friend of mine got divorced and had to move out of her family home. She ended up in a nice apartment in a huge building, but with giant strides on all sides. It’s an island of inaccessibility
I feel the opposite as an American I never get asked these questions though. so I always wonder who they are asking.
the type of people who actually answer their phones and don't hang up when the surveyor starts asking questions.
I wouldn't mind living an an apartment building nearly so much if only the building came with shared versions of the amenities a single family home might have: A yard for kids and dogs to run around in, a garden area with planters, a garage so people can work on their vehicles... If a 12 or 24 unit building just had single shared versions of these amenities it would make the apartment lifestyle a lot less restrictive to people who feel pressure to buy a house but don't want to burn their life savings. Two reasons this doesn't happen are regressive zoning codes and landlords treating shelter as an investment to squeeze value.
Yeah I could never willingly live in an apartment for many reasons, but a few of them being:
no common outdoor area for pets, so if your dog needs to pee you have to take them for a walk around the block to pee on some tiny patch of grass beside the street.
As you mentioned no garage/driveway to work on a vehicle or even have any other space intensive hobby/activity like woodworking.
Privacy, I just hate having neighbours and noises at all times of the day.
Gardening for more than a couple pots of tomatoes and herbs on a balcony.
And many more
This was a big thing for me. I understand that my apartment is surrounded by other apartments but I don't like being constantly reminded of it either by the noise they make or trying to be super quiet in mine so they aren't bothered.
The problem with many apartments in the US is shoddy construction, not density.
I live in a Victorian row house, at the end of a row, so I have one neighbor I share a wall with. It's two courses of brick with an air gap in the middle. The house is well-constructed, so we literally never hear each other. However, back when I was renting, I lived in places in the same city where the sound isolation was so poor that you could tell if the toilet paper the neighbors were using was soft or scratchy.
My wife and I both work remotely most of the time. She's on a call upstairs right now. I don't hear her.
They are built so cheaply now, you and your neighbors hear too much of each other's lives. Gone are the old insulated plaster and lathe walls; Now it is all chalk filled paper board (drywall). Even the floors are a thin layer of plywood nailed over the joists with a thin pad and carpet laying over it.
Yeah, the sleep deprivation I experienced last time we lived in an apartment makes me loathe to ever consider it an option again. Now I live near an elementary school, and have kids screaming all day at PE. I don't mind it a bit! People are fine, but when you can hear your neighbor coughing at 3am and it wakes you every night it drives you nuts.
Here they just loosened restrictions, so wood framed buildings can be built to six stories …. Now you’ll be able to hear all 500 of your neighbors stomping around, but at least it will be cheaper to build, right?
Note: a lot of the initial resistance was fire safety in large buildings. Sure enough the first six story wood framed apartment block in my town burned to the ground. I know that’s just one example and I don’t know enough to have an opinion on that, but makes you think
Yeah I'm originally from New York where everything is cement and steel by code but now I live in Portland where tall timber buildings are the norm and it definitely does give me pause in regard to fire safety. I guess a caveat is that the structural timber in those new buildings is a dense composite that is supposed to burn less intensely or resist fire altogether but yeah we'll see...
They didnt ask me or anyone I know
Rigged question: would you rather live in a big house or an apartment? Obviously people will choose a big house duuuh
I would rather live in a big house/apartement in walkable area than a big house/apartment in a car dependant area. But thats not the question they asked.
Exactly if I can have the same house with actually more garden space as I dont need a car I'd choose that every time.
Even then it's not a very useful question as car =/= car. Having a house with a prius that you use once in a blue moon to visit your grandma in the country side is very different from driving a pickup truck every day.
Daily driving a non-passenger work vehicle family passenger vehicle.
Climatetown represent!
Another alternative is a row house. It's bigger than an apartment, you actually own it with no HOA bullshit, you park on the street (though I have to pay the vast sum of about $30 a year for the privilege). And you can live in or near the city center, where you can find every kind of pub, restaurant or shop and where you can get trains or buses anytime.
Commieblock
that's because they still aren't bearing the TRUE costs of suburban sprawl. it's still "cheaper" to live in suburban hell than in the city.
if the math started to make more sense, many more would choose walkability
I'd say most people move out of the city into a big house because the land value and house is much more affordable than close to the city. However the lower price is then offset by the extra travel time to and from work, costs for car, petrol and maintenance.
In the end you don't really save any money, you just spend it on either car and time or land value.
Time is the most valuable commodity you will ever own.
Anyone that chooses a life with loads of transport are sort changing themselves big time.
Time is exactly why a lot of people in America choose to drive. Public transit practically doesn't exist, or would take two hours to go about a 30 minute drive bleeding away all your time. I just checked, and there's not even a bus that runs close to when I go in. It costs $4 and over two hours. I'd have to arrive more than six hours early to take the bus. And that's with the bus stop, literally in the parking lot of the business.
America needs to decuple their public transportation spending for about a decade just for us to catch up with the developed world.
Probably due to most of them already living in car based societies that are far apart. Living like that makes me people hate their neighbors, and they want no one to encroach on their kingdoms
It's well-known that how you ask the question in a survey can drastically skew the response, and so we have to interpret these results based on the specific questions they asked.
We know from sale prices that people actually covet walkable areas, so much so that the accusation of "rich elitist" gets tossed at proponents of walkable cities. Those places are so much more expensive. So maybe people are thinking of "houses that I can afford" when they answer this survey? Or, they're answering it from the perspective of already needing a car, so a little extra driving is no big thing.
What would the results be if they asked things like, "Do you prefer neighborhoods where kids can safely play outdoors, or neighborhoods where there is too much traffic danger?" Or, if that's too biased, "where children can walk to school versus taking a bus or being driven?" Maybe break up the question, "Do you prefer to have stores located near where you live, or do you want them farther away?"
There are lots of different ways to ask, and the different results would be informative.
(Also, this survey relies on self-reported urban/rural distinctions, and those answers are wildly inaccurate, to say the least.)
We can also tell by the existence of zoning laws. If the demand for larger lots were really that high, the market would develop like that on its own without needing minimum lot size laws to force it.
These could be factors but I do think this is probably accurate overall. Walkable areas are expensive primarily because they're in such short supply. It doesn't take a majority to make it expensive, just a slice of the population larger than the people who can actually fit in such places. And since we've made dense urban development illegal in like 99% of the country, naturally any amount of people wanting to live in such places is too much.
Ultimately I think this is a problem created by large, majoritarian government. The suburban majority decides urban design and the rest have little to no power to object.
I think tying "big" to "car-based" and "small" to "walkable" is probably skewing the results a bit. I doubt most people would choose "small" regardless of what follows it.
I would choose small, but then I'm weird. A big house just means that you've gotta fill it with excess shit, and clean it all the time.
Most Americans are selfish fucks.
Signed,
An American.
Well 40 % of Americans are still supporting Trump as per latest polls.
Maybe decades of lead exposure in childhood are just not ideal for the development of a reasonable population in a country.
The poetry in this is that said lead exposure largely came from... cars.
If i were too fat to walk, i would too
That's not the only reasons you might not be able to walk, and we do need to keep non-walkers in mind when designing cities.
I believe there are better solutions that each individual operating a multi-ton machine that requires non-renewable resources. (Even my EV requires tire changes, and AFAIK, we haven't figured out a cyclic economy for them.)
The EU managed to have about 97% tire recovery, so why should the US not be capable of it as well?
Thank you for the link, TIL. I really thought it was still a bigger problem than that.
My point mostly stands; I'd personally like to get to where I feel independent without a personal vehicle, and I think it would be better for all of us if there were fewer of them in active use.
I have the best of both worlds: small house in a car-based community. Sigh.
55% is just past half, and the US is pretty sprawling. I wouldn't call my house big, or small either, but being able to walk or bus to work is something I have not compromised on since I was 20, it's more important than a big house. Which apparently puts me in a large minority.
I feel bad for the 45% of suburbanites who would prefer to be closer to everything, we have those house farms in the exurbs here. The houses are big, but not far apart. I know several people who moved down here, bought one of those houses because they looked nice, them realized how trapped they were, but right now the price of houses in my previously very affordable neighborhood in the city has risen to eye-watering levels, and that is true for most of the areas in the city.
I mean if you live within walking/public transport distance of stuff, you don’t need a car thus you don’t need a parking (or as americans call it — the driveway) or the garage in the house, thus you don’t need as big as of a house on the ground floor which can be used by a store, restaurant or cafe instead and people can live above it. It’s a win-win for residents, store owners below, environment, urban planning and communities.
Living behind the shop or above it was my favorite location, for certain, but I think I'm in a smaller minority on that. Not in a high rise, just the shops had living space behind and above them. That was a long time ago though, since then I've lived in detached houses and that's what we have now. I don't need a car but do have one still - I was lucky, my work moved from one business district to another and landed a mile from my house. They moved to make it more accessible to more employees but coincidentally made it very close to me. The old location, if my car was in the shop, could only be reached by bus by first riding downtown then getting a ticket on a bus run by the next city over, their express bus to our city had a stop at the old office, but in one direction you had to walk across, not kidding, an eight lane state highway. At a light so there was a crosswalk but still.
Maybe some people don’t want to live very restaurant. I feel like that would be one of the first choices rejected.
I am happy with my small house, small yard, walkable town.
Why not both?
Big yard
Small town
Everything you need in the town centre
Bus going around every 30 minutes
Good enough for me.
When I started writing this post I thought
I would only write two or three
Lines
And now this format has proven
Inefficient
Doesn't work if the small town is one gigantic stroad of abandoned or soon to fail local shops, that cuts the town in half. And the only flanking businesses are corporate mega chains that asphyxiate the local economy. Which are like 90% of small towns™ in the USA.
Some of us have big houses in walkable communities. You can have both, though you have to sacrifice on the yard / lawn (which is a good thing anyways, seeing what Americans do with theirs ; which is to say they do nothing, and on purpose too !)
For me the yard is what I really want. Being able to grow fruits and veggies and attract birds and pollinators is my jam. I think my family could live quite happily with basically a bedroom attached to a big kitchen. But I don’t think I could forfeit the yard.
This is my problem. I essentially want a suburban-sized lot, cause I would make use of every inch of it. I really dont want to live surrounded by 1000 other identical lots full of people who just want to have a big patch of non-native turf grass that they are going to complain about in the rare event that I see them actually outside of their house.
I think there are a hell of a lot of people who would actually be happier in just a roomier condo or townhouse if they: 1) had ever lived in one that wasn't just the cheapest possible student housing, and 2) they weren't conditioned to believe that a single family detached home is the only place that a non-poor person should live.
This was my dilemma. I’m one person with a couple of dogs, I don’t need much interior, but I wanted land to cultivate both as a hobby and for the reward. I settled on a mid-century single wide on a decent lot, and bonus, it had mature trees. I can’t walk to downtown, but I can walk to the grocery store and bike to a bus stop to get to downtown. I do have to Lyft home because our buses quit early, but I’m often intoxicated so that’s safer anyway. The real perk of this is that the neighborhood is older, and while there’s some derelict places who don’t care (junk cars, weeds, dilapidation), it’s nice because no one fucking cares. It’s a mix of people like me turning their smaller, older homes into little bungalows and cottages, backyard chickens and gardens, plus some random peacocks that roam. We trade seeds, put bins of free veggies alongside the road, nod and chitchat. A lot of the US does have the space to create living environments like this, but it’s marketed the idea the house has to take up the whole lot and that landscaping other than perfectly manicured, wrong climate, water-sucking grass is a sin. I do wish our bus system was better, and side roads that encouraged walking/biking were better, but how we live in the communities we have shouldn’t be just dense but walkable or mega-subdivision it takes half an hour to drive out of. We can find ways to balance land use and social desires.
I have 3 kids. In the city I can afford a 2 bedroom in the suburbs I can get whatever I need. It's not that I prefer it... It's not really an option
Well, it is a country famous for being stupid and selfish and celebrating both...
Yeah, I want a garage and space to work and store my cars and motorcycles, space for my tools. I want yard space for my dogs. Shit, my dream home is a garage with a house. If I didn't have the hobbies I do a city apartment would be cool. But then I remembering hearing the neighbors through the walls, or partiers through the windows outside.
I'm lucky enough to be in a house very near a walkable urban area in my city, I've got the best of both worlds. I'd regularly walk my dogs through on a 3 mile loop; we became regulars at a couple bars and one of the pet stores... until my girl became crippled in the hind legs. Maybe we'll go again when she gets more comfortable with her wheel chair.
Given the choice, I want space.
This is painful to read. Mine is turning 9 years old, which is getting up there for her breed. This past year she’s been noticeably slowing down after about three miles - this past week I tried a longer walk and she just gave up after 3.4 miles …… we didn’t even get to the pet store
Edit: and the pet store no longer carries “Frosty Paws” so I don’t know what we’re going to do this summer
I've made frozen treats for my dogs that is just peanut butter and apple sauce mixed and frozen. Sometimes I'd add blueberries and it was funny to watch my girl eat them because she's toothless and they'd pop out of her mouth when she'd try to chew them.
If she starts having a hard time getting up, I got a Help 'em Up harness for my girl and it's great.
We just got a wheelchair that's gonna take some getting used to.
My girl is 12 and lost the ability to walk last fall. My boy is 15 but acts 5.
If the suburbs weren't subsizided and homeowners had to pay premiums for living so far from central services it may change their opinion.
How about a any house in a cycling-based community?
Most people are introverts, or at least not extroverted, given the option. Small houses mean your neighbors are on top of you, you have to hear them, probably interact with them, on a near daily basis. You have to control your noise, your pet choices are limited, and you probably don't have a yard.
Few people want that. Some people love it.
I find this ironic as an introvert. I rarely interact with any of my neighbors since it was an apartment with constantly rotating rents. My apartment complex had more people than the rural town I grew up in. City living it's easy to be one of the faceless masses. My rural family loves to talk to and gossip about neighbors. They constantly run into people they know at the few stores they have.
Edit: City life can have close knit communities. But it seems more opt-in than forced.
Agreed, the only time in the past decade I’ve talked at length (more than 5 sec) to my apartment neighbors was when one of the moms got (understandably) very upset about catching a homeless guy jerking off in the apartment garage. Meanwhile in my tiny hometown you can’t go to the grocery store without people who knew your parents 20+ years ago trying to make conversation with you.
It's not that they're close knit or require getting to know anyone. It's that your sounds and smells are an involuntarily shared experience. You don't have to know your neighbors to know they're cooking fish, or having a party, or just fucking loud. And some portion of them are inconsiderate self absorbed assholes.
Your family loves to talk about the neighbors, because they have a choice, to go somewhere they can do that. It's not something they're forced to experience by proximity, so the opportunity is a treat.
I agree sounds and smells are more common in the city, but to me that isn't an issue with introversion since that isn't socializing? Seems more like sensory sensitivity, not introversion. Someone can have both of course.
I never knew my neighbors by sight or name in the apartments I lived in, but I knew a lot of them by sound and smell! Never learned a name, but i knew family issues, their dog's routine, when they smoked, when they got home late and drunk stumbling on the stairs. I was constantly overstimulated.
Now in a small house my kid plays with my neighbor's kid, and when we're gonna be too loud we text each other an explanation/ apology. I love my neighbors. We all rent for context, so it's not like we're kind because it's gonna be life long relationships or something.
Huge differences in response based on demographics. The article goes into it more in detail. For instance:
Have you met people?
I'll do almost anything to keep my distance.
Every apartment I have ever lived in has been akin to hell on earth. Loud, unruly neighbors. Unwalkable area. So far away from amenities it takes 15 minutes of driving to get anything. No shade. Bad smells.
Its no wonder. There's a few awesome neighborhoods i would love to move to, with great walkable street, groceries, books, restaurants all only a few minutes of walking away. I would love to move to those places but they are so expensive I could never dream of it.
Walkable in the USA usually means premium exploitation. Like some developer owner that uses all the surrounding businesses like extortion. Everything in the area is 10-20% more expensive. So you still have to drive the same amount of distance for free market competitive prices, only now there is 10× the potential for an asshole neighbor. Plus, all homes in the USA are made of toothpicks and trash, so you are going to hear 10× the neighbor noise too. There is no middle ground. It is toothpicks and trash or "oh, some rich guy" pricing.
I don't necessarily want a big house but I do want space for a workshop where I can build/fix furniture and such and a garden where I can sit outside and chill by myself. I don't see how I could have those things living in an apartment.
Moot point though. I doubt I'll ever be able to afford a house. Let alone a nice one.
Why does it have to be 1 or the other in a city? You can absolutely have both in mixed development, add in shops for basic needs as well. Is it going to be as big a a suburban place? No, but you can have a small garden and a garage.
It's really weird and unnerving seeing American cities and suburbs. They are so badly planned/zoned for actual living, when compared to European countries
Most US folks may not believe it, but South American cities are also much nicer to live in than US cities.
I don't know, I'm not a housing developer. If I could those things and be able to walk to places that'd be dope, but if I have to choose I'm going with the option that gives me the things I want over walkability.
Most people prefer what they're already familiar with, especially when they've never experienced anything different.
Not much of a revelation.
Perhaps, but I think that a lot of USians have experienced something different without realising. Consider the medium density mixed use walkable situation that is Disney World or a cruise ship or a vacation in some beach town or in Venice, or even of many university campuses. I think familiarity with the language of urbanism is maybe as important as the experience of different types.
54% of Americans read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
I bet there's a lot of overlap between these two groups.
I would rather live in a big house in a more walking and mass transit based community.
Is it possible. We even have the stores in walking distance... If they were made to be walkable.
We're starting, on a very small scale. New, trendy communities are usually 5 over 1s, and they're learning to put the parking in the back, with small walkable streets in the front.
The mass transit part is key though, and that's very, very lacking.
I prefer a 80m2 apartment in a walking/public transport based community tyvm.
Most americans declare strong preferences based on tribal affiliation with no consideration and less knowledge.
What most americans say they want means not a single fuck about anything, least of all what would please most americans.
why the fuck do we let rightwingers vote on anything at all
Because most americans see a large house and car as status symbols.
That's because geographic isolation is the situation they grew up in. They haven't experienced the alternative.
I would guess that many people have never lived in a good, dense, location. My parents would vote for farther apart, but when they think of the city they think of The Warriors
It'd be interesting to poll only people who have lived in a variety of places.
I grew up in a car-focused suburb and never want to go back.
Yeah the very idea of a non-car based community is so far removed from most Americans’ brains that they think they’d have to walk 10 miles through snow or ride “dangerous, unpredictable public transit” just to get groceries. I happen to live somewhere with a nice little “downtown ish” area. There’s just one line of blocks that’s got most everything you’d need: grocery store, post office, library, some restaurants/bars. My only complain is that there’s only like 2 or 3 little apartment complexes within a 10 min walk. Everything else is houses
I don't understand it. Good public transit, a townhouse of an appropriate size, and most of what I need in walking distance would be amazing. Yeah I may still want a car, but I'd have to seriously ask myself if it's worth the cost
No shit. House size is a huge deal.
Don’t know any different. Hollywood is a hell of a drug.
Yes, people love large lots so much that -- checks notes -- government has to force them to exist via minimum lot size laws? 🤔
Surely, if they were that popular, people would freely choose to plat them that way without coercion...
Americans fought against carbrain in the 1920's, now they're all infected.
I don't want to live in a small house I want to live in a high density building. Preferably with about 100 units so its still small enough to be a community. It would need a garage though as my wife cannot handle not having a car. I can get her to not use it often but she can't fanthom not having it as an option (just to be clear this is really far for her and im pretty sure if I die she will be driving every day).
I'd love the latter, but it's rare and generally way more expensive I think.
living below neighbors with no privacy, and all the conflicts suck, if only there is a middle ground
AmericanspeopleSome people.
I live in a smallish house in the center of a small but densely populated city in England. The house is half the size of the house I lived in when I was in the US. I drive about once a week. The rest of the time, I walk or ride a Dutch city bike. I'm healthier than I was in the US, where for some jobs, I had commutes that took 2 hours each way. I know my neighbors. I know the shopkeepers on the small pedestrianized commercial street in our neighborhood, as well as on the main street (high street) in the city center, which is a 15 minute walk from my front door. I can ride my bike at a leisurely pace for half an hour and be in beautiful countryside or on the English Channel.
I'm not saying everyone should live this way, but it definitely suits me better than owning a house twice as big and having to drive everywhere.
What is better for the environment, healthier or is your personal preference is not per sé what most people consider.
Where I live (most densely populated area of Europe, 3rd in the world!) people live in or near the city in small houses or flats.
Mostly rented, until they get settled and can buy a (bigger) house in the 'countryside' and commute.
That is the cliché standard here.
And totally understandable, who wants to live in a stacked box without a garden and people living left and right, above and under you?